Nara woke in an unfamiliar hotel room, morning sunlight streaming through the sheer curtains that hadn't been fully closed the night before.
Beside her, Raka was still fast asleep, his breathing even, one hand still wrapped around Nara's wrist as if he didn't want to let go even in his sleep.
She stared at the ceiling for a while, trying to piece together her memories of the day before.
The wedding ceremony, the applause from the wedding guests, the laughter and tears of emotion all blending together.
Everything felt like a beautiful dream, except for one sentence that still lingered in her mind like a tiny thorn refusing to be pulled out.
“You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”
Nara slowly rose from the bed, careful not to wake Raka.
She reached for her phone lying on the nightstand, then walked toward the balcony. The morning air was still cool, and the city below was only just beginning to stir from its long night's sleep.
She reopened the conversation with the unknown number.
There had been no new message since last night. She tried calling it once more, but the result was the same: a disconnected ring with no explanation.
Nara leaned against the balcony railing, watching the street below as it began to fill with the first vehicles of the day.
As someone accustomed to working with accountable numbers and data, this kind of uncertainty felt foreign and unsettling.
In her work as a financial analyst, every irregularity always had a logical explanation—a data-entry error, an exchange-rate discrepancy, or administrative negligence that could be traced back to its source.
But these messages didn't follow that kind of logic at all.
Unable to hold back her curiosity any longer, Nara opened the number-tracing app she'd downloaded years ago for work, back when she had to verify the identity of a suspicious client.
She entered the string of numbers and waited for the search results, holding her breath.
Number not found in any carrier database.
Nara furrowed her brow, reading the error message over and over.
She tried another app, but the result was the same.
It was as if the number truly existed—it could send messages and pictures—yet administratively, it had never been registered in the real world.
“Are you up?”
Raka's voice from inside the room made Nara jump. She quickly locked her phone, slipped it into the pocket of her pajamas, then turned around with a forced smile.
“Yeah, just now,” she replied, walking back into the room.
Raka sat on the edge of the bed, his hair still messy, but his eyes looked at Nara with the same warmth as always. “You look a little tense. What's wrong?”
Nara hesitated for a moment.
Part of her wanted to tell him everything—the strange messages, the photograph of the woman claiming to be her future self, ten years from now, even the figure of the man in the dark jacket she'd caught sight of in the back row during yesterday's ceremony.
But then she remembered Sena's reaction the night before, how certain her college best friend had been that it was all just a cheap joke.
If Sena, who had known her for years, immediately thought she was overreacting, how could Raka, her husband of barely one night, not think the same—or even worse?
“It's nothing,” Nara finally answered, sitting beside Raka. “Maybe I'm just still too tired from yesterday.”
Raka nodded, took Nara's hand, and gently kissed the back of it. “That's normal. Yesterday was a long day for both of us.” He smiled, his eyes gleaming with playful amusement. “But now you're officially Mrs. Han. How does it feel?”
Nara gave a soft laugh, trying to chase away the unease still settled in her chest. “It still feels strange, honestly.”
“You'll get used to it,” Raka said, pulling Nara closer and wrapping her in a tight embrace. “We've got plenty of time.”
They spent that morning having breakfast on the room's balcony, enjoying the cityscape as it slowly grew busier below.
Raka told her about their honeymoon plans in Bali the following week, the villa he'd booked far in advance, and the seaside restaurant that supposedly had the best sunset view on the island.
Nara listened with genuine enthusiasm, occasionally laughing at Raka's jokes. But in between those happy moments, her eyes kept flicking toward the phone lying on the table, as if waiting for a vibration that could come at any moment.
Nothing came.
The day passed without another message. So did the next day, and the day after that.
Slowly, Nara began allowing herself to believe that perhaps it really had been nothing more than an outrageous joke, and whoever was behind it had stopped after realizing the joke hadn't managed to change anything.
Yet every time she closed her eyes at night, the woman's face from the photograph still surfaced now and then—the woman with tired eyes and an inexplicable loneliness, the woman claiming to be her future self, ten years from now.
And Nara couldn't fully convince herself that the woman was lying.