Ji-hoon had never truly known what goodbyes felt like. Not the kind you say at airports or at the end of awkward family dinners. He had known abandonment. He had known silence. He had known absence in the form of cold coffee cups and piano benches still holding the heat of someone who'd been sitting there just minutes before. But a true goodbye? A real, irreversible letting go—kissed into finality like the closing of a score? No. Not until that night.
The sky outside the conservatory was soaked in midnight hues, but Ji-hoon didn't need to see it. He could hear the way the wind stirred in erratic pulses, like a conductor trying to keep pace with a broken orchestra. He stood at the edge of the rooftop garden, where the air always smelled faintly of lavender and wet stone. Below him, Seoul stretched endlessly—a maze of city lights too far to touch and too dim to guide him home.
Hye-jin was standing just a few feet away, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, not because of the cold, but as if she were holding herself together. Her voice had cracked minutes ago—fragile, shaken, like a violin string pulled too tightly. She had told him she was leaving. Not forever. Not because of hate. But because something inside her had splintered, and she needed to find the pieces alone.
Ji-hoon could still hear her words echoing like chords he couldn't play.
"Every time I try to help you, Ji-hoon… it feels like I'm playing against a wall. You don't let me in—not really. You bleed in silence, and I can't be the only one trying to stop it. I'm tired of pretending I'm okay watching you self-destruct."
He wanted to scream that he never meant to push her away. That her presence had been the only clarity in the haze of his grief, the only harmony in the discord of his unraveling life. But his mouth wouldn't move. His body betrayed him. The only sound he managed was the shaky breath of someone trying not to fall apart.
She stepped closer, her footsteps soft against the gravel path, her scent a whisper of rosewater and the rain that still clung to her coat. Ji-hoon didn't need sight to sense the weight of her gaze on him—full of anger, love, disappointment, and longing all braided into one impossible emotion.
"I waited, you know," she said softly. "I waited for you to talk to me. To cry. To say her name without flinching. To stop pretending your pain made you invincible. But instead, you locked the door and set yourself on fire inside."
He opened his mouth to apologize. To beg. But she cut the distance between them in one breath and placed her hand against his chest, fingers trembling over his heart.
"This isn't about who's to blame," she whispered. "It's about what we became."
Ji-hoon felt his hands rise to cover hers. He found her fingers—slender, calloused from years of violin—and held them like they were the last notes he'd ever play. He didn't know how to say the right thing. The words lived inside him, but they were out of tune, muffled behind memories of blood, glass, and the scent of cologne he could never forget.
So he did the only thing left that didn't require sight or perfect pitch.
He leaned forward, and his forehead touched hers. And then he kissed her.
It wasn't a kiss that begged for another. It didn't scream passion or desperation. It was quiet. Like a piano's soft pedal pressed beneath a song too painful to end. Their lips met, and time blurred—seconds folding into memories, pain threading through affection, unsaid apologies humming between heartbeats.
It was a kiss like goodbye.
Her tears hit his skin like summer rain. He tasted salt and sorrow and the echo of what could have been. Her lips trembled against his, and then she pulled back—not harshly, not dramatically—just enough.
"I love you," she said, voice breaking. "But sometimes love isn't enough when the war inside you keeps pulling the trigger."
Ji-hoon reached out again, his hands following the shape of her jaw, memorizing her features with the desperation of someone who knew he wouldn't touch them again. He wanted to tell her that her love had been a lighthouse in his storm, that she had been the only thing keeping his music alive. But he knew saying it now would only chain her to a place she was trying to leave.
So instead, he whispered her name like a requiem. "Hye-jin."
She took a step back.
Then another.
And another.
And with each movement, it felt like the world was peeling apart at the seams.
Ji-hoon didn't follow. He stood still, letting her absence fill the space like silence after the final note. Letting the night close in around him, wrapping his loneliness in its bitter embrace.
Somewhere in the distance, a car engine started. And just like that, she was gone.
He turned his face to the sky, letting the cold bite his cheeks, wishing for rain that didn't come. His heart pounded like a frantic drum solo—wild, broken, and without tempo.
He hadn't known what goodbye felt like.
Now he did.
And it kissed like heartbreak.
The night felt endless. Ji-hoon didn't move for what felt like an hour. The rooftop was empty now, and all he could hear was the distant thrum of traffic far below, the sighing of the wind through the gaps in the railing, and his own heartbeat—loud, uneven, echoing in the space Hye-jin had just vacated. Her warmth was still in the air, faint like the remnants of perfume in an empty room, lingering where her presence had once been. His fingers felt cold. His lips colder.
He hated himself for not stopping her.
He hated himself for knowing she had to leave.
