+

"Sea, take me with open arms."

Jeong Jaehyun's voice, rough from the sea salt but laden with fervor, gets lost amidst the creaking of wood and the rhythmic pounding of waves against the hull. These are the first words he utters as he steps, with a mixture of gratitude and pride, onto the worn deck of his ship. A young man with a pale complexion, which the sun gilds with faint olive reflections, who loves the ocean like nothing else in this world. He carries the smell of the sea tangled in his hair and salinity embedded in the wrinkles of his hands.

Son of a sailor and grandson of a captain, Jeong Jaehyun was raised on salt water and the echo of seagulls tracing lazy circles in the sky. He could swear he has seen it all, from dead calms that turn the ocean into a mirror of lead, to storms that tear the sky apart with lightning claws. But even a sea wolf like him knows that the ocean always hides more than it shows; that its depths keep secrets that would age a man's soul in an instant.

Still, he insists his life is perfect. Or, at least, that it's the life he always wanted. He has a family that loves him and, after years of sweat and sleepless nights, he has managed to bring his grandfather’s old sailboat back to life. Now, every oak plank, every worn rope, every scrap of canvas, belongs to him.

When he visits the coastal taverns, drowned in cheap pipe smoke and the smell of stale beer, women with curves more sinuous than the waves themselves sidle up to whisper obscenities in his ear, while bearded men with porous skin and teeth yellow as gold coins offer to pay for his drink just to brush shoulders with the legend of the great sailor Jeong Jaehyun.

Around him, the air tastes of salt: thick and humid, clinging to his throat and condensing dew on his skin. As he sets sail, the fluttering sail whistles a whisper against the wind, pushing him away from the stench of rotting seaweed and dead fish emanating from the old dock, where the wooden posts rot slowly like decomposing corpses. He moistens the tip of his thumb, rough and calloused, and raises his hand to gauge the invisible breath of the wind.

The dock blurs until it becomes a simple brown scar on the coast, and with it, the small coastal island that Jaehyun has called home his entire life shrinks to a gray smudge on the horizon.

The captain unbuttons his shirt, letting himself be caressed by the warmth of the sun and the beautiful, absolute solitude. Three buttons, to be exact, freeing a torso sculpted by hard work, while a mischievous and somewhat arrogant smile dances on his lips as he takes a deep drag from his cigar, promising adventures known only to the sea.

The afternoon yields its throne, staining the sky with a bloody palette of oranges, purples, and crimsons. A harsh sun, low and direct, beats down on his tanned face, decorating his forehead with a necklace of sweat pearls that run down his temples.

Nevertheless, the fresh and persistent sea breeze caresses his hot skin and whispers invitations to rest, after hours of drifting with the sole purpose of showing off his ship to the indifferent audience of seagulls and waves that crash with a dull thunder against the bow.

He stretches like a big cat, with a satisfied grunt born from the deepest part of his chest, feeling every muscle in his back awaken and flex. Then, he collapses into the wooden chair, which creaks in protest, and crosses his arms over his chest. With a practiced movement, he pulls down the brim of his leather hat until it completely covers his face, creating a private, immediate night to escape the sun threatening to devour him alive during his nap.

+

Jaehyun doesn't know exactly how long he has slept. The only thing he knows is that the line between sleep and wakefulness has blurred completely; he isn't sure if he still lies in Morpheus's arms or if he walks the halls of a lucid, tangible dream.

A deafening sound like a thunderclap rips him from his lethargy. A long, harsh note that seems to vibrate in the air itself. The next thing he perceives, with the rawness of reality, are his heavy eyelids, swollen from hours of stupor, and his cracked lips parting to beg, in a hoarse whisper, for some water. He jumps to his feet, his heart slamming against his ribs, and the chair crashes to the deck with a dull thud that echoes in the sudden silence.

However, the sound does not repeat. There is only the wind and the sea.

Convinced it was the residual echo of a long, deep nap, Jaehyun exhales, runs a hand over his face, and bends down to right the chair, fiercely intent on reclaiming his interrupted sleep.

That was the plan, until that sound, which he now distinguishes as a lightning strike, pounds his eardrums again with force.

Jaehyun was sure. He knew, with every fiber of his being, what he had heard, and unless madness was tangling his thoughts, he would have sworn on his grandfather’s grave that the waves were crashing against the hull with more force; a sudden, deliberate fury that made the ship’s wood groan ominously. At the same time, the sky was tearing itself apart in a violent storm.

