Chapter 1

She rarely went straight home after work.

Her apartment wasn’t far, and on most nights she preferred taking the longer way back, following the path along the Han River. It had become something of a habit—a quiet stretch of time between work and home when nobody needed anything from her.

The city never truly fell silent. Traffic still murmured somewhere beyond the riverside, bicycles passed now and then, and Seoul shimmered across the water in broken reflections. But here, everything felt distant enough to breathe.

A light breeze caught in her soft, light-brown waves. She pushed them away from her face and kept walking.

Up ahead stood the bench where she usually stopped.

Tonight, someone was already sitting there.

A man.

She barely gave him a second glance at first. People came to the river alone all the time—to drink, to think, to escape their apartments for an hour.

But as she drew closer, something made her look again.

His head rested against the back of the bench, his arms stretched loosely to either side, hands hanging at his sides. His posture was almost careless, as if he’d simply dropped himself there and decided not to move again.

He looked relaxed.

His face didn’t.

There was something exhausted about him. Not the ordinary kind of tiredness that came at the end of a long day. Something heavier sat behind his expression, something that made the way he leaned back look less like comfort and more like surrender.

Her pace slowed.

Is he okay?

Maybe he’d been drinking.

Maybe he was sick.

She could keep walking.

She probably should.

Instead, she looked at him again.

And that was when concern became tangled with something far stranger.

Familiarity.

Her brows drew together.

Had she seen him somewhere before?

She searched her memory and found nothing.

No name. No place. No half-forgotten encounter.

She didn’t know that face.

She was certain of it.

Yet every instinct in her seemed strangely unwilling to accept him as a stranger.

After a moment’s hesitation, she changed direction and walked toward him.

The closer she came, the clearer he became. Dark, slightly dishevelled hair. Broad shoulders beneath clothes that seemed made for his frame. There was a sharpness to his features that should have made him look severe, but the almost indifferent way he carried himself softened it into something else.

Something quietly charismatic.

Still, it wasn’t his appearance that kept pulling her forward.

It was that feeling.

That impossible sense that she had seen him before.

When only a few steps remained between them, he seemed to notice her.

His head lifted.

For a fraction of a second, his body tensed.

Then he saw her.

And stopped.

So did she.

Neither spoke.

The caution in his expression slowly faded, replaced by something she recognised because she was feeling it too.

Confusion.

He wasn’t simply looking at her.

He was studying her.

As though somewhere behind those eyes, he was searching through memories that refused to give him an answer.

Where do I know you from?

She broke the silence.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He said nothing.

“I saw you from over there. You didn’t look well.”

She hesitated, suddenly aware of how strange it was to be standing in front of a man she had never met.

“If you’ve been drinking and can’t get home on your own, I can call someone for you. Or if you’re actually feeling sick… I can help you get to a hospital.”

For a moment, he simply stared.

Then one corner of his mouth lifted.

It wasn’t quite a smile. More like the ghost of one—faintly amused, almost teasing, and completely at odds with how tired he looked.

Without saying a word, he shifted to one side of the bench.

Making room for her.

She glanced at the empty space.

Then at him.

Normally, she would have thanked him and walked away.

Instead, she sat.

For a while, they watched the river.

She could feel her heartbeat more clearly than she wanted to.

She didn’t even know the man’s name.

Yet sitting beside him didn’t feel like sitting beside someone entirely unknown.

Eventually, he spoke.

“I don’t know you.”

She turned immediately.

He was still facing the water.

“But this is strange. No one I’ve never met has ever walked up to me just to ask if I’m okay.”

Then he looked at her.

“And you feel familiar.”

Her expression changed before she could hide it.

She turned fully toward him, unconsciously closing some of the distance between them.

“Me too.”

His brows lifted slightly.

“I feel like I know you too.”

Silence returned.

This time, neither looked away.

It felt absurd—two strangers studying each other’s faces as though the answer might be hidden in the shape of an eye, the curve of a mouth, some detail the mind had forgotten but the body hadn’t.

Eventually, she looked back toward the river.

“I don’t actually believe in past lives.”

A quiet laugh escaped her.

“I know how that sounds. At this point, I probably seem like the drunk one. You should be offering me help.”

Something close to a smile crossed his face, but he remained silent.

“I just can’t think of another explanation. I’ve never felt this way around someone before. And now you’re telling me you feel it too.”

He leaned back again, arms loose at his sides, gaze drifting towards the sky.

He said nothing.

She waited.

The silence stretched.

Her excitement gradually curdled into embarrassment.

Maybe she’d said too much.

Maybe he’d only made room for her because she’d offered to help him and was now waiting for her to leave.

She pressed her lips together and stood.

His hand closed around her wrist.

She froze.

The movement had been so effortless that it took her a second to process it.

He didn’t pull her toward him.

Didn’t tighten his grip.

He simply held her there.

His gaze dropped to where his fingers touched her skin.

Then rose slowly to her face.

He was testing something.

And suddenly, she understood why.

The familiarity she’d felt from a distance deepened under his touch.

No memory came.

No image.

No place.

Nothing she could name.

Only the overwhelming sensation that something was there, just beyond reach.

Something she should remember.

She stared at him.

Whatever was happening inside her was reflected in his expression.

For several long seconds, neither moved.

Then he gently guided her back down beside him and released her wrist.

The silence between them had changed again.

This time, he broke it.

“There’s something I can’t remember.”

She looked at him.

“No matter how hard I try.”

His voice was calm, but the calmness no longer felt effortless.

“And it’s not just you. There are a lot of things I can’t remember.”

“What things?”

A short, humourless laugh left him.

“That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

He rested his head against the bench.

