The night smelled of rain.
Not that crisp, clean scent that follows the storm, but the sort which bore the burden of grief, moist and heavy, seeping into the marrow.
Neon city lights flickered like burning coals, sending shattered reflections on rain-scoured sidewalk.
The world flew past, vehicles flying past, people hurrying along under their umbrellas, shouts of laughter drifting from adjoining alleys, unaware of the lone man standing under the faint illumination of a broken streetlamp.
Jin Ha-Joon stood still, his fists cramped so tightly that his fingernails pressed into his palms.
He felt nothing.
Nothing whatsoever.
Not the sting of the wind on his face, not the freezing drizzle wetting his clothes.
Nothing but pain in his chest, choking down, strangling.
His own breathing shallow, rasping, as if every breath was struggle, as if being itself was an affront to the cosmos.
And he saw them.
A few feet away, beneath the golden canopy of a café's awning, she waited.
Han So-Yeon.
The woman whom he had loved more than being itself.
The. woman who once whispered eternity into his ear, tracing her vows along the lines of his body.
The woman who had smiled at him as if there was a universe in him.
Tonight, however, that smile was granted to someone else.
Standing by her side, his best friend, no, the man who once sported that badge as a mask, laughed, his hand resting easily on the curve of her spine.
There was a comfort in his role, a confidence that should have been Ha-Joon's, a familiarity that he had previously taken inviolable.
It was a moment so ordinary, so achingly normal, that it became incredulous.
She had been absent from him for months.
No reason.
No remorse.
Just an emptiness, a gap where she used to be in his life.
And he knew the truth.
They had not merely moved on.
They erased him.
Ha-Joon's universe came crashing down in silence.
No fiery battle, no searing diatribe.
But the sudden, anguishing realization that the love he had given so generously was nothing more than a passing distraction to them.
The stifling weight of it all pressed down on him, strangling, drowning him in a sea of memories not his own.
He could hear his own words ringing in his head, echoing what he had told her:
"I would give you the world if you asked."
And he had.
He had given her everything.
His time, his loyalty, his future.
And she had taken it all, smiling, with the knowledge that she would take everything from him and leave him with nothing.
Ha-Joon stepped back, then another, walking away into the night of the city.
His gasps came in ragged gulps, his heart slamming against his ribcage.
He longed to scream, to rip his own skin, to remove that portion of himself that had ever loved her.
But the night consumed his agony, granting him neither comfort nor purging. Only the soft thrum of an city that did not care.
The rain pounded harder now, a ceaseless deluge that fogged the world's boundaries.
Ha-Joon leaned back, closing his eyes, allowing cold in.
Maybe if he just stayed there long enough, the rain would sweep him all away, leaving a ghostly presence on the streets with no name.
He hardly registered when his legs started moving, taking him away from the betrayal that had hollowed him out.
The world around him dissolved into strips of light and dark, the city noises fading into a hollow rumble in the distance.
And then, before he could prevent it, he was on the Han River bank.
The river lay before him, black and infinite, rippling under the silver light of the moon.
He gazed at it, entranced by its motionless vastness.
Part of him asked himself how it would be, to slip beneath those waves, to give the cold hug of the river carte blanche, to let go.
Would it hurt?
Would it be peaceful?
Would it even make a difference?
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
A coarse reminder that the world had not paused spinning while his had.
He drew it out with shaking hands, half-expecting to be greeted by a message that would turn his life on its head.
A plea.
An apology.
An explanation.
But nothing.
Not from her.
Not from him.
Just an old message weeks in the making, one he had never deleted,
"I love you, Ha-Joon. Forever."
He smiled quietly, the sound no louder than the rain.
Forever.
What a lovely delusion.
His grip on the phone faltered, and it fell from his hand, plummeting into the river below.
He saw the screen flash once before going underwater, completely covered by the current.
And then, without hesitation, he moved forward.
The cold enveloped him immediately, a bitter contrast to the numbness which had suffused him for so long.
The river called to him, promising freedom, silence, an end to the pain that refused to abate.
And yet, when at last the blackness started to creep in, when he felt what was left of him drawing away from him.
*****
A/N This is my third novel trying something new. And it will be not your typical Romance revenge type sht