“For you, I was just a chapter. For me… you were the whole book.”

I once read a line in a book written by a wise man. It said:

“When walking out the door to the gate of your freedom, leave the past, the bitterness, and hatred behind. If not, you’ll wallow in pain and self-destruction, and you’ll remain in the dark forever.”

I laughed when I read it. It made sense. It really did.

I tried—I truly tried—to leave behind the walls of my past, the echoing memories that clung to every corner of my soul. But no matter how far I walked, it followed. I couldn’t erase it. The past shaped me, twisted me, and in some strange way, it gave me strength. It gave me reason to keep going.

"Who would believe that I’m the villain in my own story?" I whispered to myself.

"No, you’re not!" Ae-cha screamed inside me.

"They made me one. They turned me into this," I said, laughing bitterly.

The sound of my own voice sent a jolt through my body, like an electric shock. A reminder that I was still here. Still broken.

They call me crazy. Others say I’m cursed.

I think… I’m starting to believe them.

I’m slowly becoming what they say I am—wallowing in pain, drifting deeper into self-destruction, with no one to run to, no one to call my own. I’m unraveling.

"I hate myself," Ae-cha screamed again.

"No… that’s not true," I told her, softly.

But nothing about me had changed.

Then his memory returned—like a ghost—lingering in my mind.

His dark eyes, warm and kind, once locked onto mine as he smiled.

"The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams, Ae-cha," he said.

I stared at him, confused.

"What dreams? Do I even have any?" I asked, sounding foolish.

Before I could finish, he silenced me with a kiss, then leaned in close and whispered:

"We all have dreams, Ae_,cha."

Those words lit a spark in the darkness inside me. For the first time, I saw light in my tunnel. I wasn’t alone. I had him.

But now... I walk that road alone again.

He left—taking the light with him.

His final words shattered me:

"You screwed me over. And I believed every word you told me," he shouted.

"I didn’t mean to lie to you, Tae" Ae-cha stammered.

"You made me feel like I was always the one at fault. I thought we’d make it out of this—together. That’s what we promised, wasn’t it? I was wrong, Ae-cha."

"Tae, please, you’re making a scene. Let’s just step outside. I’ll explain everything," I pleaded.

I reached for his hand.

He pushed it away.

"Just trust me. Please. I promise I’ll explain."

"How can I trust a liar like you?"

Those words hit harder than any slap.

They tore through me—like a dagger to the heart.

"If you were in my shoes, you would’ve done the same," I whispered.

"I tried telling you. I know you love me. You didn’t mean what you said. You couldn’t have..."

Tears welled in my eyes as I fell to the ground.

"Tae, don’t make it seem like you were just playing with my feelings. Tell me it wasn’t all lies... all just a charade."

He looked away, pained.

"Let’s end it here, Ae-cha. From now on… treat me like a stranger. Nothing more."

It felt like a dream. A nightmare I couldn’t wake from.

I stood there, shattered. My tears poured like rain.

"Cruel… You’re so cruel, Tae. Why are you the one leaving?"

"Why are you doing this to me? What am I supposed to do now?!"

He said nothing.

I forced myself to stand, trembling. I always knew this day would come.

When life gave me roses, it was the thorns that left the deepest scars.

"Fine," I said, wiping the tears from my face.

"You can leave. But before you do… just know, I’ll always love you. Maybe I was just a fool to believe we could make it. Never mind."

"Take care of yourself," he murmured.

I turned away. I didn’t look back.

I never saw his face one last time.

And when he left… he took the colors with him.

But even in the chaos and pain, someone watched—Lee Chug.

He stood from afar, eyes heavy with something like pity.

And I... I was ashamed to let him see this broken version of me.

To the world, I was a liar. A curse. A girl chasing after a family that never truly accepted me. A shadow of disgrace.

I gave him a present—for Tae. My final goodbye.

And then I left.

I closed that chapter for good.

Even if the world was dark, even if he took the colors with him,

I swore to dream again. To paint my own sky.

Without him.

Ae-cha sat by the old willow tree near the training grounds, the one that bent like it was forever mourning something. The wind was unusually still, and the sky was the same color it had been that night—grey, bleeding into black.

She didn't know why, but something about the silence brought the memories crashing back.

At first, just flashes.

A scream.

Glass shattering.

The smell of metal and fire.

Then—the sound of heavy boots on wooden floors, slow and deliberate.

She blinked, and suddenly, she was no longer beneath the willow.

She was five years old, hiding in a narrow space beneath the stairs, hugging a stuffed rabbit so tightly its stitching split.

Her mother’s voice echoed through the walls—desperate, pleading.

"Please, don’t hurt them… just take whatever you want—"

Bang.

Ae-cha jolted.

