March 24. 2:45 PM.
NAIA Terminal 1.
The heat swallowed everything, not warming but consuming, every inhale pulling thick wet weight into the lungs with jet fuel biting the tongue and diesel and coconut oil and the sour-sting of a thousand sweating bodies compressed into a single wall of scent that clung to the skin like a second hide.
34°C. The pickup zone shimmered with asphalt rippling under a sun that bleached the concrete white while the pillars sweated rust down their faces and baggage carts screamed over cracked linoleum with warped wheels catching and stuttering.
Jae-min leaned against the hood of the GT-R with his arms crossed tight over his chest and a rigid stillness locking his frame, the pearl white paint gleaming under the white sun and looking almost obscene against the sweating rust-bleeding infrastructure of the pickup zone.
He watched the sliding glass doors.
'In twenty-two days, this terminal will be a slaughterhouse.' Jae-min reflected, a cold tactical dread anchoring his focus as his eyes traced the exit. 'The floor tiles stained with blood, the ceiling cameras flickering over piles of discarded luggage and rotting flesh.'
Right now it was just noisy.
The doors parted with a mechanical hiss.
Ji-yoo walked out.
Black hair pulled tight in a waist-length ponytail that swayed with each step and dark sharp eyes scanning the crowd with the lazy predatory alertness of someone who never stopped cataloguing exits, an oversized vintage Rivermaya band shirt swallowing her frame with the faded print peeling at the edges and a battered guitar case slung over her shoulder.
She looked exactly like him, five-foot-nine with the same black hair and the same black eyes and the same bone structure and the same face, and if you put them side by side and squinted the only difference was the ponytail and the three inches of height he had on her.
Jae-min's throat seized with a profound suffocating paralysis locking his lungs.
'She's alive.' Jae-min realized, a profound suffocating relief crashing through him as his hands trembled against his sleeves. 'She's breathing. She's here. She's not a name on a crashed flight manifest.'
"Oppa!" Ji-yoo cried, her face breaking into a wide relieved grin as she broke into a run with her legs eating the distance between them and her guitar case bouncing against her hip.
She hit him like a freight train, the full force of her body colliding with his chest and nearly knocking him back a full step, her arms locking around his neck and her full weight crashing into his chest as she clung to him with her chin hooked over his shoulder and her fingers digging into the back of his jacket like she was afraid he would evaporate if she let go.
She buried her face in the curve of his neck and inhaled a long shaky breath that carried something older than words, a raw aching relief that she didn't understand but couldn't stop feeling.
'She's always been a koala.' Jae-min reflected, a familiar warmth flickering beneath the ice as the impact knocked him back. 'We've held each other a thousand times since we were children. It's our language. Older than words.'
Her fingers found the hair at the nape of his neck and curled into it with a gesture so old and automatic it might as well have been genetic, and he felt the heat radiating off her skin and smelled the stale airplane air clinging to her clothes and the faint familiar scent of strawberry shampoo, the same cheap brand she'd used since high school.
For a heartbeat he was frozen, the weight of her and the warmth and the alive-ness of her short-circuiting everything into a rigid overwhelmed stillness.
Then something broke.
Not the controlled strategic break of a man calculating his next move, not the cold analytical processing of a regressor running survival scenarios, but something deeper and older and more human than anything he had left in him.
His arms came up and wrapped around her and pulled her in, not gently, not carefully, not the way a brother greets a sister after a flight, but the way a drowning man grabs the rope that is the only thing between him and the dark.
His arms locked around her with a force that lifted her off the ground, one hand cradling the back of her head and the other pressed flat between her shoulder blades, pulling her against his chest so tight that her feet barely touched the concrete.
His fingers curled into her ponytail and his chin dropped to the crown of her head and he held her, held her like the world was already frozen and she was the last warm thing left in it, held her like letting go meant watching the plane go down again, held her like his life depended on the weight of her against his chest.
His shoulders shook.
Once.
A single, violent tremor that ran through his entire frame like a fault line shifting, the kind of tremor that came from somewhere so deep it didn't have a name, somewhere beneath the strategy and the logistics and the sixteen million pesos and the void and the guns, somewhere where a twenty-six-year-old man was still a boy who had watched his family's name disappear from a news screen and screamed until his throat bled.
