To you…
For loving what was never really yours.
The air smelled faintly of chalk dust and wet pavement that morning. The rain had stopped just before the first bell, leaving the world outside the windows blurred and silver.
In the back row of Class 3-B, Eun Seo sat perfectly still, trying to ignore the sound of her deskmate's sniffles. She'd always preferred silence. Silence made things simple, like the clean pages of a new notebook.
"Eun Seo, meet your new seatmate."
The teacher's voice broke through her thoughts. She looked up to see a boy standing by the door, clutching his bag strap like it was a lifeline. His uniform looked slightly wrinkled, his hair still damp from the rain.
"This is Ha Jun," the teacher continued. "He transferred here today. Be nice."
Eun Seo gave a small nod, the kind that didn't really mean anything. Ha Jun smiled awkwardly and sat beside her. He smelled faintly of rain and soap, clean, a little too clean.
The teacher went back to explaining photosynthesis. Eun Seo stared at the board, pretending to listen, but her mind kept wandering to the boy beside her. He was scribbling in his notebook, not the lecture notes, but doodles. Messy, uneven sketches of flowers.
She blinked. Flowers?
When the class ended, she couldn't help herself.
"You're drawing flowers," she said flatly.
Ha Jun looked up, startled. "Yeah. I like them."
"You're a guy," she said.
He grinned. "I'm aware."
Eun Seo didn't reply. She had nothing against flowers, in fact, she liked them, secretly but she found it strange that someone could draw something so soft without hesitation.
The next day, he brought a small potted plant to class. A violet, its petals trembling slightly under the weak sunlight from the window.
"For the desk," he said, placing it between them.
She frowned. "You can't just bring plants to school."
"It's for aesthetic purposes."
She stared at him, speechless. "Aesthetic?"
Ha Jun shrugged. "Makes the day prettier, doesn't it?"
It didn't make sense, but she found herself glancing at the violet every few minutes. Maybe he was right. It did make the day prettier. By the end of the week, the violet had become part of their routine. He'd water it every morning before class. She'd grumble that it was a waste of time. He'd grin anyway.
Eun Seo noticed small things about him. How he tapped his pen when he thought. How he always hummed under his breath, softly enough that only she could hear.
He noticed things about her too. How she lined up her pencils in order of length. How she looked out the window whenever she was bored.
Once, he caught her sketching. Not flowers, but clouds.
"You draw too?" he asked.
"No," she said quickly, closing her notebook.
He smiled, the kind of smile that looked like he already knew the truth. "It's okay. You can like things quietly."
That sentence stayed with her longer than she wanted to admit.
One afternoon, when the sunlight slanted gold through the windows, Ha Jun asked her, "Do you know what violets mean?"
She shook her head.
"Faithfulness," he said. "Or modesty. Depends on which book you read."
She raised a brow. "You read books about flower meanings?"
He grinned. "I told you I like them."
"Why?"
"Because they don't pretend to be anything else," he said softly. "They just bloom."
For the first time in months, she didn't know what to say.
The days started to blend together. Spring was coming.
Ha Jun began bringing more flowers like daisies, lilacs, forget-me-nots. Each with a small handwritten tag that explained their meaning. She teased him for it, but secretly she read every single one.
Then, one morning, he wasn't there.
His chair sat empty, sunlight spilling across it like a spotlight. The violet still stood between their desks, but its petals had started to droop.
The teacher cleared her throat. "Ha Jun's family had to move again. His father got transferred."
Eun Seo stared at the violet until the edges of her vision blurred.
She wanted to say something. Anything. But she didn't. She just kept looking at the plant, at the spot where his handwriting still lingered on a tag: "Violet… faithfulness, even when unseen."
After school, she walked to the rooftop. The sky was pale and soft, the air thick with the scent of rain and something else, something almost like goodbye.
She placed the violet on the ledge and whispered, "You can bloom here."
Her voice trembled. It wasn't sadness, not exactly. It was something quieter, the ache of something unfinished, like a sentence that trailed off before the last word.
Eun Seo didn't cry. She wasn't the type to cry.
But for the first time, she realized what she'd lost before she could name it.
Weeks later, when the new semester began, a small envelope appeared inside her locker. No name, just a pressed violet taped to the front.
Inside, there was a note in familiar handwriting:
"Spring came early this year. Maybe that means we'll meet again when it's time to bloom."
She smiled.
Outside, the cherry blossoms were beginning to fall.