Sometimes I imagine things like that.Your pale hand on that rainy afternoon.A time only for you and me, when in the end, nothing ever reached anything…He thought a song was playing, something very old. A voice that had hummed, murmuring as if reciting under its breath without any accompaniment—he had kept that voice stored away for such a long time afterward. Everything was already a mess, ruined and torn to the point of no return, and he had known that. Even so, there was a heart that didn’t know how to stop. A feeling that wouldn’t burn out.Why was that? The good memories were so few he could count them on one hand, and yet they were all such small, meaningless things.He would sometimes think that the time they had spent together had been like hell—that no matter how much he opened up his heart and showed it to you, the sheets had been soaked with tears because of your coldness, and now they were stained for good. The days when he had missed you so much he would just sit there staring at your ID photo were now this far away. Maybe, only once he reached the end of it all, the feelings he realized all over again were so pathetic he’d wanted to bite through his tongue. You had never once met his eyes, and even less had your heart ever aligned with his. He had known that his pitiful devotion was being toyed with hundreds of times, trampled like trash under your feet, and yet he had forced his eyes shut. A hellish time, an era when every side of his world was pitch black because there was no exit in sight.The man forced open eyes that didn’t want to lift. His head, burning as if it had been in a fire, was wet and slowly blinking in and out. His left leg, stripped of all sensation, was twisted into a grotesque shape, a glimpse of white bone showing as it was jammed tight in the space between the driver’s seat and the door. Other than the rumbling mechanical noise, everything around him was as silent as a grave.So this is how I die here.Only then did it suddenly come back to him.He had been hurrying along because of a late-night schedule. His manager shook his head and said it would be impossible to make it in time anyway, that they should just cancel, but he had snatched the car keys and climbed into the driver’s seat alone. The highway had been empty, and as the promised time drew closer, the weight of his foot on the accelerator kept growing heavier. He had thought he might as well be drunk. He hadn’t had alcohol or pills, but the right foot that should have been on the brake had dropped downward instead.On the empty road, he could see a single expensive-looking foreign car running alone in the distance. The road bent sharply, and in his car, whose speed he did not lower, the warning messages from the navigation system spilled out like screams. The orange reflective lights on the guardrail smeared past his eyes in a dizzy blur, and at the incredible speed he was going, his car slammed straight into the foreign car ahead and broke away from the guardrail.Why do you live? It had been a question you once asked him, dripping with contempt. He hadn’t been able to pretend not to notice the other meaning hidden in your words, and so the man had just given an awkward smile, saying nothing. He had never hated anything you said, but it had always hurt. Like swallowing needles—just when he was about to forget, the pain would jab here and there and surge up again and again.The car that had fallen below the guardrail rolled over several times. Thud, thud—the sound of his head slamming into different places and the trapped leg twisting wrong from the impact reached his ears even here. He couldn’t bring anything to mind. The pain in his body was already something far, far off, and even as his vision blurred, the man found himself laughing. But before even the smallest sound of laughter could leak out, another figure flashed through his mind, and he started like someone jolted awake from a dream.Oppa—a gentle voice calling him. A face so white it was almost sickly, always in the same hospital gown. A hospital room in the afternoon.“Ah…”A voice that hadn’t come out before suddenly escaped him. When his mind, frozen from the shock, finally snapped out of its daydream and looked reality in the face, the images of a still-young girl flooded over him like a torrent, as if they had been waiting.A face softly smiling as she looked at him. Those especially thin wrists. The moments that had torn him up inside, when he’d watched her bite her lip and endure the pain even though she wanted to cry. Oppa, it must be nice being so popular. Even when she said it like she was jealous, he had known she was happy for him.“Ah… ah…”Before you get married.I’m going to pay off all the debt and cure your illness, then put you in a beautiful wedding dress.Because Oppa wants to buy it for you. When he’d added that, your face had flushed bright red and you’d let out a shriek. How old do you think I am right now—why are you already talking about marriage! The way you’d pulled the blanket up, embarrassed, had simply made him happy. When he smoothed back your tousled hair, it had felt as if peace belonged only to the two of them. As if those hellish times were already a story from long ago.How did I ever forget you? His body, already completely ruined, had no hope. Through the hazy blur of his vision, he could see someone beyond the shattered window. It was clearly the car that had crashed and fallen together with his. I’m sorry. The words never made it to sound and melted back into his tongue. Hot liquid endlessly wet his cheeks. Someone, someone…He was this weak, he had no confidence left to go on living—and even ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ so, someone…Someone, please protect her.She acts like she’s strong, but she’s still so fragile,and she doesn’t know what kind of world it is when you have to live alone.Through the agony that dug in mercilessly, the man went on making wishes he could not even let out, praying and praying. He knew they would never reach anything. He knew that, and still. The prayers that would not stop flowed like tears and filled the silent space, and his consciousness drifted farther and farther away. Even as he watched the dim world flicker into darkness, he couldn’t let go of those meaningless wishes.There is a promise I failed to keep.There is someone waiting for me.—Oppa, when are you the happiest? The darkness came in on the heels of your voice, which one day had asked that question out of nowhere, for no particular reason.The lights went out.

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