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Han Sooyoung had always written to be alone. Not in the sense that she wanted solitude, though. Writing, for her, was the only place where words didn’t have to be filtered, where her sentences could exist without judgment, where she could lay herself bare and not be dissected like some lab rat on display. That was why she started posting her work online in the first place. It was anonymous, faceless, and yet intimate, because readers could connect – or not – with her thoughts without ever knowing her.
And then there was him.
She remembered the first email. “Beta Reading Request,” it said, nothing more. She had hesitated, naturally, because people asking to read her work – especially strangers – usually wanted to do more than critique. But there was something in the tone, understated yet insistent, that made her pause. His user was… DKOSalvation. She didn’t know him, yet he had this quiet passion, a kind of assurance that made her feel safe even before she replied.
The first few emails were short. He pointed out tiny things: misplaced commas, a phrase that didn’t quite land, a character inconsistency she hadn’t noticed. But he never scolded. Never judged. He just…noticed. And somehow, noticing felt like caring.
She had always been wary of people who claimed to “get” her. It wasn’t that she was immune to kindness, just that she had learned early how heavy human connection could be. People wanted something in return: loyalty, admiration, attention. Dokja, she learned his name was, seemed content to just read. To respond. To exist on the other side of her screen without demanding, without intruding.
Weeks turned into months. Emails became longer. He began asking questions – small, strange ones at first: what music she liked, what she had for breakfast, how she felt about the weather. And then bigger ones, more intrusive only in the sense that they required honesty: why she wrote, why she stayed anonymous, what she wanted out of life. She always answered cautiously. Always. But with him, she unconsciously let him take her guard down, piece by piece.
He told her things too, though always carefully. Not everything of course. He was so careful about what he said, yet he said enough to let her see the cracks. She learned about his mother, his past, the dark corridors of his childhood where loneliness had been constant, where he had learned early that people could hurt you, and sometimes the only safe place was to hold yourself together and walk forward alone. She didn’t know everything. She didn’t want to. Some things were too sharp to touch, too fragile to disturb. But she knew enough to see the weight he carried, and it made her care.
She wasn’t sure when the emails stopped being just exchanges of words. When she realized she looked forward to his replies the way she once had waited for novels to be released or letters that never came. When she began to imagine what he looked like, how his voice might sound if he read her work aloud, the subtle cadence of his words, the way he must lean forward over a keyboard in the dead of night to type her name correctly.
It had taken nearly a year for them to meet.
The day was gray, the kind of cold that seeped into your bones even under a thick coat. She had checked the cafe twice before going in, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped the strap of her bag. He was late, of course, but she wasn’t worried. Not really. She knew him. She trusted him. But nerves have a way of bubbling up anyway, a faint tremor that no amount of rational thought can completely smooth out.
And then he was there.
Dokja. Kim Dokja. He looked different from what she imagined, yet exactly the same. He had that quiet, almost timid way of holding himself, as if the world was heavy and he had decided long ago to shoulder it alone. But when he saw her, there was that flicker—the one she recognized from his emails, the warmth hiding behind the careful words. A small smile. Not wide, not showy, but enough to make her chest tighten in a way that surprised her.
“Hey,” he said, and it sounded like a hello, like a beginning, like a quiet acknowledgement that they had finally made it here, to this moment.
“Hi,” she said, a little breathless, and sat down across from him.
They talked for hours. At first, they circled the familiar ground—their favorite books, the minor grievances of professors, the trivialities of college life. And then, gradually, they began to peel back layers they had carefully hidden from everyone else.
Dokja spoke softly about his childhood, about the small, sharp tragedies, about his mother and the book that had made their lives public, about reporters and relentless eyes and whispers that followed him like shadows. Sooyoung felt her chest tighten as he spoke, and all she wanted to do was reach across the table, touch his hand, tell him it was okay, that she would carry some of it with him if he let her. But she didn’t. She had never been the kind of person to force comfort, to demand that someone lean on her. She simply listened, because that had always been enough for Dokja, and that had always been enough for her.