'She's alive. She's alive. She's alive.' Jae-min chanted, a desperate crushing gratitude squeezing his chest so tight his vision blurred as he pressed his face into her hair and breathed her in, the strawberry shampoo and the airplane air and the warmth and the alive.
Ji-yoo felt it. The shift. The way his arms tightened beyond greeting, beyond reunion, into something raw and desperate and terrifyingly honest.
Her own arms tightened around his neck in response, not confused, not questioning, just holding back with the same ferocity, her fingers curling deeper into his jacket as her feet left the ground entirely.
The commuters streamed past them. The intercom garbled. A jeepney honked. The sun beat down on the pearl white hood of the GT-R. None of it mattered.
He held her for thirty seconds. Forty. A minute.
Then slowly, deliberately, like peeling his own skin off, he loosened his grip and set her down, his hands lingering on her shoulders for a moment longer than necessary before dropping to his sides.
Ji-yoo pulled back and her smile faltered with a quiet concern replacing the joy, her brow furrowing as she looked up at him with the sharp forensic attention of a twin who could read him better than any lie detector.
"You look like shit." Ji-yoo whispered, her voice losing the grin and replaced by something harder and concerning.
"I haven't slept." Jae-min whispered, his voice quiet and rough and tired but not empty, his hand still resting on her head with a quiet automatic tenderness.
"Obviously." Ji-yoo snapped, reaching up and flicking his forehead with her finger, hard, the way she'd done since they were seven. "You look like a zombie that got rejected from a zombie audition because even the zombies thought you looked too dead."
"I feel so loved." Jae-min murmured, a tired smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, genuine if fragile, his hand finally dropping from her head.
"I'm serious." Ji-yoo pressed, her eyes narrowing with the teasing dropping away and the edge beneath it surfacing. "When was the last time you ate?"
"Define ate." Jae-min shrugged.
"Jae-min." Ji-yoo warned, her voice flat.
"I had coffee." Jae-min admitted, not meeting her eyes.
"That's not food." Ji-yoo stated, flat.
"It's a liquid." Jae-min drawled, deadpan.
"So is motor oil. You don't drink that either." Ji-yoo snapped, folding her arms with her ponytail swishing with the motion.
"I had a protein bar. Two days ago." Jae-min breathed, like it was nothing.
"Two days?" Ji-yoo seethed, her voice spiking as her hand shot out and grabbed the front of his jacket and yanked him down to her eye level. "Two days? Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Apparently everything." Jae-min surrendered, not resisting and just letting her yank him around like a rag doll.
"I swear to God, oppa, if you pass out from hunger before the apocalypse even starts, I will resurrect you just to kill you myself." Ji-yoo snapped, her dark eyes blazing while her grip on his jacket trembled, not anger but fear dressed up as anger.
He reached up and patted her head again, gentle and automatic, and her eyes fluttered shut at the contact for just a second before she caught herself and opened them again, annoyed at her own transparency.
"I'll eat when we get home." Jae-min whispered, a quiet surrender.
"You better." Ji-yoo snapped, releasing his jacket with a shove before immediately looping her arm through his and pressing close to his side as they walked toward the GT-R.
Her shoulder dug into his bicep and her hip bumped against his thigh, not accidental and never accidental, latching onto him like he was furniture she'd specifically designed to hang on.
Her free hand found his forearm and traced idle circles on his wrist the way she did when she wanted his attention but didn't want to ask for it.
The guitar case bounced against her back as they walked.
"So." Ji-yoo began, tilting her head up to look at him with her ponytail brushing against his shoulder. "Still think you're the better-looking twin?"
"Objectively, yes." Jae-min answered, without hesitation.
"You're delusional." Ji-yoo scoffed with a dry dismissal.
"You flew across an ocean to see my face. That's devotion, not delusion." Jae-min replied, the ghost of a smirk.
"That's concern. There's a difference." Ji-yoo countered, but the corner of her mouth twitched with the faintest crack in the scowl.
"The difference is I'm right." Jae-min rasped, unbothered.
"In your dreams." Ji-yoo snapped, elbowing him in the ribs, not hard enough to hurt but just hard enough to make a point. "Also, oppa, who drives the speed limit in a GT-R? You. Who got a speeding ticket in Korea last summer and tried to blame it on the rental agency?"
"We're not doing this." Jae-min shut it down.
