Eleven Years Ago
Snow was falling the night she met Tae.
Not the delicate, movie-scene kind.
It was bitter, unforgiving snow—sleet lashing against Seoul's black rooftops, burying the city under its silence.
Ae-cha was seventeen. Dressed in her school uniform. Shivering under a thin coat, too proud to show how cold she really was.
The Park Estate gates gleamed like a fortress.
And beyond them stood Tae, with the smile of someone who had never truly been cold in his life.
"You must be Kim Ae-cha," he said, eyes scanning her face like it was a secret map.
She nodded, barely managing a "yes." Her voice always shrank in places like this—places with chandeliers and marble and people who wore money like perfume.
His mother had arranged it all: a charity scholarship, a mentorship, an opportunity. But it was clear from the beginning—Tae was more interested in her than in his mother's plan.
She was just a girl then.
Smart. Pretty. Alone.
Perfect for his attention.
What she didn't know—what no one warned her—was that love in a house built on secrets never came without cost.
Now – Military Recruitment Base
The ink bled a little when she pressed too hard.
Kim Ae-cha, age 28, unmarried, no dependents, no emergency contacts.
A thin, tired officer in a pressed uniform looked over her papers.
"Everything in order. Step into the next room for your physical evaluation."
Ae-cha nodded and walked.
One step after another, into a life she hadn't planned but desperately needed.
This wasn't bravery.
This was survival.
The military wasn't her dream. It was her escape hatch.
Behind her, unnoticed among the staff and shadows, he watched.
Lee-Chung.
Eleven years older. Hardened jaw. Military-pressed uniform.
She didn't see him.
Didn't remember him.
But he remembered everything.
Eleven Years Ago – The Garden Behind the Estate
"You ever think about running?" she asked Tae one night, barefoot on the grass. Her school blouse was untucked, hair tied in a messy knot.
"Running from what?" Tae asked, sipping wine he had stolen from his father's cellar.
"From all this. From who you're supposed to be."
Tae looked at her. Really looked.
"I don't run," he said. "I lead."
She smiled, admiring his confidence—naive to the warning buried in those words.
Somewhere, far behind them, Lee-Chung watched.
He wasn't supposed to be there.
But he always found a way to be near her.
To hear the sound of her laughter, even if it wasn't meant for him.
He loved her quietly.
Because even back then, he knew—girls like Ae-cha never chose boys like him.
Now – Inside the Recruitment Room
"Height?"
"167 cm."
"Weight?"
"51 kg."
The officer barely looked up.
Ae-cha stood still, letting herself become data. It was easier this way.
If they saw numbers instead of a girl, maybe they wouldn't see the broken parts.
She moved through the medical evaluations with robotic precision.
Reflex tests. Vision checks. Blood drawn and labeled.
She had done worse.
Felt worse.
It was easier to bleed under sterile light than in the dark rooms of memory.
Outside, Lee-Chung leaned against the wall.
He wasn't supposed to be part of this unit's screening—but he had volunteered.
No one questioned him. He was a Park. A soldier. A leader.
But in his mind, he was still the shadow.
The shadow of Tae—his brother, the golden son.
The one Ae-cha had once loved.
Or maybe still did.
He had heard rumors, long ago, of what happened.
The explosive breakup. The shouting. The tears.
The way she left and never came back.
Even the Park family whispered about her now like she was a ghost that haunted them.
But Lee-Chung had never let go of that image:
A girl on the marble stairs, clutching her chest like it was bleeding invisible wounds.
He had wanted to hold her then.
He wanted to hold her now.
Flashback – One Week Before She Left
Tae's voice was venomous.
"Why don't you just admit it? You used me."
Ae-cha's hands trembled. "That's not true. I—"
"You wanted to get out of whatever gutter you came from, and I was your ticket."
She flinched.
"I loved you," she whispered.
Tae's laugh was sharp. "No, Ae-cha. You loved the idea of being someone else."
The words left scars.
Behind the wall, unseen again, Lee-Chung listened.
Clenched fists. Bitten tongue.
He had wanted to interrupt.
To step in.
To scream at Tae for being blind.
But he didn't.
Because she was never his to defend.
Now
The day was silent, and silence, she had learned, was where memories liked to scream she had signed anyway.
This wasn't about patriotism or duty. This was escape. This was silence. This was the sound of every door closing behind her—her aunt's, her uncle's, and most of all, the Park family's.
"Ae-cha Kim," the sergeant called, reading from the list.
She stepped forward.
Lee-Chung saw her before she saw him.
