Chapter Text
It was the happiest day of Beomgyu's life.
He had worn a white blazer, white pants, a cream shirt underneath. Jaewon stood beside him in all black — blazer, pants, ivory shirt. Their pocket squares matched. A small detail that Beomgyu had obsessed over for weeks, that now felt like the most important thing in the world.
Han Jaewon was his husband. After two years of dating, they had tied the knot. Beomgyu had married the love of his life.
Now he stood on the balcony in his post-wedding haze, a wine glass loose in his hand, looking out at the city sprawled below the venue. The lights were just beginning to blur gold against a darkening sky. Tranquil. Perfect. His.
He took another sip.
"Beomie baby." Jaewon's voice drifted from behind him, smooth as always. "I wanted to talk to you about something."
Better be the honeymoon plans. Beomgyu smiled to himself. "I'm here!"
He turned around. Jaewon was already crossing the balcony toward him, closing the distance in a few easy strides. He stopped right in front of Beomgyu, tipped his chin up, and kissed him — soft, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world.
"There you are," Jaewon murmured against his lips.
Beomgyu laughed a little. "Where were you?"
"A quick word with Woobin." Jaewon pulled back, just barely. His eyes were unreadable in the low light — but they always were, sometimes. Beomgyu had learned not to look too hard. "He mentioned something interesting."
The smile on Beomgyu's face stayed in place through sheer habit. "Oh?"
"Something about a new project." A pause. "And something that someone discovered while working on it."
Beomgyu's grip tightened on the wine glass. "I was going to talk to you about it," he said carefully. "I just needed a little more time to—"
"Oh, baby." Jaewon's voice was warm. Gentle. "It's okay."
The tension in Beomgyu's chest loosened. Of course. Of course it was okay. This was Jaewon — his Jaewon, who had kissed him on a rainy Tuesday for no reason and remembered how he liked his coffee and slow-danced with him in the kitchen at 2AM. The worst possible outcome wasn't real. It had never been real. He had been paranoid, and now they could figure it out together, and—
The push came without warning.
One moment Beomgyu was standing. The next he wasn't.
The wine glass shattered somewhere below him. He hit the railing wrong, the breath knocked clean out of him, and then there was nothing beneath his feet, and he was falling—
He caught a last glimpse of Jaewon's face over the ledge. The warmth was gone. What replaced it was something Beomgyu had no word for — not rage, not hatred, something quieter and more deliberate than either. A smile that had nothing behind it.
"I need you to be quiet, you see. Can't have anyone know about this," Jaewon said pleasantly. Almost apologetic. Then he stepped back from the ledge and was gone.
Beomgyu hit the ground.
It was warm at first — the spreading heat of his own blood, pooling dark beneath the white blazer. Then it became cold. Then it became nothing at all, just a slow dimming at the edges of everything, like someone turning down the lights in a room he was leaving.
I shouldn't have trusted him.
I shouldn't have fallen in love with him.
If only I could go back. If only I could go back to before I knew him. If only I hadn't—
Dark.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Beomgyu woke up in a cold sweat.
He sat upright, gasping, one hand clutching the sheets before his brain had even caught up with the rest of him. His alarm was screaming. His heart was screaming louder. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand with shaking hands, switched it off, and sat there in the ringing silence.
Okay. He pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum. Okay. Breathe.
A dream. It was a dream. Of course it had to have been a dream, because the alternative was—
He looked around.
His old apartment. The one he'd given up the lease on, eighteen months ago, when he moved into Jaewon's place in Hannam-dong. The water stain above the window that the landlord never fixed. The desk he'd found at a secondhand market. His guitar propped against the wall in the corner.
He should be in a hospital, if he was anywhere at all. Or he should be dead.
Neither of those options explained this.
Beomgyu looked down at his phone again, slow, the way you look at something when you already suspect you won't like what you find.
18 August 2023.
He stared at it for a long time. Long enough that the screen dimmed and went dark, his own reflection staring back at him from the black glass — pale, sleep-wrinkled, alive.
Two years ago.
His wedding had been in 2025. He knew that. He knew the date printed on every invitation, on the cake topper Yeonjun had made fun of, on the reservation at the venue. August 14th, 2025. He knew because he had spent the last two years of his life counting toward it.
And now his phone said 2023, and he was in an apartment he no longer owned, and his chest didn't hurt at all.
Beomgyu got up. Walked to the bathroom on autopilot. Gripped the edge of the sink and looked at himself in the mirror for a very long time.
No wounds. No blood. The white blazer was nowhere. He was wearing an old oversized shirt he distinctly remembered leaving behind when he moved out.
He turned on the cold tap and splashed water on his face. Once. Twice.
Think.
He remembered the balcony. He remembered the wine glass. He remembered Jaewon's face — that smile, that empty, courteous smile, like Beomgyu was a small administrative problem he was resolving. He remembered the cold.
He remembered the files, too. The ones he'd found buried in the archive three months ago, the ones he'd spent weeks trying to convince himself had an innocent explanation, the ones he had almost brought to Jaewon on a Tuesday night before he lost his nerve.
He should have lost his nerve sooner. Or later. Or differently.
Beomgyu straightened up. Dried his face. Looked at himself in the mirror one more time.
18 August 2023. The morning after his first official date with Han Jaewon. He remembered it — waking up giddy, embarrassingly happy, replaying every moment of the evening over his coffee.
That was two years ago. And now he was here, in his old life, with everything he knew sitting heavy and awful in his chest like a stone.
If only I could go back, he had thought, falling.
Beomgyu let out a long, slow breath.
Okay, he thought. Okay.
He went and sat on the edge of his bed. Picked up his phone. There were already two texts from Jaewon — charming, light, the morning-after messages of a man who had just had a wonderful first date and had no idea he was texting someone who had watched him smile while committing murder.
Beomgyu read them. Set the phone face-down on the mattress.
He sat there quietly for a moment, staring at the water stain above the window.
Then he started making a list.