Borrowed Time.

The first time Haneul noticed something off, it was with the microwave.

He walked into the break room to find Wang Naneun standing unnaturally still, eyes narrowed at the old machine like she was threatening it with her mind. One hand clutched a cup of ramen—still dry, noodles stiff and pale.

He leaned against the doorway. "Lost in a staring contest with your lunch?"

She didn't flinch. Her gaze remained locked.

Then, almost like a warning shot, the microwave sparked. Just once. A flash of light near the buttons. The screen dimmed, flickered, then went black.

Haneul's hand hovered near the outlet. "Whoa—did it short-circuit?"

"No." Naneun finally tore her eyes away. "It's rejecting me."

"Rejecting you?" He gave a half-laugh. "That's dramatic, even for you."

She tilted her head, more to herself than to him. "My frequency's off again."

He blinked. "Your what?"

Instead of answering, she handed him the ramen cup and walked out, heels clicking against the linoleum floor. Haneul stared after her, wondering if she'd been sleep-deprived again—or maybe she really was slowly losing her mind.

But then again, Naneun had always been eccentric. Intense. Strange. Brilliant, too, in a way that made people either admire her or fear her. Or both.

That same day, he noticed the cactus.

It had been sitting on her desk since the day she'd moved into the office suite, years ago. A ridiculous, spiky thing in a hand-painted pot with glitter and stars on it. She once told him it was a "gift from an old friend who never wanted to be forgotten."

Now, the cactus was drooping. The tip of one arm had gone yellow and soft.

"Hey." He tapped her desk lightly. "Your indestructible cactus is dying."

Naneun didn't look up from the stack of invoices she was reviewing. "Is it?"

"Yeah. Thought you said it was immortal."

"It is," she said quietly. "It only dies when it senses imbalance in its owner's aura."

He blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

She finally looked up. "Don't worry. It'll either come back to life or disintegrate entirely. Depends on whether I fix the problem."

"You sure you're okay?"

There was a long pause.

"I'm running out of borrowed time," she said at last, a rare stillness in her voice.

Haneul tried to laugh it off. "Is this another one of your 'divine mission' things? Because I swear, if you start glowing or speaking in tongues—"

"I've done worse," she interrupted, tone soft and almost... fond.

He didn't know how to respond to that.

They didn't talk for the rest of the afternoon.

The following day, they got into the elevator together. Just the two of them. He pressed the button for the lobby, and the doors slid closed.

Midway down, the lights flickered.

He groaned. "Again with the flickering. This building's cursed."

She didn't reply.

When he turned, she was standing perfectly still, her eyes closed, lips parted like she was listening to something that wasn't there. A faint hum vibrated around her body—so faint it could've been imagined.

"Naneun?" he asked, voice quieter than he meant.

She opened her eyes slowly. "It's harder to blend in when you've stayed too long."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She leaned against the elevator wall, face tilted upward. "This world pushes back. Earth isn't home to gods. It tolerates us, for a while."

"Okay…" He took a step back, uneasy. "Are you seriously doing this again?"

"It's not a performance, Haneul." Her voice was still calm. "I'm simply stating facts."

"Well, your facts are giving me the creeps."

She looked at him, gaze heavy with something ancient and exhausted. "When I disappear, will you remember me?"

He stared at her. "You're not dying."

"Everyone who leaves is dying in someone else's timeline," she said. "You just don't get to choose which side remembers."

Before he could ask what the hell that meant, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She stepped out first, shoulders squared, calm as ever. But there was something frayed in her stride. Something breaking.

He stayed inside a moment longer, heart unexpectedly thudding.

Haneul didn't believe in gods, other worlds, or fate.

But for the first time since he'd met her, he wondered what kind of truth she was hiding beneath all that strange, glittering confidence.

And how much longer it would hold.

--------

Jang Haneul sat alone in the hotel's rooftop café, fingers curled around a lukewarm cup of coffee that had long since lost its appeal. The city glimmered beneath the glass walls around him, sprawling and untouchable.

It had been a weird week.

Scratch that—it had been weird ever since he started working for Wang Naneun three years ago. But now… now it felt like the threads were loosening.

The microwave.

The cactus.

That elevator ride where she talked like she was some kind of exile from Olympus.

He drummed his fingers against the side of his mug. "Running out of borrowed time," she'd said. What did that even mean?

He tried to rationalize it. Maybe she was being poetic. Maybe she was burning out—managing the most exclusive hotel in the world couldn't be easy, not even for someone as maddeningly perfect as her. Maybe it was stress. Or maybe, deep down, she really did believe all that fantastical crap she spouted in quiet moments.

But no, that didn't check out either. Wang Naneun was a lot of things: odd, vain, demanding, but She didn't lie.

She never needed to.

Even when she told him—dead serious, over dinner once—that she was looking for someone to follow her to another world. That she wanted him.

He remembered laughing at the time. Called her a drama queen. Told her she'd been watching too many fantasy dramas.

She didn't laugh back. Just sipped her wine and said, "One day you'll wish you believed me."

A cold breeze slipped through the rooftop terrace's gap in the glass.

He shook his head. What was he even doing? Chasing shadows in his thoughts?

She was eccentric. So what? That didn't mean she was a goddess from another dimension. That didn't mean the flickering lights or dead plants or sparking machines were anything more than coincidence and poor maintenance.

He sighed and pulled out his phone, scrolling through meaningless messages and updates.

The last one was from her.

[Wang Naneun]: Tomorrow. VIP bar. Wear something dark. No arguments.

No emoji. No explanation. Just a demand.

Classic Naneun.

And yet, something in his chest ached. Not out of affection—at least, he told himself it wasn't that. But out of the quiet fear that he might not have much more time to keep pretending none of this was real.

He finished his coffee in one long, bitter sip and stood.

Just as he turned to leave, the lights above flickered once.

He froze.

Then scoffed at himself. "Stupid wiring."

He walked away.

Behind him, the lights stabilized.

For now.