Chapter Text
The morning was offensively beautiful.
Sunlight spilled across the glossy hood of a black sedan parked opposite a flower shop, bright enough to make the windows gleam. Five minutes later, the shopkeeper flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.
Inside the car, the dashboard clock blinked 9:30 A.M.
The engine had long since fallen silent. So had the man behind the wheel.
Riki rested the side of his head against the steering wheel, one hand still tangled in his own hair as though he'd been dragging his fingers through it for far too long. Dark strands stuck out in every direction, refusing to lie flat. Dark circles lingered beneath equally tired eyes.
His gaze was blank, bloodshot, and rimmed with red, unmistakable evidence that he had been crying. Dried tear tracks traced pale lines down his cheeks. Yet his eyes remained fixed on the florist who had just turned the OPEN sign, as though he were waiting for something more than the shop to open.
The confined space carried the unmistakable scent of earth moments before rain. Petrichor. It settled heavily around him, clinging to the leather seats as naturally as exhaustion clung to his bones. Beneath it lingered the sour edge of distress, no matter how desperately he tried to keep it contained.
Riki didn't move for a while, Just seating there in the overbearing silence. Outside, the city had already begun without him. People crossed the street with paper cups warming their hands. A mother laughed as her son tugges impatiently at her sleeve, eager to get to wherever children believed was worth running to. Cars rolled past in an endless procession, strangers chasing meetings, breakfast dates, late arrivals, ordinary inconveniences. Somewhere, someone was celebrating. Somewhere, another was falling in love.
Life, in all its cruel persistence, refused to wait. He watched it through the windshield as though there were glass between himself and the rest of the world.
Perhaps there always had been.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Nishimura Riki had once loved living more fiercely than anyone he had ever known. He loved sunrise patrols because they meant watching the city wake up. He loved stopping by convenience stores at impossible hours simply because the old cashier always remembered his coffee order. He loved long drives with no destination, music turned up loud enough to drown out the silence. He loved rainstorms, terrible movies, roadside ramen, and every insignificant thing people overlooked because someone had once taught him that an ordinary life was something to be treasured.
Now....
Now he worked until exhaustion blurred one day into the next. He volunteered for overtime no one asked him to take. Buried himself beneath reports, interviews, crime scene photographs, witness statements, and endless paperwork until the numbers on the clock lost their meaning. The younger detectives admired his dedication. None of them realized he simply had nowhere he wanted to be.
Sleep had become a stranger years ago. When it did come, it was shallow and unforgiving, lasting an hour if he was lucky before dragging him back to consciousness with memories that refuses to stay buried. On better nights, he stared at the ceiling until dawn. On worse ones, he climbed into his car and drove without purpose, convincing himself movement was enough to outrun what waited in the quiet. It never was.
His black button up was still the one he'd worn to work yesterday, wrinkled beyond saving and hanging untucked over equally rumpled slacks. The faint smell of alcohol clung stubbornly to the fabric. Somewhere near the passenger seat, an almost empty bottle lay on its side, the cap long since abandoned.
10 March, 2026.
Five year. Five years was long enough for buildings to be demolished and rebuilt. Long enough for children to learn how to read. Long enough for wounds to scar over. Long enough, people said, to heal.
What they never told him was that grief had no interest in healing. Grief was patient, it did not knock. It settled quietly inside his ribs on the day it found him, no larger than a seed. Everyone promised time would shrink it, wear away its edges until he could breathe without feeling its weight.
Instead, it rooted itself. It pushed through every corner of him with the slow certainty of ivy claiming an abandoned house. It wrapped itself around his heart until every beat belonged as much to grief as it did to him. It threaded through his lungs, making each breath just a little heavier than the last. It reached into his memories, flowering in places that had once been beautiful, until even happiness carried the taste of mourning.
There were days he almost forgot it was there. Then dates like today arrived. And the roots tightened. Until they reminded him that no matter how much of the man he had once been still existed, grief had become the only thing keeping the pieces together.
