Seo-ah's POV
The cursor blinked on the screen like it was daring her.
Four days of silence.
Four days of ache stitched between the lines of everything she'd written but never posted. Four days of replaying his voice in her head — the one that echoed words she'd only ever typed in solitude.
She had hovered over the "delete draft" button more than once. Every time she closed the Wattpad app, it felt like walking away from the version of herself that had once found healing in fiction.
But tonight was different.
Tonight, she didn't want to delete the story. She wanted to rewrite the ending.
Seo-ah sat on the floor of her room, back against the bed, a half-empty coffee cup beside her and her laptop balanced on a pillow. Her fingers trembled as they returned to the keyboard.
Seon-woo was never meant to be real. He was born from heartbreak and built with borrowed hope. But sometimes, fiction bleeds into life. And when it does, you start to see that maybe the one who stayed quiet the longest... is the one who understood you first.
She paused.
Her heart was racing.
He didn't save her. He didn't rescue her. He just stayed — long enough for her to believe she could heal on her own. And somehow, that was enough.
But even as she wrote, her thoughts drifted back to the park bench.
The way Jae-hyun had looked at her, not with pity or with pressure, but with understanding. A silence that held more than most people's words ever could.
She remembered how his fingers trembled slightly as he handed her his notebook.
How his voice cracked when he said, "Some hearts don't need rescuing. They just need to be held right."
And how, in that moment, she felt the wall she had built begin to crumble—not with force, but with gentleness.
Flashback: Three Days Ago
She'd sat in the campus library, hidden between the Literature shelves, clutching the voice recorder he'd left behind on the bench.
She didn't press play right away.
She turned it over in her hands, heart pounding. What if hearing his voice again shattered what little strength she had left?
But her curiosity—no, her longing—won.
"I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to read you like a thief in the night..."
His voice was soft, slow, like he was afraid the recorder itself might judge him.
"I only wanted to memorize you — not invade you. But the truth is, I fell in love with a girl who turned pain into poetry... and I forgot to ask if I was allowed to stay."
She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop the sob from escaping.
And then she rewound it.
Played it again.
Back to Present
She finished the new chapter of Paper Planes and Moonlight with a single line:
"He waited in the margins until she turned the page."
She clicked "publish."
The moment the post went live, her chest tightened and loosened all at once. Like exhaling after holding her breath through a storm.
Ping.
A new comment.
"He sounds real. Like someone who waited in the margins. Whoever inspired him — they must've loved you quietly."
She didn't reply.
But her heart did.
She stood up, pacing.
Could she see him again? Could she look him in the eyes and not crumble under the weight of everything unsaid?
She grabbed her cardigan, her keys.
As she opened her door, her phone vibrated again.
Another voice note.
Jae-hyun.
"I know you might not be ready. But if you are... the ginkgo tree bench. Tonight. I'll be there. No questions. No expectations. Just me."
Her breath hitched.
For a moment, she stood frozen.
Then she moved.
Scene: The Ginkgo Tree Bench
The campus had grown quiet under the weight of evening.
The lights lining the walkways glowed like scattered lanterns.
And there he was.
Jae-hyun, hoodie on, notebook in hand, sitting on the old wooden bench beneath the ginkgo tree. The same place where she once asked him, "Do you ever feel like your characters deserve better than you?"
He looked up.
Saw her.
Stood slowly.
Seo-ah didn't speak.
Not yet.
She walked until she stood right in front of him. Her fingers curled at her sides.
"You waited," she whispered.
"I said I would."
A beat of silence.
"Did you read the new chapter?" she asked, voice barely above the breeze.
He nodded. "Every word."
"And?"
"It felt like a door opening."
She looked down at her feet, then back at him.
"You weren't supposed to find me in fiction."
He took a step closer. "I didn't. I found you in the pauses. In the metaphors you never explained."
Another beat.
"I'm scared, Jae-hyun."
"I know."
"I don't want to be someone's project. Or poems. I want to be real."
"You always were."
Her lip trembled. She clenched her fists to stop herself from crying.
And then, quietly:
"Are you still memorizing me?"
He reached into his pocket.
Pulled out a folded page.
Her handwriting.
The last line she wrote in the diary he had returned to her.
"If someone ever reads this... I hope they understand that the girl behind the metaphors still believes in soft endings."
He held it out to her.
"I'm not done learning the language you write in."
She took the page.
And for the first time in days, she smiled.