And then it was her turn. She told him about her writing, about the fears she tucked behind punctuation, about the loneliness that drove her fingers to type long into the night. She told him about the fleeting joy of finishing a chapter, the quiet despair when no one read it, and the way words could both wound and heal, depending on who held them.
He listened. He didn’t try to fix anything, didn’t offer platitudes. He just listened, and when she faltered, he waited. When she stumbled over a memory too sharp, he didn’t look away or frown. He simply let her speak, let her exist. And when she stopped, he smiled, small, faint, the kind that could be missed if you blinked.
“Your words are good,” he said, finally. And she laughed, lightly, more out of disbelief than amusement.
“They’re messy,” she said.
“Messy is good,” he said. “It’s alive.”
There was something so simple about that — so devastatingly simple — that she wanted to memorize it. Messy is alive. That was how she had felt all along. That was how she had felt typing in the dark, sending emails into the void. That was how she had felt meeting him for the first time, feeling the fragile stirrings of trust bloom like tentative petals in her chest.
By the end of the day, they were inseparable. Not in the obsessive, suffocating sense that made other people wary, but in the quiet, unspoken rhythm of two people who had found a rare sanctuary in each other. Dokja walked her back to her dorm, their shoulders brushing in casual familiarity. The winter air was crisp, and the smell of coffee clung faintly to his coat, a warm, earthy scent that reminded her of comfort, of quiet mornings and whispered conversations.
“Same time next week?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, smiling genuinely, not the half-smile she reserved for acquaintances. “Same time.”
And so it began.
They were college students who stumbled into each other’s lives not by fate, but by quiet insistence: the steady, persistent pull of two lonely souls finding resonance. They studied together, laughed together, argued, fought, and sometimes just sat in silence, sharing the weight of words that were too heavy for anyone else to bear.
She knew him, or at least, she thought she did. She knew the careful way he held his life together, the faint tremor behind his composure, the way he would always, always insist on doing things himself, never asking for help even when he needed it. She had seen the glimpses of his pain, the small, fleeting shadows that crossed his face when the world reminded him of old wounds. And she loved him anyway. Perhaps because of them. Perhaps because he was fragile, because he was strong, because he was a mosaic of contradictions that somehow made sense when he was with her.
Han Sooyoung, the girl who wrote to be alone, had found someone who read her words and did not turn away. Someone who existed quietly in the spaces she had left unfilled, who filled them not with judgment or expectation, but with presence. And it was enough.
It was everything.
For now, at least.
Because the world, as always, had a way of intruding, of reminding her that even the safest harbors could not hold back the storm forever.
But for this afternoon, she let herself breathe. For this afternoon, she let herself sit across from him, smile at him, and believe that maybe, just maybe, some people were worth letting in.
Kim Dokja was worth it.
And she knew, somehow, that this was only the beginning.
College was different from anything Sooyoung had imagined. Not different in the sense of lectures or exams or crowded cafeterias, though those things were certainly present, but in the way it allowed life to stretch, to breathe, to bend around her and Dokja in ways that felt almost sacred. Dorm rooms smelled of instant noodles and detergent, sidewalks were littered with fallen leaves that stuck to wet shoes, and somehow, amidst all of that, they carved out spaces that belonged only to them.
They spent mornings side by side in the library, fingers brushing over keyboards, murmuring jokes carried on the hum of fluorescent lights. Dokja read over her drafts the way he had online – carefully, meticulously, but always with a sense of reverence that made her chest tighten. She could tell, even without looking up, when he hesitated, when he wanted to say something but held back. She had learned that look, the shadow behind his eyes, the small line of tension in his shoulders. And she knew, always knew, that it wasn’t because of her. It was never because of her, according to Dokja.