Riki blinked slowly, only then did he realize how badly his vision had blurred again.
A quiet, humorless laugh escaped him, ending in a sob.
He had thought he'd run out of tears sometime before dawn. After everything he'd cried into the silence of the morning, surely there couldn't have been any left.
Apparently, his tear ducts had signed themselves up for automatic renewal.
He dragged the heel of his palm beneath his eyes, smearing away the dampness before lifting his head.
A motorcycle sped past and for a split second, sunlight ricocheted off its side mirror, flooding the car with blinding white. Riki squeezed his eyes shut with a groan. When he opened them again - he was there.
Sitting in the passenger seat as though he'd never left. Blond hair caught the morning light, soft and familiar. Sharp eyes curved into that smile Riki had spent five years trying, and failing, to forget. His lips were still pink. Still impossibly alive.
Still beautiful.
The breath left Riki's lungs. His body reacted before his mind did, lurching upright as his hand instinctively reached across the center console.
His fingers closed around nothing. Reality returned with the same cruelty it always did.
The passenger seat was empty. A broken sound lodged itself somewhere deep in his throat. He folded forward, his forehead nearly striking the steering wheel as something vicious unfurled inside him.
It started low in his stomach, then it climbed slowly. Like the stem of a flower lined with thorns forcing its way through flesh, tearing everything in its path as it crawled toward his lungs. Every breath became sharper than the last. Every heartbeat another thorn twisting deeper. The ache rose until it settled beneath his tongue in the form of bitter bile, demanding to be swallowed back down.
His hand trembled. "I'm sorry..." The apology barely existed. It slipped from his lips as nothing more than a whisper, too fragile for the empty car to keep, too quiet for anyone to hear.
An hour later found Riki standing before a granite headstone, a fresh bouquet resting quietly at its base. He lingered there in silence, wishing for things that had long since become impossible.
By the time Riki returned home, the apartment was exactly as he'd left it.
The curtains remained drawn, allowing only thin slivers of daylight to slip through the gaps and spill across the kitchen floor.
Having just showered, his damp hair fell over his forehead in uneven strands, the ends still dripping onto the collar of a fresh black Tee.
It was currently 12:07 p.m. He sat alone on one of the stools tucked beneath the kitchen island, shoulders slumped, a cup of instant ramen steaming faintly between his hands.
The noodles had already gone soft, but hunger was catching up to him. So he ate them anyway.
His phone lay face down on the marble countertop a few inches away. It had been there since he walked through the door. The screen had lit up once the moment he stepped in. And he was sure he received more notifications while he was in the shower.
He didn't really have it in him to turn it over just yet, not sure of what he's going to see. But what good has procrastinating ever done. Eventually, with more effort than it should have taken, he reached for the device.
The screen illuminated the dim kitchen.
Chief Kim
I know how important today is for you.
Don't overthink.
Take care of yourself.
You don't have to come in today. That's an order.
Riki stared at the message until the screen dimmed, then went dark altogether. Chief Kim had meant well, he always did..... But it somehow made it worse.
Riki had never wanted anyone to remember this day. Not because he was ashamed of his grief, but because it belonged to him. It was the one thing in his life he refused to share. The one wound he insisted on carrying alone.
Sympathy felt intrusive. And every quiet " Take care of yourself" only reminded him that someone else had looked at the date on a calendar and thought of the worst day of his life. With a quiet sigh, Riki unlocked his phone again and reopened the messaging app. Another unread message waited for him.
Kei Yodai
Boss, I finally organized everything and found a solution to your problem.
Photo attached.
<
Riki didn't even bother opening the image. His eyes drifted over the message for all of three seconds before he rolled them heavenward and locked the screen again.
"Kei is insane..." He muttered it beneath his breath, lifting another mouthful of noodles to his lips.
The final unread message remained untouched. From his Mom.
He couldn't bring himself to read it. Not today. He already knew what waited behind the notification. Another painstakingly long message asking him to move on. Another reminder that his grief is enough. Another plea for him to open his heart again.
