Chapter Text
Jang Woo-jin woke with a violent gasp, as if dragged up from drowning, lungs flooding with air that felt too sharp, too cold to be real.
The world snapped into focus in fractured pieces: white ceiling, humming fluorescent lights, the sterile bite of antiseptic. His pulse hammered against the walls of his throat.
Memory crashed into him like a collapsing building.
The first life. Endless running. Smoke-choked screaming. The moment he lost her in the dark. No body. No goodbye. Just a rumor whispered through shaking lips, that she’d been bitten and turned. A possibility that carved a grave into his ribs.
The second life. Sharper. Crueler. Meaner. He saw it all again: her eyes steady with a kind of peaceful madness, her trembling smile, her whisper against his lips… I love you. If it’s you, I’ll choose death every time.
Her lips had still been warm when she pulled away.
Then the barrel pressed to her temple. Then blood. Then the world ripping away with the shot.
His throat convulsed.
And now… this.
His hands were the same. His memories the same. His chest still scarred by two lifetimes of loss. Nothing about him felt reborn. If he carried the same attachments, the same impossible longing, then—
Then she was here. Somewhere in this wide, indifferent third timeline.
Alive. Laughing. Moving through hallways. Arguing over something petty. Irritated about everything and nothing… just like the girl before the end.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
If fate had dragged them together twice, it would drag them together again. They would collide. They always had. He would fall in love with her over and over again.
A breath shuddered out of him.
His fingers curled against the stiff hospital sheets.
That was when he heard footsteps. Soft. Hesitant. Like someone pacing just outside the open curtain of his hospital bed.
Then a voice… familiar in a way that made every cell in him jolt awake.
“You okay, Woo-jin?”
He froze.
He knew that voice. He’d heard it scream his name. He’d heard it whisper I love you. He’d heard it break.
He turned his head slowly, terrified that she’d disappear like a hallucination.
She didn’t.
Kim Ji-min stood in the doorway, framed by afternoon light. Same eyes. Same stubborn mouth. Same presence that felt like both a blessing and a catastrophe.
And for a breath that stretched an eternity—
—she was the girl who had burned for him in two different lives.
The girl he was destined to love until the world ended again
Woo-jin wasted no time. Logic, decorum, even common sense evaporated the instant he saw her. Nothing mattered except the raw, urgent pull to hold the one person the universe had ripped from him again and again.
He lurched upright, IV tugging painfully at his arm, and threw his arms around her. The movement was messy, clumsy, fueled by two lifetimes’ worth of grief and devotion.
“I love you,” Woo-jin choked, the words torn straight from the softest, most ruined part of him.
Ji-min went stiff as a board.
For a heartbeat, she simply froze, her arms hovering uselessly between them. Concern flickered into confusion… confusion hardened into disbelief… and then, unmistakably, annoyance took over.
With the reflexes of someone who had survived years of unexpected Woo-jin chaos, she shoved him off with a sharp slap to his shoulder.
“Whoa, whoa! Hands to yourself, weirdo!” Ji-min snapped, stepping away. “Did a nightmare turn you into a loverboy?”
Woo-jin felt the sting of her words—this life’s version of rejection—but it was nothing.
Nothing compared to the way she had died in his arms. Nothing compared to the silence of her body going cold. Nothing compared to the sound he never stopped hearing, the one just before the gunshot.
If she pushed him away now? If she called him dramatic, unhinged, clingy?
He could survive that.
What he couldn’t survive was pretending he didn’t need to touch her when she was alive.
So he reached for her again. Slower. Careful. Almost reverent.
“Just… let me hug you for a bit,” he said, the words scraping up from somewhere raw and unguarded. “Please.”
Ji-min blinked at him like he’d grown a second head. For a moment, her face softened: concern, confusion, something human and hesitant all flickering through her expression.
Then her brows slammed down.
“What? No! Absolutely not!” She batted his hand away like it was a mosquito. “You hit your head and suddenly think you get cuddle privileges?”
In this lifetime, they were best friends. Not enemies-turned-friends-turned-soulmates. Not two people who clawed their way to each other through zombies and blood.
Just… friends.
Platonic. Casual. Friends.
That was new…. and in some ways worst than her hating him.
Ji-min simply watched him like he was her irritating but tolerable classmate—not the boy she had died for. Not the boy who had held her through her last breath.
He felt the ache of it like a bruise.
