CHAPTER 14: Midnight Words

Jae-hyun's POV

The campus was unusually quiet that night, hushed by the weight of looming deadlines and the way spring rain left a silvery glaze on the walkways. Jae-hyun's steps echoed faintly as he approached the Creative Writing building. Clutched in his hand was a single piece of folded paper — thick, slightly crumpled, covered in his tight cursive handwriting.

He had rewritten the poem four times.

Not because the words weren't right.

But because none of them felt enough.

How do you write for someone whose every word you've already fallen for?

He exhaled and tapped his knuckles softly on the doorframe of the study room, where he knew she'd be — same corner window, same quiet presence. She looked up from her notebook, startled but not surprised.

"Hey," he said.

Seo-ah blinked. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Shouldn't you?" he countered, then smiled. Nervous. Hopeful.

She raised an eyebrow but didn't reply.

Jae-hyun crossed the room and held out the paper. "It's not part of any assignment. Just... something I wrote."

She hesitated. I took it.

"Should I read it now?" she asked, her voice soft.

He nodded, but already regretted it. Too vulnerable, too soon — had he just made it weird?

Seo-ah unfolded the page slowly. Her eyes scanned the words. Once. Twice.

I do not wish to save you.

You're not some falling star I need to catch.

But if you ever wanted a sky to burn in,

I'd hold it open with my chest.

If silence was your language,

I'd become fluent in waiting.

If love was the ache in your ink,

Then I've been bleeding poems just to understand it.

Seo-ah swallowed. Her fingers trembled slightly at the edge of the page.

She looked up.

"Did you… write this recently?"

Jae-hyun nodded. "Last night. I couldn't sleep. You said something in class — about how sometimes we write not to be understood, but to not feel alone. That stuck with me."

Her breath hitched — just barely. But he saw it.

Something flickered in her eyes. Recognition? Or fear?

"You've got a way with... lines," she said carefully, folding the poem back up. "This one — 'If love was the ache in your ink…' — it feels like something I should've written."

That made him smile. Almost shy. Almost sad.

"You sort of did," he said under his breath.

But she didn't hear it. Or maybe she pretended not to.

He wanted to say more — about Paper Planes and Moonlight, about how he knew it was hers, about how her words found him when he didn't even know he was searching.

But he stayed quiet.

She wasn't ready.

And truthfully, maybe he wasn't either.

Instead, they sat. Wordless. Parallel lines drawn closer by silence than speech.

Rain began again outside, soft against the windowpane. Seo-ah folded the poem and tucked it gently into her notebook — between a blank page and one half-filled with ink.

She didn't say thank you.

She didn't have to.

Because at that moment, she looked at him like he was already part of the story.

And maybe, just maybe — she'd start to write him in, too.

Later, as they walked back across the campus under a shared umbrella, their steps slow and strangely synchronized, Jae-hyun dared to ask, "Do you ever feel like stories happen to you before they happen on the page?"

Seo-ah tilted her head slightly. "Sometimes. But I usually ignore it. Real life isn't as tidy as fiction."

He smiled. "Maybe not. But the way you write... it makes real life feel a little softer."

She didn't respond immediately. Instead, she glanced at him, her eyes soft and unreadable, then looked back at the rain. "Is that what you're trying to do? Soften it?"

Jae-hyun's voice was almost lost under the patter of rain. "I think I'm just trying to find the words for what I feel. And hope someone reads them right."

That silence again — the kind that held weight. Meaning. Potential.

When they reached the dormitory steps, she paused.

"Thank you," she said finally, voice quiet but certain.

"For the poem?" he asked.

"For... showing up," she replied.

He waited a moment, watching her disappear through the dorm entrance, her shoulders slightly less tense than before.

Jae-hyun stood there for a while, letting the rain tap across his skin, poemless but full.

He didn't need her to say anything else.

Not tonight.

Because some stories were best told in the spaces between words.

And he was willing to wait — sentence by sentence — until she was ready to write the rest.