There was a time, long ago, when he had been far from lonely, far from sad. But good things rarely last, even more so when that good thing is human, mortal. Humans age, humans die, because time is cruel and it stops for no one. Heechul was no one, suspended in eternal youth though his age was long forgotten in years long passed.

He was there when the Japanese invaded Korea, he was a soldier then. He'd died in battle - or that's what the plaque says. He'd stood in an elementary school, holding tiny, trembling hands tightly while American bombs screeched overhead and fires burnt in Nagasaki. He was a ghost of history chained to a young body. 

He'd watched people he'd grown close to die before his eyes, but no matter how many bullets he took, how many times he poisoned his blood with drugs and alcohol, he survived through the excruciating pain while he watched the people he'd watched grow old find peace in death.

He was alone. Alone by his own choice, because he couldn't bear the pain, the loneliness as he stood still in time, watching them age and wither and die. He isolated himself from human contact, banishing himself to the shadows of his home town to roam as a ghost, a memory.

But that night, a cold, wet night in the December of 1984, he stopped being lonely. He didn’t know what made him walk through that alley, or why he stopped long enough to notice the young woman huddled under thin rags on the wet concrete, clutching a bundle tightly to her chest with cold, rigid fingers. That was the night he met Hangeng.