When the Clock Strikes|Pi Han Ul x Reader|

(S02) Chapter 40

It was too quiet.

The kind of quiet that felt loud.

The kind that pressed into your chest and made it hard to breathe.

I sat in front of the mirror, knees pulled up to my chest, staring at the stranger looking back at me.

The apartment was dim. Seok Kyung was asleep in the other room—her soft breathing the only sign that time was still moving. That people were still alive. That maybe the world wasn’t entirely broken, even if I was.

I blinked at myself.

My skin was pale.
My eyes, darker than I remembered.
Hair tied back in a half-hearted bun that had given up on being pretty halfway through.

Everything about me screamed exhaustion.

But I wasn’t tired.

I was empty.

Or maybe I was trying not to be.

After Ha Ya died, I didn’t have the strength to stay in the hospital dorm. Too many memories. Too many ghosts in the hallways. And Seok Kyung—she was alone now. The apartment where we used to live, all three of us, had started to collapse in on itself without her laughter echoing through it. So I moved back. Tried to fill the space Ha Ya left behind. Tried to hold the pieces together with a shaking hand and a half-broken heart.

It wasn’t working.

None of it was.

I pressed my fingers against the mirror. Cold glass. Steady breath.

“Is it really still there?” I whispered.

The question tasted like hope and doubt all tangled up in each other.

My powers...I want to bring it back.

How do you reach for something that no longer answers when you call?

My reflection didn’t offer answers. Just that same tired girl, with hands that once moved faster than light and now trembled when I tried to tie my shoes.

I took a breath.

Then another.

Then reached for the small blade I kept in the drawer under my bed.

It wasn’t sharp.

Not enough to hurt.

Just enough to test.

My fingers hesitated.

Then I pressed the tip against my skin. Lightly. Gently. A whisper of pain. A bead of red welled up, small and slow.

I waited.

Nothing.

No warmth.
No glow.

No sudden spark of cells stitching themselves back together.

Just a drop of blood.
Just the absence of power.

I gritted my teeth.

Again.

A second cut, beside the first. Deeper this time. I hissed under my breath, watching the blood slide down my finger.

Still nothing.

No healinNo power.

No trace of the girl who once defied physics.

I curled my hands into fists, pressing the pain into my palm, into my body, into the air around me like it might answer me if I begged hard enough.