The storm began not with shouting, but with silence.
Soo-Ah had been waiting, sitting in the living room with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. The house was lit with soft, golden evening hues, and everything was pristine — too pristine. It was the kind of order that felt like it had been achieved through suffocating control.
When Dae-Hyun walked in, perfectly tailored in his charcoal three-piece suit, black tie knotted with military precision, he looked like a man who belonged on the cover of a global financial magazine. There was no hint of exhaustion on his face, no sign of turbulence behind his cold eyes. He looked immaculate. Unbothered. Untouchable.
But Soo-Ah's eyes were sharp now.
She had seen the cracks. She had walked through the fortress. She had stared at the locked doors and denial messages and felt his absence like a ghost in every room.
She stood up slowly.
"You locked me out," she said quietly, meeting his gaze.
He paused, as if considering whether to pretend he didn't understand.
"I had to," he replied smoothly, removing his jacket and setting it down.
"No, you didn't." Her voice sharpened. "You just didn't want me to see. You didn't want me to know who you really are now."
"Soo-Ah," he said, voice even, "there's nothing in there for you to see."
She laughed bitterly. "Nothing? You're lying to me. You lie to me with every calm smile, every dismissive answer. You make me feel crazy for wanting to understand you, when you're the one who built an entire life behind my back. You've built something in there — something you don't want me to touch."
He said nothing, his face unreadable.
Her voice broke then, trembling with something closer to desperation. "I saw it. The way the staff talk about you. The way they're afraid. The way no man dares to come near me at any event. You've made yourself into something terrifying, Dae-Hyun. And I don't even know what's real anymore."
He was silent for a long moment.
And then he sighed — not out of irritation, but from the sheer weight of everything he carried.
"Fine," he said.
One word. That was all. But it changed the air in the room, like a pressure system shifting just before a storm.
He turned and gestured for her to follow.
Down the corridor. Past his study. Into the place she had tried so hard to understand.
He moved a shelf to the side, revealing a hidden door embedded into the wall behind it. A retinal scan. A hiss of released air. A quiet hum of electricity.
He stepped inside, and she followed — heart pounding.
The space beyond was unlike anything she had expected. This was no pristine sanctuary of high-functioning madness. This was a graveyard.
The room was dimly lit, raw and ruined. The walls were gouged with scratches, long and deep — violent marks that screamed of rage and pain. One wall was cracked, the drywall punctured in several places as if someone had driven their fists through it. Mirrors were shattered. Broken glass lined the floor like crystalline bones.
The bed in the corner was barely used — the mattress sunken in the center. On the walls were faded photographs of her. Of Min-Jun. Of them.
It was like stepping into a sealed tomb where grief had been buried, then exhumed and buried again, over and over.
She didn't speak.
He stood still, his back to her.
"This is where I came when they put me away," he said finally. "When my father decided I needed to be sedated. When he locked me in that facility to fix me."
Soo-Ah's breath caught.
He turned slightly toward her, his face half-cast in shadow. "They told me you were as good as dead. That keeping you alive was cruelty. That I needed to let you go. And Min-Jun…" He choked on the name. "Min-Jun was already gone. And I — I wasn't functioning. I didn't talk. I screamed. They found me cradling a blanket in the hallway, whispering lullabies."
She put her hand to her mouth.
"They were going to unplug you." His voice was steel now, ice over a furnace. "They said I was in no condition to make decisions. My father, Han Jae-Sun, the board — they all wanted to pull the plug. I wasn't rational. So I became rational."
He looked up at her then, and the composure he wore like armor cracked, if only slightly.
"I built a version of me the world couldn't question. A machine. Efficient. Ruthless. Smarter than them. I made sure I was clean, composed, brilliant — because any sign of weakness, and they'd end you. So I forced myself out. I built AI models, analyzed neural regeneration data, funded the top surgeons and neurologists in secret — everything to find a way to wake you up. I built this company into a weapon to protect you from them."
He walked toward the scratched wall and ran his fingers along the gouges.
"But this…" he said softly, "this is where I came back to remind myself I'm still human."
Soo-Ah was trembling.
He turned to her now, mask slipping, pain bleeding through in glances and flinches. "You asked why I never told you. Why I locked you out. Because you were the only thing keeping me sane. If you knew what I had to do — what I had to become — you might've hated me for it."
"I could never hate you," she whispered, but her voice cracked. Her eyes were wet. "I didn't know…"
He looked away.
"And now it doesn't matter," he said with a faint, bitter smile. "Because I'm beyond saving, Soo-Ah. I stopped being someone you could save a long time ago. And if I start letting myself remember everything, if I stop being… this version of me, then I lose everything I built for you. For Min-Jun."
There was a silence then. He didn't reach for her. He didn't cry.
He simply stood there. Unmoving. Unbreakable.
But Soo-Ah knew now — knew the price of that unbreakability.
It was him.
He had traded himself away so she could live.
And it broke something inside her.