The train doesn't announce anything important when it arrives.
It just slows down, exhales, and opens its doors.
Seon-Woo steps out with one bag slung over his shoulder and the familiar ache of starting again. The city he's in now doesn't know his name. That used to scare him. Today, it feels like permission.
His mother walks a step ahead, careful, quieter these days. His sister, nineteen now, taller than she realizes, walks beside him, headphones hanging around her neck, eyes sharp with curiosity. She looks like someone who still believes the future is something you can choose.
"You okay?" she asks, glancing sideways at him.
He nods. "Yeah."
And for once, it isn't a lie he has to work hard to tell.
They left Yeonhwa Street years ago. Left behind the corner store that knew their faces. Left the bus stop where memories waited without asking permission. Left the walls that echoed with a life that no longer fit.
Some nights, Seon-Woo still dreams of it, not the place, but the feeling. The way the world once felt small enough to hold. The way love once felt like certainty.
He doesn't wake up reaching for it anymore.
At his new job, he fixes things. Real things. Pipes. Wires. Broken systems that make sense if you look long enough. He likes that. Likes that effort leads somewhere visible. Likes that not everything is fragile.
Sometimes, when he's walking home, he catches himself thinking:
What would it be like to study again?
What would it be like to build something that lasts longer than memory?
The thoughts surprise him, not because they're big, but because they exist at all.
For a long time, the future felt like a closed door he didn't bother knocking on. Everything ahead of him was measured against something behind him. Every possibility dimmed by comparison.
Now, there are moments, small, almost shy moments, where curiosity slips in.
Not about love.
About himself.
Who he might be without constantly remembering who he was.
He watches his sister laughing at something on her phone, nudging their mother to look. He feels something unfamiliar bloom in his chest, not longing, not grief.
Something lighter.
Maybe hope is too strong a word.
But it's movement.
And movement is enough.
That night, lying on his bed, he doesn't replay old conversations. He doesn't imagine alternate endings.
Instead, he wonders, briefly, quietly, what it would feel like to wake up one day and not be defined by loss.
He turns off the light before the thought can scare him away.
_________________
The house is asleep when Ha-Yoon finally opens her diary.
Not the old one, the one filled with pressed flowers and careless handwriting, but the newer one. The one she keeps hidden beneath folded clothes. The one that doesn't pretend.
She sits on the edge of the bed, lamp low, pen unmoving in her hand.
Earlier that day, Hae-Min had stood in the doorway after reading her words. He hadn't asked questions. He hadn't accused. He had only reached for her hand, held it slower, firmer, like someone anchoring himself to a choice.
That was when it hit her.
Choosing him didn't erase anything.
It didn't undo the past.
It didn't heal the wound.
It simply decided where she would stand with it.
She presses the pen to paper.
I thought choosing you would make the ache disappear.
It doesn't.
And that scares me.
She pauses, breath uneven.
But staying doesn't mean I don't feel it.
It means I'm willing to carry it without running.
Her chest tightens.
This is the truth she hasn't said out loud, not to him, not to herself until now.
Loving Seon-Woo didn't end cleanly. It never closed its door. It simply stopped being lived in. And some rooms still echo when she walks too close.
Choosing Hae-Min isn't a victory.
It's responsibility.
It's waking up every day and deciding not to measure him against a ghost.
It's learning to love without asking love to save her.
She writes one last line, hands trembling slightly.
Healing isn't choosing the easier feeling.
It's choosing to stay present, even when the past still speaks.
She closes the diary.
Across the room, Hae-Min shifts in his sleep. She watches him for a moment, his face relaxed, unguarded in a way he never is when awake.
Guilt brushes her heart, not sharp, not accusing. Just honest.
I will not punish you for a love that existed before you, she promises silently.
And I will not punish myself for surviving it.
She lies down beside him.
When he reaches for her hand in his sleep, she doesn't flinch.
She holds on.
Not because the pain is gone.
But because she finally understands it doesn't have to be.