In the icy winter, the wind howled through the empty streets. People ran toward the motionless body lying on the road, blood pooling around him. His body burned with an unbearable pain. He wanted to scream, to cry, but the agony stole all control. His lips trembled; he tried to speak, yet no sound came. The world blurred, and voices faded as though they had never existed. Each breath grew heavier and smaller—a desperate struggle against the inevitable.
"Hah…" A weak breath escaped his lips.
Am I… dying? The thought whispered through him as his senses vanished slowly, mercilessly. Light, noise, and pain dissolved one by one. The fire consuming him disappeared, and it didn't hurt anymore. He should have felt relief, but instead, a cold fear gripped him.
Am I really going to disappear? Just like that? His thoughts drifted into the dark. What happens when I'm gone? Will anyone cry? Will anyone even notice? Or will the world keep moving as if I was never here? His mind searched desperately for something—a reason, a regret, anything worth clinging to. But there was nothing. Only emptiness. His heart had known that all along.
And yet—
"Whi…te…"
A faint voice pierced his fading consciousness. His eyes widened slightly. He knew exactly who was calling him.
"Ahh…" Why now? I had already accepted death. I was ready to disappear. So why, at this moment, do I suddenly want to live?
Fragments of memory flashed before him like shattered film reels: small hands clutching his, a girl standing beneath an umbrella, his grandmother's warm smile. And at last—
"Mo…ther?"
His fingers twitched, grasping at the empty air. If only I could live… A desperate wish ignited inside his chest. I want to live. I want to create new memories. I want to find a reason to hold on.
His breathing slowed, growing heavier and fainter as darkness swallowed everything. Panic surged through his mind. Please. Please. Please—I don't want to die. At the very edge of oblivion, his final thought echoed through the void. Can someone… save me?
His chest stilled. His body grew cold and heavy, yet strangely peaceful. Just as his consciousness began to fade completely, a voice called out—soft, gentle, and hauntingly familiar.
"Whi…te."
Warmth spread through his frozen body. Instinctively, he reached toward it, and then, there was light.
He opened his eyes to an endless white expanse. There was no sky, no ground, no horizon—only an infinite emptiness. He took a step forward, and then another, but nothing changed.
"Where am I?" he whispered, confusion etched across his face.
Mist gathered before him, slowly shaping into a distinct figure. It was a girl. She was wrapped in a pale silver glow, her form almost unreal. Long white hair drifted weightlessly around her, untouched by gravity. Violet eyes locked onto his—beautiful, yet unsettlingly deep. They didn't blink. It was as though they saw right through him, peeling apart every layer of his existence.
She wore a flowing gown that shimmered like moonlight on water. For a moment, White forgot how to breathe. She wasn't merely beautiful; she was something beyond beauty, something that clearly did not belong to the living world.
"Who… are you?" His voice was barely a whisper.
Her lips curved into a faint, lonely smile. "I wish I were one of them."
White frowned, his confusion deepening. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Before she could answer, the world trembled. Cracks splintered violently across the endless white. The sound was deafening, like reality itself breaking apart. White stumbled, struggling to keep his balance, yet she remained perfectly still.
"It seems there is no time for us," she said softly. Her voice echoed strangely, as if spoken by countless versions of herself at once. "Your time has come to wake up."
His chest tightened. "Wait. What are you talking about?"
The ground shattered beneath him, and he fell backward into the darkness. Instinctively, he reached toward her. "Wait!"
But she did not move to save him. She only watched him fall. And just before she vanished from his sight, her lips moved to form a final, silent word.
White jolted upright. His hands shot forward, his breath coming in sharp, frantic gasps.
"A dream?"
Fluorescent light stung his eyes, and a sharp, sterile scent filled the air. A hospital room. He stared down at his trembling hands. No… I died. I knew I did. So why am I still alive?
The door clicked open, and a woman stepped inside carrying a plastic bag of fruit.
"Miss Elsa…?" White muttered.
She froze. The bag slipped from her fingers, the fruit scattering wildly across the linoleum floor. "White!"
She rushed to his bedside, pulling him into a crushing, desperate embrace. "You're awake…" Her voice broke completely. "I thought… I thought I lost you."
Up close, he could see the sheer exhaustion etched across her face—the dark circles beneath her eyes, the subtle trembling in her hands. She hadn't been sleeping at all. A sharp pang of guilt stabbed at him. After his grandmother passed away, Elsa had become the closest thing he had to family. And in his darkest moments, he had forgotten that.
When she finally calmed down, her expression hardened. "Why did you do it?"
He blinked, caught off guard. "Do what?"
Her voice trembled with a mix of anger and grief. "Why did you jump in front of that truck?"
His stomach dropped instantly. "What?"
"They said it looked intentional."
The words hit him like ice water. "No," he said sharply, the memory suddenly crashing back into him—the crosswalk, the flashing red light, the girl, and the massive truck speeding toward her. "I didn't jump on purpose. There was a girl. I pushed her out of the way."
Elsa's face paled, her eyes widening. "…White."
"What happened to her?" he demanded.
Her heavy silence made his chest tighten with dread. "There was no girl," she said softly.
He stared at her, utterly bewildered. "What?"
Without another word, she unlocked her phone and handed it to him. Security footage from the traffic intersection played on the screen. He watched it once. Twice. Three times.
His blood ran entirely cold.
There was no girl. The video showed only him, stepping off the curb and throwing himself directly into the truck's path.
"No…" His hands shook so violently the phone nearly slipped from his grasp. "That's impossible."
"White—"
"There was someone there!" His voice cracked with panic. "I saw her!"
The heart monitor beside the bed began to shriek as his pulse spiked. Panic clawed through his throat. And then, a sudden flash tore through his mind—the image of the girl turning toward him just before the impact. Moonlit white hair. Piercing violet eyes.
They were the exact same eyes from his dream.
"…You."
Pain exploded through his skull like a physical blow, and everything went black.
A week later, White stepped out of the apartment building. The crisp winter air brushed sharply against his face.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Elsa asked, leaning out from the doorway. "You really should rest a little longer."
He forced a reassuring smile. "I'm fine. I've already missed enough school as it is."
She looked entirely unconvinced but ultimately nodded, letting him go.
As he walked down the street, his thoughts drifted back to that fateful day. To the girl. To the dream. To those impossible violet eyes. He tried to convince himself that it was just trauma—a vivid hallucination born from a near-death experience, a trick his broken mind had played to protect itself.
But deep down, he knew the truth. She was real.
That was the day White's ordinary life began to unravel. The day he unknowingly stepped into a reality far stranger than death itself.