Roots of Betrayal
The silence has been a physical weight for three days, pressing down on my chest until I can barely breathe. Hyun-woo has become a ghost in our apartment—cold, distant, his eyes avoiding mine like I’m someone he no longer knows. I don’t know what I did, and the not knowing is tearing me apart.
Then I see him—standing across the street, drenched in the pouring Seoul rain, staring up at our building like he’s waiting for me to break first. His black hair clings to his forehead, his jacket soaked through, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t seek shelter. Just watches.
I fling the door open and run out into the storm.
He’s trembling—not from cold, but from something deeper. Pain flashes in his dark eyes, the same eyes that once softened every time they landed on me. “Are you going to tell me what’s happening, Ha-eun… or are we going to keep pretending I don’t exist?”
I freeze. He saw the note. He saw Min-ho. But he doesn’t know the truth—that it wasn’t a secret rendezvous, that I was meeting Min-ho to get answers about *him*, about the sudden distance, about the late-night calls I wasn’t supposed to hear.
Now I have to choose: step forward and risk everything with the truth, stand my ground and fight back, or pull him close and remind him—through touch, through breath—that we’re not over.
One choice could save us. Another could end us for good.