But today, he couldn't bear reading words that asked him to let go of the only person he'd never wanted to lose. If only she knew, he thought bitterly. The noodles suddenly tasted like sand in his mouth. His stomach twisted. Without warning, nausea clawed its way up his throat, forcing him to set the chopsticks down before they slipped from his fingers.
The nausea won.
Riki barely had enough time to push himself off the stool before he was making his way down the hallway, one hand pressed tightly against his mouth.
The bathroom door slammed against the wall. He dropped to his knees in front of the toilet just as his stomach finally gave in. The instant ramen came back up in bitter waves, followed by little more than water. His empty stomach twisted violently, protesting long after there was nothing left to surrender. Another dry heave.Then another.
His vision blurred as tears gathered uninvited in the corners of his eyes.
By the time it was over, he remained kneeling there, one forearm resting weakly against the toilet seat while he struggled to catch his breath. His chest hurt. His throat burned. Everything ached.
He stayed like that until the trembling in his hands eased enough for him to stand. He shuffled toward the sink, splashed cold water over his face, then lifted his head.
The reflection staring back at him looked no better than it had twenty minutes ago.
He looked away first.
When he returned to the kitchen, his phone had come alive again, the screen flashing with one notification after another.
His steps slowed.
The moment his eyes caught the names scattered across the lock screen, something inside him sank.
Shame.
It crawled through him like twin vines, wrapping around his ribs, tightening with every breath until he wondered if it had always lived there. If shame had been a person, it would have stood before him now with its arms folded and a satisfied smile, proud of the man he'd become.
He had outgrown guilt years ago.
Guilt implied there was still something left to forgive.
This... this was shame.
It settled across his shoulders with familiar ease, as though it had always known exactly where to find him.
His thumb settled on the first notification.
Heeseung
Happy first anniversary.
I know you said you might be busy today, but...
Come home early?
I'll make dinner.
Riki stared at the message.
Anniversary. The word lingered on the screen longer than it should have.
How ironic. One date. Two anniversaries. One he would spend remembering the day he lost everything. The other celebrating something he had never intended to have.
He closed the conversation without replying and moved to the one beneath it.
Jake sent a voice message.
"H... hey."
"I hope I'm not bothering you..."
A small, nervous laugh followed.
"I just..."
Silence. Only the sound of his breathing.
"...I miss you."
"I know you've been really busy lately."
"I know your job comes first..."
"But I was wondering..."
"Maybe next time you come over, you could stay a little longer?"
"Two days always feel so short."
"Only if you want to..."
"...Sorry."
"Drive safely."
The recording ended. The silence that followed somehow felt louder.
Riki swallowed the lump in his throat before opening the last unread notification.
Sunoo
Sent a video.
This duck reminded me of you 🦆
Sunoo
Image attached.
I can't wait to spend more time with you.
I miss you. ♡
Sunoo is looking straight into the camera, cheeks puffed into an exaggerated pout, pink lips pushed forward as he held up a tiny finger heart.
His thumb hovered over the keyboard more than once, only to retreat every single time.
What was he supposed to say?
Every response is dishonest. And he's sure his silence is cruel too. But in the end, he did neither.
He placed the phone back onto the countertop, leaving the messages unanswered.
He left the guilt, the shame, the grief, he left the entire world waiting in the kitchen.
His feet carried him down the hallway on instinct. The bedroom was as dark as the rest of the apartment, the curtains drawn tight against the afternoon sun. Without bothering to pull back the covers, Riki lowered himself onto the bed and lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling that had become more familiar to him than sleep itself.
The silence wrapped around him like a comforter, though it wouldn't last.
Sooner or later, he would have to get up. He would have to face the people waiting for pieces of a man who wasn't sure how much of himself remained.
He would have to return to the grief that had rooted itself beneath his ribs. To the guilt that shadowed every promise he made. To the shame that wore his face better than he did.
They had become quiet tenants of his soul, paying no rent, refusing to leave.
For now.....
Riki closed his eyes. Just for a little while, he wanted to be alone.