Chapter 225.2

Chapter 225.2

His voice brushed past her ear, heavy with disgust.

“But do you think killing everyone here will solve anything?”

“What?”

“Of course not.”

His grip on her hair loosened slightly.

“So hurry up.”

Kia drew a steady breath and went silent, unwilling to say more. But Seoryeong was already broken. She had seen Kim Hyun and Lee Wooshin burn before her eyes.

Her body stiffened in terror, cold sweat dripping from her forehead as she trembled, lost and powerless.

“Are you still looking with your eyes?”

No. She answered by closing he eyes to not see anything, the same way she had loved her husband the first time.

The only part of her body she could still move was her eyelids.

She once believed that if she couldn’t see something, she couldn’t trust it. After her husband betrayed her, that belief had hardened into instinct. But now, when every face looked the same, she had to seek what couldn’t be seen.

Could she do it? Could she find him this time?

As her vision faded into darkness, the small sounds she couldn’t hear before began to tap against her eardrums.

“….”

Kia’s rough breathing, the clinking of coins, the sharp taps of shoes colliding, the crackle of the stage burning, and short, broken groans spilling from all directions without forming words.

Among them, someone was tapping. Tak, tak, tak-tak, tak. A Morse code sent with their shoe, each tap a desperate plea for help. The sound stirred a frantic urgency in her, as if she had to save everyone.

But she wasn’t searching for everyone’s signal. She was searching for one person; Lee Wooshin’s trace.

Anything. Anything at all.

Rustle!

Wait. Wait a second. From whom? Seoryeong’s brow twitched. Somewhere close by, something like a metal bead rattled against someone’s molars.

She sharpened her senses, her brows furrowing tightly. That sound… Seoryeong’s dark eyebrows shot up.

Rustle, rustle. 

Someone was rubbing their pants. Out of all the noise, one sound pulled at her ear clearly.

‘It sounds… like candy wrapping…’

Seoryeong’s eyes flew open. She turned her head toward the sound, an inexplicable certainty gripping her. It wasn’t the frantic Morse tapping or the pleading stares that caught her attention, but that faint sound like crinkling candy wrap, which triggered a vivid memory.

A man biting into candy, rolling it between his molars, left to right. It wasn’t Kim Hyun, it was the real Lee Wooshin she had met at Blast Agency. That was her first impression of him.

The man who would unwrap a candy with his teeth, pop it into his mouth, roll the thick piece with his tongue, then crunch it between his teeth with a hard crack. The one who would carelessly toss the empty wrapper into his lunch bag and drive her crazy.

That was the man she’d met. Not Kim Hyun, the real Lee Wooshin.

Those moments flashed through her mind.

Then, when her eyes finally met his, all doubt turned to certainty. Ah… A groan rose from her throat. The man’s face was that of an old man, not Kim Hyun, not Lee Wooshin, but Seoryeong didn’t hesitate.

“Fourth row! Third from the left!”

The moment she twisted her body to shout, Kia released her arm as if he had been waiting for it. She sprang forward like a beast freed from its leash, running straight onto the burning stage.

She passed by countless Kim Hyuns and Lee Wooshins and grabbed the old man’s shoulder. The man spat out the pebble he’d been holding in his mouth. The blood-soaked stone rolled lifelessly across the floor, its use spent.

Even as a faint discomfort stirred at the sight of his unfamiliar face, Seoryeong slipped her arm around him to lift him up. The instant she felt the familiar warmth under his arm, tears burst from her eyes.

“Ah! Ugh!”

She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. It’s you. It’s really you. Seoryeong trembled all over, overwhelmed by the certainty that she hadn’t been wrong. Despite her broken arm, she held him with everything she had.

“Instructor!”

Then the front of the stage collapsed like a sandcastle. The people who had been burning toppled under the floor with a thunderous crash, and a huge wall of flame shot upward.

The unbalanced stage split further and began to crumble like a tsunami. Seoryeong supported the unsteady Lee Wooshin with one arm and stumbled backward.

As choking smoke filled the stage, Lee Wooshin coughed but used his steady hand to cover Seoryeong’s nose and mouth. The blaze, having turned people into fuel, devoured the wooden floor and threatened to reach the ceiling.

They could not go down under the stage, and no other exit was in sight.

Seoryeong bit her lower lip and looked at Lee Wooshin’s unfamiliar face.

In truth, she wanted to yank that overhead mask off right away. The face her husband wore was Kia’s face, an aged, wrinkled version decades into the future.