Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - Broken Postcards
The postcard arrives on a Thursday.
JiYong almost throws it out without looking-assuming it's fan mail, a PR stunt, another invitation to an event he won't attend. But something about the texture stops him. It's not glossy. It's matte, soft at the corners like it's been touched too many times.
No return address. No name. Just one word written in dark blue ink, a little shaky.
Encore.
That word punches something soft and rotting inside his chest.
He stands in the middle of the kitchen, barefoot, staring at it like it might light itself on fire. It doesn't. It just rests in his hand, silent and small, like a ghost of something once loud.
His breath hitches.
A memory slips in, uninvited.
The crowd had been a blur - an ocean of lights , screaming , movement . But JiYong had only been watching one person.
Seunghyun hadn't looked back at him once.
Not during "Haru Haru," not during "Last Dance," not even during "Still Life," when they were meant to turn to each other on the final note. JiYong had reached out. Just a glance. A touch. Seunghyun didn't take it.
He had smiled at the crowd , bowed like a prince , and walked off stage without waiting.
The last song still echoing behind him.
Backstage, JiYong had caught up to him. "You're really gonna leave like that?"
Seunghyun had looked at him-calm, tired. “Is there another way?"
And JiYong-stupid, furious, aching-had said nothing. Because every word he wanted to scream would've shattered them.
So he just watched him go.
JiYong blinks. The kitchen is quiet again.
He flips the card over. Nothing. Just the image of an old stone wall-temple ruins, maybe. There's a jagged crack across the center, like something split it in half. It feels like a metaphor. Too poetic. Too cruel.
Encore .
He whispers it aloud. The word tastes bitter.
He hasn't spoken to Seunghyun in four years. They didn't end with a bang. They ended with something worse- a silence so thick it swallowed every version of them that ever existed.
But this... this feels like a match struck in the dark.
And JiYong has always been too curious for his own good.
The next day, he books a train to Gyeongju.
He tells no one.
Not even his reflection.
The train hums beneath him, steady and constant, like it knows where it's going even if JiYong doesn't.
He watches the blur of countryside pass by the window-green hills stitched with power lines, sleepy towns, rice fields that ripple like water. Somewhere between Seoul and Gyeongju, the city starts to fall away. The silence settles in. He's always hated silence. It gives his thoughts too much room to grow teeth.
His fingers brush over the postcard again, tucked in the inside pocket of his coat. As if it might vanish if he stops touching it. As if it might disappear like everything else
He murmurs the word under his breath. "Encore."
It's French. He knows that. Again .
Another time. One more try.
Seunghyun had always loved that word. Not for the applause. Not for the performance. For what it meant the aching hope underneath it. That maybe, just maybe, something wasn't over yet.
"An encore means the audience wants more," Seunghyun had told him once, years ago, half-drunk in a recording studio lit only by neon signs and cigarette tips. "But sometimes it's not about them. Sometimes... it's about us not wanting to leave." JiYong had laughed, teasing. "Deep, hyung."
But Seunghyun hadn't smiled. He'd just looked at him with that faraway stare, always a little off-center, like he saw things JiYong never could.
"One day," he'd said, "we'll get one last chance to fix it. Whatever it is." JiYong had shrugged it off. Back then, there was nothing to fix.
Now?
Now he clings to that memory like it's gospel