Min-jae remained motionless.
The ceiling above him was pale, but not the plain off-white surface he had stared at for the past two years while lying in his own bed. This one rose higher. Much higher. A recessed strip of warm light ran around its edges, illuminating decorative moulding so subtle and expensive-looking that Min-jae could not immediately decide whether it was modern or designed to resemble something older.
A ceiling fan hung above the centre of the room.
Not the cheap plastic kind installed in older apartments, but a broad, silent arrangement of dark wooden blades surrounding a circular light.
Min-jae stared at it.
His apartment did not have a ceiling fan.
His apartment barely had enough ceiling to justify one.
He turned his head slowly.
The pillow beneath him was enormous.
The headboard stretched far beyond either side of his vision, upholstered in dark fabric and built into a feature wall containing narrow shelves, charging ports and soft reading lamps. The mattress was deeper than his own. The sheets had the cool, unnaturally smooth feeling of bedding expensive enough to require special washing instructions.
Min-jae pushed himself upright.
The bed seemed to continue for an unreasonable distance around him.
King-sized.
Possibly larger.
He and Seo-ah had slept in a king-sized bed once during a hotel stay on Jeju Island. They had spent the first night laughing about how they could roll in opposite directions and disappear from each other.
This was not that bed.
This was not any bed Min-jae had seen before.
The panic he had only just managed to calm stirred again.
He looked down.
He was wearing an oversized black T-shirt and loose grey lounge trousers.
Neither belonged to him.
The T-shirt felt soft enough to be expensive despite having no obvious logo. The trousers rested low against a waist that looked strangely narrow beneath the fabric.
Min-jae stared at them.
He remembered leaving the apartment in a hoodie, sweatpants and sneakers.
No.
That had been the dream.
He had not left.
Apparently.
Then why was he wearing someone else's clothes?
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
His feet descended farther than expected before touching a thick rug.
Min-jae sat there, gripping the mattress with both hands, and finally looked around.
The bedroom was enormous.
Not large by the standards of an ordinary Seoul apartment. Enormous by the standards of any private bedroom he had entered outside a luxury hotel or television drama.
Floor-to-ceiling blackout curtains covered one wall. A thin line of daylight escaped where the two panels met, bright enough to suggest automated tracks hidden above them. Beside the curtains, a wall-mounted control panel displayed icons for lighting, temperature and privacy settings.
Opposite the bed, a television large enough to embarrass the one in Min-jae's living room had been mounted above a long media cabinet.
Three game consoles occupied separate sections below it.
Min-jae recognised all of them.
One was the newer version of a console he had spent several months considering buying before deciding that his existing one worked perfectly well and that responsible adults did not need to spend that much money for marginally improved loading times.
Apparently the owner of this room had not suffered from the same restraint.
Controllers rested inside charging docks. Several more were arranged on a nearby shelf in different colours, including one custom model Min-jae vaguely remembered seeing in an online advertisement before discovering its price and closing the page in disgust.
An open game case lay on the carpet.
A controller had been abandoned beside the bed, its charging cable trailing loosely toward a socket.
Someone lived here.
That thought offered no comfort.
Min-jae's eyes continued across the room.
The desk area occupied nearly an entire wall.
One station held a large computer tower behind a clear side panel, its internal components illuminated by soft light. Three monitors formed a shallow curve above an oversized desk mat. A mechanical keyboard sat in front of them, while several others had been displayed on narrow shelves like decorative objects rather than equipment intended for typing.
A high-end microphone was attached to an adjustable arm. Studio headphones hung from a stand. Compact speakers rested on isolation pads at either side of the monitors.
The second desk was cleaner.
A premium laptop sat beside a large tablet and stylus. Notebooks had been stacked near a closed pencil case. A small keyboard—musical rather than mechanical—had been pushed beneath the desk, and acoustic panels covered part of the wall behind it.
Editing?
Streaming?
Music?
School?
Min-jae could not tell.
A jacket had been thrown carelessly across the back of an expensive gaming chair, proving that money did not automatically teach people to use hangers.
