The sky was indigo by the time Dae-Hyun returned.
He entered the house without sound, as he always did now. Even his footsteps seemed engineered to disturb nothing. The air around him shifted, like something spectral had passed through the door — no longer the boy with too much heart, but a man carved in silence, ambition, and restraint.
And yet, the moment he stepped into the living room and saw her curled up in his hoodie, eyes puffy and red, waiting for him like a forgotten prayer, something inside his chest cracked.
She stood when she saw him, not running to him — just watching, as if unsure whether he was truly there, or just another phantom in her grief-laced dream.
"I didn't think you'd still be awake," he said softly.
"I couldn't sleep."
He nodded, removed his coat, and laid it on the back of the chair. She watched his every movement — the way his broad shoulders moved, the silent tension in his frame, the heavy gravity of a man who never let himself feel anymore, lest the dam burst and drown them both.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He blinked. "For what?"
"For everything. For not seeing you. For blaming you. For… Min-Jun."
His face didn't change, not outwardly. But his hands — they twitched once, as if her words had been a blade and he took it without flinching.
"It wasn't your fault," he said, voice hoarse, barely audible. "It was mine."
"No," she stepped forward. "No, Dae-Hyun, don't say that."
He didn't answer.
Just turned away, but she stepped in front of him, arms circling his waist before she even realized what she was doing. He went rigid under her touch — not because he didn't want it, but because it had been so long since he had allowed himself to be held.
"Soo-Ah," he murmured, voice trembling now, "please don't—"
"I want to."
And she kissed him.
Not the way they had in their youth, clumsy and breathless and eager. Not the way they had as husband and wife during blissful nights of domestic happiness. No, this kiss was different. It was reverent. It was aching. It was desperate.
She poured every apology into that kiss. Every regret. Every tear she had shed alone. Every word she had never said when he lay shattered and burning.
He didn't resist. He never could with her. But this time, when he kissed her back, he trembled like a man on the edge of ruin.
By the time he carried her to their bedroom, his hands shaking slightly as he undressed her with painful care, she realized something she hadn't before: She was all he had left.
There was no hidden fortress beyond his smiles. No secret mistress called ambition. No therapy to console him. No light at the end of the tunnel. She was it. The last star in his pitch-black sky.
And when he entered her, it wasn't lust that moved him.
It was devotion.
He made love to her like a man starving. Like she was the only thing tethering him to the world. His hands roamed her body reverently, as if committing every inch of her to memory, afraid she might vanish the way their son did, the way his past did. He kissed her collarbone like it was sacred. Whispered her name like a benediction.
Soo-Ah had known this body. This man. This soul.
But never like this.
Never had she seen him shatter into her. Never had he trembled this hard, not even during the worst nights of his grief. His lips traced invisible lines along her jaw, down her neck, along the curve of her hip as if he were marking his journey back to life.
And when he came undone, face buried into the crook of her neck, it wasn't with a groan — it was with a sob.
A single, broken sob.
Her fingers threaded through his hair, and she didn't say anything. Just held him, naked and vulnerable, as his arms clung to her like she was the only raft in an ocean he'd been drowning in for far too long.
Afterward, they didn't speak for a long while.
She watched him as he lay beside her, his chest still rising and falling with the remnants of emotion. His features — the high cheekbones now sharp with weight loss, the sleepless shadows under his eyes, the faint creases from carrying the weight of two dynasties — looked different now. Younger. Human.
"You love me that much?" she whispered, stunned by the enormity of it.
He turned to her slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a crooked smile. "You're my entire world, Soo-Ah. The only reason I clawed my way back from hell."
Her throat clenched.
"And if I'd never woken up?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he took her hand and pressed it to his chest — right above his heart. The beat was slow. Steady. Devastatingly strong.
"I wouldn't have lasted another year."
She broke down again, and he just held her.
That night, for the first time since the accident, they slept wrapped in each other's arms. Not out of obligation. Not out of habit. But because there was nowhere else either of them belonged anymore.
The pain was still there.
The ghosts were still watching.
But in that fragile, golden moment — under the hush of the moonlight, the sound of his heart under her palm, the warmth of his breath at her temple — they found something precious.
Not peace.
But something close enough to make living bearable again.