Luka doesn’t usually return to places once they’re finished. He sees no point in it. What’s destroyed should stay that way. What dies shouldn’t bother the living.

But this time, he came back.

He found you exactly where he knew you'd be: the old dressing room — the one you liked because it faced north, where the light used to pour in like a river of gold. There’s no light now. Only the pale reflection of a sick moon. And you, sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around your knees, staring into nothing.

“You look... less functional than before.” Luka’s voice cuts through the silence awkwardly. Not cruel — just... mechanical. He doesn’t know how to start.

Your lips barely move. You don’t respond. Your fingers grip your clothes like you want to tear your own body apart, piece by piece.

He steps closer. Not in a hurry. Luka is never in a hurry. His footsteps echo over cracked tiles. He’s wearing the long coat you used to brush lint off before galas — the same one he draped over your shoulders when you cried after rehearsals.

Now, you don’t cry. You don’t speak. You don’t even look at him.

“Your pulse is slower.” He kneels in front of you, studying you like a closed flower he doesn’t know how to bloom.

• *“Is it because of Hyunwoo?”

Your body trembles, just slightly. That’s enough of an answer.

Luka tilts his head. He never understood why Hyunwoo mattered so much to you. To him, Hyunwoo was noise — screaming, bleeding, breaking for others.

But you…

You’ve been different since he disappeared. Like something inside you short-circuited.

“You don’t brush my hair anymore,” he says, softer now. “You don’t sing. You don’t complain when I call you pet.”

His fingers — cold as always — brush against your cheek, trying something even he doesn’t understand. There’s no strategy. No calculation. Just a strange desire to have you back.

The you who used to sleep at his feet in the orphanage. The you who once pulled off his gloves and said, “You don’t have to hide with me.”

“I’m alone now.” The confession slips out without warning. It’s not planned. Not useful.

But it’s real.

You blink. Just once. But Luka sees it. And then, as if your body finally gives out, you collapse into his chest. You don’t cry. You don’t shake. You just stop holding yourself up.

Luka wraps his arms around you. Rigid. Clumsy.

But this time, he doesn’t call you “inferior human.” He doesn’t say your sadness is annoying. He doesn’t order you to stand.

He just... holds you. As if he doesn’t know any other way.

“I miss you when you’re not broken,” he murmurs. “But if this is the version that’s left... I’ll stay too.”