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# Chapter 148: The Sound of Lights Going Out
A gust of cold air from the convenience store freezer grazed Seo-ah’s cheek.
Just past midnight, the GS25 glowed with relentless fluorescence. A convenience store near Shin-nonhyeon Station in Gangnam—the cleanest, loneliest kind of space Seoul had to offer. Seo-ah stood before the display cases, positioned between the milk and eggs, between someone’s need and someone else’s need. On the phone in her hand, still lit, Hae-ul’s message remained unread.
“Are you insane? What are you doing?”
Seo-ah pocketed her phone. Instead, she looked at her own hands. They weren’t trembling. They didn’t convulse like Kang Ri-woo’s fingers had. But that didn’t mean she was stable. It meant she was numb. Like how scar tissue loses sensation once a wound heals. Her hands were the same. Somewhere along the way, they’d stopped feeling like her hands at all. They were just hands. Tools. Machines. Objects that moved.
A tedious pop song drifted from the convenience store’s ceiling speakers. English lyrics she half-understood—something about love. But Seo-ah wasn’t listening to that. Her ears were tuned to something else. That sound Kang Ri-woo had made in the café. The crash of a table struck. The silence that followed. The turning of heads. The convenience store owner’s startled breath. Everything stopping for a moment, then resuming. That sound.
“I’d like to pay for this.”
An elderly man stood at the register with a single carton of chocolate milk. Seo-ah took it from him. Her fingers moved across the keypad automatically. Cash exchanged hands. A receipt was produced. All of it mechanical, as if someone else’s hands were doing the work, not hers. The old man looked at her face. And Seo-ah could read something in his eyes. Concern. Or maybe just curiosity. Wondering why this young woman looked so pale.
“Thank you.”
He left. The convenience store door clicked shut.
Seo-ah leaned against the counter. Her head felt impossibly heavy. Or perhaps her neck had weakened. Or maybe her entire body was slowly sinking. That sensation of sinking—it was the only feeling she’d known for months. Descending slowly into deepening water. Like her mother’s diving stories. Holding her breath, going deeper, keeping silent until you touched the bottom.
Her phone rang. This time it was a call. The screen showed a name: Do-hyun. Seo-ah stared at the screen. But she didn’t answer. She let it ring. Once. Twice. Three times. The vibration tickled between her fingers. Then it stopped.
A text arrived.
“Noona, what’s wrong? For real. Mom took her heart medication again. Says she can’t live without it. Answer the phone.”
Seo-ah read the message. She read it, but felt nothing. Mom. That word no longer held color for her. It was just letters. A sound in the shape of characters. An obligation she was supposed to meet. A responsibility she was supposed to carry. But what that responsibility was, why she had to bear it, when it had become her burden—these questions no longer meant anything.
Seo-ah typed a response.
“Got it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
It was a lie. She didn’t know if tomorrow would come, yet she’d promised tomorrow. But Seo-ah was already accustomed to lies. Her own, others’, and this gray space where truth and falsehood blurred together.
The night shift worker arrived. A late-night changeover. Seo-ah removed her apron. She checked the watch on her wrist. 12:52 AM. Seoul in November was already winter. When she stepped outside, her breath would turn to white vapor. The warmth inside her body would escape into the air.
“A customer left something by the register yesterday. A wallet, maybe.”
The night worker mentioned it. Seo-ah lifted her head. A customer’s lost item. It happened all the time. But Seo-ah didn’t care about it. What demanded her attention now was something else. The voice Kang Ri-woo had used when calling her name. It lingered in her ears, like words written on a wall.
Seo-ah left the convenience store. An alley near the Han River. The November night was truly cold. And Seo-ah didn’t want to feel that cold. But she felt it. The air passing through her throat. The wind crossing her chest. The cold penetrating her fingertips.
Her phone rang again. This time it was Hae-ul.
Seo-ah answered. She offered no greeting.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? Do-hyun is crying.”
Hae-ul’s voice poured out. A mixture of worry and anger. Seo-ah heard it. But she didn’t respond. She just walked through the alley. Gangnam at night with no one around. A place slightly removed from where lights and people gathered. A place where only her voice and Hae-ul’s remained.
“Seo-ah. What is this? Really. Answer me.”
Hae-ul asked again. And Seo-ah could tell it wasn’t a question directed at her—it was a cry.
“I saw Kang Ri-woo.”
Seo-ah spoke as though someone had opened her mouth for her. The words weren’t chosen. They simply emerged. Into the air. Into the night alley. Into Hae-ul’s ear.
On the other end of the line, Hae-ul’s breathing stopped. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Then it resumed.
“Where?”
