When the Clock Strikes|Pi Han Ul x Reader|

(S02) Chapter 41

Saw me.

His shoulders stiffened. For a moment, I swore I saw something in his expression crack—like shame crawling up his throat.

I took a step forward.

One step toward the person I’d spent years hating. One step toward the truth.

The breeze moved through the trees like it carried the weight of everything I couldn’t say.

I took a step closer, Han Wool behind me, quiet.

Geon Yeop didn’t move from the bench. Just stared at me like I was something he never thought he’d see again.

“Ye Na,” he said, voice rough.

I flinched. God, even hearing him say my name still felt like a bruise being pressed.

“You look…” He swallowed. “Older.”

“So do you,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

He nodded, slowly. “I heard… about everything. Harin. Ha-Ya.”

The mention of their names tightened my throat.

“You heard?” I asked. “While you were busy vanishing for seven years?”

Geon Yeop looked down. “I didn’t vanish. I was trapped.”

I scoffed, but it wasn’t loud. It didn’t even feel real. “Trapped? That’s what we’re calling it?”

“No,” I said, stepping forward. “You don’t get to just sit there under a tree and act like we can talk again. Like there isn’t blood between us.”

Geon Yeop’s jaw clenched. “You think I don’t remember?”

“I think you remember too much.” My voice broke without permission. “You remember everything, don’t you? The look on my face? The moment I realized you were never coming back?”

“That night… they gave me something. Injected me. I woke up three days later in a basement. Tied up. I didn’t even know where I was.” He said.

“And all these years?” I asked. “You didn’t come find me. You didn’t try. You left me to think you wanted to kill me.”

“I thought I did,” he said, voice nearly a whisper. “For a long time, I believed I really had. I had flashes. Blurred memories. My hands… they felt like they had done something unforgivable.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until I tasted salt. I didn’t want to cry. I hated crying in front of him.

“You were supposed to protect me,” I whispered. "You were my friend".

“I know,” he said, his voice breaking now too. “And that’s what killed me every single day I was alive.”

Silence cracked open between us. Only the wind filled it.

Then he looked at me.

Full-on. Not like a ghost. Not like a stranger.

Like the boy who used to laugh with me.

“I didn’t come here to beg forgiveness,” he said. “I came because Han Wool found me. Told me everything. And I realized… maybe I could still do one thing right.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Help you,” he said. “Finish this.”

I stared at him.

And I saw it.

Not the boy who betrayed me.

But the man who had been broken, drugged, silenced—and still carried the memory of what he’d done like a chain around his neck.