* * *
“Hah…!”
Kang Yigeon shot upright, gasping for breath. His entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
His heart was pounding violently, as if he had just plummeted into an endless abyss.
The throbbing headache was so severe he couldn’t even open his eyes properly.
Desperately, he reached for the nightstand.
His hand scrambled around until it grabbed a pill bottle.
He shook it into his palm, letting five or six pills tumble out, then swallowed them all at once without water.
“……”
As the headache eased slightly, he took a deep breath and slowly opened his eyes.
The bedroom, with its lights off, felt barren.
Aside from a small bedside table and a bed, there wasn’t even a potted plant in sight.
It was the same scene he had seen before falling asleep.
And yet, it felt unfamiliar.
‘Have I always lived in a place like this?’
Something was missing.
A sense of wrongness.
A deep feeling of loss.
This was his lifelong affliction—a haunting sensation that he had forgotten something utterly vital.
It felt as though he had permanently lost something he should never have let go of.
The reason he often woke with ragged breaths and shuddering in the middle of the night.
This overwhelming sense of loss had gripped his mind since childhood.
He had tried countless ways to overcome it, but every attempt had failed.
His hands trembled violently.
Kang Yigeon stared blankly at his empty palms.
He felt as though he had once held something in them, something incredibly important, but he couldn’t recall what it was.
‘What was it? Who are you? Why was I born with this unbearable sense of loss etched into my soul?’
That unknown something always dragged Kang Yigeon down into the depths—a boundless ocean of emptiness and loss where he sank endlessly.
* * *
Oh?? I’m excited!!
🙂👍