He was going to have to start over. Build trust again. Earn her softness one inch at a time. Move from playful annoyance to affection to inevitability.
A slow burn instead of the wildfire they used to be.
Ji-min stared at him like he’d malfunctioned in real time. “Okay, seriously, Woo-jin. What is wrong with you today? Did the doctor say your brain melted? Is that why the nurse looked like she was about to cry when I walked in?”
He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t trust himself to speak around the knot twisting up his ribs.
“…Woo-jin?” she pressed, waving a hand in front of his face. “Hello? Earth to concussion boy?”
His gaze dragged over her helplessly—her very-much-alive cheeks, the way her hair curled behind her ear, the faint scar she hated. His lungs burned with the effort of holding everything inside.
“I’m just…” His voice cracked. “Really glad you’re here.”
Ji-min froze again, just for a beat, before the skepticism slammed back. “Okay, nope. Absolutely not.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t get weird on me. Don’t you dare start having sentimental delusions. I leave you alone for five minutes to get a bag of lollipops and you decide to become clingy?”
She tossed a small plastic bag onto his lap. Inside, neon-green candy wrappers glowed like radioactive gems.
“Sour apple?” he whispered.
“Duh.” She crossed her arms. “It’s our flavor. You better not have forgotten.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He could never forget.
In another life, she’d fed him one while sitting on his lap—teasing him with slow, sticky licks—until things dissolved into a sloppy, sugar-sweet makeout session that had ended with both of them breathless, laughing, and covered in melted candy. Sticky, ridiculous, perfect.
This Ji-min waited for him to say something normal. Something sane.
He almost laughed.
If only she knew how close they’d been. How he’d touched every inch of her skin. How he’d memorized the shape of her body with reverent, shaking hands. How she’d worn the gift he’d given her—the one she nearly strangled him for buying at first—lingerie soft enough to haunt him even now.
His pulse jumped. The memory cut hot behind his ribs.
Ji-min squinted at him. “Why are you making that face? Don’t make that face. That face means you’re thinking something stupid.”
He choked out a weak sound. “Just… overwhelmed.”
“Yeah, well, be overwhelmed quietly.” She flicked his forehead gently, but the gesture was familiar enough to knock the air out of him. “And for the record? If you start having weird wet dreams about me because of that head injury, I swear I’ll unplug your IV myself. Don’t get any dumb ideas just because we’re best friends who happen to be a guy and a girl.”
The threat was playful. The way she said best friends was casual. Carefree. Unaware.
And it hurt more than any bullet wound.
Best friends.
Not lovers. Not survivors clinging to each other in a dying world. Not the two souls who had found each other twice before and paid for it in blood.
Just friends.
It was almost funny how the universe kept dropping him at her feet like some cruel joke, then stripping away everything that made them them.
Behind Ji-min, a nurse peeked through the curtain, paling when she saw Woo-jin sitting up. “You’re awake? Already? Oh—um—please don’t move too fast, we’re still waiting on your post-scan evaluation—”
Ji-min sighed dramatically. “Unbelievable. Can this hospital take care of a simple concussion? What are they doing, performing brain surgery with oven mitts?”
Woo-jin almost laughed again, because if she only knew. If only she remembered how many times he’d watched her patch him up with nothing but torn cloth and stubbornness…
If she remembered how they’d held each other through nights of terror…
If she remembered how they’d loved…
She’d never say any of this with a straight face.
But she didn’t remember.
She was here. Unscarred. Unhaunted.
And he would earn her again.
Even if this new beginning felt like the cruelest punishment the universe had ever handed him.
***
They ended up sitting side by side on Woo-jin’s hospital bed, both silently licking bright green lollipops like it was the most normal thing in the world.
It wasn’t.
Not for him.
Ji-min dangled her legs off the edge, humming under her breath, completely unaware that Woo-jin was dying an extremely slow, extremely embarrassing death beside her.
Every time her knee brushed his, his pulse jumped. Every time her tongue dragged over the candy, he had to clench his jaw to keep his expression neutral.
Two lifetimes of memories made it torture.
She was close enough to touch. Close enough to breathe in. Close enough that the scent of her shampoo curled into his senses like déjà vu.
He stared straight ahead, trying desperately not to look affected.
He failed spectacularly.
Ji-min noticed.
Of course she noticed. She always did, even in the lives where she pretended she didn’t. Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting just slightly, like she was trying to figure out whether he’d been replaced by a malfunctioning clone.
