Chapter 7 Ruins of the Pact
Ruins of the Pact
Yuna
The wind doesn’t sound the same without him.
It used to snag on the edges of the roof and carry pieces of him to me—low murmurs, the soft rasp of a laugh he didn’t mean to let out, the way my name left his mouth like he’d stolen it and was afraid of being caught.
Tonight it’s only cold. Only empty. It slaps my cheeks numb and combs its fingers through my hair like it’s trying to tidy a mess that isn’t on my head.
I sit on the Guild’s highest ledge with my knees tucked to my chest and my ribbon looped twice around my wrist, twisting it until the green glass bead warms against my pulse.
Below, Seoul exhales—sirens far off, a bus groaning over a pothole, a delivery scooter whining past the alley with a squeal that makes the rookies flinch the first month they’re here.
The Han is a soft black seam; the bridges blink like patient eyes.
Somewhere a pojangmacha tent bangs metal and laughter spills into the cold.
The city is loud enough to feel alive and still too quiet to drown a name.
Taeyang.
He was never mine. I learned early that wanting isn’t owning.
But the bond is a liar that speaks fluent body.
It hums under my skin like a second bloodstream, a thread that tugs toward a door I can’t make myself open or close.
Some days it’s a whisper. Tonight it’s a bruise that doesn’t fade when I stop pressing.
I told myself I didn’t care. Told Seori I’d be fine.
Told Minji I didn’t even think about him unless someone said leather or clove or please in a certain cadence and then it was just muscle memory, not heart.
The lies held until the light changed—the way it does on winter roofs—flat and silver, and I remembered the look on his face the night the mark surfaced across my collar: not hunger.
Not victory. Pain, like loving me hurt worse than anything that had ever tried to kill him.
Why me? sat on my tongue like blood. Why deny it when we were carved for each other in stardust and fate? I didn’t say it. He left before I could ask. No door slam. No explanation. Just footsteps that learned new corridors, and the after-silence that makes even walls feel guilty.
I catalog the small proofs that I am not who I was.
The girl who flirted with danger and stole the last piece of bread to make Minji pout now ties her boots twice and leaves food on the peg for a cat that never comes.
I train like a blade being filed down to a line.
I sleep like a soldier who doesn’t trust pillows.
I check the balcony twice and pretend it’s for weather.
Minji knows. Of course she does. She lingers in doorways as if a breath too late could mean finding me cracked in half.
She swaps out my tea when she thinks I’m not watching—mercy leaves and witch hazel, the mix she made for Jisoo’s wing but won’t admit she repurposed for hearts.
She never says his name; she doesn’t have to.
It lives between us, a guest that won’t take a hint.
Seori tries to pull me back with gentle gravity.
She brings me gossip and makes terrible jokes on purpose.
She drags me to the training court and sets my feet right without making a lesson out of me, then nudges me toward rookies who need my voice more than I need my silence.
Her light reaches the parts of me that don’t resist on principle. The rest keeps its arms folded.
I press two fingers to the crescent under my collar until heat pools there, mean and consoling.
The mark feels like an old truth beneath new skin.
Some nights I imagine scraping it out with a dull spoon and immediately hate myself for the cruelty of the thought.
Others I imagine following it like a compass until it leads me to a man who can say stay without his hands shaking.
“Yuna,” the wind says, because my head is not my friend. For a breath my throat closes and I have to swallow stupid hard to remember air is not a luxury.
The rooftop keeps its shrines—salt lines chalked under the vent, a broken lantern Seori refuses to throw away, three paper talismans that Rhee from the kitchens pasted under the eave the day she decided we were hers too.
I add to them because I’m sentimental when it’s safe.
Tonight it’s a sprig of rosemary from the ruin and the bead from my ribbon for a moment before I chicken out and tie it back on.
I’m brave in battle and ridiculous with keepsakes.
It’s fine. I can hold both truths without breaking.
The bond pulses. Not a command. A reminder. Here. Here. Here.
I let my head fall back until the night goes blurry and the stars smear.
The first time I brought him up here the city wore summer like perfume.
We were all spit and flint then—him pretending he didn’t want a balcony, me pretending I didn’t care if he stayed.
We agreed to silence because we didn’t know what else to do with the noise.
I thought it was a truce. Now it tastes like a promise I kept alone.
It wasn’t just the bond. It was him. The way he touched me like everything gentle in him had to ask permission from everything that wanted to burn.
The way he pressed his mouth to my pulse and then pulled away as if his own breath could bruise.
The way he pushed me away because he believed he had already ruined me by wanting to be careful.
I wish I could forget him. I can’t. When I close my eyes I feel calluses map my ribs like topography he meant to memorize; I see the flicker that lit his eyes before he slammed it shut. When I open them, I hear the silence he left like a door I keep telling myself isn’t locked.
Footsteps whisper behind me. I don’t turn. If it’s Minji, she’ll sit without speaking. If it’s Seori, she’ll cough theatrically and pretend I laughed. If it’s—
“Cold,” Seori says, and sits anyway, shoulder to mine, no commentary on my red ears. She hands me a handwarmer she clearly stole from Rheon. It smells faintly of shadow and stubbornness.
“Thanks,” I say. My breath smokes. It looks like something leaving.
We watch the city for a while. She lets the quiet do the opening. When she finally speaks, it isn’t a question.
“You keep coming up here to measure the distance between who you were and who you are,” she says. “Stop using him as the ruler.”
“I don’t know what else to use,” I admit. “He’s the only thing I want and the only thing I promised myself not to want if it meant losing me.”
She bumps my shoulder.
“Wanting him didn’t make you smaller. He did. And he doesn’t get to be the architect forever.”
I huff a breath that is almost a laugh if you squint.
“You’re getting good at this.”
“I have practice,” she says softly, and the night reaches back a year to a girl on a different roof deciding not to die the way the world asked her to.
We sit until my fingers stop hurting. When Seori stands, she doesn’t tug. She just offers a hand.
“Soup,” she says. “It’s Minji’s night. It will be edible, which is not the same as good.”
I don’t move.
“In a minute.”
She nods and leaves me with the handwarmer and a city that won’t stop pretending it needs me. The wind shifts. For a heartbeat it smells like rain about to keep a promise.
“This used to feel like the beginning,” I tell the sky. “Dangerous and beautiful.”
I touch the mark again and it answers, steady, like a heartbeat I can choose not to chase if I choose something else to live by.
“Now it feels like ruins,” I say, and the word doesn’t break me. “But ruins aren’t the end. They’re the bones of a place that mattered.”
I push to my feet, legs prickling where the cold had convinced them to go on strike. I tuck the handwarmer into my sleeve and the ribbon under my cuff and make myself walk toward the stair. Halfway to the door I stop and turn back because I’m allowed to be dramatic when no one’s watching.
“I don’t know if I’ll rebuild,” I tell the roof that saw everything. “But I’m going to stop camping in the wreckage.”
The wind nods—at least that’s how I choose to hear it. I take the stairs down, one, then another, and let the building’s noise rise to meet me: Minji swearing at soup, Seori pretending not to be amused, Jisoo humming under his breath because he forgets people can hear when he’s happy.
The bond hums too. I don’t shush it. I don’t follow it either.
For tonight, I let it exist like a scar I don’t have to hide or reopen. Tomorrow I’ll try again. Not to forget him. To remember me.