Arin was immediately consumed with complete and utter horror as she connected all the dots.

Woozi was a hacker, with a whole bulletin board about this girl. The girl ended up dead because of a hacker that stalked her. This bulletin board was kept in a locked up room that Arin was not supposed to have seen.

The girl’s murderer was on the run, using a fake name. “Woozi” sounded like a fake name, and it was a name that didn’t activate her curse, even though it probably should have at this point…

Arin was in this person’s home, “lured” there, so to speak, vulnerable to anything he could do to her.

She remembered how she met him, how nosey he was about her personal life, how he wouldn’t leave her alone...

Was he stalking her too?

She was terrified. She paced around the living room, shivering, scared. She hoped that this was all not what it seemed, and that she was just being paranoid.

But then again, it all clicked a little too perfectly.

She needed to get away from this person, regardless of who he was. As Arin was coming to these conclusions, she immediately called out to Meemo, who came ambling toward her.

Arin stuffed her scattered belongings into her bag and carried Meemo, preparing to leave and never return, but just as she was heading for the exit, Woozi emerged through the front door. He was wearing his pajamas and was out of breath, as if he had been running there.

He froze when he saw her. She froze too, wide-eyed, trembling.

“Arin,” he greeted carefully with a slight bow.

She couldn’t even say anything. She just stood there, with Meemo in her arms struggling to get down. Arin held her tighter.

“You saw, didn’t you?” Woozi asked, gulping. Arin took that as confirmation and panicked.

He was blocking her path to the door, so in order to get past him, she had to go by him. She charged for the door, and Woozi tried to stop her by standing in her way.

“Wait, let me explain! It’s not what you think!” he claimed.

She didn’t listen. All that was on her mind was getting away at that point. However, no matter how much she tried to push and pull past him, he didn’t let her.

“Please, Arin. You have to let me explain! Just give me a minute! Sixty seconds,” he said.

Meemo had been scared of all the commotion and the pushing, and at that point, she had managed to wry herself out of Arin’s grip and go hide in the bedroom somewhere. Arin had no choice but go back inside and try to find her. He followed Arin.

“The actual killer is one of my clients,” he explained. “I’m a personal digital investigator, and this guy paid me a lot of money to track the girl down.”

Arin called out to Meemo, but the cat didn’t respond.

“The media got it all wrong,” Woozi continued. “The person who hacked her was not the person who killed her; I was just the one who did the killer’s dirty work. I hate myself for helping him in this crime, but I honestly didn’t know what he was going to do! He told me she was a girlfriend, and he wanted to make sure she wasn’t cheating!”

Arin found that she believed him, but she was still too afraid to be involved with him on the off chance that he was lying.

She knelt down on the floor to look under the bed, and saw Meemo hiding in the darkness. Arin had to crawl to get to her.

“Please, Arin,” Woozi said. “I know I’m an awful person for taking that job and enabling a murderer, and I completely understand if you don’t want to be around me anymore, but if you want to report me, then all I ask is for you to wait until I find the actual killer.”

Arin managed to take one of Meemo’s legs and pull her out, then held her tight in her arms so she couldn’t run away anymore. Arin then headed for the door again. Her silence seemed to be making Woozi restless, so he blocked the door before she got there.

“I’m looking for him everyday. I am scouring the cyberspace to find traces of him,” his voice cracked, and he looked shaken and angry. He gulped, then continued “I know I’m a ing killer, okay! I know that if it weren’t for me, that girl would still be alive. I know it’s my fault that she’s dead!” At that point, much to Arin’s surprise, Woozi began to cry.

Arin stood there frozen in place as she watched him. His inner demons were far too similar to her own.

“I hate myself, Arin. I hate myself so much, and sometimes I hate that I’m alive. But I need to redeem myself, even just a little,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I need to find him. Track him down and make sure he’s behind bars, so at least I know I did something right…”

Meemo, again, managed to wry herself out of Arin’s stiff arms and run back inside. Arin didn’t go after her.

“With all of that in mind,” he said, “please, don’t let the police find me. I’ll go to jail for sure if they do...”

