The applause had ended long before Ryu Ji-ho allowed himself to breathe.
The small auditorium was already half-empty when he finally stood up from his seat, the faint echo of clapping still lingering in the back of his skull like a sound remembered rather than heard. Folding chairs scraped against the floor as people gathered their bags, laughter spilling casually into the aisles, light and unburdened. To them, the night had concluded neatly—another student screening, another modest success, another memory filed away without weight.
Ji-ho remained still for a moment longer, his fingers resting on his knees, his posture straight as if the event had not yet released him.
On the screen above the stage, the final frame of the music video had frozen—a washed-out image of Gong Da-yeon standing beneath a flickering streetlamp, her expression unreadable, somewhere between longing and defiance. The projector hummed quietly, oblivious to the fact that the audience had already moved on.
