[SORA POV]
The snow had been falling since evening.
The weather app said it would get heavier overnight, but she didn't mind. Han Sora liked this part of winter—the hush it brought, the way the city softened under all that white.
She sat on the floor of her apartment, legs tucked under a blanket, her laptop on the low table in front of her. The couch was right there, but the floor always felt better. Maybe it was a habit. Maybe thinking just came easier here.
Her unfinished work sat open on another tab, the report she hadn't gotten around to finishing after a long stretch of back-to-back meetings. But her cursor had drifted away from the document a while ago. Now, she was scrolling through Nest, the SNS app she hadn't checked in weeks.
That's when she saw it.
#TheBookstoreThatNeverClosed
Trending — 10k posts
She blinked, refreshed the page, checked the tag again. It was definitely her story.
There were posts about the traveler. The girl with the red lantern. The couple from Chapter 8. Names, moments—pieces she thought only a handful of people had ever read.
Her phone buzzed.
[Nana 🐰]
Hey. IS THIS YOUR STORY???
holy, Sora you're trending lmao.
Sora stared at the screen, as if the words might rearrange themselves. She opened Nestory, the writing platform she hadn't touched in years. She'd forgotten her password and had to reset it just to log in.
When the dashboard finally loaded, she sat there in stunned silence. The last time she checked, her story had barely 500 views. Now, the total sat at 20,000. Still rising.
Her last update was five years ago: Chapter 34: The Woman Who Left A Map.
The comments section was flooded. Some new readers were tagging friends. Others were sharing favorite lines. And one comment caught her eye:
"RIN brought me. He must be the bookstore owner."
Her phone buzzed again.
[Nana 🐰]
WAIT. WATCH THIS NOW.
[link]
Nana sent her a short clip from Nest.
It was him.
RIN—a member from that idol group Nana always talked about. Sora had only followed them in passing, mostly because of Nana's stories, but she still recognized him immediately.
The clip was from a group interview on a popular talk show. The host had asked them, What got you through your trainee days?
Rin smiled, a little sheepish, like he hadn't planned to share the story. He said those days were the hardest. He had failed a crucial dance evaluation and genuinely thought he might not debut.
"I was really bad at dancing back then," he admitted, laughing at himself. "I didn't know if I could keep going."
Then, almost offhandedly, he said he'd found a story during that time. Not a bestseller. Not something everyone was reading. Just… a simple story he stumbled across one night.
There was a line that stayed with him.
'Even broken wings remember the sky.'
His voice softened. "It felt like someone answered me," he said. "Like a bookstore found me first."
Sora sat very still. That line—it was hers. She had written it, five years ago, on a cold night just like this one. She had posted that chapter without thinking much of it, assuming maybe ten people would read it. Maybe less.
Her phone buzzed again.
[Nana 🐰]
LOOK. LOOK AT THIS THREAD.
It was a FlyME fan's post. They had traced Rin's quote, linked it back to her story, and found the original source. The post had gone viral—over 37,000 likes, comments piling up beneath it.
Sora's fingers hovered above her phone. She didn't expect that a story she wrote in the quiet corners of her life could become something like this.
That a single line, once just hers, could help someone else hold on. Could help someone else become who they are now.
Just like they helped me, she thought. Three years ago, they helped me, too.
Her laptop was still open, the Nestory tab glowing faintly in the dim room. She scrolled through the comments on her last posted chapter.
There were so many now. Readers shared their favorite moments, asking where she had gone, hoping she would come back. It was warm, and overwhelming, and a little unreal.
She kept scrolling.
Near the bottom, buried under years of silence, she saw it.
A comment from five years ago. Simple. Plain.
[reader_cwfan]
"I'm looking forward to the next chapter, haneulsky."
Her chest tightened.
It was him. The one who had commented on every chapter. The one she used to look for without realizing it. The reason she made it all the way to Chapter 34. The reason she kept writing, back then.
But she had stopped. And now it has been five years.
She clicked on his profile. The same old avatar. Cloud wings, like always.
Last seen: 2 hours ago.
She closed her laptop gently and got up, crossing to her desk. The cold air met her as she sat down. Her monitor flickered awake, still open on her work IDE. But her fingers moved past it, opening a familiar folder—a private one, long untouched. Inside were all her unfinished stories. All the drafts she told herself she would get back to someday.