They ate lunch together, often at the same quiet cafe tucked between the math building and the arts hall, the smell of roasted coffee beans mingling with the faint metallic tang of rain on the sidewalks. Dokja had a way of noticing details no one else seemed to care about: the way the sunlight slanted across the table at exactly two forty-five, the subtle wear on the corners of her notebooks, the expression on her face when she tried not to laugh but couldn’t quite stop. She found herself watching him too: the slight arch of his brow, the way he tucked hair behind his ears, the faint lines that formed when he smiled.
It was ordinary in the most extraordinary way.
And then there were the nights. Those nights when the world outside the dorm room windows seemed far away, when the hum of fluorescent hallway lights faded into nothing and they were alone with laptops and scribbled notes and the scent of one another lingering in the air. Dokja would read, she would write. Sometimes they would talk, but usually they simply existed side by side, the quiet rhythm of their breathing keeping them tethered.
It wasn’t perfect. There were arguments, of course – tiny ones at first. Who left the kettle on, whose turn it was to buy snacks, why he insisted on walking home at night despite the rain. She never minded the arguments; they were proof that he was present, that he cared enough to disagree, to insist, to stake a claim in their shared existence.
But then came the first cracks.
Dokja began to act differently, small things at first. He would pause mid-sentence, stare out the window as if looking at something no one else could see. He laughed less, and when he did, it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He spent hours at the library, more than usual, sometimes leaving without a word. She tried to ignore it, told herself that it was stress, that college life was intense, that maybe he was just tired.
But the shadow was there, creeping along the edges of his smile, folding the corners of his eyes into quiet lines she didn’t recognize. She began to notice it in subtle ways – the way he flinched at the sound of distant footsteps, the way he hesitated before opening emails, the way his hands sometimes shook when he thought she wasn’t looking.
And then the whispers started.
At first, she thought it was her imagination. She told herself that the rumors were nothing, that college was full of people who didn’t understand boundaries, who thrived on gossip. But it wasn’t nothing. Bullies from his past had found him again, dragging old scars into the light. Reporters swarmed the campus after his mother gave an interview. They watched, snapping pictures, scribbling notes, asking questions he refused to answer. And he didn’t tell her.
She didn’t understand why. She wanted to shake him, to demand that he let her help, to ask why he always tried to bear everything alone. But when she tried, when she reached across him at lunch or waited outside the library, he would smile that quiet, careful smile and say, “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
But she did worry. She worried until it made her chest ache, until her stomach twisted into knots she couldn’t untangle. She stayed up at night, writing fragments in her notebook she would later burn, imagining the worst-case scenarios and hating that she could not stop thinking of them. She wanted to scream, to shake him until he admitted the weight he carried, to tell him that she was here, always, that he didn’t have to face it alone.
But she never did.
So they continued, side by side, ordinary and extraordinary, their moments of laughter punctuated by the invisible tension she refused to name. And then came the day she could no longer ignore it.
He had been quiet all morning, quiet even for him, retreating to the corner of the library as if hiding from some unseen predator. She found him there, hands trembling slightly over the keyboard, shoulders tense, jaw tight.
“Dokja,” she said softly, slowly approaching. He didn’t look up. She waited, her chest tightening. “What’s wrong?”
He shrugged, faint, almost imperceptible. “Nothing.”
"Don't say that,” she said, voice sharper than she intended. “I can see it. I can see you. Why don’t you let me help?”
He finally looked up then, and she saw it – the flicker of something she couldn’t name. Was it fear? Shame? Was it both? His eyes were dark, deeper than usual, shadows folding into the corners of his face.
“I… I don’t want to bother you,” he said quietly, hesitant before adding, “I can handle it myself.”
She laughed bitterly, tearing at the edges of her patience. “Handle it yourself? Dokja, look at me. You don’t have to handle anything alone! You think I don't want to be here for you? Sure, maybe I can’t fix it, but I can carry some of it with you! Why do you do everything by yourself? Why.. Why don’t you ever let me in? Don’t you trust me..?”
He didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t. She waited, her chest tight, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Finally, he whispered, “I… I’m scared. scared that if I let anyone in, they’ll see how I am and leave.”
Her heart ached at his words. She felt emotions surging all at once. She wanted to argue, to beg, to cry, but all she could do was cross the short distance between them and press herself against him into a tight embrace. His body stiffened at first, then slowly, reluctantly, he wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder, and he let her, letting the silence stretch between them, letting her grief and fear and frustration spill into the space they shared.
She whispered, “I'm here. always. Please don’t shut me out.”
After a short moment, he murmured back, voice faint against her hair, "I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”
For a moment, it felt like it could be enough. Like the cracks might heal, like the weight could be shared. She held him longer than she intended, memorizing the feel of his body, the rhythm of his breathing, the quiet warmth that had always been a lifeline.
But it wasn’t enough.
She would soon come to understand that no amount of holding, no amount of pleading, could stop what was coming. The shadows he carried were not shadows she could touch. The pain he bore was not hers to carry. And when the world pressed too hard, he would make the choice that she could not prevent…that she could never have anticipated.
For now, she had this. A fragile sense of peace. A momentary reprieve from the storm. And she clung to it, because it was all she had. She clung to it because even if it was for just a little while, Dokja let her in. He let her see the part of him that still wanted to live. The part of him that still wanted to be near her and still wanted to be loved.
College continued around them, full of laughter and arguments and the ordinary weight of lives that went on whether they were ready or not. She watched him, loved him, worried for him, and hoped that somehow, somehow, the quiet bond they shared might be enough to withstand the shadows encroaching on their lives.
But the shadows were persistent. They had always been. and they had already begun to take their toll.
Dokja was changing, slipping, and retreating. She saw it, felt it, and yet she could not stop it. Not yet.
And she held him anyway.
Because what else could she do?
The autumn air carried a chill that Sooyoung couldn’t shake, like a sharp bite that cut through the layers of her coat and the false warmth she tried to summon around herself. The campus was alive with the usual bustle – students hurrying to classes, the scrape of shoes across wet pavement, the faint hum of conversation – but she felt distant, almost hollow, as if she were watching life from behind a pane of frosted glass.
Dokja had been quiet for days. Not the small, habitual quiet that she had grown accustomed to – the typical thoughtful pauses and careful deliberation before he spoke. Rather, it was a deep, shadowed silence that twisted in her chest. He would smile faintly when she approached, nod politely when she spoke, and then retreat into himself like he had suddenly learned to fold into shadows.
At first, she told herself it was stress, midterms, the usual exhaustion of college life. But she knew better. She had learned to read him, the subtle tics of tension, the slight tremor in his hands, the way his eyes flinched when someone brushed past. She had known him long enough to recognize when something was wrong.
And now, the evidence had arrived in cruel waves.
The rumors had found him. The ones from his past. The ones that had left bruises on his body from bullies and scars on his memory. It was all back. They didn’t bother hiding it. Whispers followed him across campus, snide remarks murmured just loud enough for others to hear. A notebook left on a bench, pages open to words he had written in private, vandalized with cruel commentary. And then the reporters came.
She had seen them from the corner of the cafeteria: cameras pointed, lenses trained on him, scribbles of pens and the frantic tapping of keyboards that seemed to capture every small movement he made. When he was alone, they asked questions, shouted over one another, demanded answers he refused to give. But he didn’t turn to her. He didn’t call. He didn't ask for help. He simply absorbed it, shoulders tensing, jaw tight, and kept moving.
Sooyoung felt the heat of frustration rise in her chest. It was unfair, but more than that, it was painful to watch him shoulder this alone, as if asking for help were a betrayal of some unspoken principle. She wanted to scream, to shake him, to make him understand that he didn’t have to do it all himself. But the words caught in her throat, because fear was tangled with love and she had no roadmap for navigating the weight of it all.
