Chapter Text
The bridge stood quiet under the weight of the night. Seoul’s skyline shimmered in the distance. Cold, disinterested, and glittering like a prize she couldn’t afford. Above the Han River, Kim Nam-rae leaned back against the railing, the metal cold beneath her spine. A smoke dangled between her fingers, the third-to-last one in a carton she’d been rationing as though it meant something.
She had no plan beyond this moment. The last few hours had passed in a blur of movement without meaning. Walking in loops from her shitty apartment to the bridge, stopping only once to stare at the flickering lights of a convenience store. She couldn’t afford to go inside.
Now she was here again. Nineteen and fucking useless. Back on the same bridge, the same railing, the same thoughts scraping the inside of her skull like nails against a chalkboard.
It almost felt like deja vu. Except now she wasn’t sixteen, had a smoking addiction, and already tried doing more than this to end it.
Her fingers shook as she sparked the lighter. The wind fought her for it, trying to blow the flame out, but she was persistent. Flame. Flick. Flame. She got it going.
The smoke hit the back of her throat and stayed there, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Her lip stud tugged a little with each drag. It felt habitual and grounding. She didn’t look up. She didn’t want to see the city pretending to be alive.
Suddenly, footsteps.
Her body stiffened, eyes flicking sideways. Someone else was on the bridge? A late-night jogger? Cop? Freak?
No. It was a girl.
Small frame. Pale skin. Short bleached hair that gleamed silver in the streetlamp light. She barely looked eighteen, if that. Piercings glinted on her eyebrow and ears, catching the dim light as she approached, unhurried.
Nam-rae tensed. Was it instinct? Habit? Paranoia, probably. One hand dropped to her pocket, but all that was in there was a receipt for the 4 pack of razor blades that had landed her in an institution a few months back.
The girl stopped a few feet away and gave a small nod, eyes on the smoke. Her voice was soft, rough around the edges like she’d been screaming recently.
“Got another one?”
Nam-rae’s eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you,” the girl said, shrugging. “Cigarette?”
For a moment Nam-rae considered saying no, telling her to fuck off, lighting another and flicking the butt at her shoes. But something in the girl’s face made her pause. No pity. No condescension. Just… understanding.
Wordlessly, Nam-rae handed over her second-to-last smoke.
The girl took it gently. Their fingers didn’t touch. She held it to her lips and nodded at the lighter still in Nam-rae’s hand.
Nam-rae lit it for her. Flame. Flick. Flame.
They stood there in silence, side by side, smoke coiling between them like a secret. The city hummed far below.
“You here to jump?” the girl asked suddenly, not looking at her.
Nam-rae scoffed. “That obvious?”
“Little bit,” the girl said.
“You?”
A beat. “Nah,” she muttered. “I’m just passing through.”
Nam-rae didn’t respond. She didn’t believe her, not entirely. But she wasn’t in the mood to call anyone out.
“You don’t look like you have much to pass through for,” Nam-rae said after a minute. It was rude and blunt but the girl just smiled around the cigarette.
“Neither do you.”
The wind cut through their clothes. The river below moved dark and slow.
“I’m Nam-rae,” she muttered, hating that she said it aloud.
The girl looked at her finally. Her green eyes were too sharp, too awake for someone who looked so tired.
“Nabi.”
There was a lull. A pause, not quite peace, not quite tension.
“You’re not from here,” Nam-rae said, studying her. “Accent’s off.”
Nabi nodded. “North. Escaped a few years back. Been on the move since.”
“Family?”
“Not really.” A bitter smile. “You?”
Nam-rae laughed once, short and dry. “What’s family?”
Nabi didn’t press.
They smoked in silence again. For a few minutes, Nam-rae forgot where she was, what she came here to do. She was just… there. With someone else.
“So,” Nabi said eventually, flicking ash over the railing. “You still gonna do it?”
Nam-rae didn’t answer. She looked down at the river. It looked softer now. Less like a weapon, more like a mirror.
Nabi took another drag. “If you are… can I keep your lighter?”
Nam-rae blinked. The absurdity of it. The honesty. It broke something open in her.
“Fuck you,” she muttered. But she was smiling. Barely.
“Dead people don’t need fire,” Nabi said, kicking the toe of her shoe against the concrete edge of the curb.