“A café. Near Gangnam Station.”
“What did he say?”
Seo-ah didn’t answer that question. Because she didn’t know either. What Kang Ri-woo had said. What she had said. All that conversation felt like a scene from a film now. Something she was watching but couldn’t participate in—someone else’s life.
“Seo-ah. Answer me.”
Hae-ul spoke again, this time in a lower tone. One tinged with fear.
“He… he reached for my hand.”
Seo-ah said this, and it wasn’t quite a lie. In the café, Kang Ri-woo seemed to have extended his hand toward her. Or at least, that’s how it appeared. Her memory wasn’t clear. Everything was blurred, as if she were underwater.
“He reached for your hand? And?”
“And I didn’t take it.”
Seo-ah’s voice grew quieter. Small enough to scatter on the alley wind. Hae-ul would have had to really strain to hear it.
“Thank God.”
Hae-ul said this. And within those two words lay far more emotion than Seo-ah could feel. Relief. Worry. Anger. And love. The last one was what mattered most. Hae-ul loved Seo-ah. That was the only thing that was real.
“I’m coming to you right now.”
Hae-ul said. Then the call ended.
Seo-ah continued walking through the alley. The path from Gangnam to Mapo. A path crossing the Han River. The path to her small goshiwon. Along that path, she looked at her own fingers. They weren’t trembling. They didn’t convulse like Kang Ri-woo’s. But she knew what it meant.
It was a signal of death.
A signal that her body was shutting down her emotions to protect itself. Like how blood vessels in the extremities constrict in severe cold to preserve vital organs. She was doing the same. Her heart had been wounded so deeply that it was evolving into a state where it could feel nothing anymore. Adapting. Dying.
Seo-ah climbed steep stairs. The goshiwon stairs. Stairs leading from the semi-basement to ground level. Like rising from underwater to breathe. And she arrived. At the floor where her small room existed.
She opened the door. Darkness. Her cat, Jangpan, reflected light in its eyes from within the gloom. Seo-ah turned on the light. A fluorescent tube flickered. One second. Two seconds. Then it brightened again. Like a heartbeat.
Seo-ah lay on the bed. She stared at the ceiling. The mold stain was still there. Same spot as months ago. Nothing had changed. Not this room. Not herself. Not this city. As if time had stopped. Or as if time had kept flowing, but she alone had been left behind in the same place.
Her phone rang. Do-hyun. Again. She answered.
“Noona?”
Do-hyun’s voice was small and trembling. It wasn’t a child’s voice anymore. It was a man’s voice. Seo-ah didn’t know when her younger brother had grown so much.
“Yeah.”
“Mom needs to go to the hospital. A heart check-up.”
Seo-ah heard this. But she felt nothing. Her mother’s heart. Was that her responsibility? When had she become the person managing her mother’s health? Somewhere along the way, her life had stopped being hers. It wasn’t about her dreams anymore—it was about her mother’s health. Not her music—it was about Do-hyun’s education. Not her hands—they belonged to someone else.
“Okay. I’ll go to the hospital with you tomorrow.”
Seo-ah said this. Another promise. Another lie. No—not a lie. She really would go to the hospital tomorrow. She really had to. Because that was her role. Her responsibility.
“Thank you, Noona.”
Do-hyun said. And the call ended.
Seo-ah looked at the ceiling again. The mold. The fluorescent light. The green gleam of her cat’s eyes. Everything repeating itself in the same place. As if waiting for the light to go out.
And in that moment, Seo-ah understood.
Why Kang Ri-woo’s fingers had moved. Why he’d struck the table. Why he’d tried to save her. It wasn’t love. It was desperation. The illusion that he could save someone was dying. Realizing he couldn’t rescue anyone, he’d made one last attempt to move his fingers.
It was the sound of a light going out.
The final tremor before extinction. The last movement. The last signal.
And now Seo-ah understood too. Her own light would soon go out. No—it was already going out. Flickering like the fluorescent tube every second or two. Her chest was blinking like that. Wavering between life and death.
Seo-ah picked up her phone. She opened the camera. And looked at her own face. On the screen. Who was there? Herself? Or someone who wasn’t herself? Someone who had lost her color?
The screen turned black. The battery had died.
Seo-ah set the phone down. She looked at the ceiling again. The mold remained. The fluorescent light still flickered. And she was still in this room. With a body that couldn’t move. With a heart that couldn’t feel. Waiting for the light to go out.
Outside the goshiwon, Seoul’s night continued. Someone was falling in love. Someone was making music. Someone was dreaming. But Seo-ah did nothing. She simply lay there. Listening to the sound of her own light going out.
TBC