The car pulled into the private drive just past dawn, where soft mist clung to the lacquered gates of the Kang estate — not the main family seat, but the smaller modern residence in Seongbuk-dong, the one built for laughter, lullabies, and late-night ramen cravings. Their house.
Soo-Ah sat quietly, her hand trembling against the wool of the car blanket. The cherry blossom trees lining the entrance were still there, as if frozen in time — petals gently drifting like soft snow, covering the silence between her and Dae-Hyun.
She hadn't returned here since the accident. She hadn't returned anywhere. The last thing she remembered was fastening Min-Jun's seatbelt as he gurgled happily in the backseat, humming the tune to his favorite cartoon. A blink later — silence. Tubes. Machines. Months lost in the pitch black of her mind.
Now here she was, returning to the world. But the world… hadn't returned with her.
The doors opened.
And her breath caught in her throat.
Everything — everything — was the same.
Min-Jun's little socks were still drying on the hallway radiator. Her favorite candle — the sandalwood and neroli one — still burned gently in the corner of the living room. His baby gate was still installed at the staircase. Even the toys on the floor were untouched, as if someone had preserved the scene like a shrine. A mausoleum of joy.
"Dae-Hyun…" she whispered.
He didn't answer, only walked forward with mechanical calm, setting down her hospital bags by the doorway.
Atop the grand piano was a framed photo of the three of them — Soo-Ah smiling brightly, Min-Jun tugging at Dae-Hyun's hair, and Dae-Hyun, bloated but laughing, mid-blink. A family frozen in a perfect moment before the world fell apart.
"You kept everything?" she asked, voice fragile.
He looked at her with those eyes — serene, almost too serene.
"I couldn't change anything," he said. "Not until you came back."
That evening, Soo-Ah woke from a nap in the bedroom they once shared. The golden light of sunset washed through the windows, bathing everything in a kind of surreal warmth.
Dae-Hyun wasn't in bed.
She slowly pulled on a robe and walked out, steadying herself on the wall, still weak from her long sleep. The house was mostly quiet, except for a soft rustling near the kitchen.
She heard voices.
Two housemaids were murmuring near the pantry, unaware of her presence.
"…look at him now, cold like ice," one whispered. "But you didn't see him back then. Crying with a blanket like it was the baby—Min-Jun, he called it. Wouldn't sleep, wouldn't eat."
"I heard Chairman Kang had to intervene," said the other. "He sedated him. Had him taken to a psychiatric facility. A real one. Not the luxury type. He went… mad."
Soo-Ah's breath caught.
"They say when he came back, he wasn't the same. It's like he came back from war. Never raised his voice again. Never smiled either. Just… scary smart. Scary quiet."
"Poor man."
They left before noticing her. She stood there, her heart thudding like thunder in her ribs.
She walked through the house alone after they'd gone. Her steps took her toward what used to be the most chaotic room in the home — Dae-Hyun's 'man cave', a technicolor mess of arcade machines, VR gear, anime figurines, and half-built LEGO sets. She remembered hating how juvenile it was.
But when she opened the door…
She found something else entirely.
Gone was the playroom of a spoilt chaebol.
Now it was a fortress of steel and silence. The walls were lined with screens showing live feeds, encrypted stock analysis, medical data, and AI-generated strategic models. Whiteboards were covered in meticulous equations. Bundles of documents were bound in color-coded folders.
In one corner was a glass display of surgical notes, medical literature, and even private records on experimental coma reversal therapy. And stacked on a nearby shelf, dozens of folders marked only with her name.
And beneath that, photographs of her. Dozens. Hundreds.
She slowly sat down at the desk and turned over the pages. There were notes in his handwriting — detailed, obsessive, frantic. The calculations of a man possessed.
She pressed a hand to her chest.
This was his cathedral.
When he returned home from work that night — just past midnight — he found her in the study, curled up in the chair with a half-read file in her lap.
He didn't ask what she'd seen.
Instead, he knelt beside her, gently brushing the hair away from her face.
"I didn't know…" she said. "You worked this much. You take care of me. Of everything. And all this… was for me?"
He didn't speak. His silence was confirmation.
"Do you…" she hesitated. "Do you blame me? For what happened? For Min-Jun?"
His eyes darkened, but not in anger — in that way a storm looks moments before it breaks.
"No," he said quietly. "It's no one's fault. Only fate."
She swallowed, tears brimming.
"I just… I don't know who you are anymore."
He smiled faintly.
"I'm the same man," he whispered. "Just one trying to make things right. We can have another child one day, if that's what you want. But I'll never forget Min-Jun. And I'll never ask you to forget either."
She reached for him, suddenly fragile, suddenly terrified.
"I missed everything," she choked.
"You didn't," he said, and held her. "You were the reason I survived."
She pressed her face into his chest, felt the warmth, the rapid beat of a heart that had been through war.
"You lost yourself," she said.
"No," he murmured, voice tight. "I gave myself away. Piece by piece. If you were in my place… would you be sane?"
She didn't answer.
He tilted her chin up gently, and for the first time since she woke — perhaps for the first time since the crash — she saw tears in his eyes.
Not just pain. But the kind of soul-deep grief that never left. Grief that had become architecture. Grief that had become empire.
"Don't ask me again," he said, voice breaking. "Please. Let me stay strong in front of you… if nothing else."
She wrapped her arms around him, heart splintering.
And they sat there, in that sterile room built from data and desperation, locked in an embrace that smelled faintly of dust, sandalwood, and the ghosts of a boy named Min-Jun.