White wind roared around them.
The once-peaceful city began to crumble from its edges. The world that had once been full of color slowly lost its hue. Buildings collapsed, asphalt buckled and cracked, and the very air quivered with an ominous tension. The world was falling apartâall because of the death of one person.
In the midst of this collapsing world, Sayoung gently cradled the body he held in his arms. The lifeless form swayed helplessly with his movements. He wanted to pull the sword from Uijae's chest, but he didn't want to cause any more painâeven though this wasn't the real world.
Sayoung sat down, carefully resting Uijae's body in his lap. Uijae's head fell limply onto his shoulder, and Sayoungâs hands were stained red with blood. The sticky sensation felt unpleasant.
"â¦"n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
Sayoung leaned his cheek against Uijae's gray hair as white ash began to fall. He muttered quietly to someone who could no longer hear him.
"Do you know whatâs really annoying?"
"â¦"
"Why did you do this? What were you thinking...?"
As the ideal world Sayoung had carefully created crumbled, the real world started to emerge. The once towering skyscrapers were reduced to mere ruins, the pristine roads covered in dirt and white ash. No intact buildings remainedâonly desolation. The barren wind blew, but it soon stopped, leaving a perfect silence.
How had Lee Sayoung survived, alone in this ruined world? A world without Cha Uijae. He must have endlessly replayed and clung to the memory of a world where the apocalypse never cameâa world where Uijae didnât have to die, where Uijae didnât need to save the world. A peaceful world where no one knew who Cha Uijae was. He had relived that world for so long that it had become more vivid to him than reality itself.