The waves, like enraged titans, rose around the vessel, crashing against his ship with a deafening roar. Freezing water soaked him from head to toe in an instant, while the sailboat shook and writhed on the black surface of the sea, an aggressive abyss seemingly determined to swallow him.

He lunged for the helm like a possessed man, gripping the cold wood so tightly he felt his knuckles might burst. His mind, clouded seconds before by sleep, was now a whirlwind of orders and calculations, a final, pathetic attempt by his human pride to assert itself against the chaos.

But trying to defy the ocean was as useless an effort as reasoning with an enraged god. No matter how much he wrestled with the helm, how he adjusted the sails with trembling hands, the sea, vast and impassive, was always several steps ahead.

Desperation coiled in his throat, more bitter than the saltwater. For the first time, the great captain Jeong Jaehyun felt the true weight of his insignificance. Then, with muscles trembling and his heart slamming against his chest, a plea he never thought he'd utter rose from his lips, a prayer directed at the darkness engulfing him:

"God, save me!"

It was in that precise moment of desperate faith that the ocean gave him its answer.

A monstrous wave, a wall of dark, foaming water he hadn't even seen coming, slammed into the side of the ship with the thunder of a thousand storms. The world tilted abruptly, losing all horizon. The deck became a precipice. The helm, which moments before he was wrestling with, twisted violently, tearing a strangled cry from him as it flung him like a ragdoll against the railing.

For an instant that felt eternal, everything was weightlessness and confusion. The roar of the wind mingled with the agonized creaking of wood and the crack of the sail tearing. He felt the brutal blow to his ribs as he hit the railing, and then, the most terrifying sensation for a man like him: the void.

The cold of the water hit him like a dagger, a shock that stole his breath and paralyzed his thoughts. The surface receded from his desperately grasping fingers, finding nothing to hold onto. The moonlight distorted, turning into pearly, diffuse flashes dancing above his head, mocking his sinking.

The water, once his friend and even his home, closed around him in a deathly embrace. It was darker than he remembered. Pressure began to squeeze his chest, and a primal need for air burned his lungs. His arms and legs moved with the clumsiness of panic, fighting a current dragging him into the depths, towards where the light extinguished and only the deafening hum of silence remained.

'This is it,' he thought, with terrifying clarity. 'I'm screwed.'

If this was the final price for a life of excess, Jaehyun accepted it. In the murky limbo between life and death, as his body sank into the icy jaws of the ocean, his consciousness tore apart, revealing a truth more painful than the saltwater in his lungs. And in that final, bitter flash of lucidity, a torrent of regret pierced him with force.

He didn't regret defying the sea, that was an honorable death, but all the human misery he had dragged along like ballast. Ghostly visions haunted him: the empty gleam in the eyes of countless women in port bars, whose names he had deliberately forgotten and whom he had treated as insignificant beings. He remembered the greasy feel of the bills that men with yellowed smiles and rancid beer breath slid across the bar to pay for his drinks, and how he, with a superior smile, had accepted every coin of their cheap admiration, shamelessly feeding the hungry monster of his own ego.

He was a fraud. A coward disguised as a daring captain. He had taken advantage of others' desire and admiration, building his legend on the rotten foundations of lust and arrogance. Pride had been his banner, gluttony his companion, and laziness his secret sin, sailing aimlessly in a sea of complacency.

He deserved hell, not only for being egocentric but for being a wretch who had plundered all earthly pleasures without offering anything in return. A sinner who, in his final hour, saw with terrifying clarity that he more than fulfilled not one, but almost all of the capital sins.

And in the midst of that self-imposed final judgment, a presence insinuated itself at the edges of his dying consciousness. It was not just a vision, but also a sensation: something immense, ancient, and terribly curious was gliding closer through the abyssal darkness.

He felt, more than heard, a kind of vibration that seeped into his bones, a hypnotic melody that promised an end to pain and guilt, yet felt as seductive as it was lethal.

Before nothingness could claim him completely, a gentle, deliberate cold encircled his neck. It wasn't the impersonal cold of the ocean, but a specific touch, almost a caress.