She remembered now. The sound wasn’t thunder. It was a gunshot. Maybe two.

She covered her ears, but nothing could block the silence that came after.

A silence that screamed.

Through the crack in the stairwell, she saw a shadow pass. A tall figure in a black coat, face hidden. No expression. No urgency. Like they had done this before.

The front door creaked open.

Then closed.

And that was it.

Gone.

She remembered crawling out. Stepping over the warm trail of red leading to the living room. Seeing her mother’s body crumpled like a discarded doll. Her father’s hand still clutching the edge of the table, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

She didn’t scream. She couldn’t.

She just shut down.

That night, her mind buried it deep. The police called it a robbery. No suspects. No fingerprints. Just gone—like her childhood.

The neighbors whispered about a robbery

But I remember something else—

A scream. A shadow. Blood on my mother’s nightgown.

I never told anyone.

No one ever asked.

All they saw was the quiet girl with the blank stare.

The one sent to live with an aunt who didn’t want her.

The one who survived.

But not really.

Now, fifteen years later, I’m standing in front of the house again—

Empty. Silent. Rotting.

I take a step inside.

The floorboards groan beneath my weight.

The air smells like dust and broken promises.

And suddenly—

I’m not twenty-one anymore.

I’m a child again, hiding under the stairs, holding my breath…

And that’s when I remember—

I wasn’t alone that night.

There was someone else in the room.

Someone who whispered my name—not kindly, not lovingly, but like a warning.

“Ae-cha…”

Even now, the voice echoes inside me.

It doesn’t belong to my mother.

It doesn’t belong to my father.

It belongs to the dark.

I shut the door behind me, sealing myself in.

The house is a tomb, and I’ve come back to bury whatever’s left of me.

I walk past the shattered mirror in the hallway.

The same mirror where my aunt used to force me to look at myself and say, “Be grateful you’re alive.”

Alive.

But not whole.

Never whole.

My uncle’s laughter still lingers in the walls—

Cruel. Drunken. Heavy with the stench of sweat and cheap liquor.

He was always watching.

Touching.

Taking what wasn’t his.

And my aunt? She just lit another cigarette and turned the volume up on the television.

I step into my old room.

The window is still cracked from the night I tried to escape.

The stains on the floor—those aren’t wine, like she said.

I remember.

I remember everything now.

I fall to my knees.

My breath stutters.

And then I whisper the words I never thought I’d say aloud:

“I didn’t mean to kill them.”

But I did.

The storm outside mirrored the one inside Ae-cha.

Rain slammed against the windows like fists. Thunder cracked the sky open.

In the dim kitchen, she stood barefoot, soaked from the downpour, her arms trembling—not from cold, but from what she had decided.

Her aunt sat at the table, drunk and slurring insults like lullabies. Her uncle sprawled across the couch, asleep, a bottle of soju resting on his stomach.

They didn’t see the girl anymore. They never had.

Just something to use. To curse. To break.

But tonight, she was not a girl.

She was justice wrapped in skin.

Silently, Ae-cha reached for the knife in the drawer—the same one her aunt once held against her wrist, threatening her for stealing food.

No shaking. No hesitation.

She walked toward the couch first. The sound of the storm drowned out everything. Even his final gasp.

Her aunt stood too late.

"You ungrateful little—"

Ae-cha didn’t let her finish.

When it was over, the rain washed the blood down the front steps like it had been waiting to cleanse the house for years.

“Into the Water”

Ae-cha stood at the edge of the river, the world quiet around her.

The wind whispered like her mother might have, if she’d still been alive.

She dropped the bloodstained knife into the current and stepped forward.

Her white dress clung to her skin. Her hair whipped across her face.

She whispered to the river, not to the gods.

"I’m sorry… I didn’t want to become this."

And then she stepped in.

The cold wrapped around her like arms. She didn’t fight it. She let herself sink, the weight of her choices dragging her down.

I didn’t want to live.

But the river spit me back out.

An old couple found me. Saved me.

And for a while, I let myself believe I could start over.

But even now, I feel the weight of their bodies pulling me under.

That night wasn’t the end.

It was the beginning.

"Warmth"

That was the first thing she felt when her eyes opened.

Then the soft murmur of unfamiliar voices, and the scent of boiled herbs.

She was in a small wooden house, wrapped in thick blankets. Her skin burned from the heat of the fire.

A wrinkled woman hovered nearby, dipping a cloth in water and pressing it to her head.

“You’re awake,” the man said from the corner, his voice low but kind. “We found you by the riverbank. Thought we were pulling out a ghost.”

Ae-cha tried to speak, but only tears came.

The woman smiled gently. “No need for words, child. Whatever it is… you're safe now.”

Ae-cha closed her eyes.

Safe.

