The line had gone silent.
Yo-han stared at his phone, the cold blue light illuminating the contours of his face in the shadowy solitude of his apartment. Outside, the night had fallen without warning, casting a heavy blanket over Seoul. The sky was iron-grey, almost oppressive, with a fine rain beginning to tap against the windowpane like the echo of all the words he hadn't said.
Ami hadn't recognized his voice.
Not even a flicker of familiarity.
Her tone was neutral. Polite. As if he were a stranger.
A stranger.
He had whispered her name three times, with a tremble that betrayed the storm within. But nothing. No recognition. No spark. Just confusion… and then silence.
At first, he told himself it was a joke. Perhaps she was teasing him—maybe some twisted way of coping with the distance. But that idea dissolved quickly. Because the voice on the other end wasn't playing. It was lost. Disoriented. Empty.
And then she hung up.
Just like that.
As if the weeks they'd spent side by side had vanished into mist.
As if none of it had mattered.
As if he had only imagined her.
The days that followed blurred into each other like paint running under rain. Yo-han tried to call again, but each attempt was met with cold indifference. Sometimes, her number rang endlessly without answer. Other times, it was disconnected. He began to question if she had changed numbers. If she had blocked him. If everything was over.
But the part that hurt the most wasn't her absence—it was the possibility that she truly, genuinely didn't remember him.
He thought of her often. The way she used to look out the window of the guesthouse, her eyes reflecting the sunrise like molten amber. The subtle curve of her lips when she laughed. The way time seemed to hesitate around her, like even the air was curious about her soul.
And now… nothing.
Weeks turned to months.
Autumn gave way to winter, then melted slowly into spring.
Still nothing.
No message. No sign.
Not even a single word.
Yo-han stopped going to work. The museum director called once, then twice. Then stopped altogether. He didn't answer the door anymore. Food deliveries piled up in front of his apartment until the smell forced the building to intervene.
He avoided his friends. Let his phone die. He deleted every photo—except one.
One single image.
A blurred photo of Ami sitting on a bench beneath the cherry blossoms, taken the day before she left. Her face turned slightly away. A smile mid-formation. A moment that now felt unreal. Like a dream he had no proof of.
His parents came to visit.
They didn't recognize their son.
His mother touched his cheek, her fingers trembling, whispering that he looked like a ghost.
His father didn't say a word. Only left behind a bag of warm food and a note that said, "Don't lose yourself, son."
But it was too late.
Yo-han had already begun to dissolve.
He wandered the city at night sometimes, hooded and invisible, hoping to find meaning in neon reflections or random faces. But all he ever saw was absence. And in every crowd, he searched for her silhouette—only to be met with strangers who never turned around.
His heart no longer beat normally. It pulsed with grief. With silence. With waiting.
Two years.
Two full years of nothing.
He had aged without noticing. His soul weighed more than his body. His dreams were haunted by the warmth of a voice that no longer knew his name.
And so, one night, under the faded flicker of his apartment ceiling light, he sat on the floor, knees drawn to his chest. His hands were shaking as he reached for something in the drawer—something he hadn't touched since the last day she had been in Korea.
A letter he had written to her but never sent.
He opened it. Reread it.
Cried.
And then stood.
There was a decision to be made.
And this time, he would make it.
Even if it meant rewriting his own story.