Twenty years later, in a small, dusty music shop tucked away in a forgotten alley of Seoul, lived a girl named Ha-neul.

Her name meant "sky," but she felt more like a storm cloud—grey, heavy, and full of unshed tears. She was twenty-three years old, with sad, doe-like eyes and a smile that never quite reached her face. She worked at the music shop, cleaning dusty vinyl records and organising old sheet music that no one ever bought.

Ha-neul organising.

She loved music more than anything in the world. She could hear a melody once and remember it forever. She could close her eyes and see colours dancing with every note—blue for sadness, gold for joy, crimson for anger. She had a gift.

But she could never play.

Every time she sat at a piano, her fingers would freeze. A cold terror would grip her heart. She would see a flash of a woman falling—falling from a great height—and she would recoil as if burned.

She did not know why. She only knew that music was a door she could not open, a language she could not speak.

Her father was a kind, broken man. He ran the music shop with quiet dignity, his eyes always filled with a distant sadness. He never talked about the past. He never talked about her mother. He only said, "Music is dangerous, Ha-neul. It can heal you. It can destroy you. Be careful."

Ha-neul did not understand. But she obeyed.

One cold autumn evening, as the leaves turned gold and the wind carried tHe smelledHe tried of roasted chestnuts, a man an. He walked into the shop.

He was tall and lean, with sharp features and dark, haunted eyes. He wore a long black coat and carried himself like a man carrying a heavy burden. His name was Jae-won.

He was the son of a wealthy, powerful family—the owner of the Hanseong Concert Hall, the very place where Yuna had fallen twenty years ago. His family was cursed. He knew it. He had grown up watching his father lose his mother to illness, his sister lose her fiancé to a tragic accident, and his grandfather lose his fortune to a cruel twist of fate.

Every love in his family withered. Every dream turned to ash.

Jae-won had stopped believing in love. He had stopped believing in hope. He lived his life in cold, careful control, never letting anyone close enough to hurt him.

But when he walked into that dusty music shop and saw Ha-neul standing behind the counter, something in his chest shifted. It was small—a tiny crack in the wall he had built around his heart.

She looked up. Their eyes met.