"What? It's a valid question." Ji-yoo delighted. "The rental agency still sends you promotional emails. I screenshot them for the group chat."
They reached the GT-R and Jae-min popped the trunk, Ji-yoo shoving her guitar case inside with more force than necessary before climbing into the passenger seat and immediately stretching her legs across the center console and slouching down like she owned the car.
"Your feet are on my seat." Jae-min noted, sliding into the driver's seat with mild reproach.
"Your seat will survive." Ji-yoo drawled, wiggling her toes against the leather.
"It's pearl white. It shows dirt." Jae-min countered, deadpan.
"Then clean it." Ji-yoo snapped, pulling out her phone and ignoring him entirely.
He didn't argue and just started the engine, the twin-turbo V6 roaring to life and vibrating through the steering wheel.
"We're going fast." Ji-yoo observed, glancing at the dashboard.
"I'm driving the speed limit." Jae-min denied, eyes on the road.
"You're ten over." Ji-yoo corrected, not even looking at the speedometer.
"Eleven." Jae-min corrected her without shame.
"Reckless." Ji-yoo declared, but she didn't move her feet and didn't buckle her seatbelt and just slouched deeper and closed her eyes with her head tilting toward the window.
The warm Manila air streamed through the cracked window and lifted the loose strands of her ponytail, and for a moment just a moment it felt normal, like they were just a brother and sister driving home from the airport, a fragile fleeting peace.
It didn't last.
— • • • —
4:15 PM.
Shore Residence 3.
Basement Parking.
32°C.
Jae-min killed the GT-R's engine and the twin-turbo rumble faded into silence, leaving only the low hum of the basement's dying fluorescent tubes and the faint echo of water dripping somewhere in the concrete depths.
He stepped out and stretched with a weary relief unknotting his shoulders, the drive from NAIA having been forty minutes of Ji-yoo's feet on his dashboard and her running commentary on every driver on EDSA who wasn't going fast enough.
Ji-yoo climbed out and stretched her arms above her head with her band shirt riding up and exposing a sliver of toned stomach, cracking her neck left then right with the sound echoing off the concrete.
Then she froze.
Her eyes locked onto the parking spot beside the GT-R with a sharp electric recognition seizing her frame.
The candy yellow Nissan Z Nismo sat there like a caged predator waiting to be unleashed, the paint flawless and a deep screaming yellow that looked almost radioactive under the flickering fluorescent light, every curve of the body kit immaculate and the alloy rims spotless with not a single speck of dust or a fingerprint.
Ji-yoo's face transformed with the grief vanishing and the exhaustion vanishing and the red-rimmed eyes and the swollen cheeks all of it disappearing, replaced by a pure almost childlike devotion.
She walked toward the Z Nismo like a pilgrim approaching an altar, slow and reverent, her hand reaching out and touching the hood with fingertips grazing the warm metal with the kind of tenderness most people reserved for other human beings.
"She's okay." Ji-yoo whispered, her voice soft. "She's still okay."
She crouched down and examined the rims and ran her fingers along the lower lip of the front bumper and checked the tire tread with the focused intensity of a surgeon examining an X-ray.
"She's clean. No scratches. No dents." Ji-yoo reported, looking up at Jae-min with an expression that was half relief and half accusation. "You didn't let anyone park near her, right?"
"I told the security guard to rope off the spot." Jae-min confirmed, matter-of-fact.
"You're a good brother." Ji-yoo drawled, standing up and patting the Z Nismo's hood twice the way someone would pat a loyal dog. "The best brother. Don't let it go to your head."
"I'll try." Jae-min drawled, deadpan.
Ji-yoo pressed her forehead against the driver's side window and closed her eyes with the warm glass against her skin and her breath fogging the tinted surface.
"I missed you, baby." Ji-yoo whispered, actually whispering, to a car.
Jae-min watched her with a faint tired smile crossing his face, the first real one since he woke up seven days ago.
'She's whispering sweet nothings to a car.' Jae-min reflected, a bittersweet warmth pressing against his ribs. 'The same woman who lied to our father's face three nights ago and swallowed the truth like broken glass.'
'Mom and Dad bought it for her eighteenth birthday, a twin present, one for each of us.' Jae-min recalled, a familiar aching fondness settling over him. 'She picked the color herself, screaming yellow, because she said it matched her personality.'
