Sound vanished.
Then returned all at once.
Not normal sound.
Something underwater.
Distant.
People shouting through layers of glass.
A high ringing tone filled Min-jae's head.
He tried to breathe.
Something was wrong with that.
He tried again.
Pain arrived.
Not everywhere.
That would have almost made more sense.
His body seemed divided into regions.
Some screamed.
Some reported nothing.
Min-jae opened his eyes.
The sky appeared in a narrow shape above him.
Streetlights.
Metal.
Broken glass.
A face.
Someone was crouching nearby.
"Sir!"
The voice sounded impossibly far away.
"Sir, can you hear me?"
Min-jae blinked.
He could.
Probably.
He attempted to answer.
A strange wet noise came from his throat.
The person's expression changed.
That was bad.
Min-jae had watched enough dramas to recognise the expression people made when they were trying not to let an injured person see how terrified they were.
Another voice shouted somewhere nearby.
"Ambulance is coming!"
"Don't move him!"
"I think he's trapped—"
No kidding.
Min-jae couldn't feel one of his legs.
He decided not to investigate why.
The truck.
He remembered.
The ridiculous—
A laugh tried to escape him.
It became a cough.
Pain exploded through his chest.
Bad decision.
Very bad.
Damn it.
His thoughts came strangely slowly.
Is this really how I go?
Not cancer.
Not old age.
Not peacefully asleep at eighty-seven after a long and meaningful life.
Not even some dramatic accident worthy of a news documentary.
He'd gone outside to buy ramyun.
That was insulting.
Thirty-one years.
School.
Auditions.
Training.
Military service.
University.
Work.
Three years with Seo-ah.
And Kang Min-jae was apparently going to die because the universe had dispatched a truck with a personal grudge.
"Sir, stay with me."
Min-jae looked toward the speaker.
Young man.
Maybe twenty-five.
Blood on his shirt.
Min-jae wondered if it was his own.
Probably.
That seemed inconvenient for the man's laundry.
His thoughts were stupid.
Why was he thinking about laundry?
His phone.
Where was his phone?
Work.
Monday meeting.
He hadn't finished the revised numbers.
Sang-ho was going to—
No.
Min-jae's mind almost laughed at itself.
He was trapped beneath a truck and still worried about spreadsheets.
Corporate conditioning was terrifying.
Had he locked the apartment?
Yes.
Probably.
Did it matter?
No.
He was dying.
The word finally appeared clearly.
Dying.
Min-jae's breathing became quicker.
No.
Wait.
No.
This was serious.
Obviously it was serious.
But until that second, some primitive part of him had treated the entire situation like something he would eventually wake up from in a hospital.
Broken bones.
Surgery.
Months of rehabilitation.
A terrifying story to tell people at dinner.
Remember that time a truck somehow chased me across an intersection?
But the man's face beside him said otherwise.
The shouting said otherwise.
The cold creeping through his body said otherwise.
Min-jae tried moving his fingers.
They responded weakly.
His parents.
The thought struck harder than the pain.
His mother would get a phone call.
Maybe police.
Maybe hospital staff.
Someone would ask whether she was Kang Min-jae's mother.
He imagined her answering.
He imagined the pause before they told her.
No.
His chest tightened.
Mum.
He had spoken to her yesterday.
She'd complained he wasn't eating enough vegetables.
He'd told her Seo-ah was busy because he hadn't told his parents about the breakup yet.
His father would probably go quiet.
His mother would cry.
The image became unbearable.
Min-jae squeezed his eyes shut.
He had already frightened them enough when he was young.
Auditions.
Companies.
Contracts.
No university.
Military delayed.
Every year insisting he just needed one more chance.
They had supported him anyway.
Reluctantly sometimes.
Angrily sometimes.
But they'd supported him.
Then, when he finally became the safe son they'd once wanted—
Degree.
Job.
Savings.
Girlfriend.
Possible marriage.
He went out for noodles and got crushed by a truck.
Somewhere in the distance a siren appeared.
People reacted.
"Ambulance!"
"Over here!"
Min-jae opened his eyes again.
Lights reflected from glass buildings.
Red.
Blue.
White.
His vision blurred.
Seo-ah.
Oh.
Seo-ah.
He saw her sitting on the sofa.
Do you want to marry me?
Of course he had.
Why hadn't he just said a date?
Not necessarily a literal date.
Why hadn't he done anything?
Booked somewhere.
Gone ring shopping.
Spoken to their parents.
Something.
Anything.
Why had every future decision felt safer when moved six months away?
She was going to hear that he'd died.
Four days after she left him.
Min-jae's stomach twisted.
No.
She would blame herself.
Seo-ah was exactly the kind of person who would.
She'd wonder if he'd been distracted.
If he'd been drinking.
If he'd gone outside because he was upset.
If leaving had somehow—
Don't.
He wanted to tell her.
Don't you dare.
She hadn't pushed him under the truck.
She hadn't even been wrong.
He had loved her badly.
Not cruelly.
Not dishonestly.
But passively.
As if loving someone were enough by itself.
As if a future appeared automatically if two people waited long enough.
Someone touched his shoulder.
"Sir? Stay awake."
Min-jae wanted to say something.
