"I loved you," Taesan chokes out, his voice breaking. "And you destroyed me."
The car groans under the weight of the heat, the explosion imminent. Closing his eyes, Taesan whispers his final words, steady despite the tears.
"I'll always hate you for this, but I'll never stop loving the part of you I thought was real."
Tears stream down his face as he whispers his final thoughts, his voice barely audible over the crackling fire.
"Everything… was fake."
The flames consume the car, and in the final moments before the explosion, Taesan closes his eyes, accepting his fate. The explosion erupts, engulfing everything, as Taesan's whispered words are carried away by the flames. The car blows up in a massive explosion, sending shards of metal flying in all directions.
* * *
*Six months later*
The cemetery rests beneath a dull gray sky that seems permanently exhausted. Rows of headstones stretch across the quiet land like silent witnesses to forgotten stories. The grass is trimmed but uneven in places, growing stubbornly around cracked stone edges. Old trees stand scattered across the grounds, their branches twisted and leafless, as though time itself has worn them down.
A narrow stone path cuts through the cemetery.
Footsteps echo against it. Jaewon walks through the graveyard with unhurried confidence.
He is dressed in a long charcoal-black coat tailored so perfectly it clings to his frame like a second skin. The fabric is thick and expensive, its texture so smooth that it reflects the faintest glimmers of light. The coat's buttons are polished like obsidian, each one subtle yet deliberate, like quiet declarations of wealth. Beneath it, a dark suit completes the image of calculated elegance. His shoes are spotless leather, their shine sharp enough to reflect the pale sky above.
In his hand he carries a bouquet.
The flowers are white calla lilies mixed with rare blue hydrangeas. Their petals are flawless, carefully arranged with deliberate precision. The stems are wrapped in silk ribbon dyed a deep silver-gray. Nothing about the bouquet is simple. Even the fragrance drifting from it smells expensive, a scent cultivated in distant gardens where wealth buys beauty in abundance.
The bouquet looks less like a symbol of mourning and more like an ornament purchased without concern for its cost.
Jaewon walks between graves as if he is strolling through an art gallery. Names carved in stone pass by him. Dates. Epitaphs. Forgotten lives. None of them interest him.
Eventually he stops.
Before him stands a grave slightly newer than the others.
The headstone is clean marble, polished smooth. The letters carved into it are sharp and deliberate.
JEON TAESAN
1998 – 2029
Beneath the name, another line is engraved.
"Pure soul killed by betrayal."
Jaewon stares at the words for a moment. Then a slow smile spreads across his face. He casually tosses the bouquet onto the grave. The flowers land against the marble with a dull rustle.
"How touching," he murmurs. His voice carries amusement, not grief. "A 'pure soul killed by betrayal.'" He crouches slightly, examining the inscription with exaggerated interest.
"Aww. Whoever wrote this really captured the tragedy." He lets out a short laugh. "Poor hyung. Betrayed by everyone." He tilts his head.
"First your own family. Then my dear brother Joshua." His smile widens.
"And finally me."
A sharp burst of laughter escapes him. "Hahaha. Poor Taesan."
Jaewon lifts his foot and presses it down onto the bouquet. The expensive flowers crumple instantly beneath the polished sole of his shoe. Petals tear apart. Stems snap. White lilies collapse into crushed fragments against the cold earth. He grinds them into the dirt slowly.
Back and forth, back and forth.
The delicate arrangement becomes nothing more than scattered pieces of color in the soil. Jaewon watches the destruction with quiet satisfaction.
"Idiot," he spits, stomping once more for good measure, his mirth echoing off the silent stones.
Satisfied, Jaewon turns on his heel and walks away, the cemetery's chill seeping in the air.
But then he halts. Something tugged at the edge of his vision. Slowly, he pivots back. There, nestled against the headstone's base, blooms a single peach rose—its soft, glowing petals untouched by frost or decay, a delicate anomaly amid the wilted wreaths nearby. Jaewon's eyes narrow, a flicker of unease piercing his bravado.
"Wait... this rose. Who the hell else...?"
The thought lingers in the air for a moment. Then he scoffs. He straightens up and waves his hand dismissively. "Ah, whatever." He chuckles again.
"There are hundreds of graves here. People leave flowers everywhere." His lips curl with cruel amusement. "Some soft-hearted stranger probably felt sorry for this lonely grave."
