When the Clock Strikes|Pi Han Ul x Reader|

(S02) Chapter 41

I blink. Once. Twice.

Trying to decide if I’m still dreaming.

He raises a hand in a half-wave. Awkward. Hesitant.

I don’t move.

My chest tightens. Every part of me is still swimming in the river I just left behind.

What do you say to someone who thinks you broke him?

What do you say to someone who might be right?

I rise slowly, feet unsure beneath me, walking to the window with a thousand things unsaid.

And when I reached—he’s still there.

And he looks at me like maybe he didn’t come here to blame me.

“Han Woo—” I start, my voice dry and strange on my own tongue, like it hadn’t been used in years.

But he cuts me off.

"Ye Na"

Not coldly. Not sharply.
Just… urgently. Like he doesn’t want to waste a second.

“Ye Na… Harin and Ha-Ya… they’re alive.”

My breath catches.

“What?” I whisper.

He takes a step closer. The sunlight behind him disappears, swallowed by the shadow of his words.

“They’re alive,” he repeats. “Someone switched the bodies.”

My fingers curl against the window frame. “That’s not— I saw them, Han Wool. I saw their bodies. I touched—”

“They weren’t real.”

His voice is firm. Final. Not cruel, but factual.

“Ye Na, I had someone look into it. The reports, the temperature of the bodies, even the way they were preserved... it didn’t match the actual time of death. Something was wrong from the beginning. But now I’m sure.”

I shake my head slowly. My body starts moving without my permission, backing away from him like the air had turned thick and wrong.

“No. No, they were there. I—I performed Ha-Ya’s final rites. Harin’s face, her lips were—” I stop, my voice cracking.

Because I remember.

I remember how Harin’s face didn’t quite feel like skin when I pressed my fingers against her cheek.

How Ha-Ya’s fingers bent too stiffly. How cold she was—too cold.

Han Wool’s voice lowers, steadier now. “I think the bodies were replicas. Hyper-realistic. Silicone-based.

Possibly stolen from a hospital, or even designed by someone with access to medical-grade mannequins.”

A thousand images flash through my mind. The white sheet. The stiff limbs. The way no one let me be alone with them for too long.

“Someone replaced them?” I whisper.

“Yes,” he says. “And they did it perfectly. Veins, skin tone, everything. High-end. Made to fool even a medical professional.”

I’m not sure whether I’m about to scream, cry, or collapse.

“But why?” I ask, breathless.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he says. “But think about it, Ye Na. The river. Two bodies found in the same place. Both women tied to you. To Pi Yeon Baek. To me.”