POV: Kang Yejun
The tear in reality is closing.
Kaien moves with ruthless precision, grabbing Haneul and pulling Yejun toward the service elevator. The silver-eyed figure at the rift's edge—the one with Kaien's face and a villain's eyes—reaches toward them but can't cross the dimensional boundary. The tear collapses in on itself with a sound like the world breaking.
For a moment, there's only silence.
Then alarms everywhere. Security protocols engaging. The penthouse going into lockdown.
Kaien doesn't stop moving. He carries Haneul with one arm and pulls Yejun with the other. The service elevator opens on the basement level where Kaien's personal vehicles wait. A car that costs more than Yejun's entire existence.
"Where are we going?" Yejun asks, breathless.
"Somewhere safe," Kaien says, but his voice is hollow. "Somewhere that bastard can't reach us."
They drive through Seoul for hours. Kaien's assistant Ji-woo meets them at a private residence—a house by the coast that Yejun didn't know Kaien owned. It's smaller than the penthouse but feels more real. More lived-in. More like a place where people actually exist instead of just perform.
Haneul falls asleep in Kaien's arms the moment they arrive. Kaien carries him to a bedroom and stays there for a long time, just watching the child sleep. When he emerges, his silver eyes are haunted.
"We need to talk about what happened," Yejun says.
"Not yet," Kaien replies. His voice sounds fractured. "If I explain it right now, I'll break. And I can't break. Not when Haneul needs me."
Yejun understands. Sometimes the only way to survive is to delay processing. To move forward without looking at the wreckage behind you.
They sit on the house's balcony overlooking the dark ocean. The night is quiet. Peaceful. Almost normal. Except nothing is normal anymore. Nothing will ever be normal again.
"The kiss," Kaien says suddenly. "Before everything went insane. Do you remember?"
"Yes," Yejun says.
"I've been waiting three years to do that," Kaien continues. "Three years of dreaming about your face. Three years of knowing you existed somewhere and needing to find you." He turns toward Yejun. "And when I finally got to kiss you, it lasted maybe two seconds before the world tried to destroy us."
"I'm sorry," Yejun says, and he means it.
"Don't be." Kaien reaches out and takes Yejun's hand. "I need to do it again. Properly. Without the dimension-splitting nightmare. I need to kiss you like you matter, because you do. You matter more than anything."
"Kaien—"
"Just let me," Kaien says. He shifts closer. "Just let me have this moment where nothing is breaking and nobody is dying and I get to love you without everything falling apart."
Yejun nods.
Kaien's hand finds his face. His touch is gentle, asking permission in a way that Minho never did. In a way that means Kaien cares about Yejun's answer. Cares about whether Yejun wants this.
Yejun wants this more than he's wanted anything.
Their lips meet softly. It's not urgent or desperate. It's reverent. It tastes like ocean air and promise. It tastes like coming home after a lifetime of being lost.
The kiss is perfect in a way that nothing in Yejun's life has ever been perfect.
When they pull apart, both breathing hard, Yejun can't form words. The experience has rewired something fundamental in his chest.
"That was..." Yejun tries.
"Yeah," Kaien says roughly. "I know."
They sit together on the balcony for hours. Not talking. Just existing in the space where the kiss happened. Eventually, Kaien leads Yejun to Haneul's bedroom. The child is sleeping peacefully between two pillows, sprawled out like he owns the entire bed.
Kaien and Yejun lie down on opposite sides of Haneul, creating a cocoon of safety around the sleeping child. Yejun doesn't sleep. He just lies there, thinking about the kiss. About Kaien. About the fact that everything is impossibly complicated and he doesn't want it any other way.
Tomorrow, they have their first public appearance together.
Tomorrow, the fake relationship becomes real for Seoul to see.
But tonight, in this quiet house by the ocean, everything is already real. The feelings. The connection. The terrifying certainty that Yejun would do anything to protect these two people.
He's about to drift off when Kaien's phone buzzes.
Then buzzes again.
And again.
Kaien checks it, and Yejun watches his face shift from peaceful to furious in seconds.
"What?" Yejun asks.
Kaien shows him the message from his PR team.
"Sir, we have a situation. The video Jihoon released has gone viral globally. Your stock is dropping. The government is calling for investigation into illegal experiments. Your reputation is destroyed. BUT we have good news. Your security team found something in the footage of the man with you during the rift incident. They identified him. Sir, you need to see this."
There's a photo attached.
It's the silver-eyed man. The one with Kaien's face. The one who reached through the dimensional tear.
But it's not just any photo.
It's a photograph from Kaien's own lab. A photograph from fifteen years ago. Before the accident that killed his parents. Before Kaien went into quantum physics. Before everything changed.
The photo is labeled: "Kaien and his older brother, Seo Minwoo, age 19 and 23, at parents' retirement party, 2009."
Yejun's blood goes cold.
"You have a brother," Yejun whispers.
"Had," Kaien corrects, his voice completely hollow. "My brother died in the same accident that killed my parents. I was eight years old. Everyone said it was a tragedy. A gas leak in the lab. Three people dead. Case closed."
"But he's alive," Yejun says.
"Not alive," Kaien says grimly. "Or not in the traditional sense." He scrolls to another message from his research team. "They've analyzed the quantum signature of the man who came through the rift. He's not from a parallel timeline. The readings suggest he's from this timeline. From our past. Specifically, from fifteen years ago, the night of the accident."
Yejun understands before Kaien says it.
"Minwoo didn't die in the accident," Kaien says, his voice breaking. "He went through a dimensional rift instead. He's been stranded in an alternate timeline for fifteen years. And somehow, he figured out how to come home."
Haneul suddenly sits up in bed, his silver eyes wide and terrified.
"He's not home," the child says, his voice shaking with knowledge no five-year-old should have. "In my timeline, he came back wrong. He came back hungry. He came back wanting to own the dimensional technology. Wanting to use it to become a god."
Kaien looks at his son with devastating understanding.
"And he was willing to destroy everything," Haneul continues, tears streaming down his silver eyes, "to make that happen. He was willing to destroy you. He was willing to destroy Papa. He was willing to destroy me."
Kaien pulls Haneul close, but his silver eyes find Yejun's across the child's small body.
There's a new fear there. A new understanding.
His brother isn't just trying to steal the technology.
He's trying to steal Kaien's life. His company. His love. Everything.
And if Minwoo succeeded in the other timeline, there's only one way to stop him in this one.
Yejun's phone buzzes.
A message from an unknown contact:
"Hello, brother-in-law. I'm coming to collect what's mine. My company. My technology. My family. And I'll destroy anyone who gets in my way. See you at the charity gala tomorrow. I'll be the one everyone's looking at. The one who brings down Seo Kaien once and for all."
Tomorrow's public appearance.
Jihoon's engagement party has been cancelled.
A bigger event has replaced it.
And Minwoo—Kaien's dead brother who came back wrong—is planning something that will expose everything.
Kaien looks at Yejun with eyes that have seen too much, understood too much, lost too much.
"We have eighteen hours," Kaien says quietly. "Eighteen hours to figure out how to stop my brother before he destroys us all."
And Yejun realizes that the kiss they just shared might be the last moment of peace they ever get.