For the first time, the word didn’t feel like a lie.

But deep down, she knew the storm wasn’t over.

She had survived. Again.

But this time, she carried not only scars…

She carried blood.

And she had to wear the mask of a victim perfectly now—because if the truth ever slipped out…

There’d be no river deep enough to hide in.

Eleven Years Ago

Snow was falling the night she met Tae.

Not the delicate, movie-scene kind.

It was bitter, unforgiving snow—sleet lashing against Seoul’s black rooftops, burying the city under its silence.

Ae-cha was seventeen. Dressed in her school uniform. Shivering under a thin coat, too proud to show how cold she really was.

The Park Estate gates gleamed like a fortress.

And beyond them stood Tae, with the smile of someone who had never truly been cold in his life.

“You must be Kim Ae-cha,” he said, eyes scanning her face like it was a secret map.

She nodded, barely managing a “yes.” Her voice always shrank in places like this—places with chandeliers and marble and people who wore money like perfume.

His mother had arranged it all: a charity scholarship, a mentorship, an opportunity. But it was clear from the beginning—Tae was more interested in her than in his mother’s plan.

She was just a girl then.

Smart. Pretty. Alone.

Perfect for his attention.

What she didn’t know—what no one warned her—was that love in a house built on secrets never came without cost.

Now – Military Recruitment Base

The ink bled a little when she pressed too hard.

Kim Ae-cha, age 28, unmarried, no dependents, no emergency contacts.

A thin, tired officer in a pressed uniform looked over her papers.

“Everything in order. Step into the next room for your physical evaluation.”

Ae-cha nodded and walked.

One step after another, into a life she hadn’t planned but desperately needed.

This wasn’t bravery.

This was survival.

The military wasn’t her dream. It was her escape hatch.

Behind her, unnoticed among the staff and shadows, he watched.

Lee-Chung.

Eleven years older. Hardened jaw. Military-pressed uniform.

She didn’t see him.

Didn’t remember him.

But he remembered everything.

Eleven Years Ago – The Garden Behind the Estate

“You ever think about running?” she asked Tae one night, barefoot on the grass. Her school blouse was untucked, hair tied in a messy knot.

“Running from what?” Tae asked, sipping wine he had stolen from his father’s cellar.

“From all this. From who you’re supposed to be.”

Tae looked at her. Really looked.

“I don’t run,” he said. “I lead.”

She smiled, admiring his confidence—naive to the warning buried in those words.

Somewhere, far behind them, Lee-Chung watched.

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

But he always found a way to be near her.

To hear the sound of her laughter, even if it wasn’t meant for him.

He loved her quietly.

Because even back then, he knew—girls like Ae-cha never chose boys like him.

Now – Inside the Recruitment Room

“Height?”

“167 cm.”

“Weight?”

“51 kg.”

The officer barely looked up.

Ae-cha stood still, letting herself become data. It was easier this way.

If they saw numbers instead of a girl, maybe they wouldn’t see the broken parts.

She moved through the medical evaluations with robotic precision.

Reflex tests. Vision checks. Blood drawn and labeled.

She had done worse.

Felt worse.

It was easier to bleed under sterile light than in the dark rooms of memory.

Outside, Lee-Chung leaned against the wall.

He wasn’t supposed to be part of this unit’s screening—but he had volunteered.

No one questioned him. He was a Park. A soldier. A leader.

But in his mind, he was still the shadow.

The shadow of Tae—his brother, the golden son.

The one Ae-cha had once loved.

Or maybe still did.

He had heard rumors, long ago, of what happened.

The explosive breakup. The shouting. The tears.

The way she left and never came back.

Even the Park family whispered about her now like she was a ghost that haunted them.

But Lee-Chung had never let go of that image:

A girl on the marble stairs, clutching her chest like it was bleeding invisible wounds.

He had wanted to hold her then.

He wanted to hold her now.

Flashback – One Week Before She Left

Tae’s voice was venomous.

“Why don’t you just admit it? You used me.”

Ae-cha’s hands trembled. “That’s not true. I—”

“You wanted to get out of whatever gutter you came from, and I was your ticket.”

She flinched.

“I loved you,” she whispered.

Tae’s laugh was sharp. “No, Ae-cha. You loved the idea of being someone else.”

The words left scars.

Behind the wall, unseen again, Lee-Chung listened.

Clenched fists. Bitten tongue.

He had wanted to interrupt.

To step in.

To scream at Tae for being blind.

But he didn’t.

Because she was never his to defend.

Now

The day was silent, and silence, she had learned, was where memories liked to scream she had signed anyway.

This wasn’t about patriotism or duty. This was escape. This was silence. This was the sound of every door closing behind her—her aunt’s, her uncle’s, and most of all, the Park family’s.