Two hands, pale and perfect, positioned themselves on the sides of his face with terrifying tenderness. In the twilight, eyes that glowed with their own phosphorescent light met his. They seemed to blend with the ocean itself, without pity or judgment, only with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. Those eyes held him as his world went dark, promising him something he, in his desperation, could no longer discern as salvation or final damnation.

And as consciousness began to fade, devoured by the darkness seeping in from the edges of his vision, the last image to cross his mind was not of his family, nor his ship, but of those hungry eyes that appeared before him just as he lost consciousness.

+

Jaehyun gasps, but it's not water he swallows, but the exquisite taste of oxygen his lungs had been crying out for. A burning thirst, a thousand times deeper than before, scorches his throat, and an internal, desperate, humid heat cooks his muscles from within.

His eyes snap open violently, expecting to find the eternal twilight of the depths. Instead, the morning sun stabs him, gilding the sails, now seemingly intact, of his ship.

He is alive.

The idea hits him as brutally as the sea did last night.

He's fucking alive.

His trembling hands run over his torso, his arms, his face. He pinches his forearm until the pain draws a red line on his skin. It's not a dream, and his clothes, soaked and cold against his skin, are the irrefutable proof.

He hadn’t dreamed the shipwreck, but somehow, miraculously, he and his ship are almost intact, adrift but afloat, as if a colossal hand had gently placed them here.

With a superhuman effort, he turns his head, scanning the horizon for his savior. A sea deity? His grandfather's spirit? An angel sent from...? The question freezes in his mind when sudden dizziness, a vertigo that spins the world, forces him to lie back down, defeated.

"Thank God," he murmurs to himself, in a hoarse voice he doesn't recognize. He was never a man of faith, but at that moment, gratitude is a knot in his chest that needs to be untied towards something or someone. He doesn't expect an answer. He lets a harsh, liberating sob shake his body, an inconsolable cry of pure relief and retrospective terror. He's in one piece. His world hasn't ended.

"You're awake already."

The voice didn't come from the sky. It came from behind him.

Jaehyun jumps to his feet, ignoring the dizziness threatening to throw him back down. And there, lounging against the railing as if it were a throne, are you.

You are not an angel, but you are almost as beautiful as one.

The dawn light doesn't illuminate you; it emanates from you. Your skin seems made of the same substance as the moon on the sea, and your hair falls in waves that move with a grace that isn't from the wind. You are barely wrapped in what looks like shreds of sand and foam, covering the necessary parts while clinging to your curves with a modesty that is obscene. Your eyes are not human. They gleam with a mischievousness he finds too intimidating, like pearls pulled from the terrifying depths of the ocean.

For a moment of crazy hope, Jaehyun wonders if he actually died and this is the welcome to heaven. But then, the part of him that is a son of the sea, the one that knows its legends and dangers, whispers a more terrifying truth: no angel would have such a hungry gaze.

Was it possible? Had he, the damned sinner, ended up not in hell, but in the claws of something equally terrible and capricious?

You tilted your head slightly, and a smile as beautiful as it was terrifying curved your lips.

"You were praying," you said, your voice the song of waves against a cliff, the whisper of the tide pulling sand. "It's cute. Humans always do that when they know they're... screwed."

It wasn't the mockery that stole Jaehyun's breath, but the naked truth you contained. You had heard him. You had witnessed his moment of maximum vulnerability, that pathetic plea he thought was drowned out by the roar. Shame, a sudden, bitter heat, crept up his neck, reddening his face, mixing with terror to form a paralyzing cocktail.

A guttural sound, a senseless groan, died in Jaehyun's throat. He didn't know if it was an involuntary homage to a beauty so overwhelming it hurt the retina, or the simple, animal terror of prey feeling the hunter's breath. The line between wonder and panic blurred completely.

"A-are you... one of them? A siren?" he managed to stammer, and even to his own ears his voice sounded fragile.

You glided towards him, a movement that didn't obey gravity but a nearly divine physics. The smile curving your lips wasn't a welcoming gesture, but what seemed like a promise of an exquisite and terrible end.

Instinctively, Jaehyun sought refuge behind him that didn't exist, slamming against the solid reality of the main mast.

He swallowed hard, the sound absurdly loud in the silence you imposed. Your face was now inches from his, close enough for him to count your crystalline eyelashes and see how light wasn't reflected in your pupils but seemed to emanate from them, the image of ocean depths.

