She had stopped expecting him to come home.
It had been four days since the confrontation. Four days since she had apologised for wanting to be loved. Four days since she had sent that message—I'm sorry. You're right. I'll do better—and received nothing in return. Not a word. Not a glance. Not the smallest acknowledgement that she existed.
The apartment had become a museum of what they used to be. She walked through it carefully, touching nothing, as if the life they had built together was too fragile for human hands. The photographs on the wall. The books they had read together, their spines cracked, their pages filled with underlined passages they had wanted to share. The ring on her finger, loose now, because she had lost weight without meaning to.
She hadn't taken it off. She couldn't. Taking it off would mean admitting that the future she had planned for the wedding, the children, the quiet life they were supposed to build together—was never going to happen.
So she wore it. She wore it to work. She wore it when she slept. She wore it when she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at the woman staring back at her, hollow-eyed and thin, and tried to remember when she had started disappearing.
The hospital had become her refuge. She worked eighteen-hour shifts. She volunteered for the hardest cases. She stayed late, came early, filled every empty hour with the noise and chaos of the trauma bay because the silence of her apartment was killing her.
"You're going to collapse," Minjun told her on the third day, watching her gulp down her third cup of coffee. His face was lined with concern, his usual cheerfulness replaced by something heavier. "When was the last time you ate something that wasn't from a vending machine?"
"I had ramen yesterday."
"That doesn't count."
"It has calories. It counts."
Minjun reached out and stilled her hand before she could pour a fourth cup. His grip was gentle but firm.
"Sora. Talk to me."
She looked at him. Really looked. He had been her friend for five years. He had seen her at her best and her worst. And right now, he was looking at her like she was a patient bleeding out on a table, and he didn't know if he could stop it.
"There's nothing to talk about," she said.
"Haneul—"
"Don't."
The word came out sharper than she intended. Minjun flinched, and she saw something in his eyes, hurt, maybe, or frustration, that made her chest tighten with guilt.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just... I can't. Not right now."
Minjun let go of her hand. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said something that made her breath catch.
"He doesn't deserve you."
She stared at him. "What?"
"Haneul. Whatever is going on—whatever he's doing—he doesn't deserve you." Minjun's voice was steady, certain, the voice of a man who had been holding something back for a long time. "I've been watching you fall apart for months. I've been watching him treat you like you're invisible. And I've been trying to respect your privacy, trying to stay out of it, but Sora—you're my friend. And I can't watch you destroy yourself for someone who doesn't see you."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. The words she wanted to say—He saved me. He loves me. This is my fault, not his—lodged in her throat.
"Just..." Minjun sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Just promise me you'll take care of yourself. Eat something. Sleep. Stop pretending you're fine when you're not."
"I'm fine," she said automatically.
Minjun's laugh was bitter. "Yeah. I know."
He walked away, and Sora stood there for a long moment, her coffee growing cold in her hand. She wanted to call him back. She wanted to tell him everything. But the words wouldn't come. They never came.
She had been keeping things inside for so long she wasn't sure she remembered how to let them out.
---
That evening, she came home to find Haneul in the apartment.
He was standing in the kitchen, his back to her, scrolling through his phone. He was dressed for a night out a black silk shirt, tailored pants, his hair styled perfectly. He looked like a stranger wearing the face of the boy she had loved.
She stood in the doorway, her keys still in her hand, and waited for him to turn around. He didn't.
"You're home," she said.
"I needed to pick up some things."
Not I missed you. Not I'm sorry. Just I needed to pick up some things, as if this was a hotel he was passing through. As if she was nothing more than a inconvenience he had to tolerate.
She watched him move through the kitchen, opening cabinets, pulling out a bottle of water. His movements were casual, unhurried. He wasn't rushing to leave. He just didn't want to be here with her.
"Four days," she said quietly.
He paused. "What?"
"You haven't answered my messages for four days. You haven't come home. You haven't..." She stopped. Swallowed. "You haven't said anything about the wedding."
He turned then. His face was impassive, carefully blank. The face of a man who had learned to hide what he was feeling so well that maybe he didn't feel anything at all.
"What is there to say?"
"I don't know." Her voice was shaking. She hated that it was shaking. "Maybe that you still want to marry me? Maybe that you love me? Maybe that I'm not suffocating you for wanting to know where you are?"
"Sora—"
"I haven't asked you anything for four days," she continued, the words coming faster now, a dam breaking. "I haven't called. I haven't texted. I've given you space. I've tried to be what you want. And you still—"
"You've been busy with work," he said flatly. "That's not giving me space. That's just not having time to bother me."
She stared at him. The cruelty in his voice was so casual, so effortless, that she wondered if he had always been capable of it. If she had just never seen it before.
"You think I'm bothering you?"
"I think you've been following me around for sixteen years, and I'm tired of being responsible for your happiness."
The words landed like a blade between her ribs. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. Sixteen years. Sixteen years of loving him, of trusting him, of building her life around him. And he was telling her it was a burden.
"You don't mean that," she whispered.
He didn't answer. He just looked at her with those cold, flat eyes, and she saw something in them that she had been refusing to see for months.
He was already gone. He had been gone for a long time. She had just been too afraid to let him go.
"Haneul." Her voice cracked. "Please. Just tell me what's going on. If there's someone else—if you don't love me anymore—just tell me. I deserve that much. After sixteen years, I deserve the truth."
Something flickered in his eyes. Guilt, maybe. Or irritation. She couldn't tell anymore.
"I don't have time for this," he said, grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair. "I have a shoot."
"Now? It's almost nine o'clock."
"Not everyone works nine to five, Sora. Some of us have real careers."
She flinched like he had hit her. He knew what that would do to her. He knew how hard she had worked to become a surgeon, how many nights she had spent in the hospital, how many lives she had saved. And he was reducing it to nothing.
"Fine," she said, her voice hollow. "Go."
He didn't hesitate. He was out the door before she could say another word, and she stood in the empty kitchen, listening to the sound of his footsteps fading down the hallway.
She looked down at her hand. The engagement ring glittered under the kitchen light, a diamond that had cost him three months of modelling work. She had cried when he gave it to her. She had thought it was proof that she was finally safe, finally loved, finally worthy of someone staying.
She twisted it on her finger. It spun easily. Too easily.
She didn't take it off. She couldn't.
Not yet.
---
She should have let him go. She should have gone to bed, gone to work, gone on pretending that everything was fine. That was what she had been doing for months. That was what she was good at.
But something was different tonight. Maybe it was the way he had looked at her, like she was nothing. Maybe it was the way he had dismissed sixteen years of her life as if they meant nothing. Maybe it was the way her hands were shaking and her chest was tight and she was so tired of being the only one fighting for something that was already dead.
She grabbed her coat and her keys and she followed him.
She told herself she wasn't following him. She told herself she was just going for a walk, just clearing her head, just happening to be going in the same direction. But she knew it was a lie. She knew she was following him, the same way she had been following him for months, tracking his social media, analysing his texts, collecting receipts and clues and evidence of a crime she was too afraid to name.
He walked quickly, his long legs eating up the pavement, and she had to hurry to keep him in sight. She stayed back, a block behind, her heart pounding in her chest. The streets were busy enough that she could blend in, a woman in a coat, anonymous and invisible.
He turned down a side street. She followed.
He stopped outside a building she didn't recognise. An apartment building, newer than hers, the kind with a doorman and a security camera and the kind of rent that models and celebrities could afford. She watched from across the street as he pulled out his phone, typed something, and waited.
The door opened.
A woman stepped out.