Ji-hoon turned, stumbling back toward the stairwell, one hand dragging across the wall like he needed to feel something solid. The door groaned open and slammed behind him with a violence that made him flinch. The echo of it seemed to mock him—final, unflinching, irreversible.
He made it back to his apartment, which felt emptier than ever. He didn't bother turning on the lights. What was the point? Darkness didn't frighten him. He lived in it. But now it felt different—heavier. A thick, suffocating thing pressing against his chest like grief made tangible.
He dropped his cane by the door and staggered toward the piano. His sanctuary. His prison. His weapon. His wound.
He sat down, fingers hovering over the keys like they didn't belong to him. He didn't want to play. He wanted to scream. He wanted to destroy the music that had cursed his life, that had buried him in applause while everything he loved fell apart behind the curtain.
And yet… he pressed one key.
C.
The sound trembled through the air, soft, lonely.
Then another.
E.
Then another.
G.
A broken C major chord, hollow and unconvincing. Like hope whispered through clenched teeth. He played again, faster, harder. Then a wrong note. Then another. His hands clenched into fists and he slammed them down on the keys, the sound jarring and chaotic, a war cry of the voiceless.
He stood up so fast the bench clattered behind him. He paced, bumping into the wall, not caring. He knocked over a lamp, sent a pile of music sheets scattering across the floor like shredded wings.
"She loved you," he muttered to himself. "She f**king loved you and you let her go."
His voice cracked. His legs buckled, and he sat on the cold floor, shaking. He couldn't cry. The tears never came. They stayed locked behind whatever wall he had built years ago. The only thing that escaped was sound—a hoarse, broken gasp like a dying note.
She had been the only person to see him. Not just as the prodigy. Not just as the blind pianist. But as a boy who had lost too much and clung to his music like it was oxygen. Hye-jin had given him something no audience ever could—her raw, unfiltered truth. She hadn't clapped for him because she was impressed. She had stayed because she believed he could be more than his pain. More than his trauma.
But he'd pushed her. Every time she got close, he stiffened. He answered her questions with silence. He flinched when she touched his scars. And now… now all he had left of her was that final kiss.
That kiss.
His fingers drifted to his lips like they could somehow replay the moment. He had kissed her like someone who already knew it would be the last. He hadn't realized until now how much he wanted it to mean something more. A promise. A chance. A bridge back to her.
But she had kissed him like goodbye.
Ji-hoon stood again, slower this time. He moved back to the piano, sat down with the weight of someone much older. He placed his fingers on the keys, and this time he didn't play to be heard.
He played to remember her.
The melody was soft. Unfinished. An improvisation that bloomed like a fading memory. Her laughter in the rehearsal room. The way she scolded him for skipping meals. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she got nervous. The way her voice cracked when she told him she was tired of waiting for him to open up. It was all there, tucked between the notes, filling the room like a haunting. A requiem not just for her presence, but for what they never got to be.
He played until his hands ached.
He played until his shoulders shook from the weight of everything he couldn't say.
He played until dawn lit the windows with pale, watery light he couldn't see.
And then he stopped.
Silence fell.
And this time, it screamed.
He lowered the lid of the piano with a gentleness that felt like grief. And he sat there, unmoving, for a long time.
The next few days passed in blurs. People came and went. The detective. Si-wan's assistant. Chan-gyu with his arrogant comments. Seol-ah watching him too closely. But Hye-jin didn't call. She didn't message. She didn't even leave a note. She had made her decision. And Ji-hoon knew better than to chase someone who had already crossed the finish line.
But her absence hollowed him. It was a wound that didn't bleed, but throbbed constantly. He went to rehearsals like a ghost. He answered questions like a robot. But the music sounded different. Emptier. He had always played with precision, with passion even. But now there was something else underneath the notes. A sorrow too deep to hide.
One day, as he finished a performance, the applause roared. And he bowed, face tilted to where he imagined the audience stood.
But inside, he felt nothing.
The encore came.
They always demanded it.
But he hesitated. For the first time in his career, he sat in front of the piano and didn't know what to play. His hands hovered, trembled.
And then… he played her song.
The one he had made for her that night she left.
It was raw. It wasn't perfect. But it was honest.
And as the last note faded into the silence, he stood and whispered, to no one in particular:
"That was for someone I never got to keep."
No one asked what he meant.
But in that silence… in that final pause before the lights dimmed and the crowd rose to leave… he swore he felt her.
Somewhere.
Listening.
And even if she never returned…
Even if she never heard his name again…
She would always have that song.
His kiss like goodbye.
And in the end, it would be the most honest thing he ever gave her.