He glances down at Taesan's name again.
"Poor abandoned hyung."
Jaewon spins toward his car, a sleek black SEDIN parked at the cemetery's edge; imported luxury, all chrome accents and tinted glass, humming with the promise of speed and escape.
He barely registers the glint of sunlight on its hood before catastrophe strikes. A muffled whoosh builds beneath the chassis, then ignites into hellfire.
A thunderous blast erupts behind him.
The explosion is cataclysmic, a blooming fireball that vaporises the windshield in a spray of molten glass. Tires burst with deafening pops, fuel igniting in a roiling plume that clawed thirty feet skyward, belching acrid smoke laced with the tang of burning rubber and oil. Shrapnel—door panels, hubcaps, jagged bumper fragments—whipped through the air like lethal confetti, cratering the earth and splintering a nearby oak. The shockwave ripples outward, flattening grass and sending crows exploding from the branches in panicked flight.
The blast hurls Jaewon backward like a ragdoll, slamming him into the unyielding ground ten feet away. He hits hard, coat shredded at the sleeves, pants torn and muddied. Blood trickles from a gash on his forehead, mixing with dirt to form gritty rivulets down his temple. His ears ring with a high-pitched whine, vision swimming as pain blooms in his ribs; cracked, maybe broken. Shock pins him there, chest heaving, the metallic taste of fear flooding his mouth.
"What the fu—"
His voice cracks. Then he sees it.
A figure walking through the fire.
From the inferno emerges a figure, striding through the flames with impossible calm. The blaze towers around him, orange tongues licking at his clothes without consuming them, casting his silhouette in flickering menace. His steps are measured, precise, each one landing clean on the scorched earth, unhurried, as if the apocalypse were a mere inconvenience.
"Who the hell—" Jaewon rasps, scrambling back on elbows and heels, pulse hammering like a war drum.
Then recognition slammed into him, colder than the grave soil. The man's face sharpens through the haze: sharp jaw, piercing eyes, that familiar scar above the brow. Alive. Unburnt. Impossible.
"Hyung?"
His voice trembles.
"HYUNG?"
The man stops several steps away.
Jaewon crab-walks backward, breath coming in shallow gasps, mind fracturing under the weight of it. No. He's ash. I killed him. I rigged it myself, every wire, every drop of accelerant. This is delirium, a hallucination from the blast. Get up, you fool. Run. But his body betrayed him, limbs leaden, terror rooting him like one of those ancient oaks. Shock twists his features, eyes wide as saucers, mouth agape, sweat beading despite the chill. Beneath the cruelty he'd armored himself with, a buried flicker of something human stirred: the old loyalty, twisted now into paralyzing dread, the pain of facing a ghost he'd murdered.
"Yes," Taesan says calmly. "It is me, dear Jaewon." His eyes remain fixed on him.
"Why? Did you really think I died?"
Jaewon's mind collapses into chaos. His heart begins hammering violently in his chest. Sweat forms instantly on his forehead despite the cold air. His thoughts race in frantic circles. The explosion. The car. The grave. The body that was supposed to be gone forever.
This cannot be real.
He stumbles backward on the ground.
"That's impossible."
His voice sounds thin and broken.
"You were dead."
Jaewon stammers, voices a whisper now, thoughts spiraling into chaos. He can't be. Physics doesn't bend like this. Someone faked it, pulled him out, rebuilt him. But how? Why now? God, those eyes... they see right through me.
Taesan tilts his head, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Didn't you ever hear the old saying? Everything is possible in love and war."
In a blur of motion, Taesan draws a sleek pistol from his coat—black steel gleaming like judgment. Then he pulls the trigger.
BANG!
The shot cracks through the cemetery like lightning.
The bullet tears into Jaewon's shoulder.
A burst of blood sprays across his shirt, blooming through the expensive fabric like a violent red flower. The impact jerks his body sideways. Pain explodes through his nerves, sharp and blinding.
He screams.
"ARGHGHHHHHH!!!"
The world spins violently around him. His vision darkens as blood seeps through the torn cloth and drips onto the cold stone beneath him. The last thing Jaewon sees before darkness swallows him is Taesan standing calmly before the burning wreck, his figure framed by towering flames.
Then everything fades.