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# Chapter 69: Dawn on the Road
The car stopped.
It had pulled completely away from the guardrail. Kang Riwoo’s hands still gripped the steering wheel, and Sea-a’s hands lay over his. Two hands becoming one. But it wasn’t a connection. It was a restraint.
5:27 AM. The riverside road beside the Han River. The air inside the car reeked of metal and burnt rubber. Scorch marks would be blackening the car’s side panel. Evidence. Evidence of self-harm. No—evidence of attempted murder.
“Let go,” Kang Riwoo said.
His voice had grown calm. He’d returned to the voice of an adult. It sounded more terrifying that way. Not madness, but despair. And beneath that, something worse—the voice of someone who had already surrendered.
Sea-a didn’t release him. Instead, she pressed harder, as if trying to transmit her body heat to his fingertips. As if trying to prove that she was still alive.
“Because I don’t know what you’ll do.”
“Please. Let go of me.”
His voice cracked with tears. An order mixed with weeping wasn’t an order at all. It was a plea. A plea to feel his own fingers again.
Sea-a slowly released him. But she didn’t move away. She remained beside him—in the passenger seat. And she looked at him. Really looked at him for the first time.
His face was shattered. Not metaphorically—it actually looked destroyed. His skin had turned gray. His eyes had lost focus. His mouth hung half-open, and from it came not breath but something else. A sound. A signal from a dying body.
“What do you want?” she asked.
It was a genuine question. Not an accusation. Her voice had lost its sharpness. What remained was exhaustion and something like compassion.
“I don’t know,” Kang Riwoo answered.
“You wanted to hear my music,” Sea-a said. “So listen.”
She took his hand—his fingers—in her own. They were still trembling. She held each one gently, the way you might cradle a bird. With enough care not to break it, but also with the power to do so.
“Do you know what your fingers were trying to do? Make music. Your fingers wanted to become music. They still do. The reason they’re shaking is because the music is trapped inside, trying to get out.”
Kang Riwoo looked at her. His eyes were slowly finding focus again.
“I can’t play the piano…”
“It’s not that you can’t play the piano. It’s that you don’t have the courage to play it.”
Her words filled the car. They were true. And truth always cut like a blade—sometimes wounding, sometimes liberating, sometimes both.
“Losing Junho wasn’t your fault.”
“What would you know?” he asked. But it wasn’t defensive. He genuinely wanted to know.
“I lost my mother,” Sea-a said.
She stopped. Her throat tightened. She’d never said this before. Not to anyone. Not to the sky, not to Kang Riwoo, not even to herself.
“She was a haenyeo—a free diver—in Jeju. When I was eighteen, she didn’t come back up from the water. Her heart stopped. In the cold. While I waited on the beach.”
Kang Riwoo said nothing. Sea-a continued.
“At first, I thought it was my fault. Because I didn’t call loud enough. Because my voice couldn’t reach her underwater. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t my fault. It was just death. Only death.”
“What about Junho?” he asked. Now his voice was that of a child. Really, truly a child.
“He was different from my mother. Your friend wasn’t your responsibility. There was nothing you could have done.”
Sea-a released his hand and placed it against her own chest—over her heart. So he could feel it beating.
Kang Riwoo felt that heartbeat. Fast, irregular, alive. His fingers still trembled, but the trembling felt different now. Not fear, but something else. Recognition. Awakening.
“I tried to kill you,” he said. Like a statement. Like a fact being confirmed.
“Yes,” Sea-a replied.
“Then why didn’t you? Why did you stop me?”
“Because if you died, your fingers would never play music again.”
The words came out of her. She was surprised by them herself. She didn’t know where they came from, but they were true.
Kang Riwoo began to cry. Not a wail—a silent cry. His mouth open, his shoulders shaking, but no sound emerging. The deepest form of sorrow.
Sea-a wrapped her arms around him. Her arms circled his back. And she said:
“You’re not alone.”
It might have been a lie. But in that moment, in the car at dawn, beside the Han River, it was the lie they needed most. And lies are sometimes part of living. The lies we need to survive. The lies we need not to die.
