The days that followed did not pass.They lingered.
The funeral was an affair of spectacle and scandal — opulent, sprawling, meticulously choreographed like an imperial procession. Hundreds of black-clad dignitaries filed past golden altars and white lilies, their faces arranged into polite masks of sorrow. Politicians came. Celebrities came. Executives from both conglomerates — Kang Group International and Han Global Holdings — came in black Rolls-Royces with tinted windows and secret service convoys.
But Dae-Hyun never left the hospital.
He refused to bury his son.
He refused to bury the boy he had kissed only hours before the crash. He refused to stand before strangers and eulogize a life that had barely begun. He refused to accept condolences from men who had never once played peek-a-boo with Min-Jun, who had never picked up a dropped spoon six times in a row just to hear that joyful giggle.
Instead, he stayed in her room — the ICU chamber sealed like a mausoleum of whirring machines and sterile light.
He sat there for hours, unmoving, breathing only because his body hadn't yet forgotten how.
The staff grew nervous. They whispered. They called the family.
But when Kang Tae-Joon arrived — cold-eyed, draped in a bespoke mourning suit, his presence like smoke — Dae-Hyun said nothing. He did not bow. He did not look up. He simply sat, clutching Soo-Ah's hand as if it were the only thing anchoring him to the world.
"Get him out of here," Tae-Joon ordered. "Sedate him if you have to."
But the doctors hesitated. Even the hospital board, under pressure from both conglomerates, knew better than to force the heir into anything. He was grieving, yes — but he was still a Kang.
So they let him stay.
And for a time, he stopped speaking.
Four days passed.
He barely ate. Refused water. When a nurse tried to change Soo-Ah's bedsheets, he snapped — screamed, lashed out, knocking the clipboard from her hands and shoving the equipment tray into the wall. The nurse resigned that evening.
He stopped responding to anyone but her. He began to whisper to her at night, in the hush of dawn and the static silence of 3 a.m.
He told her everything.
How Min-Jun had just started walking.
How he still had the giraffe toy she gave him on their first date.
How he couldn't breathe without her.
How he was scared — so scared — that she was drifting somewhere far, somewhere he couldn't follow.
And then one night, he broke.
It was 2:36 a.m.
The halls were dark, the nurses rotating shifts. The machines beeped rhythmically — the slow, mechanical song of borrowed life. He stood from the chair where he had slept the last four nights and crawled into the hospital bed beside her.
He held her hand. He pressed his forehead to hers. Her skin was warm, but vacant — like an echo without voice.
And then he sobbed.
Not a composed weep, but the uncontrollable keening of someone beyond words. Tears streamed down his face. He kissed her eyelids. He whispered, again and again, "Please come back. Please don't leave me. Please — it should've been me. It should've been me."
But the machines did not answer. Her chest rose and fell with machine-timed precision. Her fingers did not twitch.
She was here.
And yet — gone.
By the seventh day, he refused to leave the hospital suite entirely. He ordered a luxury mattress brought in. The best chefs in Seoul sent food, but he didn't touch it. His weight, already excessive, began to turn on him — the bloated ruin of a man once merely indulgent now become grotesque in his refusal to care.
By the tenth, he moved her into a private wing. Fully renovated under his command — walls painted her favorite color, lavender-scented ventilation, the same bed they'd shared at the estate replicated in precise detail. He brought in her perfumes, her books, her favorite vinyl records. A nurse was hired to comb her hair daily. He watched, silently, like a king overseeing a ritual.
Soo-Ah's body was kept pristine. Her vitals stable. But her brainwaves were fading — already near-flat. Her neurologist told him the truth one night, gently, compassionately:
"She's not coming back."
He nodded. Then looked her straight in the eyes.
"Then I'm not leaving either."
Min-Jun's room at the estate remained untouched.
A housekeeper found Dae-Hyun there at 3 a.m. weeks later, cradling a tiny onesie and humming a lullaby to an invisible child. He didn't acknowledge her presence. He just kept singing.
The staff no longer questioned his behavior. They simply watched from a distance, afraid — not of violence, but of what he was becoming.
His father attempted an intervention.
Tae-Joon arrived at the estate one stormy evening, accompanied by three private doctors and two armed security guards. They entered the hospital annex expecting resistance.
But Dae-Hyun welcomed him with eerie calm.
"Ah, Father," he said, voice slow, expression blank. "Come to see your grandson? He's sleeping."
Tae-Joon froze. His jaw tightened. He saw the shrine Dae-Hyun had erected beside Soo-Ah's bed — a display of Min-Jun's photos, toys, and baby shoes.
"He's gone," Tae-Joon said quietly.
Dae-Hyun smiled.
"No," he said. "He's just very tired."