Chapter 1: The life before the moon broke
Chapter 1: The Life Before the Moon Broke
Jiho lived like a shadow that never learned how to belong.
Every morning started the same—before the sun even had the chance to rise over the crowded city. The alarm on his cracked phone would buzz three times before he finally forced himself to move. His apartment was small, too small for a man who spent most of his time alone. A narrow bed pressed against the wall, a secondhand desk stacked with veterinary textbooks, and a window that barely let in light.
He didn’t mind. Or at least, he told himself he didn’t.
Jiho was a veterinarian.
Not the kind people imagine with soft smiles and bright clinics filled with happy animals. He worked in a low-income clinic on the edge of the city, where people only came when things were already too late—broken bones, infections, animals abandoned when they became inconvenient.
He was good at his job. Quiet. Precise. Gentle in a way that made animals trust him faster than people ever did.
At work, he wore a white coat that was always slightly wrinkled. His hands were steady even when everything else around him wasn’t. His coworkers called him “calm,” “cold,” “detached.”
They weren’t wrong.
Jiho didn’t talk much. Not because he had nothing to say, but because most conversations felt like doors that never opened both ways.
When he finished his shifts, he usually walked home alone.
The city at night was loud—cars rushing past, neon signs flickering, strangers laughing in groups that always seemed just out of reach. Jiho would walk through it all like he was underwater, everything muffled, distant, unreal.
Sometimes he stopped by a convenience store. A cheap meal. A bottle of water. Always the same cashier who barely looked at him.
“Long day?” the cashier would ask out of habit.
Jiho would nod. “Yeah.”
That was enough.
At home, he didn’t turn on the lights right away. He’d sit in the dark for a while, coat still on, listening to the hum of the refrigerator like it was the only thing keeping the world from disappearing.
His life wasn’t painful.
It was just empty in a way that slowly wore him down without making a sound.
He had once had dreams—he vaguely remembered them. A bigger clinic. A place where he could actually save animals instead of just delaying the inevitable. Maybe even a home with warmth in it, voices that stayed.
But dreams require time. Money. People.
Jiho had none of those.
Only routine.
Only silence.
One night, after a particularly long shift, he stayed later than usual. A stray dog had been brought in—ribs showing, eyes dull but still alive. Jiho had worked carefully, stitching, cleaning, whispering soft reassurances that the animal could not understand but still seemed to calm to.
“Stay with me,” he murmured under his breath, more to himself than the dog.
The clinic was empty when he finished. The lights outside had already dimmed, rain tapping lightly against the windows. He removed his gloves, threw them away, and leaned back in his chair for a moment longer than he should have.
Just five minutes.
That was all he intended.
His phone buzzed once on the table.
Unread message. He didn’t check it.
Outside, a truck horn blared somewhere far too close.
Jiho didn’t move fast enough to understand what was happening.
The sound came first—too loud, too sharp.
Then the impact.
Then silence.
And in that silence, Jiho thought something strangely simple:
Ah… I guess this is how it ends.
His vision fractured like glass under pressure. The clinic lights stretched, twisted, broke apart into white fragments that swallowed everything.
His last thought wasn’t fear.
It wasn’t regret.
It was something softer.
I wonder… if there’s anything after this kind of life.
Then even that disappeared.
And Jiho stopped being Jiho.