The audience faded. Ji-hoon stood backstage, the heat of the stage lights still clinging to his skin like sweat, even though he hadn't broken a sweat during the performance. He hadn't needed to. Everything he had was poured into that last piece, and now there was nothing left. Not even a flicker of his usual post-show buzz. He felt stripped, emptied out, as if the music had been pulled from his ribs rather than the piano.
Joon-won found him alone, slumped on a folding chair in the shadows, still in his performance wear—black suit, black shirt, no tie, like he'd dressed for mourning instead of applause. And maybe he had.
"I heard what you played," Joon-won said quietly, kneeling beside him, voice soft but urgent. "That wasn't on the setlist."
Ji-hoon tilted his head slightly. "Neither was goodbye."
Joon-won didn't answer immediately. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. "You can't keep doing this. Burning yourself into these performances. That wasn't music, Ji-hoon. That was grief with keys."
"Isn't that what all music is?" Ji-hoon murmured, fingers twitching like they still ached to press something, like they weren't done yet. "A eulogy. A scream we call art."
"You're falling apart." The words landed hard. No dressing, no sugar. Just Joon-won, cutting to the truth the way only someone who loved him could. "And you think no one sees it because you don't. But I do. Everyone does."
Ji-hoon didn't reply. What could he say? That he knew? That he felt it too? The splintering, the unraveling of the person he used to be? That every day he felt further from the boy who used to find joy in a single note, who used to play because it felt like freedom?
"There's something else," Joon-won added after a long silence. "You got a letter."
Ji-hoon's head turned at that, the faintest shift of tension running through his frame. "From who?"
Joon-won paused. "Hye-jin."
He held it out. Ji-hoon reached for it, his hands brushing paper gently, like it might crumble under the weight of touch. He held it to his chest for a second before setting it carefully beside him. He wouldn't read it. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never.
"You're not curious?" Joon-won asked, not hiding the disbelief in his tone.
"I'm scared," Ji-hoon admitted, voice raw. "Of what it says. Of what it doesn't."
Joon-won nodded like he understood. "When my dad left, he didn't even give me that. No words. Just silence. I think I hated that more than I hated him."
Silence hung between them again, heavier this time. Ji-hoon finally spoke, quietly: "She kissed me."
Joon-won's brow furrowed. "When?"
"Before she left. On the rooftop." He tilted his head back, as if the ceiling might offer answers. "It didn't feel like a beginning. It felt like closure she didn't want to say out loud."
"She loved you," Joon-won said, sure as stone.
"I know." Ji-hoon's voice cracked. "That's the part that hurts the most."
He stayed sitting long after Joon-won left, fingers eventually brushing the envelope again. He didn't open it. He memorized the weight of it. The texture of the paper. The way her handwriting curled his name like it was something precious.
That night, he lay in bed unable to sleep. Images of her—smiling, crying, laughing, angry—flickered behind his eyes. He didn't need sight to see her. She was etched in his memory like braille on skin. He turned to the letter again. Still untouched. Still daring him.
He finally broke the seal.
There was no perfume. No dramatic flourish. Just ink and honesty.
Ji-hoon,
I wasn't brave enough to say everything in person, and maybe you weren't ready to hear it. But you should. Because even if we never see each other again, I need you to carry this truth with you.
I didn't walk away because I stopped caring. I walked away because you stopped letting me in. And I was bleeding out trying to hold the pieces of you together.
You carry so much pain, and you wear it like armor. But love doesn't ask you to bleed to be beautiful. Love just asks you to be.
I never wanted to fix you. I just wanted to stand beside you while you healed yourself.
But you wouldn't let me.
I don't regret loving you. I only regret not telling you sooner that I did. That I do.
Take care of your music, Ji-hoon. But take better care of your heart.
Hye-jin
The paper slipped from his fingers, falling to his chest. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. She had written the truth he'd been too afraid to speak. Every line was a mirror he didn't want to look into.
He folded the letter back up, neatly, tenderly, and placed it inside a book of compositions—her favorite one.
The next morning, he went to rehearsal.
Chan-gyu was there, smirking as usual. "Finally decided to show up? Wasn't sure your little heartbreak would let you out of bed."
Ji-hoon ignored him. He sat at the piano.
Then, before anyone could stop him, he began to play.
But this time, it wasn't sorrow. It wasn't grief. It was something else. Something raw, yes—but powerful. Hopeful, even. The kind of piece that sounded like it had been played in a war zone and still survived. The kind that crawled from wreckage and stood again.
He played for Hye-jin.
He played for Joon-won.
He played for the version of himself that used to believe healing was impossible.
And when the last note settled into silence, Ji-hoon sat back.
His chest was heaving.
His hands were shaking.
But for the first time in a long time…
He smiled.