“Do you have an ex-girlfriend?” I asked before I could stop myself, my voice coming out quieter than I intended.

Heeseung’s lips curved into a smile—small, bittersweet, the kind of smile that carried weight. “Unfortunately… yes.”

The words twisted something inside me. “Why did you guys break up?”

For a long moment, he didn’t answer. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping against the wooden table as if searching for the right words. When he finally spoke, his voice was heavy, low.

“Actually… we never broke up.”

I frowned, confusion tightening in my chest. “Then… how is she your ex-girlfriend?”

The accident had never really ended for Heeseung.

Even now, years later, he still woke up drenched in sweat, the echo of screeching tires lodged inside his skull. Some nights he could still taste the copper tang of blood in his mouth, could still feel the jagged glass cutting into his skin as he clawed his way towards her in the wreckage.

Her blood had been everywhere—on his shirt, on his hands, staining the dashboard. She had been barely breathing, her lips moving soundlessly, her eyes fluttering shut as he screamed her name again and again until his throat tore.

He should’ve protected her. He should’ve taken the other road. He should’ve driven slower.

The guilt never left him. It was stitched into his bones, carved into every heartbeat.

When the doctors told him she had survived, he dropped to his knees in the hospital hallway and wept until his body shook. He thought it was over—that he had been given a second chance.

But when she opened her eyes, looked at him, and asked, “Who are you?”—that was the moment he truly died.

Heeseung carried the weight of her memory loss like a curse. She smiled at him politely, like he was just another stranger. She no longer reached for his hand, no longer called his name the way she once did. The girl who had been his entire world was gone, and yet she was still right there—breathing, existing, but unreachable.

To her, he was nothing. To him, she was still everything.

So when she asked him in that quiet café, her voice light, innocent, “Do you have an ex-girlfriend?”—he forced a smile.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Her brows furrowed. “Why did you break up?”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell her that fate had ripped them apart, that every night he begged the universe to give her memories back, even if it cost him his own. But instead, he whispered,

“Actually… we never broke up.”

Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Then how is she your ex-girlfriend?”

His chest ached so deeply it hurt to breathe. The truth was cruel, but he gave it anyway, because it was the only way he could love her without breaking her.