We fought our way back to the surface, battling through waves that cut into our flesh like blades.

Kim Yong-beom carried me on his back, climbed onto the breakwater, and ran without stopping.

He stopped at a public phone, called for an ambulance, and then gently lowered me to the ground.

“Chun-hee… look at me.”

“…Don’t go.”

Blood kept filling my mouth.

Every time I tried to speak, it bubbled up like thick phlegm, choking me. My voice came out strained, like I had a terrible cold.

“Kim Yong-beom… leave me…”

Don’t go.

I wanted to say it—beg him not to go—but no sound would come out anymore.

“Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. We’re going to the hospital. Just… hold on a little longer. Just a little longer.”

He wrapped my neck with his soaked outer coat, trying to stop the blood, his voice breaking with desperation.

“You can’t die like this. You said you’d live. That you’d become something. You still have to write your poems.”

If I could only choose one thing in my life, it would be you, not poetry.

So please don’t go.

The sound of the ambulance drew closer.

I clung to Kim Yong-beom and tried to speak.

“Don’t go… don’t go…”

Even though no sound came out, my lips kept moving as I formed the words.

Kim Yong-beom was already covered in blood.

If I let go of his hand, I was sure he would die and I would never see him again.

So please, don’t go.

Please… don’t die.

It was cold.

It was so cold that it felt like summer would never come again; as if spring and summer had never existed.

And in that moment, it felt like this was the end for us.

As if there would be nothing after this.

Kim Yong-beom held me tightly as I trembled, whispering softly into my ear.

“Chun-hee… live. You can forget me. You don’t have to wait for me. But you have to live. You have to.”

I shook my head.

You said we’d live together.
You promised.

“Come… back.”

You have to come back.

I said it over and over, stubbornly—so quietly it might not even reach him.

Kim Yong-beom nodded.

A sharp, piercing sound filled my head—beep—His voice began to fade.

I couldn’t hear him anymore.

I couldn’t see him anymore.

***

I woke up three days later.

A police officer guarding my hospital room told me what had happened.

Apparently, I had undergone surgery to repair my torn vocal cords and wouldn’t be able to speak for a while.

They also said that my voice might change.

They called it a miracle — a stroke of luck that might never come again.

But I felt nothing.

Not sadness.

Not relief.

Even though it was my own life, I felt completely detached from it.

“Kim Yong-beom turned himself in. He’s being questioned at the station.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks.

The officer, flustered, handed me tissues—but I couldn’t even take them.

I was just… grateful.

As long as we were both alive we could meet again.

“We need to confirm a few things with you as well, Ms. Lee Chun-hee. Were you kidnapped and held against your will by Kim Yong-beom?”

No.

I shook my head.

“Did he ever hit you?”

“Did he threaten to kill you?”

“It may be difficult to answer, but… did he ever do anything inappropriate to you?”

“No.”

I said, shaking my head again.

I glared at the officer, feeling angry about the way they were speaking about Kim Yong-beom, treating him like nothing but a thug.

They didn’t know anything.

They had no idea what kind of person he was.

And yet they judged him so easily.

It disgusted me.

They had treated him like a dog, cutting him off whenever they wanted, and yet here they were, asking questions like that.

They came to question me about Kim Yong-beom every day.

‘Kim Yong-beom saved me.’

They pressed a pen into my hand, and I wrote the same words repeatedly.

There was nothing else I needed to say.

A few days later, they told me that Kim Yong-beom was a detective.

I was relieved that they knew.

But I couldn’t tell if they truly believed it.

When I asked to see him, they just said it wasn’t possible yet.

I had to see Kim Yong-beom.

I clung to his words, to him.

“Were you in a romantic relationship with Kim Yong-beom?”

He was all over the radio news.

They said he was a true detective, someone who had survived among organized criminals while keeping his identity hidden, even when his life was at stake.

However, the other reports told a different story.

He was a nobody.

A failed life.

He had worked as a kitchen assistant in a Chinese restaurant run by a gang to pay off his debts.

The woman he had protected — the witness in the murder case — was said to be his mistress, a pr*stitute from the Mia red-light district.

‘So he got caught because he liked me?’

“Ms. Lee Chun-hee, please answer only what is asked.”

[B*llshit! Do you call yourself a detective? It was the pimp from Mia Market who kidnapped and imprisoned me! Do you have any idea what kind of person he was? Do you know how hard he tried to turn me into a pr*stitute? It was Kim Yong-beom who saved me!]

The words I wrote were so filled with anger that even I could barely read them.

As the only witness, I had to make sure that Kim Yong-beom’s surrender would not be in vain.

No matter how the world tried to drag Kim Yong-beom down—I had to prove that what he did was right.
That our desperate escape had only been a way to break free from a broken world.

‘Kim Yong-beom isn’t a thug. And I’m not a pr*stitute.’

They don’t know anything. What kind of detectives are they?

After they left, I chased after the person I had struggled so hard to hold onto with words: the person I had written about.

The police said it was your request and that you had left behind a clean notebook and a mechanical pencil.

In the notebook you gave me, I wrote about you.

From the very beginning, I wrote down everything we shared and everything we did, afraid I might forget.

I thought I never would.

But there were already things I couldn’t remember.

I tried to force them back, struggling to fill in the gaps, but then I stopped.

I couldn’t recreate you with lies.

That would make me no different from the news reports.

So I left those parts blank.

When you come back, I’ll ask you to fill them in.

What do you remember?

What was it like for you back then?

The notebook soon filled up with entries about you.

By the time I had written everything down, I had reached the last page.

Only a small space remained at the very end — barely the width of a finger.

I stared at it, then tightened my grip on the pencil.

There’s something I want to say to you.

It’s something I need to say, no matter what.

‘Despair sent you to me and through you, it saved me.’