The dim light of the desk lamp fell across the workstation Jiwon had known for far too many years.
His fingers moved across the keyboard with the effortless precision of a pianist playing a piece he had performed so many times that he no longer needed to think about the notes.
Except this was the only instrument he had played in years.
Jiwon leaned back in his chair and stretched, a quiet groan escaping him as his stiff back protested.
He lifted his eyes from the Sampsong monitor and looked across the office.
Cubicle after cubicle stretched into the distance, rows of identical desks disappearing beneath the fluorescent lights.
From where he sat, the office looked less like a workplace and more like an endless gray ocean, every desk another small island where someone had spent countless hours staring at a screen.
“Ah…”
The tired sigh left his lips almost on its own.
On the monitor, the cursor blinked beside the final period of his report.
Finished.
Jiwon stared at it for a few seconds longer than necessary, as though he were waiting for something else to happen.
Nothing did.
He leaned back in his chair once more.
“And that’s another day over.”
With a quiet scrape, he pushed his chair away from the desk and stood.
He stretched his arms above his head, waiting for the dull ache in his shoulders to ease, then glanced around his workstation.
There wasn’t much to pack.
There never was.
He picked up the cup beside his monitor.
The coffee inside had gone cold hours ago, but he slipped it into his bag anyway.
Then he gathered his phone charger, wound the cable carefully, and tucked it into the inner pocket.
When he opened the drawer, he found the same collection of forgotten things that had been sitting there for who knew how long: a few pens, some old receipts, a pack of cigarettes, and a worn notebook with more blank pages than filled ones.
His hand stopped over the notebook.
For a moment, he simply looked at it.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had written anything in it.
Perhaps that was why he had kept it.
Or perhaps he had simply forgotten to throw it away.
Jiwon gave a faint shake of his head, took the cigarettes, and closed the drawer.
He slipped his laptop into its case, picked up his bag, and switched off the desk lamp.
The small circle of light that had kept him company throughout the evening vanished.
His cubicle disappeared into darkness.
Jiwon put on his jacket and straightened his tie.
The movement was so familiar that he barely noticed himself doing it.
He had performed the same little ritual thousands of times over the years—jacket, tie, bag, lights, exit.
Tonight should have been no different.
Yet before leaving, he turned around.
The monitor had gone completely black.
For a moment, his reflection stared back at him from the dark screen.
An older man looked tiredly back.
Beneath that reflection, one sentence still lingered in his mind.
Thank you for 22 years of service at Seongjin Construction Co., Ltd.
Twenty-two years.
Jiwon breathed out slowly through his nose.
Twenty-two years.
And no one had noticed.
He almost found that funny.
No one had stayed behind for a drink.
No one had suggested dinner.
No one had even asked whether he wanted to celebrate.
Well…
Not with him.
If he had to guess, his coworkers were probably already drunk at the bar near the station.
Jiwon couldn’t blame them.
Why would they have waited?
He had stopped expecting things from people a long time ago.
The invitations to company dinners had become less frequent as the years passed, eventually disappearing altogether.
The younger employees barely knew his name.
The people who had joined Seongjin around the same time he had were almost all gone now.
Some had changed companies.
Some had gotten married.
Some had children and spent their lunch breaks complaining about tuition fees, daycare, mortgages, and the cost of groceries.
Their lives had moved forward.
Jiwon’s had simply continued.
One year after another.
One ordinary day after another.
Until twenty-two years had somehow slipped through his fingers.
He adjusted the strap of his bag and headed for the exit.
The hallway lights flickered on automatically as he walked past, illuminating one empty section of corridor after another.
A few seconds later, they dimmed behind him, leaving the office to darkness once more.
His footsteps echoed through the deserted building.
When he reached the elevator, he pressed the button and waited.
While he stood there, he glanced at his watch.
11:47 p.m.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday…”
The words escaped him before he realized he had spoken aloud.
Saturday.
He had no plans.
