Seo-ah's POV
It was one of those days when the sky was more a smudge of grey than blue, as if Seoul had forgotten how to color. The windows of the lecture hall were slightly fogged from the trapped heat of too many students and not enough ventilation. Seo-ah sat three rows from the back, her notebook open but barely touched — the pen resting between her fingers more like a prop than a tool.
Professor Nam was mid-lecture, reading a passage from a translated French novella about memory and perception, but her words dissolved in Seo-ah's ears. It wasn't that the topic wasn't interesting — it was. But her mind had been elsewhere since last night.
The poem Jae-hyun had written still echoed in her thoughts.
There was a line, just one line, that felt too close to her own — too raw, too familiar. Not plagiarized, no. But as if... as if someone had reached into her private world and made sense of it before she even could. It made her skin prickle.
You sort of did, he'd whispered under his breath when she complimented him. She had chosen not to hear it, but the words still throbbed under her ribs.
Her fingers gripped the pen tighter.
Suddenly, there was a soft clatter.
A notebook hit the floor beside her. Jae-hyun's. He'd been sitting diagonally in front of her, his usual quiet self, nodding subtly to Professor Nam's points. But he didn't seem to notice the notebook had fallen.
Seo-ah bent down automatically to retrieve it, the act of muscle memory from years of being the quiet one who helped without being asked. She picked it up and paused.
The notebook had fallen open. On the right-hand page, a small quote was underlined.
"Some hearts don't need rescuing. They just need to be held right."
The breath caught in her throat.
No. No, it couldn't be.
Her eyes scanned the margins. Another line was scribbled there:
"You wrote about a boy who couldn't exist… so I tried to become him."
Her hand trembled.
That wasn't just any quote. That was her quote. From Paper Planes and Moonlight.
She had typed that line at 1:13 a.m. on a night she couldn't sleep. She remembered the ache in her fingertips, the way she'd stared at the blinking cursor for minutes, wondering if she'd gone too far into her emotions.
And now it was here.
In his handwriting.
He knows.
She snapped the notebook shut and handed it back to him a little too quickly. "You dropped this," she said, keeping her voice steady.
Jae-hyun turned and took it with a nod. "Thanks."
His eyes lingered on her face for a moment too long.
Did he know that she knew now?
She turned back to her desk, her heart pounding so loud she thought it would drown out the lecture. Her mind reeled.
He knows I'm a MoonWriter. He read the story. He's read the heartbreak. He's read the truth.
She felt exposed, like standing in a room with all her diary pages floating mid-air.
Why hadn't he said anything? Why hadn't he told her?
Or maybe... maybe he didn't mean for her to know he knew. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe that quote wasn't for her to see — maybe it was a secret he had no plan of sharing.
The betrayal was soft, not sharp. Like the feeling of realizing someone's been looking at you when you weren't ready to be seen.
And yet, beneath the panic... something else twisted inside her chest.
He didn't mock her. He didn't flaunt it. He never even hinted at knowing.
And his poem. That poem… it wasn't written to show off. It was a mirror.
Still, she needed space.
As soon as class ended, she gathered her things in a blur and left the hall without looking back. Her fingers gripped her own notebook so tightly the edge bent inward.
He read my heart... and I never even saw him coming.