𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 | 𝐉𝐉𝐊

CHAPTER:12

"she ached for a love she couldn't remember, a past she couldn't grasp, and a life that felt just out of reach."

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A U T H O R' S  P O V

Seoul central mental
health clinic

The soft morning breeze carried the scent of flowers, making the hospital garden feel like a small oasis of peace.

YN sat on a wooden bench, her eyes tracing the colorful petals of the flowers swaying gently in the wind.

For a brief moment, she felt a tinge of calm-a rare and fragile feeling in her otherwise tumultuous mind.

But then, her gaze shifted to the old man sitting nearby, quietly speaking to a photograph he held tenderly in his wrinkled hands.

"Jagi! Do I look handsome today?" His voice was warm, filled with love and longing, as if the person in the picture could respond to him.

YN's heart clenched. It reminded her too much of the way she spoke to her daughter's sketch in her hallucinations.

She knew that emptiness, that desperate yearning to hold onto someone who wasn't there.

A lump formed in her throat as she felt an unexpected connection with this stranger. He, too, was talking to someone who couldn't answer back.

She couldn't help but wonder if the pain he felt mirrored her own-was he clinging to this memory the way she clung to her fractured visions of a child she barely remembered?

She hesitated but felt the need to say something, to reach out and make sense of her own emotions through his. Taking a deep breath, she finally spoke.

"Ahjussi? Why are you talking to the picture?" YN asked softly, her voice laced with empathy.

As the words left her mouth, her heart ached.

Is this what we become? People who talk to ghosts, to the shadows of love we can't let go of ?

The thought unsettled her, yet she longed to understand, to feel less alone in her grief.

The old man smiled, though his eyes held a sadness that spoke of years of silent suffering.

He gently ran his fingers over the photograph, as if the act of touching it brought him closer to the person he had lost.

"This is my Jagi," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

"Her name was Sun-hee. We were married for 40 years... she was the love of my life." His voice wavered as he spoke, but there was a tenderness in his tone that only came from a lifetime of shared moments.

YN watched him, her chest tightening at his words. She saw the way his eyes softened when he looked at the photo, like he could still see her smiling beside him.

"We used to come here to see the patients in need, i used to run a small charity foundation, you know," the old man continued, nodding towards the flowers.

"She loved this garden. Always said the flowers reminded her of spring, of new beginnings. I used to bring her every weekend... and she'd make me sit on this very bench." He chuckled softly, the sound tinged with a bittersweet nostalgia.

"She'd say, 'Ah, you look so handsome sitting in the sunlight,' and I'd joke, 'Not as good-looking as the flowers.'"