“…Give up.”
He murmured in a low voice. I had expected him to say something resolute—something about how we must try no matter what to find the right answer. It was unexpected.
I lowered my gaze and clamped my mouth shut. There was no way I could just give up on Min Yugeon that easily.
Sun Woosung, who had been quietly watching me, finally spoke.
“If it’s something you can give up on… then with time, no matter the situation, you eventually adapt.”
His words felt like they came from experience. I turned my eyes to his face.
“Colonel… have you ever given something up before?”
The moment I asked, it struck me how obvious the question sounded. Everyone gives up on something, big or small, at some point in their life.
Sun Woosung gave a small nod as he casually sorted the first aid kit.
“Yes.”
There was no hesitation, no sign of conflict about whether or not he should say it. He spoke of a heavy subject with quiet composure.
“There was a teammate who gave up his life in my place. On my very first mission.”
“…!”
“Since that day, whenever I fell asleep, he would appear in my dreams.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed. His voice, dry and cracked, delivered his past like brittle paper.
“He’d just stand there, silently watching me, as if asking what I felt when I looked at him. Honestly, I would’ve preferred if he screamed at me or cursed me out.”
His voice was flat, but the weight of guilt laced through it was undeniable.
“In the end, I started looking for a way to stop dreaming altogether… but I failed.”
A nightmare like being trapped underwater—suffocating, struggling, but never able to escape.
I knew exactly what that felt like. My fingertips turned cold.
He must’ve tried everything. But avoiding sleep meant his condition would have worsened, interfering with missions and training. And even if he tried medical treatment to deal with it, it clearly hadn’t worked. When his body couldn’t hold out anymore, he would’ve closed his eyes—but that’s probably when the intentional insomnia began.
“I gradually got used to the situation. And after that, my chaotic mind became… a little clearer.”
His tone wasn’t light. There was no sense of liberation or peace. I could still see how the weight of a life lost in his stead was crushing him to this day.
Sun Woosung shifted his gaze into the void. A shadow of something dark passed over his face.
“I should’ve accepted it from the beginning… but I kept trying to avoid it, just for my own mental comfort.”
“……”
“Pathetically so.”
His dark eyes, tinged with self-mockery, stared at me. For a moment, the man who always seemed so composed looked terribly fragile.
“I don’t agree with you, Colonel.”
At last, I forced myself to speak.
“Being tormented by the memory of someone who’s gone doesn’t automatically make you responsible. If he truly wanted you to suffer that way, he wouldn’t have chosen to leave in your place.”
Sun Woosung’s eyes widened at my words.
He looked at me like he’d just been stunned.
…Did I speak too bluntly?
He stared at me in silence for a long moment, like he was trying to bore through my thoughts. I couldn’t tell if something within him had been shaken or if he was simply caught off guard.
“If I overstepped—”
“No.”
His reply came even before I could finish my apology.
“I just… never thought about it that way before.”
His eyes wavered subtly, clouded by a storm of emotion.
Maybe someone close to him had said something like that before. But it didn’t seem like he’d ever actively sought out someone to talk to. Even if he had received medical care, he probably hadn’t shared his full story with the professionals treating him.
He’d kept it bottled up. Endured it all alone. And in the end, convinced himself that giving up was the only answer.
That’s why he told me to give up—because when he chose to adapt instead of struggling, it felt like the better choice.
Even if our situations were different.
“……”
Like Sun Woosung, I too drifted into my own thoughts.
Accepting the situation, just as he had said…
Even if Min Yugeon never came back.
Even if things ended with nothing between us.
Maybe just quietly going along with the current would be better—more dignified—than clinging to him shamelessly.
I toyed with my watch and slowly lowered my eyelids.
Just entertaining that thought made my head throb, as if my mind was rejecting it with disgust.
***
When he brought Seo Suho, who had expressed curiosity about the outside world, up to the highest level of the ship, Min Yugeon’s heart pounded uncontrollably. Seo Suho looked so breathtakingly unreal.
His jet-black hair, always so dark, shimmered into shades of brown under the sunlight, and the golden flecks in his eyes—previously only noticeable in pitch-black darkness—now spread and gleamed brightly across his entire gaze. His pale skin glowed so luminously it seemed like he might dissolve into the light at any moment.