“I… I won’t,” she reassured him, still dazed. He was the last person she expected to see this emotional, this vulnerable.

He let out a brief sigh of relief. He then took off his glasses and wiped the tears from under them.

“This is so ing embarassing,” he mumbled, stumbling past her toward the kitchen sink. He laid his glasses on the counter and began to wash his face.

He stayed there in front of the sink for a good minute, trying to stop crying, but it seemed he had hit a nerve and could not control himself. Arin was no longer afraid of him, but at the same time, her paranoia and trust issues made her worry that he was manipulating her.

The doubt made her go back inside to search for Meemo again.

“Do you think I’m dangerous?” he asked Arin when he was done washing his face.

“I don’t know,” Arin said, looking beneath a desk in search of Meemo.

“I can give you proof of all my claims if you don’t believe me,” Woozi said as he collapsed onto the living room sofa. “I have a record of all my research and emails with the client.”

“I believe you,” Arin told him, and she did. There was something about the sincerity of his outburst that made it hard to doubt him.

“Well, you shouldn’t believe people so easily,” Woozi murmured. “I’m still a bad person, and you should be afraid of me.”

“It’s hard to be afraid of someone who’s crying,” she replied.

“, are they still coming out?” he muttered, wiping his b eyes. “Ignore that. It doesn’t change the fact that I am practically a murderer.”

“But you didn’t kill her,” Arin said.

“I might as well have killed her. Without me, she would still be here,” his voice cracked and he began to cry again. The tears blurred his glasses again, so he had to take them off.

Arin understood what it was like to feel like that, to feel like your existence had prompted the end of someone else’s life, to feel like it was all your fault that someone died, even if you didn’t make the final blow that took their life. She understood what Woozi was feeling, because she felt it four times over - with S.Coups, with Minghao, with her mother, with Joshua.

She knew the heartache and the guilt, and it hurt to see someone else experience it before her very eyes.

In those times, it was ~ who had helped her out of the dark places her mind took her. She was comforted just having ~ there.

She grabbed a box of tissues and brought them to him, then took a seat beside him. She put a few tissues in his hand, then took his glasses to help him dry them.

“I understand what you feel,” she said as dried his glasses. “It’s like a soul-crushing guilt you can never shake.”

“How could you possibly understand?” he muttered, wiping his eyes with the tissues.

“Trust me, I could. I know exactly how you feel.”

Arin handed him the dry glasses, and he put them on immediately, trying to focus on her despite the fading look in his eye. “Did you ever kill anyone?” he asked.

Arin hesitated. “No, but I did something, and it led to something horrible.”

“Does the guilt ever go away?”

“No,” she replied. “It’s always there to haunt you, but over time, you just adapt to the guilt. It becomes a part of who you are.”

“I can’t accept that. If I find that murderer and make sure he’s locked up, I’ll redeem myself.”

“Redemption won’t heal anything.”

“Then what will?”

Arin wanted to give him a good and hopeful answer, but she had nothing. Nothing had healed her own guilt, but she didn’t want to say that to him. “Talking to people who care about you helps,” Arin answered, recalling how conversations with ~ helped her move on. “Those people will tell you that it’s not your fault, and sometimes, you’ll believe them.”

“I wish I had someone to tell me that, but no one will.”

After a brief pause, Arin held his gaze and said: “It’s not your fault.”

He smiled meekly at that, then reached out and squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”

Arin felt nothing but empathy for him. Regardless of all the new information she now had about him, she still thought he was a good, well-intentioned person who made a mistake that cost him too much.

When his hand let go of hers, he lifted it toward her face and gently brushed his fingers against her cheek. He pulled it back almost immediately, then apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a sniffle. “I’m not in my right mind today, as you can see from the tears.”

Arin shook her head, indicating that she didn’t mind the touch. On the contrary, it gave her flutters in her stomach reminiscent of the flutters she felt when she was under the influence of the potion.

Oh no.

She glanced at the stone on her wrist: nothing. Although she was relieved to see that, she recognized the urgent need to get away from him before the color appeared and feelings grew enough to compel her to say his name. And now that she had witnessed him vulnerable and broken, the possibility of spawning a deeper and more intimate relationship with him frightened her.

