Choi Yeonjun

The cathedral stood like a corpse dressed for royalty.

Towering ivory candles bled wax down silver holders, their flames trembling against the stained glass windows where saints watched with hollow eyes. Rain whispered against the tall arches overhead, soft and relentless, cloaking the evening in a funeral-like hush. White roses decorated every pew in excessive abundance, but their sweetness had already begun to rot beneath the suffocating perfume of incense and old money.

Everything about the wedding was beautiful.

Everything about it felt wrong.

You stood at the altar in layers of silk so heavy they felt like burial cloth wrapped around your body. Pearls rested at your throat like tiny frozen tears, and the lace sleeves clung to your skin with ghostly delicacy. Your hands were trembling beneath the bouquet.

Across from you stood .

Perfect posture. Perfect manners. Perfect smile.

The kind of man mothers prayed for and daughters learned to obey.

He looked devastatingly handsome beneath the candlelight, dark hair neatly parted, gloves folded behind his back as though he had stepped out of an oil painting. There was kindness in his eyes. Genuine kindness. That almost made it worse.

Because he was not cruel.

Cruelty would have been easier to hate.

The priest’s voice echoed softly through the cathedral.

“Marriage is the sacred binding of two souls. A promise to remain beside one another through sickness and sorrow, through all earthly suffering, until death parts them from this world...”

Death.

Your throat tightened around the word.

Without meaning to, your gaze drifted away from the altar.

Toward the back of the cathedral.

Toward him.

sat among your mutual friends at a long reception table near the shadows, dressed entirely in black while everyone else wore ivory or silver. It wasn’t intentional rebellion. Black simply looked natural on him, like moonlight looked natural on graves.

One elbow rested against the table, fingers pressed against his lips in silent restraint.

He had not spoken once since the ceremony began.

The others around him whispered occasionally, exchanging nervous glances, but Yeonjun remained still enough to resemble part of the darkness itself. Only his eyes betrayed him.

God, those eyes.

They stayed fixed on you with the quiet devastation of a man watching his own heartbeat lowered into the earth.

And suddenly you weren’t standing in a cathedral anymore.

You were back beneath the dead willow tree behind your childhood estate, where autumn leaves collected in your hair while Yeonjun laughed softly and tucked them behind your ear. Back to ink-stained letters hidden beneath floorboards. Back to midnight piano melodies drifting through open windows. Back to hands brushing in secret beneath dinner tables while your families discussed politics and inheritance as though love had never existed in the first place.

You remembered the night he kissed you.

The rain had smelled like smoke and wet roses. He had cupped your face like something breakable, forehead pressed against yours as if he feared you might vanish.

“You know,” he had whispered shakily, “if there is a God listening to me right now... I think He made you only to ruin me.”

And perhaps He had.

Because the moment your engagement to Beomgyu was announced, the world around Yeonjun seemed to decay.

He stopped writing songs.

Stopped sleeping.

The bright arrogance he once wore so effortlessly faded into something quieter. Stranger. Like a ghost learning how to imitate a living man.

Still, he never begged you to stay.

That was the tragedy of Yeonjun.

He loved too deeply to chain you to his suffering.

At the altar, the priest turned toward Beomgyu with a warm smile.

“Do you take her to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Beomgyu’s gaze softened almost painfully as he looked at you.

“I do,” he answered gently.

No hesitation.

No fear.

Just heartbreakingly sincere affection.

For one terrible second, guilt clawed through your chest. Because Beomgyu truly intended to love you well. He would spend the rest of his life trying to make you smile. He would memorize how you took your tea. He would wait outside libraries for hours just to walk you home beneath an umbrella. He would kiss your hands with reverence and never raise his voice at you.

But he would never own the parts of you Yeonjun already haunted.

The priest turned to you.

“And do you—”

A sharp crack of thunder shook the cathedral windows.

The candles flickered violently.

And somewhere in the silence that followed, a chair scraped against marble.

Yeonjun had stood.

Every head turned instinctively toward him.

For a moment, nobody moved.

He looked pale beneath the candlelight, dark curls falling messily across his forehead, eyes rimmed red from a grief he had swallowed too long. The storm outside cast shifting shadows across his face, making him appear almost unreal. Like something dragged out of a dream.

Or a grave.

One of your friends quietly whispered his name in warning, but Yeonjun barely heard.

His gaze never left you.

Not your dress.

Not the cathedral.

Only you.

As if he were trying to memorize the shape of your existence before the world took you away from him forever.

Then, finally, he laughed softly.

Not happily.

The sound resembled shattered glass.

“Sorry,” he murmured, though the word carried no real apology. “I just...” His voice faltered for the first time. “I think watching this is killing me a little.”

The cathedral fell deathly silent.

Your breath caught painfully in your lungs.

Even Beomgyu looked stricken.

Yeonjun swallowed hard, shoulders rising with uneven breath before he forced a crooked smile onto his face. A pathetic attempt at pretending he was still human enough to survive this.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered.

And somehow those three words hurt more than anything else.

Because he said them like goodbye.

Rain slammed harder against the stained glass.

The wind outside howled through the trees surrounding the cathedral grounds, and for one dizzying moment, the entire world felt suspended between life and death.

Between duty and desire.

Between the living man waiting patiently at the altar...

...and the ghost of the one you truly loved.