On the main expressway stretching into silence, Akin pressed lightly on the accelerator, letting the car glide along the rhythm of the road. With his free hand, he reached for his phone and turned on the music through the car's Bluetooth speakers. The opening guitar of "Somebody Else" by The 1988 slowly filled the cabin.
The sound was soft, deep, and unbearably lonely, seeping into the stillness of the night.
"So I heard you found somebody else… And at first… I thought it was a lie…"
Akin leaned back against the seat, driving in silence. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead, yet his mind drifted far away. It was a song he used to play on repeat during sleepless nights in his quiet studio in Shanghai, a song that once accompanied him as he smoked alone on hotel balconies in foreign cities.
Tonight, it played again, as if it were the soundtrack to something inevitable drawing closer.
He let out a soft, bitter laugh.
"Thirty-five already… and I'm still listening to heartbreak songs on repeat."
He murmured to himself, absentmindedly humming along to Somebody Else. His fingers tapped lightly against the steering wheel, his body swaying faintly with the rhythm. The music continued to flow, steady and subdued.
Around him, the world was silent. The road ahead lay empty, devoid of passing cars, as though the entire city had fallen asleep, leaving only him, the night, and a sense of fate quietly closing in.
But then...!?
Whoosh!
A silver blur shot across the road without warning, trailing a thin veil of red, as if the shadow itself were a woman drifting through the air.
The headlights caught something in their beam, shimmering silver fur, unmistakable.
A fox.
Yet the moment their eyes met.....It was no longer the gaze of a wild animal.
In that instant, the eyes changed, transforming into those of a young woman, before vanishing into nothingness right before him.
Screeeeech!
Akin slammed the brakes to the floor. The tires shrieked against the concrete, the sound piercing the night as the car skidded violently. The headlights crashed into the cement barrier, shattering in a spray of glass and sparks.
"Damn it… what kind of day is this?!"
He grabbed his hair in frustration, breathing hard as he struggled to steady himself.
"Is this supposed to be a night of celebration… or some kind of cursed day?Unbelievable."
Shaking his head irritably, Akin pushed the door open, intending to check the front of the car, already certain it would be a wreck.
But before he could even step outside…..
CRASH !!!
The thunderous impact tore through the night like lightning, splitting the sky. The shock rippled violently through his body, and in the very next instant, the ground beneath his feet vanished.
Yet to Akin's ears, the sound did not end. It stretched… warped… distorted, as if everything had been swallowed into deep water.
The sports car spun wildly, skidding out of its lane. Ahead, there was no guardrail anymore.
Only emptiness. And a height that devoured all things.
Dust, shattered glass, and sparks hung suspended in midair, like fragments of starlight breaking apart in the darkness.
Time itself seemed to be pulled apart....slow…slower…cruelly slow.
Akin felt his body grow weightless, as if he were being torn away from the world. His hand reached out instinctively.
Fingers stretched toward the air, as though grasping for something unbearably precious, but whatever it was… had already slipped away.
Whoosh....
In a fraction of a second, his body fell from the expressway.
CRASH!
The impact slammed into the roof of a car speeding along the road below. Metal crumpled with a deafening roar, and everything shattered at once. The final image his eyes could hold onto was the night sky of Bangkok....vast, cloudless, and impossibly distant.
Shards of glass rained down through the air, each fragment falling toward his broken body, catching the city lights...like petals of crystal flowers.
Akin saw everything.
He saw the edge of the expressway drawing near. He saw the void ahead. He saw the place where the road.....