The night had the kind of hush that didn't just fall—it descended. Like velvet, thick and muffling everything beneath it. The clouds were low, heavy, as if they too were waiting for the sound of music to crack open the silence. Seoul's skyline blinked faintly in the distance, but here, in this corner of the conservatory, all that existed was the recital hall and the ghosts it held between its polished wooden walls.
Ji-hoon's fingers hovered above the keys, still as sculpture. He wasn't alone on the stage—Joon-won stood off to the side, clipboard in hand, his eyes occasionally scanning the small crowd filtering in. Hye-jin adjusted her violin strings beside him, and the murmur of the audience was just loud enough to remind Ji-hoon that time was moving, even if his memories tried to freeze it.
He had played hundreds of recitals. He had listened to applause he couldn't see, felt spotlights on his skin like judgment. But tonight felt different. He didn't just want to play. He needed to bleed onto those keys.
"You ready?" Joon-won asked softly.
Ji-hoon didn't respond right away. Instead, he turned his face slightly toward the sound of his voice, nodding once.
"Tonight, she hears it," he whispered.
Joon-won didn't ask who. He didn't need to.
The program was simple—three original compositions, each a movement from the sonata Ji-hoon had started months ago and never dared to finish. He called it The Rain Will Stop Someday. He said it in passing, casually, like it wasn't a knife tucked between the ribs of his grief.
When the lights dimmed, Ji-hoon took a breath.
The sound of people settling in. Shoes scuffing, a cough in the back row, the soft hush of someone silencing their phone. And beneath it, the vibration of something unseen. Anticipation, maybe. Or memory crawling out from its grave.
He played the first note.
It was gentle—like the way someone opens a door they aren't sure they're allowed to enter. The music grew, slow and mournful, like a child's voice echoing in an empty church. The melody wasn't complicated. It wasn't meant to impress. It was meant to be felt. Every note was a word he never got to say to her.
I'm sorry.
I should've noticed.
I miss you.
I love you.
The audience didn't move. Some closed their eyes. Some watched his face, trying to guess what someone blind saw when they played music like that. But Ji-hoon wasn't seeing darkness. He was seeing her.
Her raincoat hanging by the door.
The bent corner of her favorite Chopin score.
The way she called him Ji-ah when she was teasing.
The bruise she never explained.
The smile she forced after every phone call with Si-wan.
He struck a minor chord so hard it echoed, startling even himself.
The second movement began before the echo faded.
This one was sharper—less grief, more anger. There were broken rhythms, interrupted cadences, notes that bled into each other as if trying to escape the measure. Hye-jin joined in now, violin cutting across the piano like a scream tucked inside silk.
The tension tightened with each measure. The music felt like running through a hallway with no end, doors slamming behind you, shadows whispering truths you never asked to know.
Ji-hoon's breathing grew uneven. He could feel sweat on his neck, his palms, but he didn't slow down. This movement wasn't for the audience. It was for the room where she died. For the man who took her. For every sacrifice she made in silence.
He played like the piano was the only way to stay alive.
And then—just as suddenly as it began—the third movement crept in.
Softer. Slower. More fragile.
A lullaby, almost. But not one you'd sing to a child. This one was for the dying. A farewell.
Hye-jin's bow trembled as she played, because she recognized it.
It was the melody Yoo Ara had played just before Si-wan murdered her.
Ji-hoon had never heard it—not really. He'd only dreamed it, caught it in fragments. He had felt it, more than known it. But tonight, it poured out of him like he'd always had it buried in his blood.
The entire hall was breathless.
Even the air seemed to hold its own hands in prayer.
And then—
A sound.
Sharp. Out of place.
A phone dropped. A chair creaked. Someone gasped.
Ji-hoon flinched but didn't stop playing. His hands moved instinctively. But something inside him broke focus, shattered like a mirror cracking behind his ribs.
Because he recognized a scent.
Cologne.
The same one that followed him into dreams. The one his mother wore when trying to cover bruises on her neck. The one that clung to Si-wan like a second skin.
He was here.
Ji-hoon kept playing—but now, it wasn't just music. It was war.
He didn't wait to finish the final note. He stood before the echo could even fade.
"Where is he?" he said under his breath, voice like steel scraping ice.
"Ji-hoon, no," Joon-won tried to say, moving toward him.
But he was already moving toward the scent. Toward the aisle. Toward the man slipping through the back doors before anyone noticed.
Hye-jin dropped her bow. The clatter was like a shot.
"Get him!" Ji-hoon yelled.
The guards—his guards—moved.
Chaos swallowed the hall. Applause turned to confusion, then to fear. Some screamed. Others ducked. But Ji-hoon didn't care. He shoved through the crowd, not seeing, but knowing exactly where Si-wan had gone.
The back hallway. The stairwell. He was running.
Ji-hoon chased him, mind flashing back to the note his mother once left behind: If anything happens to me, don't go after him. Promise me.
He hadn't promised. And even if he had, he would've broken it.
He heard the steps. The breath. The rustle of movement ahead.
And then—
A slam.
A door. Locked.
He stopped in front of it, panting. The guards caught up seconds later.
"Break it," he said, breathless.
They hesitated.
"I said break the goddamn door!"
It took two of them to slam it open.
But inside, Si-wan was gone.
Only the open window.
Only the wind.
Only the scent lingering.
Ji-hoon leaned against the doorframe, hands shaking. Not from fear. Not from anger.
