Ep 35. Time Stopped at Each Other

  At the end of the hallway, a dreadfully transparent silence pooled in front of Lou’s door.

  The ivory lighting spilling from the ceiling failed to push Adin’s shadow across the threshold, instead pressing it flat against the floor.

  Adin repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists in his pockets. The fine particles of Solet touching his fingertips surged through his pulse, making his heart prickle.

  Nathan.

  The mere thought of that name cast a heavy weight upon Adin’s feet.

  He recalled the flawless consideration Nathan had shown in the clinic, that intellectual composure as he read Lou’s gaze. There seemed to be not even an inch of space for Adin to intervene between them.

  Yet, stronger than his misery was the sudden, piercing longing to see Lou just once more.

  Adin’s hand hovered in the air before halting near the cold doorknob. The finger intended for a knock trembled slightly.

  Should he turn back, or let this cowardly desire be discovered?

  Just as reason and instinct confronted each other like a tautly drawn bowstring, a faint friction sounded from inside.

  Click—

  The door opened. It was the exact moment Adin had been about to turn and flee.

  "Oh... Adin?"

  It was Lou.

  Draped in an ivory blanket over loose silk pajamas, she peered through the gap in the door. Her disheveled blonde hair brushed against her cheeks as if she had just woken up.

  Her gray eyes, now without glasses, appeared larger and more dreamlike than usual. A small ripple formed in her gaze as she encountered the unexpected visitor.

  "I... well, that is..."

  Adin’s eyes wandered, unable to find a place to rest, and his words stumbled.

  "I was just passing by. No, actually... I was out of line earlier in the garden. I felt I had to say I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize, Lou."

  Adin bowed his head deeply, trying to hide his burning ears. The tips of his damp shoes left small stains on the floor.

  It was a truth hidden behind a transparent lie, but Lou did not dismiss his clumsy apology lightly. She gazed at the top of Adin’s head for a long moment, then allowed a faint, warm smile to touch her lips.

  "Come in. Have a cup of tea before you go."

  Instead of the cold, metallic scent of the Bio-Lab, the room was filled with a subtle herbal fragrance mingled with Lou’s warmth.

  On the table lay a neat stack of documents and nameless transparent vials, as if someone had recently left them there.

  Lou moved with familiarity to boil water. Two steaming teacups were placed on the table, and between the two of them, a silence as thick as the rising vapor flowed once more.

  Adin tightened his grip on the hot teacup. The heat flowing through his palms gradually thawed his frozen reason.

  Yet, his gaze kept drifting toward the traces of someone else on the table.

  "He... seemed too perfect for you."

  Adin’s voice sank low into his cup. It was a voice too transparent to hide his jealousy.

  "Seeing you stand beside him, looking so comfortable, I felt there was no place for me. I wondered if I, having brought the darkness of Ebony with me, was polluting your pristine time."

  Lou stopped just as she was about to bring her cup to her lips.

  She stared out at the darkness beyond the window, speaking quietly about the reality of the perfect comfort Nathan provided every day.

  "Adin, the comfort of the Monolith is actually a glass wall built upon agonizing control."

  "Nathan checks my vitals every day. He ensures my heart rate doesn't spike and that my body temperature remains at the set point of 26.5 degrees."

  "To prevent my emotions from fluctuating and lowering the system's efficiency, he is maintaining me as his most beautiful 'specimen.'"

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  She turned back to look at Adin. For the first time, a cold logic settled within her ethereal eyes.

  "The warm medicine and soft bedding he provides are not my rest, but chains that forcibly halt the entropy of my time."

  "Inside this perfectly managed room, I feel suffocated. Because everything is at a standstill."

  She paused, her gaze deepening.

  "But when you come... the temperature of the air changes."

  "Sometimes it feels unstable and dangerous, but it finally makes me feel 'alive.'"

  Lou’s hand slid across the table, very lightly touching Adin’s fingertips.

  It was a warmth hotter than the teacup and more irregularly trembling than any system within the Monolith.

  Through that tremor, Adin read the depth of Lou’s solitude. Her soul, which had been trapped in Nathan’s sterile stillness, was desperately reaching out toward Adin’s clumsy vitality.

  Adin did not take Lou’s hand immediately. Instead, he stared at the shimmering surface of the water in his cup for a long time.

  He spoke, pressing the weight of his voice down with deliberate caution and calm.

  "Lou, the truth is, I’ve committed a sin. I peered into your time."

