It was a life crushed under the weight of the word 'love.'

My gaze always followed the back of just one person, but that back never once turned toward me. For his sake, I willingly walked the path of the Asura.

I cut off the breath of those who hurt him, filling the nights with their screams. There was never a day when the bloodstains under my fingernails were gone.

The deeper I crawled into the filthy, dark abyss, the more he stayed under the clean, dazzling sunshine. I believed that was enough.

Because I loved him, even as I was used, discarded, and my soul was worn down into fine dust. But when he finally closed his eyes, my world crumbled along with him.

Looking back, the path I had walked was a mountain of corpses soaked in blood. I willingly followed him and closed my eyes, only to open them again.

"Is this a punishment from the gods?"

Did even the fires of hell reject me? Even within the cycle of reincarnation, the memories of my past life clung to my soul like an indelible brand.

In this reborn world, I eventually found him. But fate was cruel.

Even in this life, he did not love me. No, it was as if my very existence couldn't even be captured in his sight. It was hollow.

The obsession that had crossed hundreds of years collapsed from my very toes. Are you truly not meant to be with me?

Or is the karma of the slaughter I committed forbidding me from even touching you? My feet led me to the Wunhwajeong Inn.

Only the pungent scent of strong liquor filled my empty chest. I emptied my glass recklessly, but strangely, no tears came.

It seemed my tear ducts had dried up after being worn down so long and so desperately. I let out a hollow laugh while staring at the flickering moonlight reflected in my glass with empty eyes.

It was then that someone's shadow fell over me, past my senses that had grown dull to even misery. It wasn't the scent of the one I craved so much.

However, a strange man looked down at me with indifferent, cool eyes and asked.

"Are you crying?"

I shook my head blankly. I desperately wanted to cry, but not a single drop of liquid flowed down my cheeks.

Just as I was about to answer "No" with a parched voice, he smiled, his lips curving into a soft arc.

"Liar. Anyone can see those are the eyes of someone crying."

In that moment, my heart dropped. The heart that hadn't wavered through thousands of sword strokes cracked at a mere sentence. A man I had never met before was seeing right through the wailing inside me—something neither the one who used me all my life nor the one who ignored me ever knew.

Beyond the bewilderment, an indescribable wave of emotion washed over me. Like the only lantern offered in the cold rain, his words caused a small ripple in my parched soul.

That was the beginning with Woo Chun-ran. At the edge of a life I was about to give up while clutching bloody memories of the past, I met someone who recognized that I was crying, rather than the one who made me cry.

With the threads of a new destiny entangled, the night at Wunhwajeong deepened.