Seoul never truly slept.
Even at two in the morning, the lights in the skyscrapers were still burning. Vehicles streamed along the roads like a river of light that never stopped. From far away, sirens sounded faintly, mingling with the hum of a city that kept moving, indifferent to who was falling and who was rising.
Yet from atop that building, everything sounded so far away.
Han Seo-jun stood alone.
The night wind battered his thin body. His white shirt was already wrinkled. His black tie had come loose and hung slack around his neck. His hair was tousled by the wind, while both hands gripped the cold iron railing.
Behind him stood an old building. Haneul High School.
The school where he had spent the last six years of his life. The school where he had first stood in front of a class as a teacher, where he had met hundreds of students, and the school where he had once thought he had finally found a place to call home.
But now, it was the last place he wanted to see.
Seo-jun stared at the school grounds through the railing. There wasn't a soul in sight.
Tomorrow morning, hundreds of students would come there. They would walk through the main gate. They would enter their classrooms. They would joke around with their friends. They would complain about their assignments. Then they would talk about their exams. And some of them might talk about him. Han Seo-jun.
The teacher accused of sexually assaulting a female student. The teacher who had been dishonorably dismissed. The teacher whose name had appeared in news reports everywhere. The teacher whose face had been spread across the internet and who was regarded as a monster.
Seo-jun let out a small laugh at the thought, though there was no happiness in it.
It was only the sound of someone too tired to cry.
“Mr. Han!”
He could still hear that voice. The voice of a reporter who had stood outside his house a few days earlier.
“Is it true that you committed an indecent act against a female student?”
“Do you admit to what you did?”
“How do you feel after destroying a child's future?”
“Do you still deserve to be called a teacher?”
Those questions. Thousands of comments. Millions of words. They all spun through his head.
Perpetrator. Monster. Predator. Trash.
In only a few days, the entire world had decided who he was, and no one wanted to hear his explanation.
Seo-jun closed his eyes. He still remembered the day it had all begun.
A female student had come to the teachers' lounge because he was her homeroom teacher. Her face had been pale, and her hands had trembled. Then, a few hours later, the news had exploded.
From the accusation to the police report.
The media. The school. The students' parents. Everything had moved so quickly—far too quickly. As if it had all been prepared from the beginning. Perhaps it had.
Seo-jun opened his eyes.
His gaze turned toward Haneul High School's main building.
A room on the top floor was still lit. The foundation office.
He knew who was in there. A middle-aged man named Cha Dong-hyun, the Foundation Chairman of the Haneul Educational Foundation. A man who had been praised for years as a philanthropist. A generous donor. A successful businessman. A savior of education.
The man who often appeared on television, smiling for the cameras. But Seo-jun knew his other face.
The face he never showed the public. The face of a man who embezzled education funds.
Manipulating budgets, controlling principals, buying officials' loyalty, and using the school as a money-making machine.
Seo-jun had uncovered everything. Evidence that should have been enough to destroy the foundation. All he had to do was hand it over to the right people. But before that could happen, he had been destroyed first.
Seo-jun slipped a hand into his pocket. His fingers touched a small object. A USB drive. The only evidence he had left. He gripped it tightly.
How ironic. The proof that he was telling the truth was in his hand. But who would believe him? No one.
The lawyer who had initially agreed to help him had backed out after coming under pressure.
His friends stopped answering his calls. His neighbors looked at him with disgust. His family received calls from strangers. His mother didn't even dare leave the house. His younger sibling had to delete all their social media accounts. And the school? The school he had defended all this time? They fired him without waiting for the investigation to finish, without giving him a chance to explain.
Seo-jun smiled bitterly.
“I used to think schools were places that protected children.” The wind blew harder. “What an idiot I was.”
He lowered his head.
Six years as a contract teacher. Six years of working without security under an unreasonable burden.
Six years of teaching students who didn't even know whether their teacher would return the following year. He had accepted a small salary and worked longer than he was supposed to. He had bought classroom supplies with his own money. He had helped students who couldn't afford books. He had stayed with students who cried in the counseling room.
He had even once taken a student to the hospital when the student's parents couldn't come. He had done everything. Because he believed being a teacher meant doing more than simply teaching.
Yet in the end, a single accusation had destroyed it all.
Seo-jun closed his eyes. For the first time that night, he felt completely calm. Strange.
After months of living in fear, anger, and shame, tonight felt peaceful instead.
Maybe it was because he had finally given up. There was nothing left to prove. Nothing left to explain. Nothing left to fight for. He was simply tired.
So very tired.
Seo-jun lifted his face. The night sky over Seoul stretched endlessly above him.
“If I die...” His voice was barely audible. “Will everything end?”
There was no answer. Only the wind. Seo-jun let out a small laugh. Then he remembered his students' faces, one by one, from Class 10-4.
The faces that had once filled his classroom. Some hated him. Some liked him. Some might not even have cared about him. Yet they had all called him by the same name. Teacher.
Seo-jun lowered his head.
“I'm sorry.”
He didn't know whom he was apologizing to. Perhaps his students, his family, or himself. Or perhaps the young teacher who had once stood in front of a classroom full of hope, believing the world could be fixed through honesty.
“I'm sorry I couldn't protect you.”
His hands slowly released the railing.
One step. Just one step, and everything would be over.
But just before he did it, Seo-jun saw something. In the dark schoolyard, a girl stood alone. She wore a school uniform and had long hair. Her face was hard to make out from where he stood.
Seo-jun froze. He knew that girl. His heart beat once. Then again. The girl who had accused him.
Seo-jun stared at her, and for a moment, they looked at each other from a distance. The girl didn't say anything. But her face—Seo-jun only realized it now.
He had never really seen her face properly.
Not from the beginning. Not at the police station. Not in the interrogation room. Not in front of the media. The girl had always kept her head bowed. Always cried. Always been surrounded by adults. But tonight, she stood alone, and the expression on her face wasn't hatred. It wasn't victory, either, but fear.
Seo-jun furrowed his brow. For the first time in months, a question surfaced in his mind.
“Why?”
But the girl suddenly turned around. Then she ran. Seo-jun instinctively stepped forward.
“Wait!”
With that one step, his foot lost its purchase. Time seemed to stop. Seo-jun felt his body falling. The night wind struck his face.
The sky over Seoul spun above his head. And strangely, in the final second of his life, he thought of his class. And of the words he had once said to them.
“You don't have to know all the answers. What matters most is that you never stop searching for the truth.”
Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes.
“If I...” Seo-jun stared at the sky. “...were given the chance to do it all over again... I wouldn't become the same kind of teacher.”
Darkness.
[Calculating...]
[Soul Condition: Unstable.]
[Life Function: Terminated.]
[Regret Detected.]
[Unresolved Mission Detected.]
[A second chance is possible.]
[Searching for a suitable candidate...]
[Candidate Found.]
[Han Seo-jun.]
[Teacher.]
[The Omniscient Teacher System is preparing for activation.]
[Regression protocol initiated.]
[Returning to six months before the incident.]
[3...]
[2...]
[1...]
And for the first time in a long while, Han Seo-jun opened his eyes. But this time, the world had not yet destroyed his life.