When the Clock Strikes|Pi Han Ul x Reader|

(S02) Chapter 41

My breath hitched.

“I don’t know if I deserve to hear that,” I whispered.

He shook his head once. “You do. More than anyone I’ve ever met.”

I bit my lip, blinking hard.

He reached over, gently brushed his fingers against mine.

And for the first time in what felt like days—maybe weeks—I didn’t feel like I was drowning.

We stayed there a while longer, not speaking.

Just breathing the same air again.

Then he started the car, and we drove on.

“We’re going to meet Geon Yeop,” Han Wool said, eyes still on the road.

I blinked. “What?”

“Calm down,” he added quickly, before I could speak again. “It’s not what you think.”

My hands curled into my coat. That name—it still felt like swallowing glass. Still carried the sting of betrayal, of blood on gravel, of a night where everything burned.

Han Wool glanced at me briefly, then returned his gaze to the road. “That day, Ye Na—he wasn’t… him.”

I didn’t answer, my jaw tight.

“They controlled him. They injected him with something. Minhwan found traces of it—something that scrambles motor control, hijacks behavior. His body was there, but his mind wasn’t.”

I stayed silent. My heartbeat drummed, uncertain, confused.

“He didn’t know what he was doing. What he was saying. He didn’t even know where he was afterward,” Han Wool continued. “He went after Pi Yeonbeak years ago. You remember how he was. After what they did to his mother…”

I looked down. My hands trembled without permission.

“He became a thug. Someone willing to burn the world just to make them pay. But instead, they got him first. Used him.”

A tightness twisted in my chest.

The car slowed.

Then came to a stop.

I looked up.

The road had ended near the edge of a forest clearing. A narrow path led into the trees, where early morning sunlight spilled through branches like falling gold.

Under one tree—weathered and wide—sat a bench. The wood looked old, split slightly near the middle.

And sitting there…

Geon Yeop.

My breath left me in a stutter.

He sat hunched slightly, elbows resting on his knees, a worn jacket clinging to his frame. His face was older—sharper, more defined. A short beard along his jaw. His black hair messier than I remembered.

But the eyes—

God, the eyes were the same.

Dark and sun-scorched. The kind of eyes that had once looked at me like I was worth saving. The kind of eyes that—seven years ago—had changed everything.

And then ruined it.

I remembered the heat of his grip on my arm as I bled. The way he didn’t speak a word as I fell. The betrayal that cracked through me deeper than the blade he held.

But now—

Now I knew that hadn’t been him.

He looked up and saw us.