Chapter 87 — She Watches in Silence
Somewhere in Zurich — 3:03 AM
The floor-to-ceiling windows let in only moonlight. Screens covered the opposite wall—six of them—playing silent footage on loop.
Jaeheon.
Every movement from tonight's concert had been downloaded, slowed, stabilized, cleaned, and run through facial microexpression analysis. Not because she didn't understand emotions. But because she wanted to understand his.
And no algorithm was better than her own eyes.
Anastasia sat barefoot on the cold marble, arms resting on her knees. Her golden hair spilled over one shoulder like sunlight trapped at midnight.
She said nothing. Just… watched.
On screen: he sat at the piano. Alone. Spotlights above. Breath unsteady.
Then—he played.
Her lips didn't part. Her hands didn't move. But her heart did.
She could feel something inside her tighten when she looked at him like this.
Jaeheon Kang.
The boy from the ball.
The man who never forgot her.
And yet—he never said her name.
"Track his eye movements," she finally said.
The AI's voice responded softly. "He only looked at the crowd three times. The rest of the time, his gaze stayed fixed on the keys or closed."
She already knew. "And when did he look up?"
"Right before the final crescendo. Briefly. Left quadrant. Seat row F."
She paused.
Then, almost imperceptibly: "That's where I sat."
Her Thoughts
He remembered. He knows.
He wrote a song for me tonight.
He didn't say it aloud.
He never will.
And I—
…I don't know what I'm doing.
She had never cared for things like this.
She'd been kissed before. Had been proposed to before. Had broken hearts with a single glance.
But this? This silence between them?
It was louder than anything she had ever known.
He didn't ask anything from her.
He just gave.
Again. And again. And again.
And now… she found herself wanting to give something back.
But what?
She stood.
Walked across the marble with bare feet.
The monitors reflected her face—cold, expressionless, beautiful.
She reached toward the screen and paused, her fingers hovering over his face.
"…Do you still think I was on a date with him?"
The words never left her lips.
But someday—they would.
And when that day came, she wouldn't explain anything.