Finally, she confronted him. It had been days since she had seen and talked with him properly. Days of watching him retreat further into himself. Days of sleepless nights imagining the worst. She found him sitting on a bench near the library, coat huddled around him, hands wrapped tightly around a book he didn’t read.
“Dokja,” she said, voice oozing with raw desperation, cutting through the low hum of the campus. He looked up, startled, then offered a small, careful smile.
“Sooyoung,” he murmured.
“No, no, don’t ‘Sooyoung’ me,” she snapped, kneeling beside him. “I’ve seen you. I’ve watched you. What's happening? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me help?”
He flinched slightly at her tone, but didn’t answer. She grabbed his hand, holding it tightly, as if sheer will could pull him out of the shadows he had retreated into.
“Dokja,” she pressed, voice softer now, quivering with a mix of anger and fear. “Why do you do everything yourself? Why won’t you let anyone in? Why not me? Me, who loves you, who’s been here for you from the start and knows you – why won’t you let me in?”
He swallowed, eyes flicking away. “Like I said last time I… I don’t want to burden you,” he said quietly, voice tight with something she couldn’t name. “You have your own life. You have enough to worry about.”
Her heart twisted. “Burden me? Dokja, don’t you understand? I don't care about ‘burden.’ I want to be here. I want to help. I want– no. I need you to let me in. Please, I can’t bear to be forced into the role of a bystander anymore. I can’t stand to lose you.”
For a long moment, silence stretched between them. She could hear her own heartbeat, loud in the cold air, and the faint rustle of leaves that skittered across the pavement. He seemed to be calculating, weighing the world on a scale she couldn’t see, measuring the cost of letting someone else in.
Finally, he spoke. “I… I’m scared,” he whispered, almost inaudible. “I'm scared that if I let anyone in, they’ll see me. I’m scared that they’ll really, truly see me — the true me — and leave out of disgust. More than anyone else.. I’m scared that you’ll see me and leave me.”
Her vision blurred. She had known he carried shadows, but hearing his voice ripped something open inside her. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder, fingers tightening around his hands. “I'm not going anywhere, Dokja,” she whispered in a shaking voice. “I'm not. I love you. I love you enough to stay, to fight, to bear it with you. Why can’t you believe that? Why can’t you believe me? I love you, you know? Why can’t you trust that I love you?”
He hesitated, then leaned into her, fragile and tentative. She could feel the tension in his body slowly ease, a faint tremor relaxing as he allowed himself to be held. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing closer, as if proximity alone could mend the fractures forming beneath the surface.
They stayed like that for what felt like hours, though it was really only minutes, swaying gently with the rhythm of their breathing. Words weren’t necessary, but perhaps they never had been. Her presence alone, steadfast and unwavering, was a tether pulling him back from the brink of isolation.
Yet even in that fragile peace, she sensed the undercurrent of inevitability. shadows that couldn’t be held at bay forever, cracks that could not be entirely mended, fears that were too sharp to fully voice. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to acknowledge that love – even her fierce, unwavering love – might not be enough to keep him tethered forever.
And then the world intruded again. A camera flash from across the quad, the murmur of footsteps, the distant scrape of a chair on pavement. Just like before, the shadows were patient. They had always been. They watched, they waited, and they were relentless.
Dokja pulled back slightly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. His eyes were dark, clouded with thoughts he didn’t voice. “I’ll be fine,” he said softly, almost a mantra, like he was making a promise to himself more than to her. “Just… don’t worry.”
She did worry. She always would. She worried and she hated herself for being unable to do more. Hated that she couldn’t pull him completely from the darkness that gnawed at the edges of his fragile existence.
They walked back to their dorm together, shoulders brushing, silence heavy yet comforting in its own way. She wanted to ask more, to demand honesty, to pry open the walls he had built so meticulously. But she didn’t. She let him lead, let him decide what to share, even as her heart ached with frustration and fear.
