Dual POV
Seo-ah's POV
It had been four days.
Four days since she last saw him.
Four days since her voice shook and cracked in that hallway.
Four days later she whispered, "You read my soul."
She hadn't opened the Wattpad app since. She couldn't. Paper Planes and Moonlight had become too close, too raw. Now, every line she'd once written for comfort felt like an echo that betrayed her. Her diary stayed closed too. No new sketches. No poetry. No drafting.
Only silence.
She sat by the window in the campus café, headphones in but no music playing, watching as people passed by. Their worlds kept moving. Laughs, coffees, assignments, whispers — none of it paused for heartbreak.
Her thumb hovered over Jae-hyun's name in her contacts.
She missed his voice. The quiet kind. The way he didn't speak unless his words mattered. The way he made her feel that she wasn't just a girl who bled fiction.
But how could she reach out, knowing he saw her through pages not meant for his eyes?
You should've told me.
But part of her... part of her knew she wasn't angry just because he read it. She was angry because he saw through her walls before she was ready to tear them down.
She sighed, pulling her cardigan tighter around her. "I wish you didn't read it," she muttered aloud, "but I also wish you hadn't stopped reading me now."
Jae-hyun's POV
He stood in the writing lab again. Same table. Same chair. Same worn-out notebook.
But she wasn't there.
Seo-ah hadn't been to class in four days.
He kept glancing at the chair next to his.
Empty. Still.
On day one, he told himself maybe she was just late. When the lecture ended and her seat remained untouched, he tried not to think much of it.
On day two, he hesitated longer before taking notes, catching himself staring at the door. A dozen times. Maybe more.
Day three came with a silent ache. He'd memorized the shape of her handwriting in the margins of her notebook, and now he caught himself writing quotes from Paper Planes and Moonlight just to fill the silence.
And now day four — the quiet had grown teeth. Even his classmates noticed his stillness.
"Is Seo-ah okay?" one whispered to another behind him.
He said nothing.
He just looked at the chair again. It had never felt this far away.
Her voice haunted his notes.
He flipped through the back of his notebook where he scribbled poetry.
I read her like scripture, soft and slow —
every word a wound,
Every silence is a sermon.
He closed the book.
He didn't blame her.
Maybe if their story had started differently —
Without anonymity.
Without the silent admiration.
Without him falling in love with the way she wrote pain like it was music.
Maybe then, she wouldn't be gone now.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out the small voice recorder he carried for poetry.
He pressed play.
Her voice.
"Do you ever feel like your characters deserve better than you?"
He remembered when she asked him that under the campus ginkgo tree, half-laughing.
His response had been vague then.
He wished he could answer again now.
Yes, Seo-ah. And I think you deserve someone who won't read ahead before you're ready to turn the page.
But he had.
He leaned back, eyes closed.
"Maybe it's too late," he murmured to the ceiling.
Seo-ah's POV
She walked the campus garden path later that evening, twilight softening the sky. Her steps were slow, thoughtful.
Her phone buzzed.
It was from Ji-won.
Ji-won: "You okay? You've been off lately."
She typed: "Just needed space."
Pause. Then:
Ji-won: "Did you talk to him yet?"
Her thumbs hesitated.
Then: "No."
Her fingers hovered.
Then she typed something else, a new message:
"Have you ever hated someone for understanding you too well?"
She didn't send it.
She deleted it.
Instead, she opened Paper Planes and Moonlight and scrolled to the unpublished chapter she had been writing.
The cursor blinked, waiting.
She began typing.
Some heartbreaks don't happen in loud sobs or big goodbyes.
Some feel like silences you were never ready to keep.
And some people love you quietly... until their silence becomes unbearable.
Tears blurred the screen.
She didn't stop typing.
Jae-hyun's POV
He sat by the steps of the main building at night, bundled in a hoodie, phone in hand. His playlist shuffled through their shared favorites.
A voice note.
He recorded one.
"I never meant to hurt you.
I never meant to read you like a thief in the night.
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."
He didn't send it.
But he listened to it.
Twice.
Then closed his eyes, wondering if she'd ever write him back — in fiction, in silence, or maybe one day... in person.