In the first life, this car had been sitting in this exact spot when the freeze hit, untouched and unloved, because Ji-yoo had never come home.
The memory flickered through him and a cold determined resolve hardened in his chest.
"Come on." Jae-min breathed, walking toward the elevator. "Let's go inside."
"In a minute." Ji-yoo declared, not moving, still pressed against the window.
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min pressed, patient but firm.
"Five more seconds." Ji-yoo snapped, not moving.
"Five more seconds of what? You're literally hugging a car." Jae-min exhaled, exasperated.
"It's not hugging. It's bonding." Ji-yoo corrected, pulling back and wiping the fog from the window with her sleeve. "There's a difference."
"There isn't." Jae-min stated, absolute.
"There absolutely is." Ji-yoo countered, finally stepping away from the Z Nismo but glancing back twice in the span of ten steps the way a mother checks on a sleeping child.
They walked to the elevator and Jae-min pressed the button while the fluorescent tubes above buzzed and flickered, casting their sickly dying yellow light over the concrete cavern.
Ji-yoo fell into step beside him with her shoulder digging into his bicep and her arm looped through his, latching on the way she always did.
Her head tilted and dropped against his shoulder as they walked, not leaning but resting, like she'd been carrying something heavy all day and his arm was the only place to set it down.
"Hey, oppa." Ji-yoo whispered, the playfulness dimming.
"Yeah?" Jae-min asked, glancing down at her with quiet attentiveness.
"If the world doesn't end, I'm going to drift that car through Makati at two in the morning." Ji-yoo declared, the fire back in her voice.
"You'll get arrested." Jae-min noted, a flicker of almost-amusement.
"Worth it." Ji-yoo snapped, squeezing his arm once, hard, the kind of squeeze that said thank you for keeping her safe without actually saying it.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open and they stepped inside.
— • • • —
4:30 PM.
Shore Residence 3.
14th Floor.
30°C.
Ji-yoo froze in the hallway with a sharp disoriented shock locking her feet.
Her eyes locked onto their unit's door, but there was no cheap wood and no peephole, just a solid steel bulkhead with three heavy-duty deadbolts and a blinking infrared camera lens glinting under the hallway fluorescents.
"What the hell is this?" Ji-yoo demanded, her voice flat with the teasing gone and replaced by a sharp assessing edge.
Jae-min stepped past her with a calm authority and the keycard beeped and the heavy locks disengaged with a dense metallic clunk.
"A fortress." Jae-min stated, no pride in it, just fact.
He pushed the door open and the unit was unrecognizable, stripped down to concrete and wiring with thick bulletproof polycarbonate panels bolted over the floor-to-ceiling windows and turning the lavish living room into a dim claustrophobic box.
Heavy steel blast plates sat on ceiling tracks ready to seal the hallway, and from the spare room came the harsh stuttering blue glare of an arc welder and the smell of burning metal.
The walls had been doubled, eight inches of layered steel and soundproofing foam.
Ji-yoo stepped inside and turned in a slow dizzying circle with her mouth hanging open while the air inside tasted like ozone and fresh paint.
Jae-min walked to the bare steel table in the center of the room and picked up a half-empty bottle of water, the plastic crinkling under his grip.
"Sit." Jae-min whispered, his voice carrying the steady weight of someone who had already made every hard decision.
She sat on a leftover camping stool with her back straight and her eyes sharp and watching everything.
Jae-min let go of the bottle.
It didn't hit the table. It stopped existing.
No flash of light, no sound, the plastic simply severing from reality and leaving his empty hand hovering in the air.
Ji-yoo screamed with the stool screeching against the concrete as she scrambled backward and crashed to the floor, her hand flying to her chest and her heart hammering so hard he could see her pulse jumping in her throat.
Jae-min reached up with steady unhurried control and his fingers dipped into a jagged pitch-black crack that hadn't been there a second ago, a tear in the fabric of the world that looked like an oil slick shattering the air, and pulled the bottle out.
He set it back on the table with the water inside sloshing violently against the plastic.
Ji-yoo sat on the floor with her chest heaving and stared at the bottle with ragged frantic breaths, then slowly her breathing steadied and the panic receded and was replaced by something harder that looked almost like fascination.
