Chapter Forty-Six: A Healer
#Flashback - The Lecture Hall
The hall was a temple of quiet, every breath held, every gaze fixed forward. He didn't command silence; he drew it to him, a natural gravity. When Professor Kim Namhyun spoke, people didn't just listen—they felt. His voice didn't preach; it reached in, gentle and sure, touching places you'd forgotten were wounded.
Namhyun paced slowly, hands tucked behind his back, his presence a calm in the academic storm. His voice, a measured baritone, was poetry woven with logic. Soothing. Magnetic. Unshakably kind.
"There will be people," he began, his words clear and deliberate, "who will tell you who you are. 'You're too loud,' they'll say. 'Too quiet. Too much. Not enough. Too cold. Too soft. Too… different.' And if you listen to them long enough…"
He paused, letting the weight of that long enough settle in the hushed room.
"You might start to believe them. But I am here to tell you this: you do not owe this world an apology for being yourself."
My pen stilled on my notebook. The frantic, self-critical scribbles in my mind quieted for a moment.
"You are not a mistake," he continued, a soft, unwavering certainty in his tone. "Your intensity, your fire, your careful silence, your unexpected laughter… they are yours. And they are worthy. Not in spite of themselves, but because of what they are. Pieces of a whole that is uniquely you."
My chest tightened with a sweet, painful ache. Worthy.
"Society excels at building molds," Namhyun said, a faint, knowing smile touching his lips as he moved to the center of the room. "And if you don't fit, it will label you 'broken.' But listen to me now: being different is not brokenness. It is a form of brilliance. And loving the parts of yourself that the world has told you to hide? That is the bravest revolution you will ever lead."
The silence was profound. I felt something stir—a fragile, hopeful thing uncurling in a dark corner of my soul.
"We spend our youth," he went on, his gaze sweeping the room with a compassionate intensity, "trying to contort ourselves into shapes designed by others. The perfect child. The acceptable woman. The productive man. The lovable partner. In all that desperate reshaping, we lose the most crucial thing."
Another pause. The air itself seemed to lean in.
"We forget to love the original. Ourselves."
The breath caught in my throat. It felt like he was looking directly at the hollow, hidden core of me.
"I want you to sit with a question," he said, his voice dropping to a more intimate register. "When was the last time you looked in a mirror and did not judge? When was the last time you could say, even in a whisper, 'This is who I am. And it is enough.'? Not who your parents envisioned. Not who society rewards. Just… you."
My fingers gripped the pen so tightly the plastic groaned. Tears, hot and sudden, pricked at the corners of my eyes. He was pulling at a thread I'd spent years sewing into a scar.
"I, too, was once afraid of my own reflection," Namhyun admitted, his honesty disarming. "Until I realized the world does not need another careful copy. It needs the original. The one who is broken, and brave, and always, always becoming."
He took a final, slow step forward. "So even if they mock you. Even if they misunderstand you, or try to soften your sharp edges, or silence your unique voice… speak anyway. Live anyway. Be anyway."
I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat threatening to choke me. He was speaking to a version of me I had buried, a girl I wasn't sure still existed.
"Talk to yourself with the kindness you would offer your dearest friend. Stand for who you are, even if your voice shakes. You are not a mistake. You are worthy. Because you are not here to be perfect. You are here to be… real."
He ended with a soft, definitive nod. "Take care of yourselves. The world will try to change you. Do not let it succeed."
---
I sat on a cold stone bench outside the lecture hall, eyes closed, his words echoing like a healing chant in my fractured mind. The hollow ache was still there, but it felt… seen. Acknowledged. For a moment, it wasn't a flaw; it was just a fact.
"You liked his speech that much?"
My eyes snapped open. Taehyun stood there. He wasn't in his usual armor of a severe black suit. Just a simple grey shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows. But there was a weight to his posture, a shadow in his eyes I hadn't noticed before—a deep, quiet sadness that mirrored the one he so often ignited in me.
I raised a brow, the familiar defensive wall sliding partly back into place. "He's… different. He doesn't tell people what to become. He reminds them that what they already are might be enough."
Taehyun sat beside me, his body too close, his heat a familiar invasion. "And you need to be reminded of that?"
I scoffed, looking away at the budding trees. "Maybe. Doesn't everyone?"
A heavy beat of silence passed between us, filled with everything we didn't say.