Time passed. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. The dawn slowly brightened. The black sky turned navy. The stars winked out one by one. The city’s night was ending.
“What do we do now?” Kang Riwoo asked.
His tears had stopped. He looked almost composed. Only his fingers still trembled.
“We go down,” Sea-a answered.
“In this car?”
“Yes.”
“People will see. The car’s damaged. There are marks from hitting the guardrail.”
Kang Riwoo looked ahead. He was right. The side of the car was charred black, and the guardrail would bear the car’s paint.
“We have to go anyway,” Sea-a said.
She opened the car door. Dawn air rushed in—cold, humid, carrying the smell of the Han River. Water and moss and something like the scent of death.
Kang Riwoo slowly followed. They got out of the car. Onto the riverside road. Near 6 AM.
The road was empty. At this hour, only taxis and street-cleaning trucks moved. And them. Two people who had tried to die but failed. No—they hadn’t tried at all. They had only despaired. And they had come back from that despair.
“Kang Riwoo,” Sea-a said his name aloud.
For the first time. Until now, she had called him “you.” But now he was someone who deserved to be called by his name.
“Yeah?”
“I want to know what you did in Berlin.”
Kang Riwoo looked at the Han River. The morning Han was not black. It was gray. Not the color of death, but the color of sleep. Deep, dreamless sleep.
“I killed my friend,” he said.
“How?”
“With music.”
Kang Riwoo answered. And then he began. About that night in Berlin. About going to a piano competition at the Berlin Music Academy with his friend Junho. About how brilliant Junho was. About how Kang Riwoo had damaged his friend’s hands.
“The night before the competition, we drank. I drank too much. And I bit his hand.”
Kang Riwoo looked at his own hands.
“I bit his hand. His fingers got hurt. Deeply. There was blood. And Junho gave up the competition because his fingers were damaged. And I competed instead. In Junho’s place.”
“And?”
“I placed third. I lost. And Junho held me afterward. With those bitten hands. He held me and comforted me. And a week later, Junho killed himself.”
Kang Riwoo’s voice was completely flat. Emotionless. Perhaps because he had already cried too much.
Sea-a said nothing. She simply took his hand. His damaged fingers. No—the fingers that had bitten him long ago. There were no scars now, but the memory made them tremble.
“You didn’t kill Junho,” she said.
“Then what?”
“Your fingers did. Not your hands—your fingers.”
Kang Riwoo looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“You hate your fingers. So you punish them. By keeping them from the piano. But what you’re really punishing isn’t your fingers. It’s your soul.”
Sea-a brought his hand to her mouth. And she blew gently on each of his fingers. As if warming them. As if bringing them back to life.
Kang Riwoo felt it. Her lips touching his fingertips. Her breath transferring to his hand. And his fingers—for the first time—stopped trembling.
Just for a few seconds. But they stopped.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I reminded your fingers that they’re alive,” Sea-a answered.
They stood facing the Han River. 6:23 AM. The sky had brightened more. Blue was beginning to mix in. Birds started singing. The city’s morning was beginning.
“What do we do now?” Kang Riwoo asked again.
“You play the piano,” Sea-a said.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You always could. You just never gave yourself permission.”
Sea-a placed his hand against her chest again—over her heartbeat. So his fingers could feel it. And then she sang. Not with her mouth, but with her body. With her heart. With her soul.
It wasn’t a song. It was an incantation. An incantation of aliveness. Of persistence. Of never stopping.
Kang Riwoo felt that incantation. And for the first time, he held her. His trembling fingers traced down her back. As if playing piano keys.
And that was music.
The world didn’t change. The Han River still flowed. The sky still brightened. The city still woke. But something changed inside them. Something small. But complete.
Sea-a felt his arms around her. And she felt that they weren’t trembling.
For the first time.
“Thank you for not killing us,” Kang Riwoo whispered into her ear.
“Thank you for not wanting to die,” Sea-a answered.
And the two of them stood beside the Han River at dawn. The car was destroyed. The sky was brightening. Birds were singing. And Kang Riwoo’s fingers were finally ready to learn music again.