Unlike Seo Suho, who leaned against the wall and looked up at the sky, Min Yugeon couldn’t take his eyes off him. He looked so mesmerizing that even a second spent looking away felt wasteful.
Seo Suho turned to him. Their eyes met naturally. Min Yugeon had just started to relax his furrowed brow, squinting against the brightness, and was about to smile—
—if not for the tears that welled up and fell from Seo Suho’s eyes, one after another.
“…!”
Min Yugeon froze.
His body moved before he could even think. He rushed forward and gently cupped Seo Suho’s face. He opened his mouth to ask why he was crying—
—but then stopped.
No sound came out.
“Min Yugeon.”
Seo Suho’s voice rang clearly. He placed his hands over Min Yugeon’s, letting the tears stream freely down his cheeks.
…But had Seo Suho ever cried like this before—so sorrowfully, looking at him as if overcome with resentment?
Min Yugeon distinctly remembered him crying like he wasn’t quite in his right mind. But this… this was different.
“Is it true?”
Seo Suho’s voice trembled.
“Is it really…”
“…”
“Your father… killed my parents?”
Min Yugeon’s eyes flew open in shock.
And in the same instant, the ground dropped out beneath him.
“Seo Suho…!”
His mouth moved desperately, his hand reaching out—but it was no use. Seo Suho’s form receded in an instant, and the tear that had clung to the tip of his chin fell straight down with Min Yugeon.
Endless freefall.
“Huh—!”
He jolted awake, gasping, hand flung toward the ceiling.
His eyes darted around wildly. The room wasn’t unfamiliar, but it no longer felt safe. Beyond that door was a house that now only inspired dread—a place where Seo Suho was gone and only his wretched parents remained.
Bent over, Min Yugeon clutched at his chest, trying to catch his breath.
Right after hearing the whole truth from Lee Minha, he’d blinked like an idiot, stunned. At first, it was so unbelievable he’d let out a laugh. And then, rage—hot and overwhelming—swelled through him like his entire body had been set on fire.
No amount of screaming, no level of destruction, could possibly relieve that fury.
Crying and sobbing, laughing or wailing—he couldn’t even tell what sound was coming from his mouth anymore. His tears flowed uncontrollably. His mother had looked frightened, a flash of terror in her expression as if worried her son had lost his mind.
And for the first time, Min Yugeon thought—she had every right to be afraid.
He even briefly wanted to make her fears come true.
Because maybe being out of his mind was better.
…Min Sanghan had killed Seo Suho’s parents.
Whether he liked it or not, Min Sanghan was his father.
Min Yugeon didn’t want to accept either of those facts. They made him want to go mad.
“……”
Gripping his face as if to tear it off, Min Yugeon ground his teeth. His bloodshot eyes, ready to bleed, glared into empty space.
Why had he ever underestimated it—Min Sanghan’s selfishness, his greed, his inhuman cruelty, his shamelessness toward a child who wouldn’t bend to his will?
The answer was simple. He had never imagined that even someone like that would go as far as to harm someone.
“How could this happen? How could it?”
He hadn’t thought those sobs were fake.
“Suho, if you need anything, just tell me, okay?”
He’d come to visit Seo Suho in his time of hardship, even under Min Yugeon’s glare. That, at the very least, seemed to show some shred of human decency.
But it had all been a lie.
“Director Min takes good care of me. Don’t worry about me—just focus on adjusting to the center.”
The words Seo Suho had spoken, watching Min Yugeon’s reactions…
“My parents’ project finally got approved. Director Min must’ve convinced them well.”
It was only because he’d been taken in by Min Sanghan’s deception that he could speak so casually like that.
Sitting in the director’s chair, a position earned by eliminating his rivals, and being called “uncle” by Seo Suho—the son of the very people he murdered—Min Sanghan was nothing short of a monster wearing human skin.
Min Yugeon’s stomach churned.
“Urgh…!”
He stumbled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, collapsing in front of the toilet and vomiting.
When he was finally done retching, his body drenched in cold sweat, he lay limp on the floor, the chill of the tiles stealing the warmth from his body as he closed his eyes.