That night, she lay awake, fingers tracing the lines of her notebook, writing fragments she couldn’t share. Images of him alone in the library, flinching at the sound of footsteps, whispers curling around his shoulders like smoke lingered in her mind, as if it was haunting her. She wrote letters she would never send, words meant to reach him when he couldn’t speak them himself. She imagined holding him, shaking him, forcing him to see that he wasn’t alone, that she wouldn’t leave.
She wanted to show her love and devotion. But deep down, a small, cold knot of dread twisted in her stomach. She knew, somehow, that her love might not be enough. That the weight he carried – the unspoken guilt, the memories, the relentless eyes of others – was a burden she could not lift entirely.
The days stretched on, each one heavier than the last. The rumors persisted, the reporters lingered, the shadows grew longer and far deeper. She watched him retreat, a quiet pull away from the world she had so carefully shared with him. The world they built together. She wanted to follow, to anchor him, to fight for him with every breath, but he was already slipping through her fingers.
And then came the hug, fragile and fleeting, the last moment of near-peace before the storm. She pressed herself against him, memorized the curve of his shoulders, the faint scent of coffee and him, the warmth she could never replicate. He held her back, tight enough to soothe, light enough to frighten. It was the calm before the fall.
This was the calm, and although she didn’t know it yet, the fall was coming. The shadows had already begun to claim their due, and no amount of love, no amount of words, no amount of presence, could stop what was coming next.
She slept that night with his warmth still lingering on her skin, with hope and dread tangled in equal measure. She didn’t know it, but the next step would be irreversible. The next day, the world they had carved together would fracture in a way she could never undo.
She would wake to a silence so suffocating that it would leave her gasping for breath.
The morning had a thin, fragile light, the kind that slipped between the edges of the blinds and fell across her dorm room in quiet, tentative beams. Sooyoung had woken first, as always, the silence hanging heavy and still around her. She reached across the bed, expecting the warmth of him, the faint, steady rise and fall of his breathing, only to realize–
He wasn’t there.
Her chest tightened, a low, creeping panic crawling into her ribs. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, toes brushing the cold floor, and called his name. “Dokja?” her voice was soft, tentative, almost breaking. Silence answered her.
At first, she told herself he had gone for a walk, gone to the library, something ordinary. He had been leaving without letting her know, but he always came back. She tried to convince herself that Dokja would be back. Her stomach twisted in worry, but she clung to the hope that he was simply a few minutes late or a few steps away. She searched the dorm, then the campus. She searched the library, cafe, park benches, and bookstores where they had spent countless afternoons laughing, arguing over trivialities, watching the world pass by.
He was nowhere.
The shadows she had felt creeping over him, the tension she had begged him to share, now coiled in her mind with a cold certainty. A small, terrified part of her whispered the truth even before she found it.
The note was brief. Elegant and meticulous, a mirror of everything he had always been: careful, precise, and impossibly aware of how his words would land – even in the last moments.
Sooyoung collapsed to the floor, the paper trembling in her hands as if holding it might bring him back somehow. She could not read it. not fully. Her eyes skimmed the familiar curves of his handwriting, each letter a shard piercing her chest. The words were polite, quiet, apologetic: a love confessed, a sorrow explained, and the faint echo of inevitability. He could not stay. He would not stay. And she was left behind, shivering, broken, and silent.
The world became a sharp, unbearable hell. The air scraped her lungs with every breath, sunlight felt like shards of glass, and every familiar corner of the campus screamed with absence. She wandered through it all, clutching the note like a lifeline she could not follow. Each step was a laceration, each memory of him a wound that refused to scab.
She replayed their last conversations. The hug, the whispered promises, the fragile, fleeting peace. She remembered pressing her forehead to his shoulder, memorizing the feel of his body, believing that love – her love – was enough to hold him. That it was enough to keep him. But it was not enough. It could never have been enough.
She screamed into the void of her dorm room, long and ragged, a sound that carried all the anger, grief, and despair she could not contain. It tore out from her trembling heart in waves, leaving her throat raw. Yet again, the silence answered her. He was gone. Gone in a way that no amount of tears, no amount of pleading, no amount of love could undo.
