Yo-han had stared at his phone screen for long minutes after the call ended.
Ami's voice still echoed in his ears—but it hadn't been her. Not really.
That cold tone. The absence of recognition.
It was as if she had become someone else, or worse—forgotten him completely.
His fingers trembled as he set the phone down, unable to make sense of what had just happened.
At first, he thought it was a joke. A twisted attempt to push him away.
He told himself it was just her fear, her way of testing how far he would go.
He waited.
Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.
No messages. No return call. No apology. No tears.
Just… silence.
Yo-han stopped answering his friends. He stopped showing up to family dinners.
His world shrank to the walls of his small apartment in Seoul, where her absence filled every corner.
The air felt heavier. His body, slower.
Even breathing had become laborious.
He had tried, at first, to keep living like before.
But the colors of the city faded.
The noise of the crowds felt distant.
The things that once excited him—books, artifacts, paintings—felt dull.
Even the museum, his sanctuary, became unbearable.
He resigned without fanfare. No one protested.
His coworkers noticed the change.
His parents begged him to explain.
But how could he?
How do you explain that your soul was torn out by a voice that didn't remember you?
A year passed.
Then another.
Yo-han's face had changed.
Dark circles carved under his eyes, his smile faded into nothingness.
The boyish sparkle was gone.
He would walk the same streets they once walked together, hoping for a memory.
A scent. A flash. A ghost.
But nothing came.
What remained was a hollow pain that refused to heal.
And eventually… that pain turned to something else.
Bitterness.
Not hatred, no.
But something sharp and quiet, like a shard of glass lodged beneath the skin.
He began to rewrite the story in his mind.
Maybe she had never truly cared.
Maybe he had imagined everything.
Maybe it was just fate's cruel trick.
And so, in the middle of a rainy Seoul evening, Yo-han made a decision.
He didn't speak it out loud.
He didn't write it down.
But in the way he closed his eyes that night and didn't cry—
something had shifted.
He was ready to forget.
To erase every trace.
To silence that echo once and for all.
Whatever had lived between them…
was now buried in silence.
And yet, the rain fell harder that night,
as if the sky itself mourned a love no longer claimed.