The room seemed to breathe with him — slowly, unevenly, like a living creature weary of its own sounds.
The air was thick, as if frozen, and the warm flicker of the monitor spread across the tabletop, his skin, and the walls, turning everything into a tenuous reflection, as if the city outside the window were listening itself — to him, to this stillness, to the moment before the silence.
Lines trembled on the screen: system failures, signal packets, messages from Min Ki — short, dry, increasingly sharp. He was typing non-stop, as if trying to hold a network that was already cracking under the weight of silence. And in this frenetic rhythm of keys, one sensed not irritation, but fear — the kind that comes not from threats, but from the loss of control over what once felt like an extension of one's own body.
Ryeon sat motionless, barefoot, his palms resting quietly on his knees. He wasn't looking at the screen, but the letters reflected in his pupils, trembling in the depth of his eyes, turning into light, into cold, into a rhythm that no longer matched his breathing. In his ear was the familiar weight of the headset, the warm metal, the thread that connected him to everything: to Min Ki, to the network, to the system. He could hear the soft crackle of the line, the rhythmic breathing in the channel — the sound with which he had lived half his life.
And suddenly, he understood: he was tired. Not of missions, not of orders, not of the voice — but of the very presence of that sound, of the fact that even in silence, he no longer belonged to himself.
He slowly removed the headset. His fingers moved cautiously, as if touching something alive. A click — barely audible, yet containing more meaning than dozens of transmitted commands. And the world changed.
At first, it seemed as if all sounds had vanished. But a moment later, he heard more: how the air moved in his lungs, how his heart thumped against his ribs, how the fabric under his fingers quietly rustled. This was not emptiness. It was the opposite — a filling. A silence that made breathing difficult.
He looked up. Words flashed on the screen.
MIN KI:
— What are you doing? Get back on the line. Immediately.
Ryeon did not move. He just watched the letters appear one after another — like blows against glass, as if someone were trying to reach him through a thick layer of water.
MIN KI:
— If you are not connected, you are outside the system. Do you understand what this will lead to? You won't be able to come back.
The monitor light beat against his face, cold and alive. He exhaled slowly, feeling all the tension accumulated over the years leaving his body with the air — and in its place remained not emptiness, but a strange sensation of heavy peace, almost sweet. He couldn't call it freedom or fear. It was simply silence — so dense that it could be felt with his fingers.
Every inhale resonated with a heartbeat. Every exhale — with a vibration beneath his skin. The silence wasn't quiet. It was speaking — just in a different language.
He stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the city glowed like a body beneath the skin: streets pulsed with car lights, neon flowed, traffic lights blinked, and this entire current resembled breathing — the very one he had just rejected. His face was reflected in the glass — pale, with tired eyes, but for the first time, they lacked the foreign frequency.
A new message lit up on the panel.
MIN KI:
— I warned you. If you are not in the system — you are nowhere. Ryeon. Come back. Can you hear?
He didn't hear. Or perhaps he simply didn't want to. He looked into the reflection, saw his lips barely moving in response — and realized that perhaps for the first time in many years, he was speaking to himself. Without mediators. Without a signal. Without someone else's breath in his ear.
He returned to the table and placed the headset next to the keyboard. Small, dull, cold. The metal briefly gleamed — and for a moment, it seemed as if life still flickered inside. He touched the casing with his finger and felt a tremor run through his body from the gesture — not pain, not loss, just the feeling that something had been ripped out of its familiar rhythm.
The room filled with sound — his own breathing. The world didn't become quieter. It simply readjusted its rhythm. Now the walls, the air, his body — everything breathed differently.
He closed his eyes. The silence had weight, movement, warmth. It seemed to stand nearby, almost touching — invisible, cool, and at the same time, searingly alive. He felt it with his skin.
Opening his eyes, he momentarily saw a foreign silhouette in the window's reflection. A flash. Empty space beside him. But the gaze — green, tired, alert — belonged only to him.
He quietly said:
— I was already a part of the system. Now I am a part of the silence.
The words dissolved into the air, and the room seemed to freeze. The monitor flickered, went dark. The electrical noise cut out. The gloom became soft, like breathing in a dream.
He sat there for a long time — not knowing how many hours passed. And suddenly realized: in this silence, something still sounds. His heart. The air.
And somewhere — far away, barely perceptible — another breath.
Not Min Ki.
Not the network.
Jisung.
A faint, uncertain impulse, almost a touch — but alive. He didn't know where the other man was now — behind walls, across miles of wires, but the connection remained. Not digital. Real.
Ryeon lowered his palm to the table, next to the headset, and felt the silence under his skin pulsating. It was no longer empty. It had simply learned to speak in its own way.