A half-empty plastic bottle sat nearby.
Several drawers had been left partially open.
On another wall, shelves held physical games, collector's editions, model kits and figurines arranged with enough care to suggest enthusiasm but not enough to resemble a showroom. One figure had fallen sideways. A small tool kit for assembling models remained open beside an unfinished piece.
The room was luxurious.
It was also personal.
Min-jae's heartbeat accelerated.
"Where am I?"
The question left him in a voice that again sounded subtly wrong.
He looked toward the door.
Closed.
No glass panel.
No sign outside it.
No medical equipment anywhere.
He examined his arms again.
No intravenous line.
No tape where one had recently been removed.
No bruising.
No hospital identification bracelet.
He pressed his fingers against his ribs.
Nothing hurt.
He took the deepest breath he could manage.
His chest expanded easily.
No surgery.
No damage.
He lifted one leg, then the other.
Perfectly healthy.
The body remembered no truck.
His mind remembered everything.
Min-jae stood cautiously.
The floor seemed stable beneath him, though his balance felt unusual. Not weak. If anything, he felt lighter than he should.
Perhaps he had been unconscious.
Perhaps somebody had rescued him from the accident and—
Brought him here?
To a wealthy teenager's bedroom?
After changing his clothes and repairing injuries severe enough to crush his chest without leaving so much as a bruise?
"No."
Min-jae gripped the edge of the bedside table.
A hospital.
Maybe this was part of some private rehabilitation facility designed to feel like a home. Rich patients paid for strange things. Perhaps insurance had—
His company health insurance did not cover anything resembling this.
Neither did his savings.
And no rehabilitation centre left game cases open on the floor or jackets hanging from gaming chairs.
Somebody wealthy had found him.
That explanation lasted approximately three seconds.
Wealthy people who rescued traffic-accident victims generally called ambulances rather than carrying unconscious men into their children's bedrooms.
He had been unconscious for a long time.
Long enough for his injuries to heal completely.
Maybe months.
Perhaps he had suffered memory damage and forgotten being transferred here.
But why here?
Who owned the room?
Why was Min-jae wearing their clothes?
Why did his body feel—
He pushed that thought away before it fully formed.
Medication.
Hallucination.
He had survived. He was lying inside a hospital bed somewhere, heavily sedated, while his damaged brain constructed this room from random desires and memories.
That made more sense.
Not much more.
But enough.
Min-jae pinched the skin of his forearm.
Pain answered immediately.
"Ow."
He stared at the faint red mark.
People always pinched themselves inside dreams as though the brain were incapable of inventing pain. Min-jae had never understood the logic.
Still, it seemed rude for reality to cooperate so convincingly if it intended to reveal itself as an illusion.
He turned toward the bedside table.
A phone rested on a wireless charging pad beside a tablet and a pair of earbuds.
Relief surged through him.
He reached for it, then stopped before his fingers touched the screen.
It was not his phone.
The model was newer and significantly more expensive. The case was translucent, revealing a small sticker tucked beneath it. Min-jae did not recognise the design.
His phone might have been destroyed in the accident.
The accident was a dream.
He was in his apartment.
He was not in his apartment.
His thoughts began circling one another.
Min-jae picked up the unfamiliar device.
The screen remained dark.
He could turn it on. Check the date. Call emergency services. Look for contacts, photographs or any clue explaining who owned this place.
His thumb hovered over the side button.
Seo-ah.
He had wanted to call Seo-ah.
His parents.
He needed to hear their voices.
But something stopped him from waking the screen.
Not reason.
Instinct.
The sense that one answer would lead to twenty questions he was not prepared to face.
He set the phone down.
"Think."
His strange voice echoed faintly through the enormous room.
He walked toward the centre of it.
A low lounge chair and matching footrest occupied one corner beside a small refrigerator. Through its glass front, Min-jae saw bottled water, soft drinks and several neatly arranged cans.
No alcohol.
Teenager.
The conclusion appeared before he could stop it.
This was the bedroom of a wealthy teenage boy.