“You’re being weird again,” she said flatly, lollipop stick jutting out the corner of her mouth. “Stop it.”
“I’m not—” he began.
“You are,” she cut in. “You get that look when you’re about to say something stupidly emotional. And I refuse to listen to hospital-bed poetry. Not today.”
He swallowed a sound that might have been a laugh. Or a sob. He wasn’t sure anymore.
Ji-min huffed, kicking her heels lightly against the side of the bed. “Anyway, your parents are blowing up my phone, so I should probably call them back before they assume you died.”
Woo-jin’s head snapped toward her so fast the IV tugged. “You’re calling my parents?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, like it was obvious. “Someone has to tell them their son face-planted and knocked himself unconscious during Korean literature.”
“I didn’t face-plant,” he protested weakly. Even though in this timeline he might have.
Ji-min ignored him entirely. “Plus, Daesu’s already doing your discharge paperwork. And that idiot Chang-hoon’s, too.”
Woo-jin blinked. “Chang-hoon?”
“Yeah. My cousin?” She raised a brow. “Curly hair, loud, annoys me to death, probably going deaf from the number of times I’ve yelled at him? You’ve known him since we were basically babies.”
His lungs stalled.
In both timelines he had lived before, Chang-hoon had been either a background bully or a fight manager and fixer. Never someone she would speak about with a strange blend of fondness and exasperation or call cousin.
Ji-min hopped off the bed. “Stay put. Don’t move. Don’t say anything cringe while I’m gone. And don’t start crying or whatever—if I come back and you’re emo, I’m putting you in a wheelchair and rolling you into traffic.”
She said it casually, like someone warning their plant not to die while they ran to the store.
He reached for her wrist, barely touching her. “Ji-min… don’t go yet.”
She froze, just for a breath. Her eyes softened—barely—and he felt it like a gut punch.
Then she rolled those same eyes so dramatically it broke the spell. “Oh my god, Woo-jin. I’m making a phone call, not enlisting in the military. Get a grip.”
He hated how much he liked being scolded by her, hated it and yet couldn’t stop the heat creeping into his chest. God, it was… sexy.
Even as he thought that, she was already slipping out through the curtain, muttering about “clingy concussed boys” and “idiots who can’t fill out forms correctly.”
The moment she disappeared the curtain beside his bed scraped open.
Woo-jin turned.
The boy in the next bed stared back at him, curly hair messy, one eyebrow raised, hospital gown half-untied like he’d threatened to fight the nurse who tried to fix it.
Park Chang-hoon.
Except not the Chang-hoon from the first timeline. Or, the Chang-hoon from the second.
This one looked older inside. Haunted. Wary.
And trying very, very hard to hide it.
Chang-hoon smacked a lollipop against his palm. “Took you long enough to wake up.”
Woo-jin said nothing.
Chang-hoon didn’t wait for him to speak. “You remember too. Obviously. Otherwise you wouldn’t be staring at Ji-min like a kicked puppy.”
Woo-jin stiffened. “I wasn’t—”
“You were,” Chang-hoon said bluntly, climbing out of his bed and dragging a chair next to Woo-jin like they’d done this a thousand times. “Please. I’ve seen simps. You were halfway to confessing your undying devotion.”
Woo-jin gaped. “…That’s not—”
“Don’t argue,” Chang-hoon cut in. “I know a lost cause when I see one.”
Before Woo-jin could say another word, Chang-hoon shoved his phone at him.
“We need to check something,” the boy muttered. “If this timeline is already a clown show, we need to see how big the circus is.”
Woo-jin leaned in almost automatically as Chang-hoon thumbed open his photo gallery, their shoulders brushing out of habit.
Not the gallery he remembered—no grainy photos of their old friend group, no accidental snapshots of Ji-min laughing.
This one… this one was a completely different universe.
Everything was wrong.
Apparently, in this world:
He, Ji-min, and Chang-hoon had been friends since childhood. All three trained in taekwondo, MMA, and boxing together.
Daesu joined them later, becoming a very loud, very chaotic fourth member.
The photos showed the four of them at competitions. Sparring. Eating tteokbokki with bruised knuckles. Laughing so hard Daesu fell off the curb. And in almost every picture, Woo-jin and Ji-min were side by side—her elbow in his ribs, his hand tugging her hood, the kind of easy familiarity that hurt to look at.
In this timeline, Ji-min wasn’t the delicate, prickly girl he’d once lost, nor the hardened, smoke-scarred survivor she became later.
