Twisted Paths

Refuse To Be The End

I stood frozen, my body numb with shock as I watched the car descend, its frame teetering dangerously on the edge of the bridge. Aera... Aera was hanging in mid air.

My heart hammered in my chest, each beat a painful reminder of how close I am to losing her. Her eyes met mine one last time, filled with horror, the fear so raw I could feel it all the way down to my bones.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.

The car plunged into the water with a violent splash. My eyes never left the spot where it disappeared. Aera's figure... gone.

The world seemed to slow down as the sounds of Ha-ri shouting beside me, the frantic voices of Ji-min and Seo-ah talking to the police, and Joo-eun holding Hye-rin all blended into a distant blur. Nothing mattered except that one terrible truth. Aera—my Aera—was gone.

I had no words, no actions. Just a cold emptiness inside me.

Gone.

Her smile. Her eyes that always seemed to carry both fire and softness. Her fierce independence, the way she had held onto me, even when she didn't have to. The baby... the child we had both dreamed of. All of it. Gone in a single moment.

I couldn't process it. I couldn't breathe.

I stood there, staring at the water below, my thoughts racing a million miles an hour, but I couldn't make sense of any of it. She had been right there, right in front of me, just moments ago. Now, the world felt like it was crumbling around me.

My mind screamed for her, for her safety, for a miracle that wasn't coming. I wanted to move, wanted to do something, anything, but my body refused to listen. The water that had swallowed her whole seemed so endless, so unforgiving.

The cries around me grew louder, but they felt like they were coming from a different world.

I couldn't lose her. Not like this. Not when we had only just begun. The memories of everything we'd shared, all the promises we had made, flashed before my eyes. But none of it mattered now. Nothing mattered without her.

I couldn't look away from the water, hoping against hope that she would somehow surface, but deep down, I knew. I knew the truth.

And all I could do was stand there, helpless, watching the life I had fought so hard for slip away into the darkness.

The police and firefighters were already at the bank of the river, dispatching divers, but one of the firefighters still on the bridge spoke into his radio with a grim tone. "Sir, the car plunged into the water, there's nothing else we can do to assess the situation now. Miss Yang Aera was pregnant, I doubt she would survive this. Peramedics disclosed time of death."

The words hit me like a freight train, crashing through every wall I'd put up in my mind. 

I could barely hear the rest of what the firefighter said, his voice a dull hum beneath the deafening sound of my own heart breaking. I didn't even register the movement around me—the firemen scrambling, the police officers coordinating, or Ha-ri's frantic calls as she pushed past everyone to reach me.

Aera... pregnant... dead.

My breath hitched. My world tilted. The air felt thick, suffocating, as if the life around me had been sucked out, leaving me stranded in a place where nothing made sense anymore. The baby, the future we'd been building together, gone. Gone in an instant.

I felt the ground beneath me tremble, though I wasn't sure if it was my body or the bridge itself. My hands started to shake, my legs buckling beneath me. I couldn't stand. I couldn't think. All I could do was stare at the water, hoping against everything that somehow, someway, they were wrong.