The room was too quiet for comfort.
Ji-hoon sat with his fingers pressed together, palms damp. Across from him, the therapist — Kang Ha-rin — waited, her legs crossed, a notebook in her lap, but the pen hadn't moved in minutes. The ticking clock on the wall clawed at his nerves like fingernails on metal.
She said nothing, just watched. It was the kind of silence that wasn't empty — it was waiting. And Ji-hoon hated waiting. Especially now. Especially here.
"I don't even know why I agreed to this," he muttered.
"You didn't," Ha-rin said calmly. "Your manager did."
A humorless chuckle slipped from his throat. "Of course he did."
She made no move to argue. The truth hung in the air like incense — thin, invisible, but heavy. Ji-hoon could hear his own heartbeat. Even that felt too loud.
He shifted in his seat, the soft fabric of the chair brushing his fingertips. He hated this — the unfamiliar. No piano keys. No controlled environment. No applause. Just questions waiting in a cage of walls painted too softly to be comforting.
"You've been losing sleep."
Ji-hoon didn't respond.
"I can tell," she continued. "Your voice is more strained than last week. You've been grinding your teeth — I can hear it when you talk. And you flinch when someone shuts a door too loudly. You're unraveling, Ji-hoon."
Still, he said nothing.
"Do you want to talk about what happened last Friday?"
"Which part?" he asked, a bitter smile pulling at his lips. "The part where I screamed loud enough to scare the neighbors? Or when I smashed a porcelain award into my closet mirror?"
"Either," she said softly. "Both."
His jaw clenched. "You ever feel like your body's too small for your grief?"
Ha-rin nodded slowly. "Yes."
"I felt like I was choking on air. I couldn't sit still. I couldn't breathe. I kept hearing things. Her voice. Her lullaby. It wouldn't stop."
Ha-rin leaned in slightly. "And what did you do when it wouldn't stop?"
Ji-hoon looked down. His nails were bitten and torn, skin raw. "I lost it. I tore down everything. I screamed. I cursed at nothing. At everyone. I ripped my own shirt off and —" he laughed without humor, "— I collapsed. Right there, on the floor. Like a dying animal."
"And afterward?"
Ji-hoon was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "I slept for seventeen hours. When I woke up, my body was sore, but the silence was worse. Everything was still again. Like nothing happened."
Ha-rin scribbled something, and for the first time, Ji-hoon wished he could see her expression. Not just hear her calm. He wanted to know if she was judging him. Pitying him. Scared.
Because he was scared. Scared of what he was becoming.
He whispered, "I think there's something wrong with me."
"There's something hurting in you," she corrected. "That's not the same thing."
"What if it makes me do things I shouldn't?"
"Like burning a building?"
The silence snapped taut.
Ji-hoon's fingers twitched. "You knew?"
"I have ears," Ha-rin said softly. "And I watch the news. But more than that… you reeked of smoke when you walked in here Monday."
He exhaled, leaning forward and digging his nails into his palms. "They deserved it."
"Maybe they did. But you didn't deserve the aftermath."
"I don't care," he snapped.
"Yes, you do," she said, gently but firmly. "You care too much. That's why you're breaking."
He shook his head. "You don't understand."
"I do. More than you think." She paused, voice lower now. "My brother… he was shot three years ago. Mistaken identity. He was walking home from rehearsal. And the man who did it? He got six months. Six. Months."
Ji-hoon blinked, startled by the crack in her voice.
"I used to wish I could find that man. That I could do something worse than death to him. But I realized… I'd be giving him my peace. My life. And my brother didn't die for me to lose myself."
She looked at him directly.
"You're on a razor edge, Ji-hoon. And once you fall, it's not easy to climb back."
He swallowed hard. The room felt heavier now. His hands trembled slightly, but he didn't hide it.
"I hate him, Ha-rin," he whispered. "Si-wan. I hate him so much I forget to breathe."
"I know," she said.
"I want to kill him."
"And do you think your mother would want that?"
The question struck him like a slap. He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Ha-rin stood slowly and walked over. She didn't touch him. Just stood near enough that he could feel her presence like warmth.
"You play music that breaks people's hearts," she said. "You play with the kind of pain that makes people feel seen. If you lose yourself now… the world loses that music too. Your mother loses it."
His breath hitched.
And finally, finally, the tears came — quietly, like rain no one noticed at first. His shoulders trembled. His throat tightened. And Ha-rin said nothing more. She just sat beside him, the silence now softer, bearable. Like a pause in a melody.
Therapy wasn't quiet. Not for Ji-hoon. It was a scream buried in a whisper. It was all the things he'd buried clawing to the surface. But maybe, just maybe, that scream had somewhere safe to go now.
And maybe, tomorrow, he'd play again.
Even if his fingers still shook.
Ji-hoon's fingers were still trembling long after the session ended. He'd walked out of Ha-rin's office into a world that felt somehow louder, harsher, like the sky itself had been eavesdropping on his unravelling. He stood outside the clinic for a long time, the cold air brushing his skin like a reminder that the world was still here. That he was still here.
The cab he called took too long to arrive. In the silence, he could hear every footstep, every door slam, every distant honk. And beneath it all, that lullaby — soft, threadbare, haunting — echoing from memory.
When he reached his apartment, the scent of smoke still lingered faintly despite his attempts to clean everything. It wasn't just from the fire. It was in his clothes, his skin, his memory. And now, it was in Ha-rin's eyes. That quiet knowing. That understanding that hadn't come from textbooks, but from scars.
He dropped his bag to the floor and walked toward the piano — the same one he hadn't touched in days.