"So this is how you knew." Ji-yoo murmured, the realization settling over her like a cold wave. "Not crazy. Not stressed. Something else entirely."
"Oppa." Ji-yoo rasped, hoarse from the scream. "How long?"
"Since I woke up." Jae-min answered, the weight of it settling into his voice.
"And you can store things?" Ji-yoo pressed, the shock cracking as something analytical pushed through.
"Anything. As much as I can handle." Jae-min confirmed, watching her face.
"How much is that?" Ji-yoo pressed.
"A hundred and twenty cubic meters. Last I checked." Jae-min answered, casual as if describing a closet.
Ji-yoo stared at him then at the bottle then at the space where the black crack had been.
"That's a lot of guns." Ji-yoo drawled, her voice steadering with a ghost of her usual dry humor bleeding through the shock.
"Four hundred kilos worth." Jae-min confirmed, not looking up.
Ji-yoo exhaled and ran a hand over her face with her fingers still trembling.
"Okay." Ji-yoo snapped, nodding to herself slow and deliberate. "Okay. So you can store things. You came back from the dead. The world is ending in twenty-two days."
She looked up at him.
"What else?" Ji-yoo pressed.
Jae-min didn't answer immediately and picked up the bottle and set it down and picked it up again, a small mechanical motion to do with his hands while the words arranged themselves behind his teeth.
"Mom and Dad." Jae-min said, the two words landing like stones dropped into still water.
Ji-yoo's face changed with the steadiness cracking just a fraction, her jaw tightening and her fingers curling against the concrete floor.
"I already know about the plane." Ji-yoo whispered, her voice stripped of humor and analysis. "You told me on the phone."
"I told you it would crash. I didn't tell you everything I tried to stop it." Jae-min admitted, heavy.
He sat down on the folding chair across from her with the metal creaking under his weight.
"Three days. Eleven attempts." Jae-min whispered, his voice quiet and clinical.
"Korean Air anonymous tip line. Reported a bomb on Flight KE627." Jae-min began, a clinical detachment flattening each word. "They logged it, swept the plane, found nothing. Case closed. My Manila VoIP number flagged and forwarded to Korean National Police. Denied."
"A lawyer in Gangnam. Hired through a proxy. Filed an emergency injunction to ground the flight." Jae-min continued, flat recitation. "The judge read the filing, adjusted his glasses, and scoffed. Asked if I had physical evidence or just paranoia. The lawyer quit and refunded half the fee."
"Master Sergeant Reyes. Dad's old Philippine Army buddy. The only one from Dad's unit who still lived in Korea." Jae-min pressed, the words landing like hammer blows. "Called him directly. Pleaded with him. He listened to the silence on the line for a long time. Then told me I needed to rest. Hung up. Didn't answer the second call."
"Aviation forums. Posted in three. DO NOT FLY KE627 APRIL 15." Jae-min recited. "Removed within hours. One forum banned my IP. Another auto-reported me to Korean authorities for spreading false information."
"Philippine Embassy in Seoul. Duty officer." Jae-min finished. "Listened with the polite deadened patience of a bureaucrat. Said the embassy had no jurisdiction over Korean domestic aviation. Suggested I seek mental health support. Wished me a good evening."
'₩2.4 million spent. A police file with my name in a foreign country. And the flight still exists.' Jae-min loathed, a hollow savage self-loathing coiling in his chest as he stared at his hands.
"If I call again, they'll make good on the threat." Jae-min whispered, his voice dropping. "Dr. Paeng. Commitment. And then I can't prepare. Can't fortify the unit. Can't save Uncle. Can't protect you."
He looked at her. "I can't save anyone." Jae-min stated, the words landing with a quiet devastation carved from something too heavy to carry alone.
Ji-yoo's hands clenched into fists on her lap with her nails biting into her palms. Her jaw was set hard and rigid but her eyes were glistening.
'He tried everything. He spent millions. He called strangers in the middle of the night. He begged.' Ji-yoo ached, a fierce helpless rage flooding her chest as she watched her brother's hollow face. 'And they shut him down. Every single one.'
"Then what do we do? Just sit here?" Ji-yoo demanded, her voice cracking on the last word.
Jae-min didn't answer and walked to the polycarbonate window with a heavy silent withdrawal, through the thick tinted plastic the Manila skyline burning in the sunset with smog catching the light and painting the towering skyscrapers in deep bloody reds and choking golds.
