The rain had come in late that night.
It tapped gently against the wide windows of their bedroom — not the storm kind, no thunder or fury — but the soft, melancholy drizzle that wrapped the world in hush. The sort of rain that made time feel suspended, weightless. The kind that often came after long conversations or shared silence.
Soo-Ah lay curled in bed, freshly bathed, wrapped in the same ivory nightgown she used to wear in the early days of their marriage — soft silk, unassuming, one of his favorites.
The room smelled of white tea and vetiver, and the light was low, golden, intimate.
Dae-Hyun had just returned from his late-night training. She could hear him in the walk-in shower, the slow hiss of water, the subdued clink of glass bottles. When he finally emerged, shirtless, toweling his damp hair, she turned to look at him from the bed.
And froze.
She'd seen glimpses. Beneath buttoned shirts. In the mirror, passing. But she had never seen him — all of him — since she awoke.
He was not the man she remembered.
The soft layers of youth, of indulgence, of comfort — gone. In their place was a body that looked forged, not grown. Sculpted through obsession and discipline. His torso was lean, his arms defined, his waist taut. His shoulders wide, back sinewed, every movement precise. His skin was pale, stretched over a frame that moved like it had forgotten what softness was.
But what arrested her most wasn't his beauty.
It was the absence of self-awareness. He wasn't vain. He wasn't flaunting. He moved like someone who didn't even remember what he looked like. Like the vessel didn't matter anymore.
He caught her gaze but didn't speak.
Instead, he came to her side of the bed, slowly. Sat down.
"I can sleep in the other room," he said, quietly. "If you're not ready."
Her fingers found his. "I want you to stay."
He looked at her then — really looked — and she saw the flicker of hesitation, not because of desire, but because of restraint. He was always so careful now. As if even the air between them was fragile, as if she were made of spun glass, and he of fire.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
She nodded. Her voice almost broke. "Please."
The first kiss was barely a breath.
Just lips grazing lips, a whisper of warmth, a memory rekindled. He didn't press further. He waited. She reached for him.
The second kiss held more — the weight of years lost in seconds. Her hands slid over his chest, over skin now tight with muscle, tracing the new contours of a man reforged in silence and pain.
She felt it then: his restraint.
He was trembling — not with lust — but with the colossal effort of holding back. Of not losing control. Of not hurting her. Of not scaring her. Of being too much.
And yet she could feel how much he wanted her — not in the boyish, eager way he used to, but like a man who hadn't touched sunlight in years.
She pressed her forehead against his. "Don't hold back," she whispered.
His breath shuddered. "I don't want to break you."
"I'm not glass."
"You were," he whispered, voice hoarse. "For a year, you were sleeping and I thought you were dead every night."
She reached up and cupped his face. "Then show me you believe I'm alive."
That broke something in him.
The rest was slow. Reverent.
Every touch was an apology. Every kiss, a prayer.
He undressed her as if peeling away grief itself. His hands were gentle, calloused, deliberate — touching her not like a man reclaiming his wife, but like a penitent approaching a sacred flame. She was crying before she realized it — not from pain or fear, but from the unbearable tenderness of it all.
He kissed every scar of hers. Touched every inch of her with aching devotion.
And when they finally moved together — when their bodies finally remembered what it was to be one — it wasn't loud or frantic or desperate.
It was quiet.
Like mourning.
Like homecoming.
She clutched at his back as he whispered her name like scripture against her throat. He buried his face in her neck and trembled as if breaking, as if shattering against the feel of her, the smell of her, the impossible reality that she was alive beneath him, with him.
And when it was over — when they lay wrapped in each other, slick with sweat and tear-stained, neither of them speaking — he held her close like he never wanted to let go again.
Her fingers traced the faint scars on his shoulder, ones she'd never seen before. He didn't flinch.
"You've changed," she whispered into his chest.
"I had to," he murmured. "It was the only way I could survive."
"I almost didn't recognize you."
"I don't always recognize myself either."
She looked up at him.
"But I still love you."
He closed his eyes. And for the first time in forever, she saw peace ease onto his features, softening the brutal lines of grief carved into his face. Just for a moment.
And in that silence, beneath the rain and candlelight and cooling sheets, they found something precious — not healing. Not redemption.
But a kind of understanding.
A moment where their broken pieces finally remembered how they used to fit together.