“Ae-cha Kim,” the sergeant called, reading from the list.

She stepped forward.

Lee-Chung saw her before she saw him.

He had changed. Taller now, the angles of his face sharper, no longer the quiet boy who lurked behind shadows and books in the Park mansion. But his eyes—those eyes had never stopped watching her, not even back then, when she was his brother’s girl.

He had loved her then. And hated himself for it.

She didn’t recognize him. Not yet. But something in her paused as she walked past him, a hesitation too small to notice, but too large to ignore.

Lee-Chung turned away quickly, masking the storm behind his stoic uniform. He had waited for this moment for eleven years. And now she stood just a few feet away, broken but alive, like a ghost from a story he had never stopped reading.

– Outside the Barracks

Ae-cha stood on the balcony after her first drill, sweat soaking her collar, muscles sore.

This wasn’t a place for weakness.

And she was weak.

But not for long.

She stared at the horizon, red with sunset.

The wind carried echoes of her past.

A voice.

A kiss.

A heartbreak.

“I’ll forget him,” she whispered.

But the wind didn’t answer.

Behind her, on another floor, Lee-Chung lit a cigarette he didn’t smoke.

He had followed her into war.

Not out of obsession.

But out of loyalty to a memory—a promise he never made out loud:

“I will be there when everyone else leaves.”

She didn’t know him.

Not yet.

But soon…

The past would catch up.

And this time, he wouldn't stay in the shadows.

Now

In the camp, she learned to sharpen her silence into discipline.

The officers called her “cold.” The other recruits avoided her. One girl whispered, “She’s the one who never smiles.” But Ae-cha didn’t come to be liked.

She came to disappear.

Lee-Chung watched her from a distance, never speaking, always observing. He hadn’t planned this reunion. Fate had brought them to the same path, but the timing felt like a cruel joke. She didn’t remember him—not the boy who once hid behind piano rooms and hallway corners just to catch a glimpse of her.

Not the boy who gave her a carved wooden flower the day she first visited the Park estate. She had returned it, thinking it was from Tae.

But now, she stood just meters away, unaware of who he was… and of everything he knew.

Night came cold and restless.

Ae-cha sat on her bunk, knees pulled to her chest, the scars on her arms whispering stories no one would ever read.

Across the room, Lee-Chung watched her. He wanted to speak, to say her name, to break the steel between them.

But he didn’t.

Because he wasn’t that boy anymore—and she wasn’t the same girl.

He wasn’t even sure if she believed in anything anymore. Especially not love.

Flashback: The Abandoned House

A memory she never shared—not even with Tae.

She had been eight. The house they stayed in after her parents died was damp and narrow, suffocating. Her aunt, a bitter woman with yellowed teeth and a husband who reeked of tobacco and menace, had taken her in.

Not out of love. Out of obligation.

“You’ll sleep in the attic,” her aunt said. “Quiet girls survive longer.”

Survive. That was the word. It hung like rot in every corner of that house.

There were nights her uncle would creep up the stairs. She’d learn to wedge a chair beneath the door. Other nights, she wasn’t fast enough.

The attic had no window—but she saw the moon anyway. Every time she closed her eyes.

Now

During night drills, Lee-Chung caught a glimpse of her hand trembling as she loaded a rifle. It was a small shake—barely visible—but to him, it was seismic.

Because he knew what hands looked like after trauma.

He had seen his own shaking the day Tae brought Ae-cha to the mansion for the first time. He had loved her then. Silently. Devastatingly.

But she never saw him.

She only saw Tae.

The Last Fight

“You never trusted me,” Ae-cha said that day, standing in the Park courtyard, eyes swollen from crying.

“I trusted what I knew,” Tae had said. “But everything with you feels like a puzzle with missing pieces.”

She had wanted to scream. Tell him about her past. Her shame. The scars.

But she didn’t.

Because by then, it didn’t matter.

She had already lost him.

Now

That night, Ae-cha found herself alone behind the mess hall, clutching a cigarette she didn’t light. Her breath rose in clouds, mingling with the stars.

“You fight like someone who’s trying to forget something,” a voice said.

She turned sharply.

Lee-Chung stood there, hands in his pockets, eyes shadowed by moonlight.

She frowned. “What would you know about it?”

“Enough.”

She studied him for a moment. There was something familiar in the set of his jaw. The way he tilted his head. But her mind wouldn’t connect the dots.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

Lee-Chung’s heart stuttered.

“No,” he said.

Because sometimes, silence was a kindness too.

Ae-cha lay in bed later, haunted by dreams of flames, of screaming, of a small hand reaching through smoke. Her heart thudded like a war drum.

She didn’t know who she’d become anymore.

But she knew one thing.

She wasn’t done running.

She was just getting started.