"The flight is April fifteenth." Jae-min whispered, his breath fogging the polymer glass. "You were supposed to be on it. You were supposed to fly back with them."
Ji-yoo went utterly still with the blood rushing from her extremities.
"But you came home early." Jae-min said, turning, his silhouette dark against the bleeding sunset. "You faked a gig. You're not on the passenger list anymore."
The realization hit her like a sledgehammer to the sternum.
"I'm not on the plane." Ji-yoo whispered, the words barely a breath, fragile and disbelieving.
"No." Jae-min confirmed, the single syllable final.
"But Mom and Dad are." Ji-yoo stated, her voice hollow.
"Yes." Jae-min confirmed.
Ji-yoo's face crumpled with the tough-girl facade and the ego and the pride and the sharp tongue and the armor she wore like a second skin shattering, not dramatically but quietly, the way things break when they've been held together too long by willpower alone.
"Oppa, no. No, we have to stop them. We have to." Ji-yoo pleaded, reaching for him and grabbing his wrist with her fingers digging in like she could physically hold back the future through sheer force of grip.
"How? They think I'm crazy." Jae-min answered, not pulling away from her grip. "If we push harder, they'll lock me up. We lose days. We lose everything."
"Then we tell them the truth! We show them your power! We show them the money, the guns, the—" Ji-yoo sobbed, her voice rising and cracking and splintering.
"They won't believe it." Jae-min cut in, his voice a flat unyielding wall. "I watched the news report, Ji-yoo. I stared at my phone for three days, refreshing the page, praying for a survivor. There weren't any."
Ji-yoo was crying now with silent tears spilling over her lashes and tracking down her cheeks, not wiping them and not hiding them, just letting them fall while her grip on his wrist stayed iron-tight.
"So I just do nothing? I let them get on that plane?" Ji-yoo asked, the question small and stripped of every ounce of the fire that usually defined her.
Jae-min walked back to the steel table and pulled out a folding chair and sat across from her.
"You stay here." Jae-min commanded, his voice steady and certain. "You're not flying back to Incheon. You're not booking another ticket. You're not going to the airport to try to drag them off that plane. You stay in Manila."
"No. No, I can't just sit here." Ji-yoo seethed, shaking her head violently with her ponytail whipping.
"If you go back, you die with them." Jae-min stated, the truth delivered gently but without flinching.
"THEN MAYBE I SHOULD!" Ji-yoo shrieked, the words ripping out of her throat raw and ragged.
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min called, his voice dropping to a low absolute gravity that cut through her panic.
"THEY'RE OUR PARENTS, JAE-MIN!" Ji-yoo shouted, shooting to her feet with the stool clattering away. "I can't just sit here and wait for them to die!"
"I waited. For forty-three days." Jae-min replied, his voice unnervingly calm. "I know exactly how it feels."
Ji-yoo stared at him with her chest heaving and sobs choking her throat.
"They'll be so scared." Ji-yoo whispered, her voice tiny and fractured. "On that plane. When it goes down. They'll be so scared and I won't be there."
"I know." Jae-min whispered.
"They'll call for me." Ji-yoo fractured.
"I know." Jae-min repeated, the same two words carrying everything he couldn't say.
"And I'll be here. Safe. In a bunker. While they freeze to death on a mountain." Ji-yoo spat, the words dripping with self-loathing.
Jae-min didn't answer and the hum of the refrigerator was deafening in the silence.
Ji-yoo's knees gave out and she sank to the concrete floor and put her face in her hands and sobbed, loud and ugly and gut-wrenching, the sound of a daughter losing her parents twice.
Jae-min stood and walked to her and knelt down beside her on the cold concrete.
He didn't hesitate this time.
His arms went around her and pulled her against his chest with his hand cradling the back of her head the way he'd done when they were children and the world was smaller and simpler.
He held her while she broke with his jaw tight and his eyes burning, but he didn't look away and he didn't let go.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Finally Ji-yoo lifted her head with her face swollen and her eyes bloodshot and raw, but her jaw was set like concrete with the armor rebuilding itself rivet by rivet.
"Give me my phone." Ji-yoo demanded, not asking.
Jae-min reached into her backpack and handed it to her.