“I don’t know what I’ve forgotten. I don’t know what I’m supposed to remember. I’ve just had this feeling for as long as I can remember.”

He paused.

“Like I’ve spent my whole life inside a question I was never given the answer to.”

She listened without interrupting.

“I think it’s a punishment.”

Her eyes settled on him.

“Not a normal one. Something heavier. Something the soul carries.”

He stared ahead.

“I don’t know what I did. I don’t even know if I did anything. But I’ve lived with it for years.”

Only then did she begin to understand the exhaustion she’d noticed from across the path.

“Maybe you’re feeling it for the first time tonight,” he continued. “I’ve been feeling it for as long as I can remember.”

His gaze shifted to her.

“And then you appear.”

Something tightened in his expression.

“I look at you, and suddenly it’s worse.”

His eyes dropped briefly to her wrist.

“That’s why I touched you.”

She remained still.

“I needed to know. I thought maybe if I touched you, I’d understand what this feeling was.”

He frowned slightly.

“And for a second, things come to me. Almost like scenes.”

“What kind of scenes?”

“I don’t know.”

His frustration showed for the first time.

“I can’t hold on to them long enough. I just know there’s something I’m supposed to remember.”

His words reached somewhere inside her that she had never been able to explain.

She knew that feeling.

Not with his intensity. Not with the same exhaustion.

But throughout her life there had been moments when something had seemed absent. A missing piece she couldn’t identify. Something unfinished, perhaps, though she had never known what.

For him, it was different.

For him, it had become pain.

Her eyes drifted away from him.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter.

“Do you think…”

She stopped.

Then looked at him.

“Do you think we’re being punished for something?”

He went still.

No answer came.

He simply stared at her.

Then his eyes filled.

One tear slipped down his cheek.

Another followed.

He didn’t sob.

Didn’t hide his face.

Didn’t wipe them away.

He simply sat there as the tears fell in complete silence.

For the first time that night, she felt afraid.

Not of him.

Of what she’d just said.

Do you think we’re being punished for something?

The words no longer sounded like a question.

There was something disturbingly certain about them, as though she had reached blindly into the dark and touched something that had been waiting there all along.

As though the question itself carried part of the answer.

He still didn’t wipe his face.

Instead, after a few moments, that strange half-smile returned.

Tired.

A little mocking.

Almost impossibly composed for someone with tears still on his cheeks.

He pulled his shoulders back and settled into the bench again.

“If you have time… we could get a drink.”

She stared at him.

“I just want to know who I am,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. If we’re carrying the same punishment, maybe we can help each other.”

His gaze returned to the river.

“Figure out who we are. Why this is happening.”

A faint trace of humour entered his voice.

“Or find out we’re both just dealing with some psychological problem.”

Then he looked at her.

“I thought I was alone in this.”

A pause.

“Apparently, I’m not.”

For the first time, there was something different beneath his exhaustion.

Not relief exactly.

But perhaps the beginning of it.

“At least now it feels like there’s a way to look for an answer.”

She considered his suggestion.

The only place she really knew for drinks was where she worked. She hadn’t been on a date—or simply gone out with someone for the sake of going out—in a long time. She hadn’t bothered learning which places were worth visiting.

And she certainly didn’t want to go back to work.

“Do you know somewhere good?” she asked. “Somewhere different?”

“I do.”

He answered without hesitation.

That easy expression returned.

“Just come with me. If you’re willing to trust someone you don’t know and take a little risk.”

She held his gaze.

She knew nothing about him.

Not even his name.

Yet only minutes earlier, this stranger had described feelings she’d carried for years without ever finding words for them.

“I want an answer too,” she said.

Her voice was steadier now.

“No one’s ever described what I feel before. You’re the first person who’s said it out loud.”

A small smile touched her lips.

“I think it’s worth the risk.”

He began to stand.

“Wait.”

He looked back.

She held out her hand.

“My name is Luna.”

A genuine hint of amusement appeared in her expression.

“If we’re going to look for the same answer, I think we should at least know each other’s names first.”

His eyes dropped to her hand.

“Dawn.”

For a second, Luna said nothing.

Dawn.

The name suited him in a way she couldn’t immediately explain. His dark, dishevelled hair, the quiet confidence, even that strange atmosphere around him—it all made the name sound almost too deliberate.

Maybe it wasn’t his real name.

A nickname, perhaps.

Dawn interrupted the thought before she could ask.

“It’s my real name. Relax.”

Luna looked at him.

Had her face really been that obvious?

He took her hand, gave it a brief shake, then rose to his feet.

“Now that we’ve officially met, shall we continue, Luna?”

“Okay, Dawn.”

Saying his name aloud felt strangely different.

She stood and followed him.

The night had already been unusual.

Somehow, she had the feeling it was only becoming stranger.

They left the riverside behind and headed toward one of the busier streets nearby, where restaurants, cafés and bars gathered beneath glowing signs.

Dawn walked ahead at an unhurried pace.

Luna followed a few steps behind.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

Eventually, twenty.

Not a single word between them.

Dawn seemed completely unaffected by the silence. His pace never changed. He didn’t glance back to check whether she was still following, nor did he make any attempt to fill the quiet.

Luna, on the other hand, was beginning to lose patience.

Perhaps it was his calmness that irritated her most.

She had just agreed to follow a man she’d met beside the Han River after the two of them had somehow concluded that they might be carrying the same inexplicable spiritual punishment.

And he was walking as though they were on their way to buy coffee.

Luna quickened her steps until she reached him.

Then caught his arm.

“Hey.”

Dawn stopped.

“Are we not there yet?”

He turned to her.

“And is everything okay? What are you thinking about?”

His gaze rested calmly on her face.

No urgency.

No confusion.

Nothing.