Chap 50 : The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Pt 9) : The Gate (THE END)
He didn't sleep that night.
He couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. The girl with the purple hair. The girl who had saved him. The girl who had fallen from the sky and merged with Sera's body.
She was here.
She was real.
She was in Sera.
And Sera—the real Sera, the one who had climbed out of the window in her boyband t-shirt—was gone.
No.
Not gone.
Standing beside Sera.
Minjae had seen it. In the moment after the light faded, when Sera opened her eyes—there had been someone else there. Someone floating beside her. A ghost.
The ghost in the concert t-shirt and ripped jeans.
The ghost with the same face as Sera.
Sera was dead.
The real Sera was dead.
And the girl with the purple hair—the celestial being, the warrior, the savior—was living in her body.
Minjae sat on his bed, his head in his hands, and tried to make sense of it.
He couldn't.
He didn't need to.
He just needed to see her again.
Minjae did not see Sera for about a week.
He heard from the school administration that she had taken a week's medical leave of absence. He wanted to text her, but after what she had been through, he felt it was better to simply let her be.
Until one day, after a week past.
He saw her standing at the school gate.
Not moving.
Just standing there, staring at the entrance like she had never seen a gate before. Like she wasn't sure how to walk through it.
The ghost was beside her. Floating. Talking. Pointing at things and trying to speak. But it seemed Sera was not paying attention. Not noticing her at all.
He watched them for a long moment.
He watched the celestial being—the girl who had killed monsters and saved his life—struggle with something as simple as walking through a gate.
And he understood.
She didn't know how to be human.
She didn't know how to live in this world, in this body, in this life that wasn't hers.
She needed help.
And he—Minjae, the fat crybaby from the apartment, the boy who had learned to survive—he could help her.
He walked up behind her.
He stood close. Closer than he needed to. Close enough that she would notice. Close enough that she would have to react.
And then he pushed her.
She turned.
Her eyes—Sera's eyes, but not Sera's eyes—met his.
And for a moment, just a moment, he saw it.
The way she looked at him—that fierce, distasteful glare—took him back ten years. Back to the rooftop. Back to the way she had stared at those adults with contempt burning in her silver-green eyes. The same fire. The same defiance.
She was still in there.
The girl who had saved him.
"You pushed me," she said.
He grinned.
He couldn't help it.
"You were standing at the gate. For, like, a full minute. Just standing there. Staring." He tilted his head. "And you were blocking the way. I thought maybe you had forgotten how to walk?"
He didn't expect her to remember him.
He didn't expect her to know who he was or what he had seen.
He just wanted to be close to her. He just wanted to help.
Because she had saved him once—ten years ago, on a rooftop, when he had been nothing but a scared, fat kid waiting to die.
And now it was his turn.
And for the first time in ten years, Minjae felt like he wasn't alone.
He would be here if she ever needed him.