He hadn’t had any in years.
The elevator arrived with a soft chime.
Jiwon stepped inside, pressed the button for the ground floor, and leaned against the wall.
As the numbers descended, his reflection appeared in the polished metal doors.
He almost didn’t recognize the man staring back at him.
Gray had begun to creep into his hair around the temples.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and a deep line had settled across his forehead.
When had that appeared?
Jiwon slowly raised a hand and touched his face.
Fifty.
He was fifty years old.
Had he really made it this far?
The thought felt strangely distant.
The elevator reached the ground floor.
The doors opened.
Jiwon stepped outside without looking back.
Seoul was still wide awake.
Neon signs washed the streets in artificial color.
Cars streamed through the intersection, their headlights cutting white paths through the darkness.
Somewhere nearby, music spilled from the open door of a bar, muffled by the traffic and the night.
Jiwon walked without any particular destination in mind.
Then he stopped.
That melody.
He knew it.
He didn’t need to hear the chorus.
The first few notes were enough.
He had heard them everywhere once—on television, in convenience stores, through the speakers of clothing shops, from the earphones of teenagers on the subway.
His steps came to a halt.
No.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
That song.
Their debut single.
The song that had turned seven unknown boys into the biggest sensation in Korea almost overnight.
Aurora.
Jiwon stood motionless on the sidewalk as the crowd flowed around him.
No one noticed him.
No one ever did.
For a few months, it had seemed as though there was no other group in the world.
He remembered those days clearly.
The enormous screens in Gangnam.
Their faces plastered across advertisements.
The endless lines outside album stores.
Fans screaming their names until they lost their voices.
Seven boys standing in front of cameras with nervous smiles, still looking as though they couldn’t quite believe that all of this was happening to them.
They had all come from Star Dust.
Seven contestants chosen from hundreds.
Seven boys who had survived months of training, evaluations, eliminations, and public votes to earn a place in the final lineup.
And then came their debut.
The song exploded.
It shot to the top of the charts almost overnight, and suddenly it was impossible to escape.
The chorus played everywhere.
Their faces appeared on television, in advertisements, on magazine covers and billboards.
Even Jiwon, who had never been particularly interested in K-pop, had found himself humming the melody on his way to work.
For a brief moment, Aurora had everything.
Fame.
Success.
Sold-out concerts.
Endorsement deals.
Thousands upon thousands of fans screaming their names.
The whole country seemed to be watching them.
Jiwon smiled faintly.
“Aurora…”
The name left his lips softer than he expected.
There was something strangely nostalgic about it.
Something that hurt.
Before he realized what he was doing, he began to sing along.
His voice was low and rough, worn down by years of disuse.
“When the night falls, we’ll light the sky…”
He hesitated before continuing in a whisper.
“Seven stars, one dream, one time…”
His voice faded into the noise of the street.
Jiwon stopped singing.
The song continued without him.
He lowered his eyes.
More than thirty years.
More than thirty years since that song had first been released, and he still remembered every word.
Every beat.
Every transition.
He could even remember the exact moment each of the seven members entered.
It was ridiculous.
He couldn’t remember what he had eaten for lunch that day.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had called an old friend.
But he remembered this.
A quiet, bitter laugh escaped him.
Some things, apparently, refused to die.
Aurora’s success hadn’t lasted forever.
Of course it hadn’t.
The second single failed to capture the same attention.
The third did even worse.
The headlines gradually disappeared.
The advertisements stopped coming.
The stages became smaller, and the crowds thinner.
But Aurora kept going.
Another album.
Another comeback.
Another attempt to recapture the magic that Star Dust had given them.
It didn’t work.
Lightning never struck twice.
Eventually, the seven members went their separate ways.
The group disbanded quietly, far removed from the frenzy that had surrounded their debut.
Jiwon had followed their story from a distance.
He still remembered reading the announcement on his phone while sitting at his desk.
He had felt a little sad.
Then he had closed the article.