Ji-yoo wiped her face with the back of her hand and took a shaky breath and held it and pressed call.
It rang three times.
[Eun-hae]: "Ji-yoo-ah?" Eun-hae answered, her voice warm and happy. "How was your flight? Are you back in Manila?"
'The same voice that hummed Korean folk songs at two in the morning.' Jae-min recalled, a bitter frozen grief echoing in his mind as he stood beside Ji-yoo.
[Ji-yoo]: "Mom, I'm at St. Luke's." Ji-yoo lied, her voice steady barely, a fragile wire pulled taut. "The doctors think it's my appendix. They want to keep me overnight for tests."
[Eun-hae]: "Oh my god. Ji-yoo, are you okay?" Eun-hae gasped, the warmth vanishing and replaced by that particular frequency only mothers could reach.
[Ji-yoo]: "I'm fine, Mom. Please don't worry. It's probably nothing." Ji-yoo assured, each word costing her with the lie sitting in her mouth like broken glass.
[Eun-hae]: "Your father and I can cancel the trip. We'll come home right now." Eun-hae offered, already moving and already planning.
Ji-yoo's heart slammed against her ribs so hard it hurt.
[Ji-yoo]: "Yes. Please. Mom, I need you here." Ji-yoo pleaded, the mask cracking and the need bleeding through.
[Eun-hae]: "Baby, of course. We'll book the first flight out tomorrow morning. Your father will—" Eun-hae began.
Then Dad's voice barked in the background, muffled at first and growing louder.
[Hermano]: "What do you mean cancel?" Hermano snapped, his voice sharp. "The tickets are non-refundable. Those cost us ₩1.8 million."
[Eun-hae]: "Hermano, our daughter is in the hospital." Eun-hae countered, her voice turning away from the phone.
[Hermano]: "St. Luke's is one of the best hospitals in the country. Jae-min is there. She's not alone." Hermano stated. "Don't tell me you want to throw money away because of a stomachache."
Ji-yoo gripped the phone so hard the plastic casing creaked with her knuckles turning bone-white.
[Ji-yoo]: "Dad." Ji-yoo tried.
[Eun-hae]: "Ji-yoo, let me talk to your father." Eun-hae said, her voice strained.
The phone shuffled with fabric rustling.
[Hermano]: "Ji-yoo. What did the doctors actually say?" Hermano asked, low and practical.
[Ji-yoo]: "They said it might be appendicitis. They need to run more tests." Ji-yoo answered, the lie coming smoother now because lies were easier when the truth was too heavy to carry.
[Hermano]: "Might be." Hermano pressed, testing for weak points the way he always pressed.
[Ji-yoo]: "They said I should stay overnight." Ji-yoo continued.
[Hermano]: "Overnight. Not surgery. Not emergency. Overnight." Hermano measured, a heavy irritated breath hissing through the receiver. "Your mother has been planning this trip since January. We paid for everything. Forty people are coming to this reunion. Your Uncle Rey already booked the venue."
[Ji-yoo]: "Dad, please." Ji-yoo begged, the pride crumbling.
[Hermano]: "You're in a private hospital with your brother. If it gets serious, he'll call us." Hermano declared, final and absolute. "The flight home is April fifteenth. Two hours. We'll be there before dinner."
[Ji-yoo]: "Dad, I'm scared." Ji-yoo whispered, a raw naked vulnerability slipping out before she could stop it.
The words were small and young, stripped of the tough girl who played gigs in smoky Hongdae bars, stripped of the ego and the pride, just a terrified daughter who wanted her father.
'In my first life, I heard my father say I love you once. On that phone call three nights ago.' Jae-min reflected, a bitter frozen grief echoing in his mind as he watched Ji-yoo's face. 'Like a soldier passing a medal through a fence. He had never said it before.'
A long suffocating silence hummed on the line.
[Hermano]: "I know, sweetie." Hermano murmured, his voice softening just a fraction. "I know. But I need you to be brave. Just until the fifteenth. Two hours on a plane and we're home."
Ji-yoo opened her mouth with a raw desperate urge to scream the truth, that the plane would crash, that they would die, that she could feel it in her bones the way you feel an earthquake before it hits.
'Jae-min is right. They won't believe me.' Ji-yoo resigned, a cold crushing weight settling over her as she swallowed the truth. 'They'll just have two crazy children instead of one.'
