Lee Jae-heon's answer was so decisive that the air in the performance hall went quiet for a beat.
"Sure."
Ha Seong-yoon looked at Lee Jae-heon for a mont without saying anything. The stage lighting fell across the man's face — a face so calm it bordered on hollow, as if he had just comnted on today's weather rather than his own death.
...Truly incomprehensible.
Ha Seong-yoon thought it, but didn't say it.
He had grown used to this — the way Lee Jae-heon discussed his own death like it was a minor inconvenience to be handled, not sothing worth hesitating over. But even used to it, Ha Seong-yoon couldn't stop sothing uncomfortable from sitting quietly in his chest.
"…Didn't you ask for our opinions?"
Seo Jang-hwa spoke up. Her voice wasn't particularly loud, but in this pocket of silence it rang out clearly.
Lee Jae-heon turned to look at her with a slightly puzzled expression, as if he couldn't understand why that question was necessary.
"Does Seo Jang-hwa have a different opinion?"
"…That's not what I—"
"Then we're fine."
Seo Jang-hwa pressed her lips together.
Jeong In-ho, standing beside her, quietly placed a hand on her shoulder — a gesture that needed no words. She knew. She knew it wasn't that Lee Jae-heon was dismissing everyone's input. It was simply that in this man's head, everything had already been calculated before he even opened his mouth.
Sohow that was worse.
"…Where's Dahoon right now?"
Yoon Ga-ram asked softly, her voice a little rougher than it had been earlier.
"Still in there."
Ha Seong-yoon answered for the group, nodding toward the enormous aquarium behind the stage. The tank still cast its cold blue light — Park Da-hoon was still inside, his body trapped in water with nowhere to surface.
"…Alright then."
Ha Seong-yoon steadied himself with a breath. He looked around once — Park Da-young still hadn't lifted her head, Jeong In-ho was silent with sothing heavy behind his eyes, Seo Jang-hwa was chewing her lip and staring sowhere to the side. Yoon Ga-ram was trying to hold herself together but her hands were clasped tight against each other.
Song In-myeong stood slightly apart from the rest, his expression indifferent, but his eyes were moving.
"Those of you who can move — start getting ready to leave."
Ha Seong-yoon said it plainly, his voice returning to sothing practical.
"I won't ask again. The decision's been made."
"…Doctor."
Yoon Ga-ram called out softly.
"What?"
"…Never mind."
Ha Seong-yoon held her gaze for a second, then looked away. He knew what she had wanted to say. But this wasn't the mont for it.
The preparations moved faster than Ha Seong-yoon expected — likely because none of them actually had much to prepare. The survivors exchanged glances that said what mouths didn't, and then one by one they began to file out through the exit Ha Seong-yoon had designated.
Seo Jang-hwa stopped at the door.
She turned and looked back at Lee Jae-heon — the man still standing exactly where he had been, his deanor unchanged from the mont before.
"…Jae-heon."
"Go on."
"…"
"I said go on, Seo Jang-hwa."
She clearly wanted to say sothing more. It was written plainly across her face. But in the end, Seo Jang-hwa only looked at him for one more second before she stepped out.
The door shut behind her.
Lee Jae-heon stood alone in the performance hall — or nearly. Song In-myeong was still sowhere nearby, and Han Do-yoon was still wandering around the area. But in this particular mont, it felt close enough to solitude.
He looked up at the tank.
Park Da-hoon was in there. A small, motionless figure, hair spreading through the blue water like a faint halo.
…
Lee Jae-heon thought about many things and nothing at all, simultaneously.
This wasn't the first ti he had done sothing like this. He didn't need to remind himself of that. But sothing about this ti — the way Seo Jang-hwa had looked at him just before she walked out — made him pause for a single beat.
Not because he was reconsidering.
He just… noticed it.
Strange.
He wasn't sure who he was thinking about when he used that word.
Ha Seong-yoon appeared one last ti before leaving, standing at the doorway with the expression of a doctor making a final assessnt before a surgery with poor odds.
"…I don't know what to say."
"Then don't say anything."
"You."
"Yes."
Ha Seong-yoon exhaled.
"…Don't die badly."
Lee Jae-heon heard that, and was quiet for a mont.
"My death already has aning, Doctor."
"I'm not talking about aning. I'm talking about how you die."
"…"
"Don't make it worse than it needs to be."
Lee Jae-heon looked at Ha Seong-yoon — the doctor standing there stiff-backed, face set with the kind of stubbornness that was almost annoying, but with sothing else entirely in his eyes.
"…Yes."
"Good."
Ha Seong-yoon left without looking back.
When the last set of footsteps faded, Lee Jae-heon was alone with the tank.
He walked toward it.
The water shifted faintly as he approached — as if it was reacting to his presence.
Park Da-hoon was still in there. Still breathing, if you could call it that. His eyes were shut, his face pale but peaceful in a way that seed almost wrong.
Alright.
Lee Jae-heon placed his hand on the edge of the tank.
The glass was cold.
He thought, briefly, about Ha Seong-yoon with that perennially exhausted look he got whenever Lee Jae-heon was involved. About Seo Jang-hwa and the way she hadn't said goodbye. About Yoon Ga-ram's voice going rough.
Then he stopped thinking.
This was the mont for action, not thought.
He stepped in.
The water closed over him slowly — colder than he'd expected, or perhaps he was simply paying more attention this ti. The pale blue light of the aquarium filled his vision, and everything beyond it beca distant, irrelevant.
Park Da-hoon drifted directly in front of him.
The face of soone considerably younger — a face carrying sothing Lee Jae-heon couldn't fully na in this particular mont.
…Let's switch places.
No one could hear it.
Bubbles escaped from his lips as he opened his mouth — the words dissolving into small circles that rose upward and vanished.
The water climbed past his throat, past his jaw.
The tank's light blurred at the edges.
In the last mont before everything went dark, Lee Jae-heon thought of sothing very small and very unrelated — that Ha Seong-yoon would hear the news and would almost certainly sigh, and that his expression would carry sothing that wasn't quite indifference.
For so reason, that didn't bother him.
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