But because of what he'd almost done.
He would've killed him.
He knew it. In that moment, if Si-wan had stood before him, Ji-hoon would've wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed until memory stopped screaming.
But now, all that remained was the music still echoing in the recital hall.
He turned slowly. Walked back. People were whispering, scattering. Confused. Scared.
The piano still sat there.
Silent.
He walked toward it again.
And he sat.
And he played one final note.
Not for her.
Not for him.
But for the part of his heart that had survived anyway.
The note lingered, trembling in the air, like it didn't want to die.
Ji-hoon sat there, his fingers still resting on the keys, but the sound was gone. His chest rose and fell unevenly, the sweat on his neck cold now, like the night had pressed a wet cloth to his skin. Around him, the concert hall was no longer a place of reverence—it had turned into something else entirely. A crime scene of emotion. A battlefield of ghosts.
His hands shook.
Not from exhaustion, but from restraint. The kind of restraint that tears you open inside because you almost didn't stop yourself.
He had wanted to kill Si-wan. And if he had found him, he would've done it. He knew it in the part of himself that never flinched.
But Si-wan had slipped away again, like a shadow that only appeared when the light was weakest.
The doors creaked open behind him. A hesitant voice whispered his name. "Ji-hoon..."
It was Hye-jin.
Her footsteps were quiet, careful. Like she didn't want to startle him. Or maybe she didn't want to get too close. Maybe she'd seen something in him tonight that scared her.
Ji-hoon didn't turn around.
"You knew, didn't you?" he asked. His voice was calm, but it carried that strange edge—the one that cracked mirrors and made people avoid eye contact.
Hye-jin stood behind him in silence. Then slowly: "I didn't know everything."
"You knew enough."
A pause. "Yes."
His throat clenched. "You let me play a piece about her death… while he was here."
"I didn't know he'd come tonight," she said, and now her voice trembled a little. "I didn't. I thought he was still in Japan."
Ji-hoon turned his head slightly toward her. "And what would you have done if you knew?"
"I would've stopped the concert."
"No. You wouldn't have. Because deep down… you wanted him to hear it too."
She didn't deny it.
Her silence confirmed everything.
Ji-hoon stood, slow and deliberate. He faced her, though he could only feel the shape of her presence—he couldn't see the guilt on her face, but he could hear it in her breath, like a violin string pulled too tight.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" he asked.
"Because I was afraid," she said, her voice cracking. "I was afraid of what you'd do. Of what it would do to you. You've spent your whole life trying to become something more than tragedy. I didn't want to be the reason you became the boy who hunted a killer instead of the pianist who made people weep."
His jaw clenched. "I am the boy who hunted a killer. And I'm the pianist who made people weep. I don't get to choose. That's the problem."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The words didn't do anything. They never did.
Ji-hoon walked off the stage. His footsteps echoed in the emptiness now. The crowd had long thinned, scattered like feathers after a storm. A few people lingered by the doors, hushed and shaken, unsure if they'd witnessed a recital or something far more intimate—something almost sacred in its pain.
Joon-won waited near the exit, his face pale.
"Ji-hoon—"
"I don't want to talk," Ji-hoon said. "Not tonight."
He pushed the doors open and stepped into the hallway.
But the hallway didn't feel like a hallway anymore. It felt like a memory.
Like the ones that grabbed you by the throat and made you taste metal.
Every corridor of this conservatory carried her. Yoo Ara. His mother. Her heels echoing down the steps. The way she hummed without realizing. The hand that used to rest on his shoulder when he played.
Ji-hoon reached out and touched the wall beside him.
It was cold.
How could a place that once held so much warmth feel this empty now?
Because she wasn't here.
Not in body.
But the music had brought her back for a few seconds.
He stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the basement. The practice rooms. The last place she ever played with him.
When the doors opened, the hallway was dim and quiet. No footsteps. No teachers. Just dust, and silence, and the faint buzzing of a fluorescent light overhead.
He walked down the hall until he reached Room B12.
The door was locked.
He pulled the keys from his coat pocket—ones he hadn't used in months—and unlocked it.
The room hadn't changed.
The music stand was still there, tilted slightly left. The cracked mirror in the corner still caught the shape of the piano. The bench creaked under him as he sat.
And he reached out, blindly, until his fingers touched the familiar keys.
He didn't play.
He just sat there.
Thinking.
Feeling.
Remembering.
He remembered the last time she taught him in this room.
She had been quieter than usual. Tired.
He had thought it was just another long week. A stressful day.
He never realized she was saying goodbye.
And now?
Now, he couldn't stop wondering how many signs he missed. How many bruises were covered by long sleeves. How many tears she wiped away before stepping into his practice sessions like everything was fine.
And now he knew.
Now he knew everything.
She had died so he wouldn't.
She had bargained with Si-wan. She had been used, manipulated, discarded like a pawn in someone else's game. And she had never let him see it.
Because she wanted him to live in the light, not the shadows she was trapped in.
Ji-hoon pressed his forehead against the piano.
And cried.
Not quietly.
Not politely.
But the kind of crying that breaks open the cage around your heart and leaves you gasping.
He cried for every birthday she still sang on.
For every recital she never made it to.
For every hug he'd never feel again.
And for the guilt of not knowing sooner.
He cried until there were no tears left.
Only silence.
Only memory.
Only the soft echo of a lullaby that now lived inside him.