“Are you late for something?” Woozi asked as he watched her look at the bracelet on her wrist.

“No…” she answered. “But, I don’t think I can stay here in your apartment anymore. I’ll find my own place.”

Woozi’s face fell. “Why not?”

Because you’re my soulmate. “Because I’m not comfortable here.”

“Why aren’t you comfortable here?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Woozi said. After a brief pause, he added, “it matters to me how you think of me.”

“I think well of you, and that’s the problem.”

“Do you have a boyfriend or something?”

Arin didn’t know why his mind went there, and what he was implying about the trajectory of their relationship, but it just reinforced her decision to leave. “Something like that,” she lied. If that was an answer he would accept, she decided to give it to him.

“Oh,” Woozi said. “I see. By any chance, is it Jeonghan?”

“What? No, of course not!”

“I just thought so, because he seemed like he was going through a really bad break-up since you left two days ago.”

Arin narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“When I went to get Meemo from your place on the roof, Jeonghan was asleep in your bed wearing overdue bandages, and had empty beer bottles all around him. I just assumed he was… you know… getting over you or something.”

Arin didn’t know why Jeonghan wasn’t changing his bandages from the injury he acquired trying to jump off the roof. She didn’t know why he would be drinking beer on her dirty bed in the storage room, especially not in this intense winter weather. Her room did not have heating, so if he stayed there for too long, he would certainly freeze. “Was he okay?” Arin asked, concerned.

“Why do you care about him?”

“I… I…” she trailed off, not sure what to say.

He didn’t wait for her to find the words. He just reached for his phone, and after a few seconds of tapping, handed it to her.

“He has a security camera inside his home. That’s him right now.” Arin glanced at the phone and saw security footage from inside Jeonghan’s apartment. She gasped, feeling like this was wrong on so many levels, an invasion of privacy in which she should not take part. However, her concern for him overpowered that conscientious voice in her head telling her not to engage.

Jeonghan looked pale and tired. He was lying down on the sofa, and the bandages around his forehead and arms were almost black, wounds festering underneath the decaying cloth. He was still wearing the same clothing he had on two days ago when she last saw him.

She couldn’t explain why the sight of him like that shook her up, but it did. She was worried about him, and she couldn’t hide it.

“Excuse me,” she said, then took out her own phone and dialled up Jeonghan’s number.

She could see Jeonghan’s phone lighting up from the security camera screens on Woozi’s phone. She could see him slightly shift and reach for the phone. When he saw Arin’s name on his screen, she saw him sit up abruptly, even though it hurt his bandaged elbows to do so.

“Hello,” he said groggily through the phone. She heard him hiss in pain.

“Jeonghan, is that you?”

“Who the is this?” he muttered, even though he knew exactly who it was; she saw him read her name.

“It’s Arin.”

“Look who’s alive! What the do you want?”

“How are you?” she asked, watching him from the screen.

“Get to the point. I don’t have any ing time for this. I have so much to do.”

“I was just calling to say that I hope you’re okay, and that I hope you’re changing your bandages every day and disinfecting your wounds.”

“What are you, my mom? Why the would you care?”

“I do care. And I want you to know that there might be hope for you. I met some people who could help you.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Please take care of yourself.”

“You’re wasting my time.”

“Please change your bandages.”

“ off.”

“Okay. I’m hanging up.”

“Good! And don’t call again!”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I’ll block your number.”

“Bye.”

An awkward silence ensued. Arin didn’t hang up, and neither did he. He kept the phone to his ear, as if waiting for her to say something else, or for her to hang up. When the silence drew out for too long, Arin ended the call, and watched him put his phone down.

He didn’t block her number like he said he would. Instead, he looked at the festering blood-filled bandages on his elbows and began to take them off.

A/N: I’m so sorry; I know I skipped a week, but this chapter took me soooo long; I was stuck on how to write it so I ended up rewriting it three times. I’m still not satisfied to be honest, but I needed to get it over with so here you go. Thank you for waiting!