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# Chapter 73: Before the Fire Goes Out
7:14 AM. Seo-ah was dropping off Kang Ri-u in front of her gosiwon in Hapjeong-dong. The building was one of the oldest in the neighborhood, looking like a sinking ship in the dawn light. Kang Ri-u didn’t get out of the car. He stared at the space between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. It was empty, yet it felt full of something. The weight of the past few hours. The weight of death. And the weight of one person’s hands that had stopped it.
“Don’t come to work tomorrow.”
Seo-ah spoke. Her voice was hoarse. From the wound on her neck. The marks where Kang Ri-u’s fingers had dug in. When she had tried to kill herself.
“Why?”
Kang Ri-u asked.
“Your father will know something happened. And if you don’t show up at the company, he’ll come looking for you. Before that, you need to be somewhere he can’t find.”
Kang Ri-u heard the words but couldn’t process them. Or rather, didn’t want to. In this moment, he didn’t want to move. He wanted to stay beside Seo-ah. He wanted to hold onto this moment where she was still holding his hand. Forever.
“Kang Ri-u.”
Seo-ah called his name again. It wasn’t a soft voice. It was a command.
“You have to leave me. Remember what we talked about? I told you—you don’t exist for anyone, yet you keep trying to die for someone. Do you know what that is?”
Kang Ri-u didn’t answer.
“That’s not love. That’s escape. You’re trying to keep dying for your dead friend through me. And I… I can’t accept that.”
Seo-ah’s words were precise. As always. Her words cut like blades, exact as wounds. Kang Ri-u knew she was right. He knew how deep in lies he’d been drowning. And realizing it hurt as much as drowning itself.
“Go.”
Seo-ah said.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Anywhere but Gangnam. Somewhere your father can’t find you. Somewhere you can meet yourself again.”
Kang Ri-u opened the car door. He felt like he was watching himself from a third-person perspective. That man getting out of the car, that woman moving to the driver’s seat, the car door closing. Like a scene from a film. Like the final scene.
“Seo-ah.”
Kang Ri-u said.
“Don’t call my name.”
Her voice was ice. Ice without any emotion. That was the deepest wound. It looked like she had completely let him go. As if she’d never been holding him in the first place.
Kang Ri-u stepped back. The wall of the gosiwon building caught his back. Old gray tiles. Tiles that had been there for decades. And Kang Ri-u, as worn as those tiles, leaned against them.
The car moved. Slowly. It slipped out of the narrow alley in Hapjeong-dong. And disappeared. Kang Ri-u stood there until the car was completely out of sight. Morning sunlight began to touch his face. Dawn had ended completely. The day had begun. And he was alone.
Seo-ah drove without direction. She left the riverside road and abandoned the route to Gangnam, instead turning into the alleys of Gangbuk. It was a world Kang Ri-u didn’t know. Hapjeong-dong, Mangwon-dong, Yeonnam-dong. The world where Seo-ah lived. And now she knew she had to return to it.
2:47 PM. Seo-ah parked Kang Ri-u’s car in front of Sky Tattoo Shop. His expensive car. A car that didn’t belong in this alley. Standing on this street like an alien. And somehow it woke her up. Made her realize whose world she was stepping into now.
Sky came out as she opened the shutter.
“Wow, Seo-ah. You’re driving your oppa’s car? Wait, what are you doing?”
Sky’s voice stopped. She was really looking at Seo-ah now. The marks on her neck. The torn clothes. The bruises under her eyes. And Seo-ah’s expression trying to hide all of it. That expression that showed nothing.
“What happened?”
Sky asked.
“Let’s go inside.”
Seo-ah said.
The small room of the tattoo shop. Downstairs. Semi-basement. It had a refrigerator, a simple bed, and everything that was Sky’s. And now Seo-ah was there too. In Sky’s arms.
“Crazy girl, what did you do? Who did this to you…”
Sky gently touched Seo-ah’s neck.
“Don’t talk about it.”
Seo-ah said.
“What?”
“Don’t ask questions. Just… be here for me.”
Sky didn’t ask anymore. She lay Seo-ah on the bed, brought water, brought bandages. And just sat beside her. In the way that meant knowing what it was to be a friend.
Time passed. Seo-ah couldn’t tell how much. Time had lost its meaning. The world kept turning, but she had stopped. Like the little match girl. In a warm place, but dying.
5:32 PM. Seo-ah’s phone rang. It was Do-hyun.
“Noona, what are you doing?”
“I’m home. Eat dinner.”
“What about you?”
Seo-ah didn’t answer.
“Noona, where are you? Your voice sounds strange.”