There was a file at the very bottom of the folder.
Chapter 35 New Draft.docx
She had finished writing it back then, but she never uploaded it. Sora leaned back in her chair, eyes drifting to the window where the snow was falling harder now, blanketing the roofs in white. It was the story she thought no one would ever wait for.
------
Five years ago.
Her apartment had been smaller then. Just one room. When she pushed the door open, she didn't bother turning on the lights. She slipped off her shoes, dropped her bag to the floor, and all but collapsed onto the bed just a few steps away.
Her body was heavy. The kind of tiredness that sank deep, not just in her bones but somewhere quieter.
She glanced at the wall clock. Midnight.
She had stayed late again, pulling overtime after catching a mistake just hours before the delivery. She made it in time, but she knew it was a mistake that could've been avoided if she'd double-checked things properly.
I have to wake up early tomorrow. What day was it, anyway?
Her eyes wandered to the calendar pinned above her desk. It was still flipped to the previous month. She hadn't bothered changing it.
Thursday, she thought.
Chapter 35. I was supposed to upload it today.
She let out a long breath. For a moment, she thought about just leaving it—sleeping, pretending she'd forgotten. But after a pause, she reached into her bag and pulled out her laptop anyway.
The draft was still sitting there. Half-written. Unpolished. It had been weeks since she last touched it.
It doesn't matter, she told herself. No one's reading it anymore.
Her story barely got ten views per chapter. No bookmarks. No new comments.
She leaned back against the cold wall, staring at the screen.
A notification from Nestory. She opened it out of habit.
There it was. A comment, simple and small, left on her latest chapter.
[reader_cwfan]
"I'm looking forward to the next chapter, haneulsky."
Her breath caught in her throat. He's waiting.
She stared at the message for a long time, as if the words might change if she looked long enough. As if maybe she'd misread it. But it was still there.
Her hands hovered over the keyboard. The cursor blinked at her—patient, waiting.
She took a breath, placed her fingers on the keys.
Paused.
Typed a sentence.
Deleted it.
Typed again.
Deleted.
Again.
Deleted.
No words came. Nothing felt right. Nothing sounded like it mattered.
Frustrated, she pressed random keys—just noise on the screen, just to feel something moving beneath her fingertips. Then her hand stopped. Her shoulders trembled before she realized she was crying.
"I'm a failure."
The words slipped out, small and broken.
She was tired. So tired.
Even when she gave her best, it never seemed enough. Not at work, not here. It was like no matter how hard she ran, she was always one step behind something she couldn't reach.
Quietly, she closed the laptop and placed it on the table beside her bed.
The draft stayed there.
Unfinished.
Weeks passed. Then months.
She kept showing up to work. Finishing projects. Delivering what was expected. Days blended together, stitched by routines she no longer thought about.
Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat.
The story faded into the background. Writing slipped quietly out of her life.
Instead, there were meetings. Overtime. Promotions. Eventually, she moved to a bigger apartment. A nicer one. It was the kind of place people congratulated her for getting, the kind of place she once thought would make her feel like she'd finally made it.
But some nights, especially the rare ones when she came home early, the apartment felt too big. Too quiet.
That Friday evening, she arrived on time for once. She dropped her bag on the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and let herself fall onto the couch. Her eyes burned from another long day in front of a screen. Her ears rang faintly in the silence, like they hadn't caught up to the stillness yet.
Without thinking, she reached for her phone.
Not to check messages. Not to check work.
Her thumb hovered for a second, then opened her music app. She hit shuffle on her mix playlist.
A song began to play.
The song stopped her. The soft strumming, the quiet voice—it settled into the room, into her chest.
"Maybe I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way."
The words sat with her, lingering in the quiet, like the song had found her exactly where she was.
Her body slowly relaxed, her breathing steadied. And at some point, without realizing it, she drifted to sleep.
When she woke, the room was dim, her phone resting on her stomach, still faintly warm from hours of playing.
It was already past midnight.
She sat up and fumbled with the screen, trying to find the song again—but the playlist had shuffled through dozens while she was asleep. It was buried now, somewhere in the long list of forgotten tracks.
She sighed and got up, moving to her desk to search for the song through the fragment of lyrics she remembered. But her eyes caught something else.
A file sitting quietly on her desktop.