---
Later, giddy on the strange catharsis of the lecture and cheap iced coffee, I sat with my best friend on a sunny bench, kicking at pebbles.
"He is literally not of this earth!" I sighed, a dreamy, unfiltered smile on my face.
"Who?" she asked, grinning because she already knew.
"Professor Kim Namhyun."
She snorted. "Ah. The campus saint. Here we go."
"No, listen!" I leaned forward, the words tumbling out fueled by a sudden, pure admiration. "If that man ever ran for office, I'd campaign day and night. He speaks like… like peace. Wrapped in poetry and anchored by sense. The way he talks about trauma, identity, just… being…" I threw my hands up. "He's everything."
My friend raised a knowing eyebrow. "You've got little hearts in your eyes, you realize that?"
I fell back against the bench, laughing at my own dramatics. "He's married! He has a son! He's practically a moral unicorn. But if he weren't…" I shrugged, the grin turning wistful. "I'd date him in a heartbeat. A gentleman. A genius. Kind. Actually stable…" The word 'stable' hung in the air for a second, a stark, silent contrast to the turbulent reality of my life. "He's the dream," I finished, quieter.
We laughed, clinking our plastic cups.
We didn't see him. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. He was just cutting across the quad, documents in hand, his gaze already seeking me out when my voice—bright, admiring, yearning—carried on the breeze.
"I'd date him."
He stopped. Something vicious and cold twisted behind his ribs.
It was irrational. He knew it was just talk. Idolization. Namhyun was a good man—decent, principled, boringly noble. Taehyun respected him, in a distant, slightly disgusted way. But that logic did nothing to douse the sudden, possessive fire.
His wife. Sitting in the sun. Daydreaming aloud about belonging to another man. A stable man. A kind man. Even in jest, the words were a blade. Especially because I didn't remember he was my husband. To me, he was just the professor. The captor. The source of the instability Namhyun's words soothed.
His jaw clenched. The papers in his hand crumpled under his tightening grip. His steps, when he resumed them, were slow, deliberate, and sharp.
I looked up, the laughter dying on my lips as his shadow fell over us.
He stared at me, his gaze coal-black and utterly unreadable, but a dark flame flickered in its depths. "You admire Professor Namhyun a great deal," he stated. His voice was flat.
The warmth of the moment vanished, replaced by a familiar chill. I forced a casual shrug, the walls slamming back up. "Of course. Who doesn't?"
He said nothing. The silence was a pressure.
My best friend coughed awkwardly and stood. "I just remembered a… thing. A very urgent thing. Snacks. Bye!" She fled, sensing the lethal voltage in the air.
I glared up at him, defiance sparking. "What? Are you jealous?"
His eyes narrowed, just a fraction. "No."
I raised a brow, challenging him. "Really? You're standing here looking like you're about to declare war on the Philosophy Department."
He took one final step, closing the distance until his voice could drop to a low, private vibration that brushed against my skin. "You speak of him," he murmured, "as if he is the only man who makes you feel… seen. Valued. Whole."
The accuracy of it was a shock. It stole my retort.
I lifted my chin, the old hurt and confusion morphing into a sharp, defensive anger. "That's because he talks to people like they're human," I shot back, the words barbed. "He doesn't just stare at them like he's trying to solve them or… or own them."
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He leaned in, his breath a warm caress that felt like a threat. "I don't need to be adored by the masses or elected to any office to earn a place in your thoughts, Angel." His hand rose, not to grab, but to gently, deliberately, tuck a strand of wind-blown hair behind my ear. His fingertips grazed my cheek. "I just need you to remember that you are already mine. In every version of reality that has ever existed, or ever will."
My breath hitched, trapped somewhere between fury and a terrifying, unwanted thrill.
He straightened, his gaze still holding me captive. "I'll pick you up after your last class."
Then he turned and walked away, his steps precise and controlled. But I could feel it—the simmering storm he carried with him, a turbulence that both terrified and, in a dark, secret part of my unraveling heart, called to the chaos in my own soul.
I stared after his retreating figure, my heart a tangled mess of shed armor and warm, traitorous flutters.
I should be furious. I was furious.
But a dangerous, unstable part of me—the part that loved and hated him with the same frantic intensity, the part that felt most alive in the eye of his storm—found his jealousy…
Devastatingly attractive.