“I’ll be home soon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Seo-ah hung up. Sky looked at her. Without speaking. Without asking. Just looking. And that gaze was the biggest question.
“That person you mentioned. Kang Ri-u.”
Seo-ah said.
“That chaebol son?”
Sky asked.
“Yeah.”
“What did he do?”
“He tried to kill me. Together with himself.”
Sky said nothing. Her silence was louder than words. As if the world had shattered again.
“But I stopped him.”
Seo-ah said. Awkwardly. As if she had already become a third party.
“Are you insane?”
Sky said.
“Yeah. Probably.”
7:11 PM. Kang Ri-u was checking into a hotel. Some hotel in Myeongdong. Under an assumed name to hide his identity. He went to his room and showered. To wash away Seo-ah’s fingerprints. To wash away the traces of her left on his neck. But water couldn’t wash them away. They were already under his skin.
He stood before a mirror. He looked at his face. Someone’s face. But not his own. Whose face was this? The face of a man who wanted to die? Or a man who wanted to live again? Both? Neither?
His hands trembled. As always. But this time for a different reason. Because Seo-ah wasn’t there. Because she wasn’t holding his hands.
He found a piano. In the hotel lobby. Ivory keys. He sat before it. For the first time since Berlin. And placed his fingers on the keys. Trembling fingers.
The first note. Do.
His hands wept. Really wept. Music flowed out. The music he’d sealed away in Berlin. Clean like Seo-ah’s voice, but desperate.
He played. For an hour. People gathered in the hotel lobby. Someone might have streamed it live. He didn’t care. About who he was, who was watching, what the consequences would be. He simply played. For the first time after Seo-ah left him. Not for himself, but for her.
And when the final note rang out, he cried. For the first time since Berlin. Not for Jun-ho. But for himself.
9:48 PM. Seo-ah was heading back to her gosiwon in Hapjeong-dong. Leaving Kang Ri-u’s car behind. Taking a taxi. Back to her world. Back to that narrow room where Do-hyun was waiting.
Do-hyun was waiting at the entrance. Anxiously. The moment he saw his noona’s condition, he said nothing. Instead, he just held her. His noona. Something as worn as earth. Something as hot as fire. Something like nothing at all.
“Noona.”
Do-hyun said.
“Yeah.”
Seo-ah answered.
“You really don’t want anything?”
Kang Ri-u had asked the same question. But Do-hyun’s voice was different. It wasn’t an accusation. It was concern. A brother’s concern.
“I want something.”
Seo-ah said.
“What?”
“To sing my song. With my name. A song no one can take from me.”
Do-hyun heard those words. And understood. That this was the first desire his noona had ever spoken for herself.
11:22 PM. Kang Min-jun, Kang Ri-u’s father, sat in his office. A high-rise building in Gangnam. There, he was watching the news.
“A man known to be the son of a famous pianist gave an unannounced public performance in the lobby of a Myeongdong hotel. The video is currently going viral on SNS. The piece performed was Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2. Experts are calling this performance ‘the pinnacle of emotion’…”
Kang Min-jun clicked on the video. And watched. His son. Before a piano. With trembling fingers. Crying.
His face didn’t change. But his hands clenched into fists. The fists of a man who couldn’t control his son.
11:47 PM. Seo-ah couldn’t sleep. Do-hyun was sleeping beside her, but she remained awake. Staring at the ceiling. An old ceiling. Mold stains. Above it, a neighbor’s footsteps. Someone’s life. Countless lives layered upon each other in this building.
Her phone rang. It was Sky.
“Seo-ah. Did you see the news? That Kang Ri-u bastard. She played piano at a hotel. Did you see the video? This guy is crying for you. You can tell if you watch.”
Seo-ah found the video. And watched. Kang Ri-u. Before a piano. With trembling fingers. It wasn’t the Kang Ri-u she had known. Not that man heading toward death. It was someone else. Someone living for himself for the first time.
And in that moment, Seo-ah understood. What she had done. Who she had let go. Or rather—who she had saved. And that salvation was burning something else.
11:59 PM. Kang Ri-u was listening to the piano music in his hotel room. The echo of the music he had just played. It sounded like Seo-ah’s voice. Like she was singing for him. In a song no one else could hear. A song only he could hear.
And midnight came. The day ended. And another day began.
The finale of Volume 3. Something had ended, and something had begun. Seo-ah had let Kang Ri-u go, and Kang Ri-u had begun to find himself. They no longer tried to die for each other. Instead, they had begun to live for themselves.
But the fire hadn’t gone out. It had grown stronger. More dangerous. In Volume 4, that fire will burn many more things.
It wasn’t over yet. It was only the beginning.