His fingers hovered over the keys.
He didn't play.
Not yet.
Instead, he sat back, closed his eyes, and listened. To the silence. To the creaks of the building. To the ticking of the wall clock. He let the noise in, for once. Let it wash over him.
It had been a long time since Ji-hoon had allowed himself to just... be.
The next session was worse. It began before he even sat down.
Ha-rin barely said hello before she asked, "Did you sleep?"
"Not really," he admitted.
"Nightmares?"
He nodded.
"Tell me."
"There was a hallway," Ji-hoon began, voice flat. "Endless. I kept walking. But the lights kept flickering. I couldn't see the end. Every time I stepped forward, it stretched further."
Ha-rin leaned in. "And what was at the end?"
"A piano," he whispered. "And blood on the keys."
She didn't write that down. Instead, she asked, "And who was playing it?"
He swallowed. "My mother. But it wasn't really her. Her head was bowed. Her hands weren't moving, but the music kept playing. Wrong notes. Notes I never wrote."
"You feel guilty for still hearing her."
He looked up. "I feel guilty for not saving her."
Ha-rin let the silence settle again. This time, it didn't feel hostile. Just heavy.
"You know it wasn't your fault."
"Knowing and believing are different things," Ji-hoon muttered. "You're the therapist. You should know that."
She smiled gently. "And I'm telling you that grief doesn't respond to logic. It never does."
He pressed his hands together, trying to stop the tremors. "I broke a violin last night. One of my students left it. I snapped it in half."
"Why?"
"Because it reminded me of her."
Ha-rin didn't scold. She didn't offer platitudes. She just said, "Do you want to know what I think?"
"Not really."
She continued anyway. "I think you're terrified of what's inside you. The rage. The grief. But you're more terrified of losing control than you are of letting yourself feel it. So you've been surviving — not living — and the cost of that is every smashed violin, every sleepless night, every hallucination."
Ji-hoon didn't argue. He couldn't.
A week later, the sessions began to change.
He talked more. He even laughed once — bitterly, but still.
Ha-rin started assigning him small tasks. Write down one thing each day he looked forward to. One memory of his mother that didn't end in blood. One reason to keep playing.
He scoffed at first. But on the third night, he wrote:
Her hands, resting on mine, guiding me to middle C. I was six. I didn't even know what grief was. But I knew what love sounded like.
And for the first time in weeks, he slept without waking up screaming.
But therapy wasn't always progress.
Sometimes, he relapsed hard. He'd come in shaking, eyes red, teeth clenched. One morning, he threw a chair in Ha-rin's office.
She didn't flinch.
"I saw him," Ji-hoon whispered. "Si-wan. On the street. Just walking. Smiling. As if none of this ever happened. As if he didn't rip my life open."
Ha-rin nodded. "Did you approach him?"
"No," Ji-hoon said, voice trembling. "Because I was afraid I wouldn't walk away."
She didn't say he should be proud for that restraint. She didn't say anything at all. She just let him sit there, vibrating with rage and pain, until it passed.
Because sometimes, that was the therapy. Not advice. Not lessons. Just surviving the storm together.
One evening, Ha-rin asked, "Do you want to hear something?"
Ji-hoon tilted his head. "What?"
She pulled out a small, worn cassette player and pressed play.
Music — delicate, hesitant — poured out. A child's hand on the piano. Clumsy, but full of heart.
"That's my brother," Ha-rin whispered. "First recital. I found this after he died. I play it on the hard days."
Ji-hoon didn't speak. He listened. And in that brittle, imperfect melody, he found something achingly familiar: the beginning. The courage to make sound before it's perfect. The raw voice of someone who dared to feel.
And it reminded him: he used to be that brave.
By the end of the month, Ji-hoon was playing again. Slowly. Quietly. But the keys no longer felt like foreign objects. They felt like confessions.
One session, Ha-rin asked, "If you could say anything to your mother now, what would it be?"
He didn't hesitate.
"I'm sorry I let her song die with her. But I'm going to play it again. Louder. For her. For me."
Ha-rin smiled. "That's all she ever wanted."
Ji-hoon exhaled. And for the first time in what felt like centuries, the silence inside him didn't scream. It listened.
Because therapy wasn't quiet. It was a crescendo of broken pieces forming harmony. And Ji-hoon… he was learning to write that harmony again.
He sat there in the sterile room, the sound of the ticking clock behind him loud enough to be maddening. Ji-hoon's fingers curled on his lap, knuckles white, breaths shallow. Hye-rin—the therapist—sat across from him, silent, waiting. She never rushed him, and that somehow made it worse. The quiet was too thick.
"I don't want to be here," he finally said, his voice dry, almost lost in the air.
"You came anyway," Hye-rin said, her tone calm. "That counts for something."
"I came because Joon-won told me I'd lose everything if I didn't."
"And is that true?"
"I don't know," he whispered. "Maybe I already have."
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was the kind that throbbed in his ears, making him aware of everything—his breathing, his heartbeat, the sound of a distant siren through the window, someone coughing in the hallway.
"I didn't even get to bury her," he said, almost without thinking. "No grave. No goodbyes. Just… nothing."
"Have you ever let yourself grieve her?"
Ji-hoon flinched. His throat tightened.
"I don't know how to."
Hye-rin nodded, scribbling something onto her notepad. "Then maybe that's where we start."
He didn't respond. Tears gathered in his eyes, but he blinked fast, like it would erase them. He hated being seen like this. Hated that even now, in a room meant to heal, he still felt broken in ways that had no name.