Hanara Kim stood in front of her bedroom mirror, gazing at the wedding dress hanging neatly behind the closet door. The ivory fabric was still wrapped in protective plastic, as if waiting for the moment they had anticipated for seven years.
Tomorrow was her wedding day.
She let out a long breath, trying to take in the reality of it. Seven years was no short amount of time. She had known Raka Han since they were both just starting out in their careers, back when they often ate dinner on a tight budget at a little place near the office.
Now everything had changed.
Raka had become an established man respected by many, while Nara had become a woman who—at least in other people's eyes—had a perfect life.
She still remembered the first time Raka had asked to speak seriously about their future, two years ago, at a small restaurant near the river.
Raka had held her hand tightly, his eyes full of conviction, and told her that he had never been so certain of anything in his life as he was of Nara. His words had felt so sincere that Nara had never once doubted him after that.
And yet tonight, for some reason, the memory felt distant and hazy, as if it belonged to someone else.
Her phone vibrated on the vanity.
Nara glanced at it, assuming it was a message from one of the friends who would be attending the reception tomorrow. But when she read the screen, her brows furrowed.
The number was unfamiliar.
There was no saved name, no profile picture—only a string of strange digits she had never seen before.
She opened the message.
“Don't marry him tomorrow.”
Nara frowned. A faint smile appeared at the corner of her lips. She assumed it was a joke from one of her best friends, maybe part of a little surprise before the wedding. She typed a brief reply.
“Who is this?”
There was no answer.
She set her phone back on the vanity and continued what she was doing, checking once more the schedule they had prepared with the wedding planner.
But her thoughts kept returning to the strange message.
There was something about that short sentence that didn't feel like an ordinary joke. Its tone was too serious, too direct, with none of the emojis or exclamation points that usually accompanied teasing.
Ten minutes later, her phone vibrated again.
This time, it wasn't a text but a picture.
Nara opened it, her curiosity beginning to mingle with unease. The photograph showed a woman standing in a park she didn't recognize, wearing a gray coat. Her hair was shorter than it was now, and fine lines appeared at the corners of her eyes—signs of an age she hadn't reached yet.
But the face was her own.
Nara's heart began to race.
She enlarged the photograph, studying every detail.
Standing beside the woman was a man she had never seen in her life. He was tall, with jet-black hair, wearing a long dark jacket and looking toward the camera with an expression she couldn't read—somewhere between calm and alert.
She examined the background more closely. A park with trees beginning to turn yellow, an old wooden bench in the distance, and a sign whose lettering was too blurry to make out.
The place wasn't familiar. She was certain she'd never set foot there in her life. Yet the way she stood, the way her hands were folded across her chest, even the slight tilt of her head to the left—all of it was a habit unique to Nara, one that even Raka often teased her about.
The next message arrived before she could type anything.
“I am you, ten years from now.”
Nara stared at the screen in silence. Her hand was beginning to feel cold.
“And the man you're marrying tomorrow will become the reason someone you love most dies.”
She set the phone down with an almost harsh motion, as if it had suddenly become hot in her hand.
The room around her seemed quieter than usual. She could hear her own heartbeat, along with the slow ticking of the wall clock in the living room.
This made no sense, she thought. It was just an outrageous joke.
And yet some part of her—the part that had always relied on logic and caution in every decision—couldn't completely ignore the unease beginning to spread through her chest.
She tried calling the number. The call wouldn't connect. She tried again. The result was the same: a disconnected ring with no explanation.
Nara sat on the edge of the bed, gripping her phone tightly. Her thoughts churned between wanting to dismiss the whole thing as a pointless prank and a curiosity that was growing beyond her control.
She looked at the photograph once more. The woman in it really did resemble her, but there was something different in her eyes. It wasn't the happiness usually seen in wedding or vacation photos.
There was exhaustion there. A loneliness too difficult to explain in words.
Her phone vibrated for the last time that night.
“Believe it or not, your decision tomorrow will change everything. I only hope you choose correctly, because I tried it already—and I failed.”
Nara placed the phone on her nightstand, turned off the bedroom light, and lay down in the darkness. But her eyes remained open, staring at the ceiling, faintly illuminated by the streetlights outside the window.
She tried to recall every moment with Raka over the past seven years—every laugh, every little argument that always ended in an embrace, every promise they had made to each other on quiet nights when the world felt as if it belonged only to the two of them. It had all felt real. It had all felt right.
Then why could a single message from a stranger make everything feel so fragile?
She turned toward the window. The city lights still shone in the distance, twinkling as usual, as if nothing had changed tonight.
But for Nara, something inside her had shifted slowly, almost imperceptibly, like a fine crack in a pane of glass that would only become clearly visible when someone pressed against it harder.
Tomorrow was her wedding day.
And for the first time since she had accepted Raka Han's proposal two years ago, Hanara Kim felt something she had never felt before on the eve of the biggest day of her life.
Doubt.