His grandfather's tales, those legends that seasoned his childhood and which he had filed away in the drawer of superstition, took on a terrifying reality. They weren't fables; they were warnings he now regretted underestimating. And now, he, the skeptical captain Jeong, was the protagonist of one, cornered against the wood of his own ship by a creature of scales and nightmares whose beauty was as undeniable as it was terrifying.

"Is that the... trivial name you give us?" your voice was a rough caress, the sound of foam dissolving in sand, laden with pure disdain. "Sirens. Sounds like a tale to captivate gullible humans."

Jaehyun squeezed his eyelids shut, seeking a darkness that didn't come, when your hand, cold as the skin of a deep-sea fish, landed on his cheek. When you parted your fingers, the sight stole his breath: between each one, interdigital membranes stretched, an elegant and grotesque reminder of your nature.

That hand began a slow, deliberate descent down the map of his body. It grazed his jawline, the vulnerable column of his throat, and stopped, with devastating curiosity, on the chiseled planes of his chest and abdomen. Every inch your hand traveled was a caress that burned and tore at him, a forced intimacy that stripped him of all bravado.

"I..." words stuck in his throat, unable to come out completely. "Did you... fix this?" he managed to ask.

You nodded languidly, your attention still captive to the relief of his muscles, which tensed under your touch as if they had a life of their own. Your fingers, with their delicate webbing, continued exploring, tracing circles on his diaphragm, feeling the firmness of his shoulders, as if evaluating the quality of a delicacy.

"H-how is it possible? The mast was about to snap... the sails, in tatters..."

A low laugh escaped your lips, interrupting him. Finally, you lifted your gaze to skewer him, stopping the caress that was driving him mad.

"If you really think you're the first sailor whose vessel has been shattered before my eyes and whose breath I've stolen, your naivety is touching. I, personally, have shattered ships sturdier than this one, and I've tasted the flesh of men more arrogant than you, stupid captain." You looked him straight in the eyes, and Jaehyun felt his terrified heartbeat shake his chest. "Materials... I have plenty. There are always bones to use as nails, and scraps of sails from sunken vessels."

Jaehyun felt the world tilt again. A cold sweat, alien to the sun's heat, ran down his spine. Damn it. At that moment, drowning seemed like a merciful end. Perhaps his savior was an entity that fed not only on human flesh, but on despair, cultivating slow terror to harvest sweeter screams.

"Are you planning... to eat me alive?" The question came out harsh, a whisper laden with resigned horror. He preferred to face the harshest truth than to keep swimming in the swamp of uncertainty. Under your gaze, he felt more insignificant than a grain of sand on the beach.

Your laughter burst out then, a cascade of crystalline notes that, however, completely lacked warmth; it was the echo of pitiless cruelty. The laugh was as beautiful as it was humiliating, and a spark of absurdly human irritation rose in him, mixing with panic. You shook your head, with an almost pitying gesture, and Jaehyun raised an eyebrow, completely bewildered. If his destiny wasn't to become your banquet, what role was he meant to play in this nightmare?

"T-then why? Why did you save me? Do you..." His voice broke when your finger, of a viscous, cold softness, landed on his lips, sealing them with subtle but irrevocable pressure.

"You talk too much, human," you murmured, your voice taking on a sharp edge. "But, to silence that curiosity which, I'm sure, will be your tomb... yes. There was a reason."

You slowly withdrew your finger and turned around. Your back offered itself to his view as you contemplated the horizon, that vast blue realm that was your home and his trap.

"C-can I ask why?" Jaehyun squirmed inside, feeling the weight of his own foolishness in defying your clear disdain, but the need to know was stronger than survival instinct.

When you turned back, it wasn't with the anger he expected. Instead, a slow, deliberate smile spread across your lips.

"Because you're pretty," you declared with crushing calmness. The brutal simplicity of the statement left Jaehyun completely stunned, his mind blank and his mouth slightly open. And you, visibly savoring his confusion and bewilderment, tilted your head and added in a whisper that was both a caress and a condemnation: "And I like pretty things."

The declaration, so simple and brutal, fell on him like a bucket of ice water. There was no threat in it, only a crushing truth. And for a creature of simple, absolute desires, what did that "like" mean? The question settled in Jaehyun's mind, more terrifying than any explicit threat.

