The first thing Gin Chan felt wasn't pain—it was rhythm.
A low thump.
Not his heartbeat. Music.
His eyes opened to dim lighting, orange-tinted and warm. Strings of lights twirled around rustic beams above him. He wasn't in a hospital. He wasn't restrained. In fact, he was sitting at a corner table in a bustling little café, a mug of coffee steaming in front of him, half-full. His fingers clutched a pen, and an open sketchpad lay in front of him—filled with precise, delicate pencil lines forming the face of a woman.
No. Not a woman.
Yoon Seo.
His hand trembled slightly.
The memories came as a whisper instead of a storm. This body—this life—belonged to Kim Min-jae, a quiet, artistic man who had suffered a traumatic accident a year ago. A near-fatal car crash had left him comatose for six months. When he awoke, he hadn't spoken. Not a word. Not until last week.
Now, Min-jae was trying to return to the world in fragments. With every sketch, with every pencil stroke, he fought the silence inside him. Gin had awakened into a soul still reeling, but strong in its resilience. It wasn't a fighter's body, not a genius's—but an observer's. A recorder of life's tender moments.
That was the new rhythm Gin felt. Slower. Gentler.
He turned the sketchpad. Page after page—drawings of the café's regulars, city streets, a sleeping cat on a windowsill. But Yoon Seo's face appeared often, etched with reverence. And below one of her portraits was a caption in pencil:
"She reminds me of someone I lost before I ever found her."
Gin's breath caught.
Was this destiny? Did Min-jae already know Yoon Seo? Or had fate written her into this life too?
---
He found her again that afternoon.
She walked into the café like a memory Gin wasn't ready to face. She looked almost the same—long dark hair, a blue scarf she always wore in the winters, and a small locket around her neck. The difference was in her eyes.
They held sorrow.
He watched her order from the counter with soft politeness, then sit alone at the window seat. Her fingers toyed with the edge of her teacup. She stared out at nothing in particular.
Gin knew that look.
Grief.
But he couldn't go to her. Not yet.
This wasn't his body. This wasn't his name. And she wasn't the same Yoon Seo.
Not to him.
Not yet.
---
Over the following days, Gin lingered near her. He didn't speak. He just sketched. Once, he left a folded napkin on her table with a doodle of her sipping tea.
She glanced around, confused, then smiled softly.
Each time she visited the café, Gin tried to capture something new—her laughter when the barista made a joke, the curve of her lip when she was lost in a book, the moment she stared too long at the rain outside.
Every drawing was a page of unspoken love.
---
They finally spoke on a quiet Wednesday.
Gin had dropped his pencil and it rolled under her table. She bent to pick it up at the same time he did, and their fingers brushed.
She blinked.
He bowed slightly, mouthing a thank you. He hadn't spoken aloud yet. Min-jae's trauma ran deep.
She surprised him by saying, "You always draw me."
He nodded slowly.
"I'm not mad," she added with a faint smile. "Your sketches are… peaceful."
He pulled out the sketchpad and showed her one.
It was her, reading, sunlight filtering through the café window.
She stared at it for a long time. Her hands trembled.
"That's exactly how I felt that day," she whispered. "Like the sun was trying to reach me, but I was too far inside myself to feel it."
Gin didn't know how to reply.
So he wrote in the margins:
"The sun still sees you. Even in your shadow."
She looked at him, eyes shining. "You don't talk much, do you?"
He shook his head.
"Maybe that's okay," she said.
And for the first time in this life, Gin smiled.
---
Days turned into weeks.
They shared silent walks in the park. She talked. He listened, scribbled thoughts in notebooks, sometimes even laughed softly. She called him Min-jae, and that name—though borrowed—no longer felt foreign.
Gin learned Yoon Seo volunteered at a local orphanage. He offered to paint a mural for the children. She helped. They spent hours side by side, covered in streaks of color, laughing until the sadness in her heart began to dim.
She was healing.
And so was he.
---
One night, under a sky littered with stars, she asked, "Do you believe in soulmates?"
Gin hesitated, then wrote:
"Yes. But I think sometimes, they don't find each other in time."
She read it, then whispered, "I used to love someone. He died. I don't even know if he really knew how much I loved him."
Gin's chest tightened.
"He knew," he wrote.
"How would you know that?"
He stared at her, and for a brief second, he saw recognition flicker in her eyes.
But it vanished.
"You remind me of him sometimes," she said. "But you're gentler. He was… always fighting the world."
Gin looked away. Fighting the world was the only thing he'd ever known.
---
The night before everything changed, she held his hand.
They sat on the rooftop of her apartment building, watching the lights of the city blink like fireflies. She rested her head on his shoulder.
"I'm glad you woke up," she said. "You made me feel alive again."
He wanted to tell her. To scream that it was him, that he had come back across lives, deaths, pain—all for her.
But he didn't.
He just whispered, "Thank you."
His voice—unused for a year—cracked in the cold air.
She turned to him, shocked. "You… spoke."
Gin only smiled.
---
The next morning, he didn't wake up.
He had gone to sleep as Kim Min-jae, holding the memory of her warmth, and died in his sleep.
Peacefully.
Death came to him again.
---
He stood on the stone platform in the void, the stars like memories floating above.
Death stepped forward, her dark eyes thoughtful.
"You touched her again," she said. "Without breaking the rules."
"I didn't tell her," Gin whispered.
"You didn't have to. She felt it."
He looked up. "Why did you let me see her?"
"Because you're starting to understand," Death replied. "This isn't about saving yourself. It's about remembering what made you human."
He nodded slowly.
"Was she happy?" he asked.
"She will be," Death said. "You gave her a little light. That's more than most ever get."
Gin clenched his fists.
"I want more time."
Death raised the silver gun.
"You always do."
Bang.
---
End of part 1
For a moment, Gin Chan felt peace — with her.
Yoon Seo's voice. Her smile. Like home.
If you felt it too, vote with a Power Stone.
Give this broken soul the strength to reach her — in whatever life comes next.