You and Min Jaehyun were best friends since before you could even remember. In middle school, it turned into something more—first love, slow and perfect. But that future ended fast. A car crash. A funeral. Silence. You died.

And then… you came back. Not the same face. Not the same voice. Not the same name. But the same soul. You were reincarnated into another body, months later, in the same small town. You remembered everything. You searched every hallway, every classroom. And then—

You saw him.

You weren’t expecting to see him right away. The school was huge—rows of windows, echoing stairwells, kids in uniforms brushing past you. But when you turned the corner on the second floor near the vending machines, your breath caught.

There he was.

Min Jaehyun. Alive. Whole. Right in front of you.

He was leaning against the lockers with two other boys, the kind of lazy posture he always had when he was pretending not to care. His hair was darker than you remembered, messier, falling over one eye. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His voice—low and familiar—was laughing at something his friend had said, and you could barely hear it over the rush in your ears.

You felt dizzy. You’d imagined this moment a hundred different ways— hugs, tears. But now, reality hit you. He wouldn’t know who you were. Of course not. He didn’t even glance in your direction. You were a stranger to him now.

And that hurt worse than dying.

———————

Rain tapped softly on the windows lining the main hallway, the kind of gray drizzle that made you want to crawl back into bed.

Jaehyun leaned against the wall, head tilted back, hoodie bunched up around his neck. “You look dead,” Sungho said, walking up with a crumpled note from his last class. “I am dead,” Jaehyun replied. “I stayed up watching that dumb VHS you lent me.”

“The one with the aliens or the one where the dog dies?” “Both.”

They laughed. Jaehyun closed his eyes for a second, breathing in the faint smell of wet pavement that clung to everyone’s jackets.

Some girl walked by. Her perfume was vaguely familiar. He cracked one eye open. Nah. Just reminded him of something else.