He finds you in the hospital library, fast asleep over an open textbook. You’re halfway through your notes on cardiac arrhythmias, and Sunghoon reads the page like he hasn’t already memorized your handwriting.

This is the 23rd version of you he’s loved. In this one, you're a med student. You're always tired but somehow always smiling at the nurses. You wear two pens in your pocket, even though one of them always leaks. You forget to eat when you're stressed. You're the same as always, and nothing like before.

You don’t recognize him yet. You never do. But he watches over you anyway - again.

He’s not supposed to be here. He’s already finished his residency, already trying to leave the hospital for good. But then he saw your name on a clipboard outside the library, and he forgot how to breathe.

So now he’s here, pretending to read, not to look too long.

You wake up with a groggy yawn and rub your eyes. “What time is it?”

He glances at his watch, like he hasn’t been timing your nap down to the minute. “Almost midnight.”

You stretch and wince. “God. I was just gonna rest my eyes.”

You smile at him.

He falls all over again.

In 1st, you were the daughter of a general, and he snuck into enemy territory just to bring you medicine. You died that winter. The 5th was a nurse in World War II, patching him up between shellfire and air raids. In the 10th, you were a stranger he passed every morning at the same subway station - until the bombing. In the 14th, you were both dying, and he held your hand through every last breath. That one nearly broke him. In the 16th, you died saving him. Some lives were short. Others were stolen. Life 17 ended in fire, 19 - in war.

You always die first. But not this time. Not if he can help it. This version of you is so alive. Busy, flustered, stubborn, stressed. You forget your ID badge and curse under your breath. You snort when you laugh too hard. You take your blood pressure on yourself when you're bored and joke about diagnosing your own heartbreak.

He never laughs louder than when he’s with you. He doesn’t tell you that in life 15, you didn’t talk at all, and he would’ve given anything to hear your voice again.

You start studying together. You think it's coincidence - two overworked students with compatible routines. But he times his breaks to yours. He buys your favorite snacks before you even tell him what they are.

You tell him one day, “You're way too good at knowing what I need. It's a little suspicious.”

He hesitates. “Maybe I’ve known you longer than you think.”

You pause, pen mid-air. “Have we met before?”

His throat tightens. “Something like that.”

Later, when you're both assigned to the same surgical rotation, you elbow him in the hallway.

“You’re quiet with everyone else. But not with me.”

He shrugs, teasing. “Maybe you bring it out of me.”

Your smile is softer this time.

By week eight, you’re sharing midnight snacks behind the supply room. He listens as you vent about a difficult patient and offers quiet reassurance. You don’t know how often he’s held your hand in another life. But maybe your heart does - because you lean into him like it’s muscle memory.

That night, he watches you fall asleep on the breakroom couch. He tucks your blanket in, like he did in life #12, when you were both on the run from something darker than either of you could name.

In that life, you whispered to him in a voice that shook, “I hope we meet again. Somewhere safer.”

And maybe this is it.

And one night — when you’ve both crashed in the on-call room after a brutal ER shift — he speaks again. Softer this time. Closer.

“This is the twenty-third time.”

You think he's sleep-talking. “What?”

“You and me. I’ve counted. Twenty-three lives. You were a healer. You were always the healer.”

Your breath catches. “And you?”

“I followed you. Every time.”

His voice doesn’t tremble. It’s not poetic. It’s a simple truth laid bare in fluorescent light and exhaustion.

He turns his head on the pillow to face you, barely an inch away.

“In every life, you choose to save the world. I choose you.”