His mouth didn't cooperate.
The sirens grew louder.
Or maybe closer.
Hard to tell.
He thought about his apartment.
The yellow mug beside the sink.
He had nearly texted her about it.
He'd decided there was time later.
Something close to hysterical amusement moved through him.
Of course.
Of course that would be the joke.
Later.
Min-jae had built half his adulthood around that word.
Later, he would think seriously about his career.
Later, he would decide whether he wanted something more.
Later, he would propose.
Later, he would travel.
Later, he would figure himself out.
Later.
Apparently later had operating hours.
Who knew?
His vision dimmed around the edges.
Panic rose.
Not yet.
He wasn't finished thinking.
As though completing the thoughts might complete something else.
He hadn't even—
What?
What hadn't he done?
Everything.
Nothing.
He wanted to see his parents again.
He wanted his mother to complain about vegetables.
He wanted his father to pretend expensive gifts were unnecessary while keeping them in perfect condition.
He wanted to tell Seo-ah that she had been right.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry.
Maybe they wouldn't get back together.
Maybe they would.
He didn't know.
For once, uncertainty felt better than absence.
He wanted to travel somewhere farther than he'd ever been.
He wanted to see what thirty-five felt like.
Forty.
Fifty.
He'd never decided whether he wanted children.
Suddenly the possibility that he would never get to decide felt monstrous.
There were books he hadn't read.
Places he hadn't visited.
People he hadn't met.
Food he hadn't eaten.
Stupid television shows he hadn't watched.
Promotions he didn't even particularly want but now felt offended he would never receive.
His life had seemed unbearably repetitive two hours ago.
Now every boring day he'd complained about looked obscenely valuable.
Another Monday.
Another commute.
Another meeting.
Another argument with Seo-ah about where to eat.
He wanted all of it.
Anything.
More.
The realisation was almost humiliating.
Kang Min-jae, who had spent years half-convinced he was tired of his own life, was apparently desperate to keep it the moment somebody tried taking it away.
His eyes moved weakly toward the huge screen above the convenience store.
FIRSTLIGHT were still there.
Six perfect young men frozen in expensive confidence.
The advertisement changed.
For an instant, white light flooded the screen.
That light mixed with the approaching ambulance.
With streetlamps.
With headlights.
Everything smeared together through Min-jae's unfocused vision until the intersection disappeared.
Lights.
So many lights.
Something deep inside him shifted.
A stage.
He hadn't thought about standing on one seriously in years.
Not seriously.
Sometimes after drinking.
Sometimes watching VIA.
Sometimes when an old HIVE song appeared unexpectedly in a café and memory stabbed him before he could defend himself.
But he remembered now.
The darkness behind the curtain.
His pulse hammering.
A rehearsal stage he'd once stood on with five other trainees.
No audience.
Only staff.
Still, for one stupid moment before the lights came on, he'd imagined it.
Thousands of voices.
His name among them.
At twelve, he had wanted to become someone nobody could look away from.
At twenty-one, he'd accepted that he wasn't.
At thirty-one, he'd become so frightened of wanting impossible things that he'd almost stopped wanting anything difficult at all.
Maybe that had been the real failure.
Not that he didn't debut.
He hadn't been good enough.
That happened.
People had limits.
Effort wasn't magic.
He understood that now.
But somewhere after accepting one dream was impossible, Min-jae had quietly started treating desire itself like something childish.
Dangerous.
Embarrassing.
Better to want reasonable things.
And even then, not too strongly.
The ambulance lights grew brighter.
For a second they really did look like stage lights.
Min-jae would have laughed if breathing didn't hurt so much.
I always wanted to stand under lights like this.
A pause.
His fading mind corrected him.
No.
Not like this.
Definitely not like this.
The darkness around his vision deepened.
Someone shouted at him again.
"Sir! Stay with us!"
He tried.
He really did.
It occurred to him, with strange clarity, that if somebody offered him a choice at that exact moment—another fifty years of completely ordinary mornings, spreadsheets, rent payments, bad knees, family arguments and wondering what to have for dinner—he would take it.
Gladly.
He wasn't done.
He had spent years thinking the exciting part of his life was behind him.
Perhaps he'd been wrong.
Perhaps he could have changed.
Perhaps he could have apologised.
Perhaps he could have found something else.
Perhaps—
The light narrowed.
His mother's face appeared in his memory.
Seo-ah laughing.
His father pretending not to cry at Min-jae's military discharge.
A cramped trainee dormitory.
Five boys discussing stage names at two in the morning.
A twelve-year-old sitting in front of a television while VANT performed and discovering for the first time what it meant to want something with his entire heart.
Min-jae wondered when he'd stopped being that person.
No.
That wasn't quite right.
That boy hadn't disappeared.
Min-jae had simply stopped listening.
The sirens faded.
The voices followed.
His body felt very far away.
Fear remained.
Pure and primitive.
No philosophy.
No acceptance.
No beautiful revelation that everything had happened for a reason.
Kang Min-jae did not think his life had been meaningless.
He did not think death was peaceful.
He did not feel ready.
He wanted his mother.
He wanted Seo-ah.
He wanted tomorrow.
His final thought was painfully simple.
I really don't want to die.
And then there was nothing.