Ten minutes passed. Isolde helped me get back home. Mom and Dad weren’t there, which was odd. But it could’ve been work. It was always work.

  I felt weak. Isolde had stopped crying, but her eyes were still wet, and her face was etched with a worry that wouldn’t leave, like a lingering shadow.

  Now I was lying in bed, sprawled out like a still-warm corpse. Whatever had happened had left me drained. Not just my body… my mind, too.

  “What exactly happened?” I asked. My voice was still faint, brittle like wet paper, but at least I could hold a conversation.

  “You… you just collapsed on the ground out of nowhere and…”

  She stopped. The mere image in her mind seemed to choke her. Even without words, her face said more than any trembling sentence could. Judging by the way her shoulders shook with each breath, it had been far worse than I could imagine.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she went on, her voice quivering. “Your heart wasn’t beating. I shook you, I talked to you, but you wouldn’t respond. I screamed—screamed like I never have—but there was no one. No one to help… no one to hear me…”

  Her voice broke into a stifled sob, and her body shuddered with messy, raw crying, as if the memory was tearing itself apart inside her. The desperation she’d felt was something I’d never seen in her. Not like this.

  My heart… stopped beating.

  That… that couldn’t be. It was absurd. Medically impossible. If that had really happened, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be breathing.

  How long was I like that?

  Silence wrapped around me for a moment, but then my mind zeroed in on something smaller, simpler… but to me, more important than anything else. The argument. The stupid little argument Isolde and I had. That’s what hurt the most. That’s what weighed the heaviest.

  My chest tightened. I thought of Hyung-Seok. The consciousness of my past life. The things he said. But right now, all of that was secondary.

  I had to apologize.

  “Issy…” I murmured, barely audible, not straining my throat. “I want to apologize… for not being with you during training with Alicia. It’s just… I didn’t want to miss the chance to learn something as incredible as what Uncle Reginald teaches.”

  She was still crying. Her fists clenched. Her face was a mix of pain and tenderness that hurt to look at.

  “Why… are you apologizing…?” she asked through her tears. “It was my fault for not being there with you in the study. If I’d gone with you from the start… you wouldn’t have had to come looking for me…”

  No.

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  No, it wasn’t her fault.

  “It’s mine,” I insisted, stronger this time. “I’m the one who should be with you. Following you. Protecting you. If it weren’t for my stupid greed for knowledge, you wouldn’t have ended up fighting those boys.”

  And then I fell silent.

  A cold thought pierced my mind. I was apologizing… for something so small. For a meaningless argument. And yet, it hurt. It hurt so much it was unbearable.

  It was as if… as if I was begging forgiveness for everything I didn’t do before.

  As if I was pleading for the forgiveness of those girls from my past life… the ones I killed. The ones who trusted me. The ones who wanted to be part of my life, not knowing that desire was their death sentence.

  A trivial apology… that hurt more than any crime I’d committed.

  All I could see was an image: myself. Distorted. Dark. Repulsive.

  A version of me that didn’t even deserve to cry.

  “I have an idea to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” I said, my eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  The weight in my chest was something I could ignore… but it wouldn’t go away. It was a silent burden, like an anchor hooked to memories of a life that wouldn’t let me escape.

  Despite that, all I could think about was how to balance time. How to split it between training, studying… and, above all, making sure this never happened again. Maybe it wasn’t the right moment, but I had to try.

  “What do you mean…?” Isolde asked. Her voice was no longer a stormy sea, just a lake with small ripples born from the remnants of a tempest.

  “I don’t want us to fight anymore. Not even once. It might sound silly… but it hurts. Even if it was just one argument. It hurts.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned forward and rested her head on my stomach. Her body was still trembling faintly, as if she wasn’t ready to let go of the fear that had consumed her.

  “I don’t like it when you pull away from me… it feels…”

  “Empty?” I finished for her, stroking her hair slowly. “I know… I feel it too. That’s why I want to organize our time. Study with Uncle Reginald, train with you… what if we split it? Four hours for each?”

  My fingers brushed her cheek, wiping away the tears that still fell without her permission. She’d cried so much her eyes were red. Seeing her like this hurt more than any physical weakness I felt.

  “As long as you’re okay with the schedule, I’m fine, Lucy.”

  “No. Don’t say that,” I replied with a tired smile. “I want to know what you really think. You can’t keep walking around with that sad face all the time.”

  Isolde sighed. She went quiet for a few seconds. Then she lifted her head, still serious, but no longer broken.

  “Then… five hours of training from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon. And the rest with Uncle Reginald. Studying. Theory. Whatever.”

  I stared at her. It wasn’t a bad schedule… but it sounded more like a college workload than a routine for kids. Still, it was her suggestion. How could I say no?

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  I sat up slowly. Everything hurt: my arms, my legs, even breathing. As if my body still wasn’t convinced it was alive.

  Did I die?

  Yeah… I guess that’s the most straightforward way to put it. The most logical. The most unsettling, too. There was no point dwelling on it… I needed water. My lips were so dry they felt like they hadn’t tasted a drop in centuries.

  “What are you doing?” Isolde said, alarmed. She gently pushed me back down, forcing me to lie down again.

  “Water,” I said simply.

  “Then just say so! I’ll get it.”

  Overprotective. Not a good sign. If she started clinging to me like I might vanish again, her mind would end up carrying a burden that didn’t belong to her. I didn’t want her to live like that. I didn’t want her worry for me to become a prison.

  Isolde stood and headed for the door.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, without looking at me.

  “Yeah.”

  As soon as she left, I propped myself up a bit and looked out the window. The sky was an unsettling canvas: the sun was just starting to bleed red, but the night was already draping a dark veil over it. The two colors mingled in a dance of menace and melancholy.

  The air was thick. Heavy. The cold wrapped around me like a wordless warning.

  A shiver ran through me.

  Something was coming. And it unnerved me.