She was… one of the bros.
And still, impossibly, the person he loved most.
Chang-hoon swiped to a video. Ji-min launched a kick that sent Woo-jin flying into a stack of gym mats while Daesu screamed commentary in the background.
Woo-jin blinked at the screen. “She… kicked me?”
“Oh, she destroyed you,” Chang-hoon said a bit too proudly. “Multiple times. Honestly, it’s inspiring.”
Woo-jin wanted to die.
But the biggest shock wasn’t Ji-min. It was everything around her.
Hyo-ryung wasn’t Ji-min’s best friend in this timeline. They barely spoke outside of class. No sleepovers. No whispered secrets. No clinging to each other between passing periods.
And Chang-hoon—
He wasn’t the bully who had shadowed Myeong-hwan in the first timeline.
He was… family.
Annoying. Loud. Protective. A cousin who had practically grown up in Ji-min’s living room. A cousin who shared snacks with her, trained with her, dragged her out of trouble, and got elbowed by her at every family dinner.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Chang-hoon grunted, scrolling through his phone. “You act like it’s weird we’re friends.”
Woo-jin couldn’t answer. How could he?
Every version of him had been hated, used, or barely tolerated by this boy. And now—this was the first time he looked at Woo-jin like they were equals. The first time the universe hadn’t set him up to ruin Woo-jin’s life.
So he said nothing.
Chang-hoon opened a group chat—The Four Horsemen of Bad Decisions.
The profile photos alone were incriminating.
Daesu doing finger guns. Ji-min holding a frying pan like a weapon. Chang-hoon flipping the camera off. Woo-jin wearing a headband with bunny ears for reasons he did not want explained.
The chat history was unhinged.
Daesu: IF WE GET BANNED FROM KARAOKE AGAIN IT’S YOUR FAULT
Ji-min: tell the owner he should’ve been born with stronger eardrums
Chang-hoon: woo-jin stop flirting in the groupchat holy SH*T
Woo-jin froze. “…I flirted?”
Chang-hoon gave him a sideways look. “Buddy. That’s not even the worst one. Look at February.”
“NO—”
But Chang-hoon had already scrolled, and Woo-jin physically cringed.
Everything—everything—was different.
A timeline where they were inseparable. Where Ji-min had always been closer to him than Daesu. Where the push-pull between them wasn’t born from death or desperation… it had existed from the very beginning.
All their lives.
His pulse thudded in his ears. This world had made them inevitable long before any apocalypse could.
And, as if on cue, both their phones buzzed at the same time.
A new message. From a number Woo-jin knew too well.
Cheong-san: are you guys scared of goldfish?
Woo-jin blinked. “What?”
Another buzz, another number.
Na-yeon: YES. YES I AM.
Then a third. Dae-su? No. Someone else. Several someone elses.
Numbers kept popping up, one after another—names he recognized, names he had survived beside. Students who hadn’t died in the second timeline.
Chang-hoon’s face went pale. “…Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, crap.”
Woo-jin’s pulse spiked.
His fingers hovered, then typed a single shaky word:
Yes.
Immediately, messages exploded.
Every survivor of the last life—every kid who had lived through the nightmare—was remembering.
The room suddenly felt smaller, heavier.
Chang-hoon met his gaze. “At least,” he said quietly, “we’re not the only ones.”
A shiver ran down Woo-jin’s spine.
If everyone had returned with memories of the end, then the beginning was far more dangerous than he’d imagined.
But the danger felt almost bearable with one truth steady in his chest: Ji-min was still alive.
Still close enough that he could hear her voice echoing faintly from the hallway, bossing someone around, probably threatening a nurse again.
His heart thudded like an idiot.
Best friends.
She’d said it so casually, like it was a permanent title.
Like he wasn’t two seconds away from melting into a puddle every time she touched him. Like he hadn’t kissed every inch of her skin in two different lives.
Woo-jin rested his head back against the pillow and exhaled shakily.
Best friends.
Yeah, right.
He’d be lucky if he survived sitting next to her without accidentally remembering how her thighs used to— He cut himself off with a strangled noise.
God.
He was doomed.
And Ji-min, blissfully unaware, was probably coming back still licking her lollipop.
He didn’t know if that made things better or worse.
But he knew one thing for certain: she would never, ever be just a bro to him.
Not when he’d spent two lifetimes learning every way she could ruin him.