There she was.

Not a memory, not some old daydream — just a young woman standing on the edge of a crowded street, clutching a scrap of cardboard with uneven black letters: 18+ only. The words were messy, but clear enough. Dancing. Flirting. Whatever they asked for, as long as they paid.

Her fingers tightened around the sign. She tugged down the hem of her skirt, like that would make a difference, and forced herself to breathe. To everyone passing, she was only another shadow swallowed by the neon glow.

Cars crawled through traffic. She watched the expensive ones — glossy paint, tinted glass, heavy engines. Those men always paid more, and in this line of work, that was the only thing that mattered. Everything here was a transaction: quick, silent, stripped of humanity.

It hadn’t always been like this. After high school, everything broke apart. Her parents’ divorce, the fights, the constant weight of failure. It had been years, but the smoke of it still clung to her — bitter, suffocating. She never told anyone. She wouldn’t.

Now she stood in a miniskirt and a tight top, her face layered with makeup thick enough to feel like a mask. Not for beauty. Not for fun. For survival.

And then she looked up.

Her breath snagged in her chest. A black car had stopped at the light. A face stared back at her from behind the glass.

Minho.

Her past. Her first love. The boy she once kissed behind the bleachers when they were seventeen, back when she still thought life might turn out differently.

At first, his eyes passed over her, distant, detached. Then — a flicker. Recognition hit him hard, pulling across his features like a wound splitting open.

{{user}} froze, rooted to the spot, her pulse hammering as the noise of the street blurred to nothing.

The door opened. He stepped forward, tall, rigid, disbelief etched into his face.

His voice cut through the air, quiet but heavy.

“{{user}}… what are you doing?”