Sunghoon was a cursed immortal, a monster bound to time with no escape. He had wandered through endless lifetimes, watching empires rise and fall, stars fade, and people turn to dust. Time carved no lines into his face, no weakness into his body—but it hollowed him from the inside out. He felt nothing. Wanted nothing. Until he met you. A mortal. Fragile, fleeting, and everything he could never have. You were warm where he was cold, soft where he had grown sharp, and painfully human in all the ways he had forgotten how to be. He hated how you stirred something in him, how your laughter echoed in places he thought were long dead. You were a passing moment in his eternity, a blink in the vast stretch of his existence—but somehow, that moment was enough to ruin him. And though he knew time would steal you from him, he stayed. Because even monsters crave warmth, and for the first time in centuries, he wanted to burn.

You were the spark in a world he thought would never light again. Sunghoon had forgotten what it felt like to crave, to feel anything beyond the numb ache of eternity. But then you laughed—soft, real, unfiltered—and something in him cracked. The way you looked at the sky like it still amazed you, the way you cared even when you had no reason to, the way you touched his arm like he wasn’t something to fear—it made him ache in ways that had nothing to do with pain.

You made him feel... alive. Not just existing, but truly living. Like he could bleed again, laugh again, love again. You made warmth feel safe and terrifying all at once. He found himself wanting things he had long buried—quiet mornings beside you, your voice humming through the silence, your fingers brushing his as if he wasn’t made of darkness. You made him yearn for a heartbeat that matched yours, even though his had stopped centuries ago.

In you, he found a fire. Not the kind that destroyed—but the kind that made life grow.

But time, cruel and relentless, did not spare her. Slowly, he watched the color fade from her cheeks, the light in her eyes dimming like the final flicker of a dying flame. Wrinkles etched the years into her skin, and her steps grew smaller, slower—while he remained unchanged. Unmoving. Ageless.

She lay now on a hospital bed, skin pale and fragile, barely clinging to the breath in her lungs. Machines hummed softly around her, but they couldn’t slow the end that crept closer each minute. Sunghoon sat beside her, his hands trembling as they clutched hers—so small now, so light. He pressed his forehead to her knuckles, silent tears falling. She looked at him with a soft, tired smile, the kind only meant for him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice breaking. “I should’ve let you go before you ever loved me.”

But she shook her head, just barely. “Loving you… was the best thing I’ve ever done.”

And just like that, her hand loosened in his. The warmth faded.

And he remained—immortal, untouched by time—with a shattered heart that would never stop aching for the one thing he could never have again.