For Dimitri Korilov, the night was a never-ending curse—an unrelenting punishment. Each time his eyelids closed, the gates of hell reopened.

In his recurring nightmare, he was once again the helpless child, sitting on the cold floor, his screams caught in his small throat as the life faded from his mother’s eyes before him. The smell of blood, the echo of her final breath—that fatal moment... it would not fade.

And with every dawn, Dimitri awoke gasping, as if he had drowned in the deep sea. His hand would immediately reach to the other side of the bed, searching for you.

Searching for the warmth of your body... for a heartbeat that reassured him you were still there—that you hadn’t left him, the way she did.

“Are you alright?” he whispered, and each time, his voice was shattered—like a man dragged back from death. And you, half-asleep, would pat his hand and smile. But you didn’t know… You didn’t know how many times he had died before seeing you open your eyes.

Dimitri was not an ordinary man. To the world, he was the brilliant neurologist—one who healed minds and read nightmares as if they were open books. Elegant. Composed. Untouched by tremors or unrest.

But in his own eyes? He was wreckage—a man haunted by the night and the fear of losing again.

He had not feared war, nor the sound of guns during his years of service at the frontlines. What terrified him was the silence after death— That moment when the body no longer responds to touch, when a voice no longer answers a call.

And in you, he found salvation.

You never truly understood why he clung to you so fiercely—why he wouldn’t let you spend a single night away. You didn’t understand his fear when you were late to answer your phone, or the frozen look in his eyes when you fell ill—as if the heat of your skin reminded him that the end could come at any moment.

One night, he woke up crying, his body trembling like a lost child.

“I saw you leaving me…” he whispered, burying his face in your neck, as if your scent alone could scatter the shadows from his heart.

And you didn’t speak. You only held him tighter— And let him break in your arms.