There was something alive in her. Something fragile but fighting. Nam-rae hated it. Wanted to rip it out of her. Wanted to wrap it up and keep it from the world.
“Wanna split a shitty convenience store sandwich?” Nabi asked suddenly. “I have like… 3000 won.”
Nam-rae stared at her. This was insane. She was insane. But the air was colder now, and the river looked even farther down than it did an hour ago.
“Fuck it,” she said. “Yeah. Why not.”
They walked off the bridge together, the cigarette smoke trailing behind them like shadows.
———
The convenience store was half-lit and entirely empty. One of the fluorescent ceiling tubes buzzed like a dying insect, flickering above the instant noodle aisle. It smelled like burnt oil and mildew, but it was warm inside, and neither of them commented on it. The teenaged cashier didn’t look up from his phone.
Nam-rae trailed a step behind Nabi, arms crossed, shoulders tight. She didn’t like being in public this late. Too many security cameras. Too many drunk men. Too much risk at night. She’d only agreed because of the way Nabi said it. “This is normal. This is what people do instead of dying.”
Nabi crouched near the bottom shelf and picked out two egg sandwiches with crinkled corners. “These are probably expired,” she muttered. “But they’re only a thousand won each.”
“I’ve eaten worse,” Nam-rae said. And she had.
They paid in silence. On their way out, Nam-rae glanced up and saw the security camera mounted above the door. Her reflection in the convex mirror showed her sunken cheekbones, dark eyes, the scar pulling at the left side of her mouth. She looked exactly how she felt: like something that had cracked open and was stitched back together wrong.
They sat on the curb outside. The street was almost empty, save for a cab idling half a block away.
Nam-rae peeled the sandwich plastic open with her teeth.
Nabi watched her, then asked quietly, “How long were you standing up there?”
Nam-rae chewed, swallowed. “Long enough.”
Nabi didn’t push. She unwrapped her own food and took small bites. Her hands trembled slightly, not from the cold.
“You looked like you meant it,” she said finally.
“I did,” Nam-rae replied.
Nabi nodded and stared out to the street.
They didn’t say anything else for a while. A car drove past, slow, windows down, music playing—something low and sad in a language neither of them understood. It passed, and the silence returned.
Then, Nabi looked over at her and said, “You don’t have anywhere to be tonight, do you?”
Nam-rae froze and looked at her through squinted eyes. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not an insult. Just a question.”
Nam-rae stared at her, lips parted around a breath she hadn’t meant to take. “No. I don’t.”
Nabi stood. Wiped her fingers on her pants and tucked the garbage in her pocket. “You can come back with me. It’s not far.”
Nam-rae narrowed her eyes. “You live with someone?”
Nabi hesitated, then shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“…Why?”
The pause said more than the answer ever could.
“Uncle kicked me out,” she said finally. “I’ve been crashing at an abandoned studio behind a pharmacy near Hongdae. There’s power if you steal the plug from the back alley.”
Nam-rae didn’t know what to say to that. Not because she was shocked—but because she wasn’t. It made sense. Nabi moved like a bird that had nowhere to land.
“You let strangers sleep near you often?” Nam-rae asked.
“You’re not a stranger. You gave me a cigarette.”
Nam-rae snorted. “What if I rob you in your sleep?”
Nabi shrugged. “What’s there to steal?”
Another silence. Longer this time.
Finally, Nam-rae stood. “Lead the way.”
⸻
The studio smelled like old paint, dust, and a hint of lavender air freshener from a busted plug-in by the wall. A single mattress lay on the floor in the corner, covered in mismatched blankets and jackets. Posters were peeling off the walls, some in Korean, others in English, half torn and faded.
“You live here?” Nam-rae asked, stepping over a broken chair.
Nabi kicked a bucket aside. “I exist here.”
She plugged a lamp into the wall. The light sputtered, then glowed faintly amber. It was enough.
Nam-rae sank to the mattress with a sigh. Her spine popped as she stretched. She rolled her shoulders back and stared at the ceiling.
Nabi sat across from her, legs folded.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I haven’t slept right in years.”
“Me neither.”
They didn’t talk for a while. Nam-rae laid down, staring at the ceiling fan that didn’t work. She heard Nabi shifting, pulling off her boots, stacking them neatly by the wall.
