[Somewhere Between Timelines | Unknown Location – 12:00 PM]
The walls here pulsed with energy. Surveillance screens flickered in a dark room filled with whirring noise. On one of the displays, Min-jae and Hae-won's conversation played.
On another—Do-yoon and Hae-won's kiss.
A woman stepped forward, her silhouette sharp. She touched the screen gently.
"Subject 42A is destabilizing."
Another voice, male, calm: "We warned them. Two candidates remembering is a breach."
She tapped a code into the console. "Then begin phase two. Reset memory anchors. Clean the timelines."
The man turned. "And the anomaly?"
Her lips curled. "Kill her if she chooses wrong."
---
[Min-jae & Hae-won | Secret Café – 12:15 PM]
"You're saying there's someone controlling all this?" Hae-won asked.
"A system. Overseers. Enforcers. I was part of it… until I defected for you."
She froze. "You what?"
He looked at her with a mixture of guilt and devotion. "I broke my protocol, Hae-won. I altered your path the moment I touched your hand the first time. That moment… created the first ripple."
She struggled to process it.
"You're not just a professor, are you?"
He smiled. "Not in the way you think. I study time. But I also… guard it. And now, I'm risking it all—for one last reset. With you."
He pulled a folded page from his coat pocket. An old wedding invitation.
Her name.
Baek Do-yoon's name.
But scribbled across it in a different ink: Trust only what your heart refuses to forget.
---
[Do-yoon & Hae-won | His Apartment – 12:30 PM]
Their kiss ended, but the air between them buzzed with heat.
He looked at her, bewildered and breathless. "I know I've kissed you before."
She nodded slowly. "Yes. Many times. In many lives."
He stepped back, as if realization frightened him. "This doesn't make sense. I shouldn't know this."
Then his phone rang.
The number: Unknown.
He picked up. Silence.
Then a voice:
"Baek Do-yoon. You are experiencing unauthorized temporal memory restoration. Stop pursuing Subject Shin Hae-won or be reset."
He stiffened. "Who is this?"
The voice repeated: "You have been warned."
He hung up, then turned to Hae-won.
"I'm not losing you again."
She stepped into his arms.
And just outside his apartment door… someone was listening.