He had changed. Taller now, the angles of his face sharper, no longer the quiet boy who lurked behind shadows and books in the Park mansion. But his eyes—those eyes had never stopped watching her, not even back then, when she was his brother's girl.
He had loved her then. And hated himself for it.
She didn't recognize him. Not yet. But something in her paused as she walked past him, a hesitation too small to notice, but too large to ignore.
Lee-Chung turned away quickly, masking the storm behind his stoic uniform. He had waited for this moment for eleven years. And now she stood just a few feet away, broken but alive, like a ghost from a story he had never stopped reading.
– Outside the Barracks
Ae-cha stood on the balcony after her first drill, sweat soaking her collar, muscles sore.
This wasn't a place for weakness.
And she was weak.
But not for long.
She stared at the horizon, red with sunset.
The wind carried echoes of her past.
A voice.
A kiss.
A heartbreak.
"I'll forget him," she whispered.
But the wind didn't answer.
Behind her, on another floor, Lee-Chung lit a cigarette he didn't smoke.
He had followed her into war.
Not out of obsession.
But out of loyalty to a memory—a promise he never made out loud:
"I will be there when everyone else leaves."
She didn't know him.
Not yet.
But soon…
The past would catch up.
And this time, he wouldn't stay in the shadows.
Now
In the camp, she learned to sharpen her silence into discipline.
The officers called her "cold." The other recruits avoided her. One girl whispered, "She's the one who never smiles." But Ae-cha didn't come to be liked.
She came to disappear.
Lee-Chung watched her from a distance, never speaking, always observing. He hadn't planned this reunion. Fate had brought them to the same path, but the timing felt like a cruel joke. She didn't remember him—not the boy who once hid behind piano rooms and hallway corners just to catch a glimpse of her.
Not the boy who gave her a carved wooden flower the day she first visited the Park estate. She had returned it, thinking it was from Tae.
But now, she stood just meters away, unaware of who he was… and of everything he knew.
Night came cold and restless.
Ae-cha sat on her bunk, knees pulled to her chest, the scars on her arms whispering stories no one would ever read.
Across the room, Lee-Chung watched her. He wanted to speak, to say her name, to break the steel between them.
But he didn't.
Because he wasn't that boy anymore—and she wasn't the same girl.
He wasn't even sure if she believed in anything anymore. Especially not love.
Flashback: The Abandoned House
A memory she never shared—not even with Tae.
She had been eight. The house they stayed in after her parents died was damp and narrow, suffocating. Her aunt, a bitter woman with yellowed teeth and a husband who reeked of tobacco and menace, had taken her in.
Not out of love. Out of obligation.
"You'll sleep in the attic," her aunt said. "Quiet girls survive longer."
Survive. That was the word. It hung like rot in every corner of that house.
There were nights her uncle would creep up the stairs. She'd learn to wedge a chair beneath the door. Other nights, she wasn't fast enough.
The attic had no window—but she saw the moon anyway. Every time she closed her eyes.
Now
During night drills, Lee-Chung caught a glimpse of her hand trembling as she loaded a rifle. It was a small shake—barely visible—but to him, it was seismic.
Because he knew what hands looked like after trauma.
He had seen his own shaking the day Tae brought Ae-cha to the mansion for the first time. He had loved her then. Silently. Devastatingly.
But she never saw him.
She only saw Tae.
The Last Fight
"You never trusted me," Ae-cha said that day, standing in the Park courtyard, eyes swollen from crying.
"I trusted what I knew," Tae had said. "But everything with you feels like a puzzle with missing pieces."
She had wanted to scream. Tell him about her past. Her shame. The scars.
But she didn't.
Because by then, it didn't matter.
She had already lost him.
Now
That night, Ae-cha found herself alone behind the mess hall, clutching a cigarette she didn't light. Her breath rose in clouds, mingling with the stars.
"You fight like someone who's trying to forget something," a voice said.
She turned sharply.
Lee-Chung stood there, hands in his pockets, eyes shadowed by moonlight.
She frowned. "What would you know about it?"
"Enough."
She studied him for a moment. There was something familiar in the set of his jaw. The way he tilted his head. But her mind wouldn't connect the dots.
"Do I know you?" she asked.
Lee-Chung's heart stuttered.
"No," he said.
Because sometimes, silence was a kindness too.
Ae-cha lay in bed later, haunted by dreams of flames, of screaming, of a small hand reaching through smoke. Her heart thudded like a war drum.
She didn't know who she'd become anymore.
But she knew one thing.
She wasn't done running.
She was just getting started.