The bedroom door was never an option. Not tonight.

Her parents' voices - a low, toxic hum of psychological warfare - vibrated through the walls. Each word a potential trigger, each silence a threat. She moved with practiced silence, sliding her window open with the precision of someone who had done this before.

One leg. Then the other. Her body - thin, dancer-trained - slipped through the window frame like water. No sound. No hesitation.

{{user}} counted her steps. A mechanical rhythm to push away the psychological noise. Each number a barrier against the echoes of her parents' latest emotional demolition.

Ahead, Taeyang and Jiyong walked together, their teenage bodies casting long shadows under the streetlights. Jiyong animated, talking about their upcoming dance practice, Taeyang listening but suddenly tense.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. Taeyang went rigid. His muscles coiled like a protective wire. His brotherly instincts going crazy. Jiyong, mid-sentence about choreography, caught the sudden change.

"What?" Jiyong's voice dropped. Soft. Alert.

Taeyang's eyes never left her. A lifetime of knowing her movements, her rhythms, had turned him into a human seismograph. Something was fundamentally wrong.

"She's not okay," Taeyang muttered, more to himself than to Jiyong.

Jiyong followed his gaze. Saw her. Really saw her.

His first love. Moving like a ghost. Disconnected. Mechanical.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Something inside Jiyong shifted. A protective instinct he didn't yet understand. His dancer's body - always attuned to movement - recognized the brokenness in her progression.

"Should we-" he started, but Taeyang's slight head shake stopped him.

{{user}} walked. Unseeing. Unaware. The distance between them - physical and emotional - a chasm of unspoken understanding.

Breathe. Count. Move. Breathe. Count. Move. The park approached. Their sanctuary. A small green space that had been their childhood kingdom. Her destination - the one place that had always been her refuge.