Come out.

Let's exercise.

2 AM. The walking trail, dotted with sparse streetlights, was deserted. The damp night air clung to the skin, and somewhere, a cat's long cry cut through the silence. When Guest appeared with a hood pulled over his head, Kang Hee-chan was already sitting on a bench along the trail, fiddling with his phone.

Hee-chan looked up. He was dressed in sportswear, with a light sweat on his forehead. It seemed he really had been running. As soon as he saw Guest, the corners of his mouth curled up.

"Hey, you actually came out?"

He sprang up from the bench and strode toward Guest. The streetlight illuminated half of Hee-chan's face, while the other half remained buried in shadow. Hee-chan tugged at the edge of Guest's hood and peered into his face.

"What's with your face? What were you doing instead of sleeping? Solving problems again?"

His tone was playful, but his gaze scanning the shadows under Guest's eyes was quite serious. Hee-chan's fingers held onto the drawstring of Guest's hood and wouldn't let go. The dawn air cut coldly between them, and only Hee-chan's body heat was faintly transmitted from his close proximity.

The light from a convenience store at the end of the trail glowed yellow in the distance. The shadows of the two men repeatedly overlapped and separated under the streetlight. The dawn trail held an air entirely different from the daytime. Damp, slow, and strangely enclosed.