And then the pain began to manifest, subtly at first. A scratch at the back of her throat, a strange constriction that made swallowing difficult. She ignored it, blaming nerves, exhaustion, the weight of grief. But it grew. It was a persistent, gnawing pressure that pulsed with every heartbeat, with every thought of him.
Then came the flowers.
It was the only thought that could describe it – the petals curling, soft and cruel, against the delicate lining of her throat. She coughed, small and futile, fingers trembling against her neck. Hanahaki Disease. She realized it with a bitter, hollow laugh that turned to sobs. Love so intense, so unresolved, so unconsumed, that it had begun to bloom inside her, petals sharp and insistent. Love for someone who was no longer there to receive it.
The irony was unbearable. She still loved him – fiercely, impossibly, destructively – and now that love had turned against her. It was a cruel reminder of the world she failed to save. Her world, which had always been Kim Dokja, had fallen apart in ways she could never repair.
Days passed. She moved through them mechanically, eating and sleeping just enough to exist. Each cough brought small streaks of blood against her trembling fingers and petals falling into her lap, soft as they were deadly, the scent of him in each one. She could not bear it, yet she could not stop thinking of him. Remembering how he had smiled faintly, how he had let her in for even a moment, and how fragile and human he had always been.
Friends tried to reach her. She did not answer. The world around her became a blur of color and sound she could not inhabit. The hallways of the dorm, the smell of coffee from their favorite cafe, the laughter of students passing by – all reminders that he was no longer there. All reminders that the love she once shared had nowhere to go.
At night, she dreamt of him. Sometimes he was just out of reach, standing at the edge of an unknown field while smiling faintly, silently. Sometimes he spoke, his voice soft, carrying apologies she could not forgive. Sometimes she felt him brush against her shoulder, close enough to touch. Every time, she awoke to the sick, pressing weight of flowers curling in her throat, petals sharp against her tongue.
She tried to write. She tried to pour her grief onto the paper she had once used to pour her heart into stories, but the words failed her. Sentences dissolved into trembling, incoherent scrawls, the ink smudged by tears she could not stop. She wrote fragments of letters, letters she could never send, imagining he would read them somewhere, somehow, though she knew it was impossible.
Weeks blurred into months. She walked the campus like a ghost, hollow-eyed, hands trembling, throat raw with unspoken words. Each cough, each tiny speck of blood, was a reminder: she still loved him. Too much. Too painfully, irrevocably, and destructively. The Hanahaki Disease was relentless, and so was her grief.
She remembered the first day they had met, the first laugh, the first gentle touch, the quiet afternoons in the library, the careless warmth of his presence. She held onto those memories with the desperation of someone clinging to air, knowing that clinging could not save him, could not prevent the petal-strewn pain that now filled her chest.
She hated it. She hated the disease, she hated her undying love, she hated the cruel irony of a heart that could bloom even after its object was gone. And yet she could not stop. She could not let go.
She remembered him, always, even as the petals grew, even as the blood streaked her fingers, even as the world continued around her in normalcy she could not inhabit. Kim Dokja, who had been her everything, who had been the quiet center of her universe, was gone. He was gone and her love, unresolved, unbearable, and blooming, would not let her forget.
Her reflection in the window was pale, eyes hollow, mouth trembling. Petals twisting through her lungs, sharp and insistent. She coughed again, the metallic taste bitter on her tongue, and pressed a hand to her chest, wishing desperately for relief, for anything to stop the ache.
But nothing came.
She was left with only him, only the memories, only the bloom of a love that could not be returned, only the pain that was now hers alone to bear. It was a love turned lethal by absence.
And she would live as she had always lived and she would die as she always knew she would – in fragments and shadows, all because of the unyielding love that tore petals out from her throat from within.
Kim Dokja was gone.
And she, alone, was left to bloom.