Silence stretched, broken only by the lapping of waves against the hull. Jaehyun was still pinned against the mast, but terror was beginning to give way to a deep incredulity. That thing, that goddess, that monster... found him pretty. His worth rested, absurdly, on his appearance. It was a feeling he, who had always believed himself the predator in games of attraction, had never experienced from the other side: the pure, objectifying, terrifying sensation of being desired by something that didn't see his soul, only his shell.

You, as if you had said all there was to say for now, stepped back. The hypnotic pressure keeping Jaehyun paralyzed broke, allowing him to breathe deeply, a trembling gasp that burned in his lungs. The air where your body had been was now empty, and strangely cold.

"Rest, captain," you murmured, and a glint of mischief shone in your eyes. "You'll need strength."

The words, laden with an unspeakable promise, hung in the air. Without further explanation, you turned and, with a fluid movement, slid over the side and plunged into the water. A nearly silent splash, a brief swirl of foam, and then, the blue, impassive plain of the ocean.

Jaehyun collapsed against the mast again, his legs unable to support him.

The fear hadn't gone; it was now a dull, constant throb in his temples. But a seed had been planted, watered with confusion and a humiliating dose of wounded vanity. He was alive, and his savior was not an angel or a demon, but a monster of nature who happened to find him pretty. And as the sun warmed his skin, marked by the memory of your webbed fingers, a part of him, the same one that had always sought danger, began to wonder, with excited panic, what the hell that really meant.

+

The days that followed were not a transition, but a slow immersion into a new state of matter, one woven from fear, need, and a corrupting fascination. And Jaehyun was painfully aware of the trap he was in.

His sailboat lay like a corpse on a mirror of lead. Not the slightest breeze blew. The sails, repaired with disturbing perfection, hung limp and useless from the masts. There was no course to take, no way to fight. He was stranded in the most absolute immensity, a prisoner in a cell of water, condemned not by chains, but by a calm so vast and implacable it stole even the last illusion of control. His destiny no longer depended on his skill, but on his remaining food and water supplies, and now he also knew, on you.

The first night, Jaehyun didn't sleep. He huddled against the helm, a useless ornament on a dead sea. He thought he could feel, in the oppressive silence, the echo of your final phrase: "You'll need strength." For what? To endure this eternal stillness? To bear the slow agony that you, perhaps, were only prolonging for your own amusement?

At dawn, exhaustion and hopelessness overcame him, and he collapsed into a feverish sleep. And then he dreamed. Not of monsters, but of the unsettling peace of the abyss. He dreamed of your hands, no longer as claws, but as cool shadows soothing the fire on his skin; of your eyes, not as hungry pits, but as bright beacons in an infinite fog. He woke with a gasp, facing the bitter reality again: the motionless ship, the relentless sun clashing with the dream residue. Confusion was now a more bitter taste than pure fear.

It was on the third day, when the sun was an anvil on his neck, that you appeared again.

You emerged from the ocean naturally, as if you had always been there, as if you had always been part of that stagnant sea. You floated on the surface, a spectacle of supernatural indolence, the lower half of your body moving in slow undulations that barely disturbed the crystalline water. In your hand, a coconut, split almost perfectly in half.

With a carefree motion, you tossed the fruit. It landed at his feet with a dull, truthful thud on the wood. Jaehyun looked at it, then at you, conflict twisting his stomach. Was that the poisoned apple of an evil witch? He didn't know, but need was an animal fiercer than reason and pride, so he took it anyway.

When the cool liquid flooded his mouth and quenched his internal fire, an involuntary sound, almost a groan of relief, escaped his lips. When he looked up, only the perfect, circular patch where you had submerged remained. You hadn't just given him something to drink. You had reminded him that, in this prison of calm, only you held the key to his survival.

And so you established the rhythm of your strange coexistence: a choreography of appearances and disappearances on the motionless stage of the sea. Sometimes you brought him something to eat besides the supplies that were running out faster than he'd like. A silver fish, dead from a precise bite at the base of its skull, which you left on the deck for him to feed on. He found it somewhat repulsive to eat something you offered him, but it was better than nothing, after all.

Other times, you brought him a bundle of thick, gelatinous seaweed which, he discovered by rubbing it on his sunburned arms, had a soothing and regenerative power.

Your language was not of words, but of actions. And every deed was a paradox that dismantled his defenses: you were the killer siren of legends, the embodiment of danger, and yet his life literally depended on your whims.