Chapter 35 Draft.docx
It had been there for a while. She vaguely remembered sorting through old files months ago, clearing out unfinished projects. She was supposed to delete it, but maybe she couldn't bring herself to. Or maybe she just forgot.
Her fingers hovered, then double-clicked.
The draft opened. The words she abandoned years ago blinked back at her.
The melody of that song came back to her. It felt like a small nudge, something soft but steady, telling her it was okay to try again.
She opened a new document. Titled it: Chapter 35 New Draft .
She wasn't planning to finish it tonight. That wasn't the goal. Just to begin.
So she typed.
Slowly at first. Stopping. Deleting. Trying again. But this time, the words didn't push back.
They came—slow, a little uneven, but they kept coming. And somehow, the chapter took shape.
No deadlines. No expectations. No one waiting.
Just her.
When she finished, she leaned back, listening to the faint hum of the city outside her window.
She didn't plan to publish it. Not yet.
--------
She opened Chapter 35.
Sora sat in silence, pulling her bird-shaped plushie close as she stared at the screen. It had been a long time since she last opened this file.
The lines were rough, typed in one sitting, almost like she had written them in a daze. But as she read them now—her chest tightened, gently, like something tugged at her.
It was raining when the girl found the bookstore.
She hadn't been looking for it. In fact, she hadn't really been looking for anything.
The rain-soaked streets shimmered with scattered light. It had started as a drizzle but settled now into a moderate rain. The girl walked without hurrying, her umbrella dangling at her side, unopened. The strap hung loosely from her wrist, but she never lifted it. She didn't seem to notice the rain at all.
She remembered now—how much of herself she had written into this chapter.
The girl in the story was a high schooler who had wandered the streets, lost in her own thoughts. It was raining, but she never once opened the umbrella she carried. She simply stopped in front of a small bookstore, standing quietly under its awning, as if waiting for the rain to pass.
The shop owner had watched her from inside, puzzled by the girl's refusal to use the umbrella. Concerned, the owner eventually stepped out, offering her a towel and a cup of warm tea. The girl accepted and stepped into the bookstore.
She explored the aisles, tea in hand, but never quite settled on a book. In the end, she sat by the window and simply watched the rain.
Somewhere behind her, the soft crackle of an old LP player started. A song played, gentle and steady. The melody wrapped around the moment, and for the first time, the girl smiled.
She wanted to ask about the song, but the owner had stepped away, leaving her there by herself.
She didn't move, not until the music faded.
When the shop owner returned, the girl stood and glanced toward the door. "The rain hasn't stopped yet," the owner said.
But the girl only smiled. "It's alright. I've found what I was missing. Thank you for opening the doors for me."
And with that, she finally opened her umbrella and stepped back into the rain.
Sora leaned into her plushie, her chin resting on its soft head. She had written that story without thinking anyone would read it. Without expecting anyone to find it. But somehow—it had found its way. Somehow, it had reached someone.
She glanced at the screen, the blinking cursor waiting patiently at the end of the chapter.
Maybe it's time to open the door again, she thought.
She found herself revising the document. Adjusting a sentence. Rearranging a line.
It felt strange. She never thought she would come back to this. Never thought she'd try again.
She reached for her tea. It had gone cold again.
The clock on her screen read 2:02 AM. She had been here for three hours.
She smiled, faintly, and saved the file. She finished editing it.
She moved the chapter to Nestory and opened the author's note section.
Her fingers paused, then began to type.
Author's Note – Chapter 35: A Song Without a Title
I didn't plan to post this.
It's been years since I last opened this story. I told myself I had moved on—that maybe I didn't have anything left to say. But sometimes, something small finds you.
A song. A moment. A memory you didn't realize you had missed.
This chapter was written for that feeling.
It's not a grand story. It's not a perfect one. It's just… a thank you.
For the songs that find us when we need them. For the doors that stayed open, even when we didn't step inside.
Thank you for reading. It's been a while, but I'm glad you're here.
— haneulsky
She reread the note, letting it sit on the screen for a while.
Her mouse hovered over the "Publish" button.
Her hand paused.
It wasn't perfect. It didn't tie things up neatly. The ending just… stopped. Maybe even a little too simply. But somehow—it felt like enough.
She clicked.
Chapter 35: A Song Without a Title
Published successfully.
Just like that, it was out there. The chapter she thought no one was waiting for. The one she almost deleted.
Now, it had found its place.