The schoolbooks stacked beside the cleaner desk supported it. So did the uniform jacket hanging near the wardrobe, though Min-jae was too far away to examine the crest or determine which school it belonged to.
The wardrobe itself stretched across nearly half a wall.
One section remained slightly open.
Inside, rows of jackets, hoodies and shirts had been organised with the obsessive neatness of either a housekeeper or a mother who had given up expecting her child to do it properly. Transparent drawers displayed watches, jewellery and accessories. A lower shelf contained fragrances. Designer trainers stood in illuminated compartments beneath them.
Min-jae owned four pairs of shoes suitable for public viewing.
Two were variations of black office footwear.
He had never seen so much money arranged around a bedroom so casually.
A pair of shoes on one shelf probably cost more than his monthly grocery budget.
The computer setup cost several months of rent.
The television might have been worth his first used car.
Everything inside the room belonged to a version of adolescence Min-jae had never experienced.
When he was sixteen, his bedroom had contained a narrow single bed, an ageing desktop computer shared with his father and enough empty floor space to practise choreography only after moving a chair into the hallway.
He had wanted a proper gaming computer.
Better headphones.
A room large enough to practise without kicking furniture.
Clothes that did not come from whatever shop had a sale.
A private refrigerator, mostly because he had once seen one in a celebrity's house on television and decided it represented the absolute height of wealth.
This room had all of it.
More than all of it.
Even thirty-one-year-old Min-jae wanted half the things surrounding him.
The newest console.
The computer.
The television.
The headphones.
The chair.
He had considered purchasing several of them and rejected the idea each time because there was always something more responsible to do with the money.
Savings.
Rent.
Future marriage.
A deposit.
The room looked like someone had gathered every object Min-jae had ever wanted, removed the financial anxiety and built a teenager's paradise around them.
His skin prickled.
No.
Min-jae looked back toward the bed.
The huge mattress.
The expensive clothes.
The healthy body.
The impossible absence of injury.
The idea entered quietly.
So quietly that, at first, it seemed to come from somewhere outside him.
What if the accident was real?
Min-jae's fingers tightened around the hem of the unfamiliar shirt.
The truck.
The impact.
The blood.
The stranger's expression.
His mother.
Seo-ah.
The darkness.
What if he had not awakened because he survived?
What if he had awakened because something came after death?
He almost laughed.
Heaven.
The word was absurd enough to feel embarrassing even inside his own head.
Heaven was clouds.
Gates.
Angels.
Whatever imagery churches had assembled over centuries of people trying to make death less frightening.
It was not multi-monitor gaming setups, collector's editions and designer trainers.
Unless heaven had modernised.
Min-jae looked around again.
What would paradise look like to an ordinary person?
Perhaps not clouds.
Perhaps a perfect room.
A healthy body.
Everything you denied yourself while alive.
All the time you had lost.
The theory should have comforted him.
Instead, cold spread through his stomach.
"Hello?"
The word came out louder than he intended.
Min-jae froze.
The voice was his.
He recognised the rhythm and shape of it.
But it was not the voice that had spoken to coworkers the previous afternoon. It lacked the deeper resonance he had developed in adulthood. It sounded lighter, clearer and unburdened by years of coffee, poor sleep and office air-conditioning.
Younger.
Min-jae swallowed.
"Is anyone there?"
Again.
Younger.
He told himself it was the acoustics.
The high ceiling.
Fear tightening his throat.
Sleep.
Medication.
Death.
His eyes moved across the room, searching for anything that might answer him.
That was when he saw the mirror.
It occupied most of the wardrobe's central door, reaching from near the floor to above his head.
Min-jae could not see himself from where he stood.
The angle showed only part of the bed, the pale rug and the dark shape of the curtains.
He stared at it.
Every other question in the room seemed to narrow toward that single sheet of glass.
The voice.
The strange balance.
The oversized clothing.
The narrow waist.
The body without injuries.
Min-jae knew that if he walked across the room, the mirror would tell him something.
He also knew, with the certainty of pure instinct, that he would not like the answer.
For several seconds, he did not move.
Then he took one step toward it.