Lee Know

For months before she disappeared, she had watched the pressure of Lee Know’s idol life grow heavier—long nights in the studio, rehearsals that stretched past sunrise, rumors spreading like wildfire, and every stolen moment they shared becoming harder to protect from the world’s scrutiny—until she convinced herself that she was a complication he didn’t need, a secret he shouldn’t have to carry, even though he always reassured her with quiet smiles and gentle promises that he wanted her there. She loved him too fiercely to watch him fight battles on two fronts, the public and the private, and somewhere along the way she let fear twist itself into certainty, whispering that letting him go was the only way to keep him safe, even if it shattered her. So one morning, trembling and sleepless, she packed her bags and moved to Korea without telling him, thinking a clean break would hurt less than clinging to a love she believed was pulling him apart, leaving behind only a short message he never received. A year later, standing in the roaring crowd at his concert, she was sure he’d forgotten her, just another ghost in his past, but when the spotlight swept his gaze across the arena and landed on her, his expression fractured—eyes widening, breath stuttering—before he looked away as if the sight reopened a wound he had fought desperately to close. After the show she tried to slip out unseen, but he found her backstage with storms in his eyes, demanding to know why she had vanished, why she believed removing herself from his life would protect him, why she thought his heart was something that could survive being abandoned without warning, and as she stood there trembling beneath the weight of his voice, she realized every moment of loneliness she had carried had lived equally, painfully, inside him.