And gone back to work.
Just like always.
Now, standing beneath the neon lights of Seoul, he found himself wondering why their song still hurt.
Perhaps it was because Aurora had at least tried.
They had stood on a stage with no guarantee that anyone would remember their names.
They had chased a dream.
They had risked failure.
And they had failed.
Their success had faded.
Their names had become less familiar.
Eventually, even the people who had once screamed for them forgot.
But for a little while, they had lived the life they wanted.
Jiwon had never even given himself that chance.
The faint smile disappeared from his face.
The music continued behind him.
I could have sung.
The thought came without warning.
I could have danced.
His fingers tightened around the strap of his bag.
I could have tried.
He closed his eyes.
At eighteen, he had thought there would always be time.
At thirty, he had told himself he could start later.
At forty, there had always been another reason to wait.
And now…
Now he was fifty.
Jiwon opened his eyes.
“Too late.”
The words were barely audible beneath the traffic.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, placing it between his lips before flicking his lighter.
A small flame bloomed in the darkness.
He took a drag.
The smoke burned its way down his throat, familiar and unpleasant at the same time.
He slowly exhaled, watching the pale cloud drift upward before being swallowed by the cold night air.
For a moment, he simply stood there and watched it disappear.
There had been a time when Jiwon had believed his life would turn out differently.
Not extraordinary.
He had never been foolish enough to expect that.
Just… different.
His thoughts drifted back to the beginning.
To the first decision that had quietly set everything else in motion.
His father.
Jiwon had been eighteen when his father died.
Old enough to understand what death meant.
Too young to understand how deeply it would shape the rest of his life.
His father had been an ordinary man who worked hard and rarely complained.
He would come home late most nights with rough hands and tired eyes, but whenever Jiwon’s future came up, he always said the same things.
Study hard.
Get into a good university.
Find a stable job.
Live a better life than I did.
At the time, those words had seemed almost painfully simple.
After his father’s death, they became something else.
A responsibility.
A promise.
Jiwon had taken them seriously.
Perhaps too seriously.
His grades had never been exceptional.
They weren’t terrible, but they were nowhere near enough to get him into one of Seoul’s prestigious universities.
The entrance examination had made that painfully clear.
His score was poor.
Much poorer than he had hoped.
There were universities that would have accepted him, but tuition was another problem.
His family couldn’t afford to support him while he spent four years studying without worrying about money.
If Jiwon wanted an education, he would have to work for it.
So he made what seemed like the sensible choice.
He enrolled in a third-rate university.
Economics.
It wasn’t his dream.
It wasn’t even a subject he particularly loved.
But it was practical.
Useful.
A degree that could lead to a stable office job.
At eighteen, that had been enough.
He told himself he could figure out the rest later.
First, he would graduate.
Then he would find a decent job, work hard, save money, and build a stable life.
Maybe one day he would have a family of his own.
It wasn’t the kind of future that made his heart race.
But it was safe.
And after losing his father, safety had seemed more important than anything else.
Then came military service.
Two years disappeared from his life.
When Jiwon returned to university, he found himself further behind than ever.
The world had continued moving while he was away.
Friends he had known before enlistment had moved on with their lives; some had already graduated, while others were preparing for employment.
Jiwon simply went back to class.
He worked part-time whenever he could and studied when he wasn’t working.
He tried to keep up.
But life rarely cared about what he tried to do.
A semester was delayed.
Then another.
There were classes he couldn’t take because of his work schedule.
There were months when money mattered more than grades, and days when he was simply too exhausted to care.
The four-year degree became five years.
Then six.
He had gone off schedule without ever consciously deciding to do so.
By the time he finally graduated, he was twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven.
Looking back now, the age seemed impossibly young.
Yet back then, Jiwon had felt old.
He had felt as though everyone else had already started their lives while he was still standing at the starting line.
He had no dream waiting for him.
No plan beyond finding a job.
