When the Clock Strikes|Pi Han Ul x Reader|

(S02) Chapter 40

None of this makes sense.

Now I think about it.

Harin would never kill herself.

Not like that.

Not when she had so much to prove. So much pride that she was willing to bury the truth just to win. Just because I got in her way? Just because Han Wool likes me?

No.

Harin would fight. Claw. Scream. Manipulate the narrative until even the facts bowed to her delusions.

But she wouldn’t throw herself into that river.

And Ha Ya—no. She would never die like that.

She didn’t fall in.

She was pushed.

Someone killed her.

And I’ve been too busy bleeding out inside myself to piece it together.

I sat up slowly.

Fingers tangled in the bedsheet. Mind whirring with too many threads unraveling at once.

They both drowned.

Same river.
Same silence.
Same lie.

If someone’s trying to make it look like suicide, why do it twice? Why target both Harin and Ha Ya?

And then—

Pi Yeon Baek.

The name slipped into my mind like a shadow.

He wanted the experiment. He wanted Han Wool and Harin together. Marriage. Control. A future carved by DNA and domination.

So why kill Harin?

Why would he destroy the future daughter-in-law he’d invested everything into?

Unless—

There is someone aiming us.

Is it the unknown person?

My breath caught in my throat.

She sent me a message before she died.
Blamed me.
Said it was all my fault.

But the words didn’t sound like surrender. They sounded like desperation. Like someone on the run. Like someone who wanted to scream a final warning before someone cut her off.

It doesn’t line up.

None of it does.

I threw off the blanket and stood up, pacing across the small space between the bed and the mirror. My reflection followed me. Eyes too wide. Lips too tight.

“There’s something wrong,” I whispered.

There’s definitely something wrong.

I slipped on a hoodie over my tank top, grabbed my phone, and stepped out of the room. Seok Kyung stirred on the couch, half-asleep, mumbling something incoherent into her pillow.

I paused for a second.

Watched her shoulders rise and fall.

She’s lost everything, too.

But right now, I couldn’t sit in grief with her.

I needed to find the truth before it buried me.

Before it buried her, too.

I slid on my shoes and walked out the door.

I slid on my shoes, locked the door behind me, and hailed a taxi. The driver didn’t speak much—just glanced at me through the mirror, nodded when I gave the address, and drove into the thick silence of the city.