  "I flipped the forbidden hourglass and saw the fragments you tried to forget... no, the pieces that were stolen from you."

  Adin’s confession filled the room, low and heavy. Lou’s fingertips trembled minutely, but Adin did not stop.

  "I saw the records of your world being erased under the guise of protection. I was consumed by a cowardly desire to possess you, and it overthrew my reason."

  "The moment I realized that the perfect comfort you enjoyed was actually killing you, I felt not jealousy, but an uncontrollable rage."

  Adin slowly raised his head to look Lou straight in the eyes. In his once-moist eyes, there now pooled the solid silence of one who bore the weight of his sins.

  "I am not a person clean enough to save you. I, too, am a sinner who plundered another's secrets."

  "But Lou... what should I do now?"

  Adin’s question scattered weakly into the air. It was less a question seeking an answer and more a confession of one standing before an unbearable truth.

  Lou lowered her gaze instead of answering. On the table, the shadow of the vase Nathan had gifted cast a long silhouette.

  "Nathan... has protected me until now."

  Lou’s voice was steady, yet it held a lingering sense of debt.

  "He is the one who gathered my broken shards and dropped an anchor to keep me from being swept away beyond the cold glass walls."

  "Even knowing that comfort is suffocating me, it isn't easy for me to turn away from the warmth he gave."

  Lou looked up at Adin. Her gaze rested on Adin’s trembling hand.

  "But you touched the stopped gears inside me."

  "It’s frightening... but I want to break this smooth glass wall now. The dismantling of the anchor you intend to carry out—I want to join you and help."

  "If I can become a tool that aids your mission... perhaps I, too, can finally walk out of this frozen paradise."

  Lou’s confession was quiet and profound.

  It wasn't a flamboyant declaration, but it clearly held the will to abandon her own safety and step into the uncertain abyss together.

  On the back of his hand, Adin felt the trembling of muscles moving by her own will, not Nathan’s control.

  That was enough for Adin.

  The complex fogs that had been haunting his mind since passing through the tunnel evaporated in a single sentence.

  The wandering he had done, floundering under Nathan's shadow because he didn't know Lou's heart, ended with this single tremor of her fingertips.

  Her sincerity was now reason enough for Adin to stake everything on this situation.

  Adin took a very deep breath. A cold, dangerous kind of stillness rose from the bottom of his chest.

  If Lou had decided to be with him, all that remained was to clear every obstacle blocking their path. It didn't matter if it was Nathan or the order of this massive Monolith.

  "I understand, Lou. That’s enough."

  "I will carry all the sins. You just... stay right there, just as you are."

  As the long confession ended, a slight tension left Lou’s shoulders. Her eyes soon grew heavy with a mix of relief and exhaustion.

  Adin watched in silence as Lou leaned against the sofa and fell into a brief sleep.

  Very carefully, Adin slid his arms under Lou’s thin shoulders and lifted her.

  Her body was lighter than expected, but the weight of the resolve contained within it pressed heavily against Adin’s heart.

  When he laid her on the bed and pulled the blanket up to her neck, Lou’s face held a profound peace—not the artificial serenity of the Monolith, but as if she had finally returned to herself.

  Adin knelt by the bed for a moment. Her steady breathing filled the silence.

  He leaned down with deliberate care and pressed his lips against Lou’s pale cheek—short, yet firm with a deep vow.

  It was not the kiss of a shy boy, but the solid declaration of a man who had decided which world he must protect.

  Adin’s footsteps as he left the room were as silent as a ghost, even though he did not try to muffle them.

  The moment he stepped into the hallway and closed the door, the 'click' of the lock sounded to him like a bell signaling the closing of his boyhood.

  Standing with his back to the door, Adin’s eyes no longer held the clumsy, anxious light from moments before.

  All wandering was over.

  Adin’s spine stood straight like a forged blade, and the cold air of the Monolith finally felt like a familiar weight.

  The man who had confirmed the sincerity of the woman he loved had become much heavier, yet was ready to move more lightly than anyone.

  He reached into his pocket. The particles of Solet touching his fingertips surged as if responding to his resolve.

  Now, he had to find out everything about Nathan, without exception. How he had imprisoned Lou, and what things he was hiding behind that perfection.

  Who he truly was.

  "I need to see Dr. Oh."

  Adin strode across the hallway.

  If it was Dr. Oh, he would hold the first clue to dismantling this massive anchor. Under the brilliant lights of the Monolith, the shadow of Adin—who had finally become a man—stretched long and dark across the corridor.