[Ji-yoo]: "Dad." Ji-yoo choked, her voice cracking with a tear slipping down her cheek and dropping onto the screen of the phone. "Promise me you'll call me. Every day."
[Hermano]: "Every day. I promise." Hermano vowed, something unsteady beneath the words.
[Ji-yoo]: "And promise me you'll come home." Ji-yoo pleaded, barely holding together.
[Hermano]: "I will. April fifteenth, Ji-yoo. Two hours and we're there." Hermano confirmed, steady as concrete.
Ji-yoo clamped her hand over her mouth with the sobs clawing at her throat, forcing them down and swallowing them like poison.
[Ji-yoo]: "I love you, Dad." Ji-yoo whispered, the words barely escaping and muffled by her palm.
[Hermano]: "I love you too." Hermano said, gruff and thick and unfamiliar in his mouth. "I'll give the phone to your mother."
The phone shuffled again.
[Eun-hae]: "Baby?" Eun-hae murmured, her voice gentle. "Your father says you'll be okay. I trust him. But if anything happens, you call me. Day or night."
[Ji-yoo]: "Nothing will happen, Mom." Ji-yoo choked, the lie so thin it was transparent.
[Eun-hae]: "Okay." Eun-hae whispered, and she was crying, the wet sniffle through the speaker audible. "Okay, baby. We'll see you on the fifteenth. I'll call you as soon as we land."
[Ji-yoo]: "I love you, Mom." Ji-yoo wept, the words barely escaping.
[Eun-hae]: "I love you too. So much." Eun-hae breathed, her voice breaking on the last word.
Click. The line went dead. The screen went dark.
Ji-yoo lowered the phone and it slipped from her numb fingers and clattered to the concrete floor, her hands shaking violently.
"I begged them to stay." Ji-yoo whispered to the empty fortified room, her voice hollow and echoing off the steel walls. "I told Dad I was scared. I told him I needed him. And he said two hours."
She curled into a tight fetal ball on the cold floor with her knees drawn to her chest and her forehead pressed against the concrete and her ponytail pooled around her like spilled ink.
Jae-min stood up slowly and took off his heavy jacket, the leather warm from his body heat, and draped it gently over her trembling shoulders with a quiet unhurried motion, the same way he'd draped a blanket over her when she was seven and had a nightmare.
Then he sat down beside her with his back against the wall and close enough that their shoulders touched.
He didn't say a word. He didn't have to.
— • • • —
11:00 PM.
Ji-yoo's Room.
Jae-min stood in the doorway with a quiet weary stillness.
Ji-yoo lay on the bare mattress staring blankly at the ceiling while her guitar case sat like a tombstone in the corner and the Rivermaya posters on the walls looked garish and surreal under the harsh overhead light.
Her eyes were empty and red and puffy and exhausted down to the bone, but her jaw was set.
"We save Alessia this time." Ji-yoo declared, her voice hoarse but holding a razor's edge, not a request but a declaration, the voice of someone who had lost something and was channeling the grief into the only thing left.
"Okay." Jae-min murmured, the word carrying more weight than two syllables should.
"Good. Get out." Ji-yoo snapped, waving a dismissive hand with the ego flickering back to life and the pride reasserting itself through sheer force of will.
Jae-min turned with a quiet acceptance.
"Oppa." Ji-yoo called, softer now with the edge gone.
He stopped with his hand resting on the doorframe.
"I'm glad you're here." Ji-yoo said, the words simple and small and stripped of every defense, just a sister telling her twin the only true thing she had left.
He didn't turn around because he couldn't let her see his face with a raw unguarded emotion threatening to break through.
"Me too." Jae-min whispered, the words quiet and something in them cracking wide open, not controlled and not walled but just raw and honest and true.
He pulled the door shut and the heavy steel click echoed down the fortified hallway.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, unknown number, the screen glowing harshly in the dark.
[Unknown]: Candidate Jae-min Han Del Rosario. Your movement has been noted. Do not deviate from your current trajectory. Observation continues. - N
Jae-min stared at the glowing text with the blue light casting sharp shadows under his eyes.
'Let them watch.' Jae-min defied, a cold unyielding resolve hardening in his chest as he pocketed the phone.
He walked back into the fortress with a cold unyielding resolve in every step.