Little by little, fear transformed into a chronic tension. Jaehyun began to study you. Not with the evasive gaze of prey, but with the concentrated intensity of a castaway mapping his only hope and possible doom.

He saw how the last rays of the sun, as evening fell, ignited the micro-scales on your torso and hips, creating an effect of diamond dust on lunar skin. He watched the hypnotic dance of your hair, floating around your head like a crown of seaweed. And above all, he dared to hold your gaze. He no longer looked only for the predatory gleam. He scrutinized your eyes for a glint of recognition, the spark of an intelligence that wasn't just instinct, perhaps even the shadow of a loneliness as abyssal as the one he felt in the midst of that blue immensity.

One afternoon, while tearing the flesh of a fish you had provided him with his teeth, the silence became unbearable. Courage, or perhaps desperation for contact that wasn't merely utilitarian, sprang from a place no longer pure terror.

"Why?" he managed to ask, his voice sounding strange, laden with an emotion he couldn't name. "Why do you do all this?"

You, who lay on the water as on a bed of liquid velvet, turned your head slowly. Your eyes fixed on him with an intensity that stole his breath.

"Every serious collector learns that the value of a possession lies not just in owning it, but in preserving its essence," you replied, and the word 'possession' didn't disturb him as much as it should. "Compassion is a luxury for creatures with limited time. Mine is not compassion, human. It's interest. I want to observe how pretty things unfold when the yoke of need is removed."

It was a cold, analytical, even cruel response, maintaining distance with the precision of a scalpel. But Jaehyun, in a flash of lucidity that shook his soul, didn't hear it as a rejection. He heard it as the most perverse and seductive invitation he would ever receive.

You didn't want a static, terrified trophy. You wanted a spectacle. And deep within him, the wounded pride of the great Captain Jeong, the one who once believed himself master of his destiny, rose to the challenge.

Fear, that ancient tyrant, was beginning to yield its throne to a dangerous, intoxicating, and profoundly human need: the desire to prove to you that there was more to him than a handsome face and a well-sculpted body. That he could be, for you, something more than a specimen.

It was with this new, reckless purpose beating in his veins that, moments later, the silence broke. With a feline impulse and a grace that was pure defiance of physics, you shot out of the water in a perfect arc to land with a soft impact on the deck, placing yourself in front of him.

It was only the second time you had come completely onto his ship. The first had been that initial day, when terror had blinded him so much that his mind only registered a divine and terrifying silhouette. In the following days, you had limited yourself to appearing on the surface, keeping the lower half of your body submerged, offering him food and drink from a safe distance.

Now, reality imposed itself with brutal clarity, and for the first time with enough lucidity, his gaze dropped below your torso. He instinctively searched for the scaly fan of a fish tail. But to his surprise, he didn't find it.

Instead, you had legs. Long, sculpted with powerful yet graceful musculature, also covered by that mosaic of iridescent scales that faded towards the thighs. The sight stole his breath. You weren't the creature from bestiaries. You were something different, something that walked the thin, terrifying line between human and absolutely wild. The fact that you had legs, like him, suddenly made you infinitely more real and, somehow, more terrifying.

"Where is your tail?" The question sounded abrupt, almost rude, in the silence, betraying the myth of sirens having fish tails that he had taken for granted until seconds ago.

You turned your head slowly. Your eyes, scrutinizing him for "nuances," fixed on him with renewed intensity. An eyebrow arched, a disconcertingly human gesture laden with superb incredulity.

"Tail?" you repeated, the word sounding absurd and diminutive in your mouth.

Jaehyun nodded, a frantic movement fueled by the need to understand you. "Yes, you know. Aren't sirens half human, half fish?"

What followed wasn't a laugh, but a harsh, sharp sound that escaped your chest, a bitter laugh that held no joy. Jaehyun paled. He felt the cold of fear run down his spine. For a moment of pure panic, the old terror returned, and he wished he could throw himself overboard.

"Do you know what level of the food chain fish are at down there?" you asked, your voice having lost all its melodic tone to become a flat, dangerous whisper. You didn't expect an answer; it was a statement disguised as a question. "If 'sirens' had fish tails, land creature, believe me, I wouldn't be here right now. We'd be just another insignificant prey." You paused, letting the weight of the word sink into him like a harpoon. "Don't you dare compare me to such an inferior being again," you hissed.

