With a flash, my eyes snapped open.
My heart was pounding like crazy.
I was definitely dead.
A car had slammed into us head-on, and I had heard Dongmin’s voice last.
But when I opened my eyes, I was at this same place again. Fluorescent lights, stainless-steel walls, a display panel blinking the number 4. Inside the elevator.
'...This can't be. Again?'
The second time, at least, I had been prepared for it.
This time, I truly hadn’t expected it at all.
Who could have imagined that I’d come back twice and die twice, and there would be a third time?
I turned to look beside me.
Dongmin was there.
But something was strange.
He was gasping for breath, blinking over and over with one hand on the wall.
He had the face of someone who had just been somewhere else until a moment ago and had been forced here against his will.
Even in the first run, even in the second, he had never looked this shaken at this moment.
"...Dongmin-ssi, are you okay?"
Dongmin lifted his head.
His eyes wavered, unable to focus, then finally settled on me.
"...Yeah. Yes, I’m okay."
The answer was quick.
Too quick.
Then he turned around and, instead of the close button, frantically pressed the open button.
As soon as the door was halfway open, before it had even opened all the way, he forced his body through the gap and out.
Without looking back, he disappeared down the hallway.
It was behavior I could never have imagined from him under normal circumstances.
Left alone in the elevator, I heard a click from my wrist.
The moment I looked down, my breath stopped.
The watch glass, the place that had only had a crack in it, was now completely shattered.
'...Third time. And this is the last one.'
This time it wasn’t some inexplicable certainty.
It was proof right in front of me.
If the cracked glass had shattered completely, it meant there would be nowhere left to return to.
I tore my eyes from the watch and looked toward the door where Dongmin had disappeared.
Black jumper, tousled hair, a face still half-asleep.
That back view was still burned into my eyes.
This person died because of me both times.
Once while gripping the steering wheel, and once while wrapping himself around me as if to shield me.
By then, the realization that I was deeply, painfully grateful for that—and that I loved him so much it hurt every time I breathed—hit me.
This time I decided I’d show him everything without hiding a thing.
'...But why did he run away like that......'
*
I went out into the hallway, flustered.
The fourth-floor hallway, accounting office on the left, BND Research on the right.
Everything was exactly the same. The only thing that wasn’t was that one person.
When I opened the office door, the manager waved a stack of papers.
"You’re all here, right? The deadline’s been moved up by two days."
Not a single word was different.
Assistant Jiwon brought up the kimbap story just the same.
Since I was hearing these lines for the third time, I wasn’t even scared anymore.
I sat down and turned on my monitor.
Client ledgers, Sunil Capital, 240 million won.
Numbers I already knew by heart.
This time, starting out already knowing everything was actually a relief.
I knew where to start even on my own.
The words on my own, lodged in my head with a thud.
This time, I had no intention of hiding my feelings from Dongmin.
Neither the feelings I had for him, nor my steps toward him.
But as for this case, especially since I knew that those people eventually even went after humans, I had no intention of dragging him into it.
We had died together the last two times because we were together.
This time I was going to take it on alone and make sure he lived.
I didn’t write down any resolution like “don’t get close” this time.
A different thought came to mind instead.
'If this really is the last time, then I should love you to my heart’s content.
Without hiding it, without hesitating. I’ll carry the dangerous part all by myself.'
*
At lunchtime, I ran into Dongmin in the hallway. I smiled first.
"...Did you eat?"
Dongmin gave a short reply without stopping.
"...Yeah. I was busy."
Then he just walked past me.
It was an attitude I’d never seen in either of my two lives. As I watched his receding back, I suddenly realized something strange.
That tone just now, that distance. It looked familiar.
It was me. The exact same tone I had used when pushing him away in the second round.
'...No way.'
My heart sank with a thud.
I wanted to believe it was a coincidence, but one thing was already clear.
This person had changed somehow. At the very least, he wasn’t the Dongmin I knew from the two lives so far.
*
All afternoon, my attention was fixed on that side.
Through the glass door, I stole glances toward BND several times.
Dongmin was sitting at his desk, looking over something, but every so often he would stop and stare into the distance, looking exactly like someone forcing himself to endure something.
Near quitting time, I ran into him again in the elevator. There were only the two of us.
"...Dongmin-ssi."
"...Yeah."
"Um, maybe."
I swallowed the words I’d been about to ask.
I couldn’t ask a person I was seeing for the first time in a third life, “Do you perhaps remember anything other than me?”
Not yet.
"...Never mind. Go ahead."
Dongmin gave a brief nod and got off first.
Just before the door closed, I looked down at the watch on my wrist.
Hallway lights spilled through the shattered glass.
I felt both the certainty that this time would really be the last, and the unease that maybe he was carrying something too at the same time.