“Why the butterfly?” Nabi asked suddenly, voice soft.
Nam-rae blinked and looked over at her. “What?”
“The tattoo on your neck.”
Nam-rae exhaled through her nose. “It’s a long story.”
“I don’t mind.”
Nam-rae tilted her head and furrowed her brows. “It was something I did when I got clean for the first time. Dumb symbolic shit. Transformation, change, all that.”
“Did it work?”
Nam-rae shrugged. “I’m still here.”
“Fair enough.”
Silence settled again, not as heavy this time.
“You know,” Nabi said after a while, “I didn’t mean to be at that bridge tonight.”
Nam-rae turned her head slightly. “What do you mean?”
“I was walking. Thinking about stuff. Got turned around. Ended up there.”
Nam-rae watched her carefully. “You weren’t just there for a cigarette.”
“No,” Nabi admitted. “But it helped.”
Nam-rae reached into her coat pocket and took out the nearly empty carton.
“Last one’s yours,” she said.
Nabi looked at it, then at her. “You sure?”
Nam-rae nodded. Nabi reached over and took it.
Their fingers brushed this time.
———
Nam-rae didn’t sleep, not really. Her eyes closed, but her body never loosened. She laid on her side, facing the cracked drywall, reaching out to feel the texture. Across the mattress, she heard Nabi’s breathing. It was slow and steady, uneven at times.
Around four in the morning, Nabi stirred and whispered, “You still awake?”
Nam-rae opened her eyes. “Barely.”
A pause.
“You always like this with strangers?”
“You’re not a stranger,” Nam-rae muttered. “Apparently.”
That got a soft laugh. “No. I guess not.”
Another long pause passed between them, warm and brittle.
Then Nabi said, “You know what my name means, right?”
Nam-rae shifted slightly. “No. Should I?”
“‘Nabi.’ It means butterfly.”
Nam-rae blinked. Turned her head just enough to see her face in the dim orange light.
“You’re shitting me.”
Nabi smiled, one side of her mouth tilting up. “Dead serious.”
Nam-rae’s hand went unconsciously to the tattoo at her collarbone, fingers tracing the dried ink beneath her shirt.
“That’s…” Nam-rae stopped herself. “That’s so fucking weird.”
“Ironic,” Nabi said softly. “I show up on a bridge the night we think about dying and you just happen to have a butterfly tattooed on you.”
Nam-rae didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Do you believe in signs?” Nabi asked.
“No,” Nam-rae said. “But maybe I should start.”
The silence that followed was different. Not absence or discomfort. Something fuller. Heavy in the ribs.
“I used to tell myself if I ever saw a butterfly on the day I was planning to leave this world behind, I’d take it as a sign not to do it,” Nabi said.
“And did you?”
“I saw you.”
Nam-rae felt her throat tighten, but said nothing. Words were starting to feel fragile in her mouth.
Nabi scooted closer. Their knees brushed beneath the blankets. Neither of them pulled away.
“You think you’ll try again?” Nabi asked, barely above a whisper.
Nam-rae inhaled slowly, the air like gravel in her lungs. “Probably. Yeah.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
Nabi turned to face her, her voice steady in the low light. “Because you still have something to give. Even if it’s just a smoke to a stranger. Tonight? That cigarette? That might’ve been the first time I didn’t feel invisible in weeks.”
Nam-rae looked at her. Really looked. The softness of her cheeks, the faint smudges of eyeshadow under her pleading green eyes, the upturn of her eyebrows and the creases of her dimples. She wasn’t just some girl with a pretty name. She was cracked porcelain holding something bright inside.
“I don’t have much to give,” Nam-rae said finally.
“Neither do I,” Nabi whispered. “So maybe we give to each other.”
There was nothing poetic about the room. The walls were stained, the mattress thin, the ceiling fan motionless, but in that moment it felt sacred.
Nam-rae didn’t reach for her. Didn’t make a move. She just laid there, listening to the way Nabi breathed when she was half-asleep, when her guard was down. Tried to memorize it.
Outside, the city was still asleep, but the sky was starting to lighten at the edges, bleeding soft into the cracks of night.
Nam-rae closed her eyes for real this time.
And for once, she didn’t dream of dying.