So when Seongjin Construction offered him a position in the management support team, he accepted.
There was no dramatic moment.
No sudden feeling that fate had finally pointed him toward the right path.
He simply signed the contract.
And that was it.
That was how his life began to take the shape he had never intended for it to have.
One ordinary day at a time.
At first, he told himself he would stay for only a few years.
Gain experience.
Save some money.
Then he would figure out what came next.
But one year became three.
Three became five.
And before he realized it, the job had become his career.
The career had become his routine.
And the routine had become his life.
He spent his days managing budgets for buildings he would never care about, checking invoices, processing payments, reviewing contracts, balancing numbers, and making sure other people’s plans stayed on schedule.
He became good at it.
Very good, in fact.
That was perhaps the cruelest part.
He had become competent at living a life he had never wanted.
Jiwon let out a quiet laugh.
There was no humor in it.
“How did I end up like this?”
The question disappeared into the noise of Seoul.
He already knew the answer.
There had never been one great mistake.
No single decision that had destroyed everything.
It had been smaller than that.
A thousand little choices.
Take the safer option.
Wait until next year.
Get through this first.
Work a little longer.
Save some money.
Think about it later.
Later.
Later.
Later.
Until there was no later left.
Jiwon glanced down at the cigarette between his fingers.
The ember had burned almost to the filter.
He hadn’t even noticed how much time had passed.
He flicked the cigarette away and watched it tumble onto the pavement.
Then he looked toward the pedestrian signal.
Red.
Still red.
Jiwon almost smiled.
Of course.
He had spent his entire life waiting for a green light.
Waiting for the right moment.
Waiting until he was ready.
Waiting until things were easier.
Waiting until he had enough money.
Enough time.
Enough courage.
He had always believed there would be another chance.
Next year.
Next month.
Tomorrow.
There was always tomorrow.
Jiwon stared at the red signal.
A few seconds passed.
Still red.
People gathered around him, waiting to cross.
Someone checked their phone.
A couple whispered to each other.
A delivery driver stood at the curb, tapping his foot impatiently.
Jiwon remained still.
He looked up again.
Red.
For some reason, the sight irritated him.
“Really?”
He gave a quiet, humorless laugh.
He had waited fifty years.
What was another few seconds?
His gaze drifted across the street.
The city continued moving on the other side, indifferent to him.
Perhaps that was what life had always been like.
The world moved.
Jiwon waited.
The light stayed red.
He looked at it once more.
Still red.
He shifted his bag higher onto his shoulder and stepped closer to the curb.
His mind wandered again.
If he could go back…
Just once.
If he could return to eighteen.
Would he choose differently?
Would he have studied something else?
Would he have tried singing?
Dancing?
Would he have stood on a stage and allowed himself to fail?
Or would he have made the same choices all over again?
The question frightened him more than he expected.
Because somewhere deep inside, Jiwon already knew the answer.
He would choose differently.
If he had known how quickly fifty years could disappear, he would have chosen differently.
The realization came too late.
As always.
Jiwon lowered his gaze.
The pedestrian signal was still red.
Then—
Tap.
Someone bumped into his shoulder from behind.
Not hard enough to hurt.
Just hard enough to throw him off balance.
Jiwon’s foot slipped from the edge of the curb.
“Huh—?”
His body lurched forward.
His bag swung violently from his shoulder as he instinctively reached out to steady himself.
Someone behind him shouted.
“Hey!
Watch—!”
Jiwon never heard the rest.
He looked up.
Two headlights filled his vision.
They were impossibly bright.
For one suspended moment, everything else disappeared—the neon signs, the traffic, the people, the music drifting from the bar.
There was only white light.
Jiwon froze.
Like a deer caught in the headlights on a mountain road.
His body refused to move.
His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs didn’t respond.
The car was already too close.
Far too close.
“Hey!
Stai att—!”
A horn tore through the night.
Then came a sharp, piercing whistle.
And—
Darkness.