Chapter 492: Please, tell me I loved you better than that

The silence that followed was unlike anything I had ever felt.

It wasn’t the heavy, expectant silence of the car ride, nor was it the peaceful quiet of the new house. It was a vacuum, a sudden and violent emptying of the air in the room.

I sat there, my fingers clawing into the fabric of my shorts, digging in so hard my knuckles turned white. My heart was a frantic, irregular drum against my ribs. Every second felt like a minute. Every breath I took felt like I was inhaling glass.

I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I just watched my own trembling hands, waiting for the laughter, the denial, or the cold rejection that would tell me I was insane.

But there was nothing.

No one moved. No one spoke.

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and the living room was plunging into a deep, dark twilight. The shadows of the four men grew long and distorted across the hardwood floor, stretching toward me like the ghosts I had just summoned.

I could hear the ragged, uneven hitch in Min-Cheol’s breathing. It was the only sound in the house. He sounded like he was suffocating.

I risked a glance through the curtain of my hair and saw him—the ’baby’ of the group—clutching his own throat, his blue eyes blown wide and glassy with a horror so raw it looked like he was the one being choked. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Next to him, Ki-hoon had turned a sickly, translucent shade of grey. He wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at his own hands—the hands that had just massaged my shoulders, the hands that had scrubbed my back in the tub.

His fingers were twitching, a frantic, repetitive motion as if he were trying to shake off an invisible stain. A sudden, wet sound escaped him—a gag he barely choked back. He looked like he was seconds away from throwing up.

Seo-Jun was the most terrifying. He hadn’t moved a muscle. He was still slumped in the armchair, but the snarky, arrogant light in his red eyes had been completely extinguished.

They were hollow. He looked like a man who had just been told his entire existence was a lie, his soul scooped out and replaced with lead. His jaw was locked so tight I could hear the faint, sickening grind of his teeth.

And Jin-Yeok... Jin-Yeok was a statue of ice. He was perfectly still, his arms still crossed, but his gaze was fixed on the space just above my head. He wasn’t blinking.

The clock on the wall ticked. Once. Twice.

I gripped my shorts tighter, the fabric bunching under my fingernails. My eyes were burning, the tears I’d shed leaving cold, salty tracks down my cheeks.

"Say something," I whispered, the words barely making it past my trembling lips. "Call me crazy. Tell me I’m lying. Tell me... tell me it’s not true. Just say something. Anything." I choked, but still, the delay stretched on.

They were processing a nightmare they hadn’t lived, but one I had carried into their reality. They were looking at me and seeing the Jo-Pil they loved, but they were also seeing the Jo-Pil they had destroyed.

It was so surreal, but they could not dismiss it. They could never, not when I had taken up the courage to confess.

Finally, Seo-Jun made a sound. It wasn’t a word. It was a low, broken groan that seemed to tear itself out of his chest.

He stood up, his movements jerky and uncoordinated, and stumbled back a step, his eyes finally landing on mine. The sheer, unadulterated agony in his gaze made me flinch.

"The window," he rasped, his voice sounding like it had been shredded. "You said... You jumped."

He looked at the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me, the very ones I had been admiring just minutes ago. He didn’t look like a predator anymore. He looked like a victim of his own future.

Ki-hoon finally broke. He slumped forward, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders beginning to shake with silent, violent sobs.

"Four times..." he choked out, the words muffled by his palms. "We made you... We did that to you... Four times?"

The weight of the atonement I had asked for was finally descending, crushing the breath out of them. They weren’t denying it. They weren’t fighting it.

They were believing me.

And as I watched the four most powerful men I knew crumble into pieces on the floor of my new home, the ’unbreakable’ shield I’d felt earlier began to crack.

Back then, I had wanted them to feel it. I had wanted them to bleed, to see them crumble and regret it. Those were my last wishes before I jumped. I wished to see them more miserable than anyone else, but seeing the absolute, soul-destroying remorse on their faces... It was not relief I felt.

This was a different kind of pain entirely.

Min-Cheol finally let out a loud, broken sob and slid off the coffee table onto his knees, reaching out a hand toward me but stopping inches away, as if he were afraid his very touch would burn me.

"Hyung," he wailed, the sound echoing through the empty, cedar-scented house. "Please... please tell me I didn’t... tell me I loved you better than that."

I stared at Min-Cheol’s hand, the fingers hovering in the dim light like a ghost seeking permission to exist.

In my first life, those hands had been just as strong, but they had gripped me with a terrifying possessiveness that didn’t know the meaning of the word stop. Now, they were shaking so violently I thought his bones might rattle.

"You didn’t," I whispered, my voice cracking. "In that life, none of you did."

The so-called love they came to feel later was not love at all. I refuse to phrase it as love. It was a sick obsession and nothing more. Regret? Start over? Those were all fake in the sight of me, who had broken me over and over in their hands.

"All you were interested in was owning me, breaking me into command, and giving birth to your heirs. That is the hell I faced, Little Min, and you... You were no different."

He broke completely at those words, his hand falling to the floor.

The room felt like it was tilting, the air freezing over as my words hung there, sharp and unforgiving. I watched them—four Alphas who had spent the last few months trying to prove their devotion—recoil as if I had hit them with a truck.

"You see... my biggest and scariest nightmares back then and... even now," I muttered, my voice eerily calm despite the tears. "Is all of you." I smiled, lifting my head to show them an expression that was both genuine and fake. "Still, how can I blame you now for something that happened in another timeline, right?"