Jaehyun pressed his lips together, murmuring a soft "sorry," feeling somewhat frustrated not only for having offended you unintentionally, but for failing in his first attempt to show he could see you beyond prejudice.

He had tried to fit you into a legend, and you had reminded him, with brutal eloquence, that your true nature was more complex and savage than any earthly myth could conceive.

The reprimand hung in the air between you, leading to a silence too deafening for his taste.

Jaehyun had bitten the dust of his own ignorance, and his apology was lost in the vast auditorium of your indifference. But your continued presence on the deck, the fact that you hadn't thrown him overboard or disappeared into the depths, was a response in itself. He supposed it was your way of accepting his apology. A kind of archaic, conditional forgiveness, granted not with words, but with the simple act of not condemning him.

You turned away, moving away from him fluidly, your bare, webbed feet making barely audible contact with the worn deck wood. You began to walk with deliberate slowness, circling the perimeter of the sailboat as if inspecting newly conquered territory. Your eyes scrutinized every detail of the vessel with pure intensity.

Jaehyun stood still, watching you. Every move you made was like a spell, kryptonite to him. It was like watching a tiger prowling a clearing; terrifying and magnificent at once.

Your stroll took you to the stern, to the semi-protected area where the helm stood like a now-useless monument. There, on a small wooden chest fixed to the deck that served as both seat and storage, lay the last vestiges of his former life. His linen shirt, still stained with salt and sweat, was folded haphazardly. And on top of it, resting with an almost nostalgic dignity, was his captain's hat. It wasn't a new or luxurious piece, but leather tanned by sun and wind, the brim slightly warped from use. On its front, embroidered with a thin, golden thread that seemed to capture the last glow of the sun, was the word: "Jeong."

You stopped in front of it. Your hand rose, and your thumb, cold and smooth, slowly traced over the golden letters. It wasn't a gesture of affection, but of pure analysis. The intensity of your concentration was so palpable that Jaehyun held his breath.

"Your name is Jeong?" you whispered in a thoughtful tone, without taking your eyes off the hat.

It was as if a spark of electricity ran down his spine. Jaehyun approached cautiously. Seeing his prized possession, which once belonged to his grandfather, in your hands, he didn't feel alarm, but a strange warmth. A genuine smile spread across his lips.

"It's my surname," he clarified, his voice a little firmer, imbued with pure family pride. "My name is Jaehyun. Jeong Jaehyun."

You nodded slowly, still absorbed in the object. Your finger left the letters and traced the brim of the hat, feeling the texture of the leather. Then, you murmured, in a low but crystalline tone, a statement that was both recognition and challenge: "Captain Jeong Jaehyun."

Jaehyun's eyes shone with an intensity the calm ocean would have envied. He puffed out his chest instinctively, almost childishly, and a blush of pure, simple pride crept up his neck.

That you, a supernatural creature who seemed to despise both humans and fish, who spoke of shattering ships and tasting the flesh of arrogant men, called him "Captain," affirmed his identity in a way no tavern flattery ever had.

Paying no attention to his reaction, you continued your exploration. You crouched and opened the chest lid. Inside, the disorder of a life reduced to essentials: a roll of spare rope, a compass, and a few personal trinkets. Your fingers closed around a pack of paper cigarettes, wrinkled and damp at the corners. You picked it up, studying its rectangular shape with an expression of confusion mixed with deep distaste, as if holding the shell of a poisonous insect. Indifferent, you tossed it over your shoulder, towards the railing, as if discarding trash.

Jaehyun, with a swift reflex, reached out and caught it in the air before it fell into the water. "Hey, that's valuable," he said, but his tone wasn't angry, just slightly amused.

Your attention had already shifted. At the bottom of the chest, your hand found a small bottle of thick glass, with a short neck. Inside, an amber-colored liquid moved heavily. The bottle was warm to the touch, baked by the relentless sun.

With a quick, curious movement, you uncorked it. Instantly, a strong, acrid smell, of burnt wood and aged alcohol, emanated from inside. An involuntary hiss of pure repulsion escaped your lips.

Jaehyun laughed, a low, genuine laugh that resonated in the stillness. He moved closer, until he could feel the coolness emanating from your skin contrasting with the day's heat.

He took the bottle from your hands with a delicacy that surprised you both, his calloused fingers brushing yours, cold and smooth, for an instant.

"Hey, I didn't remember I had this stored away..." he mused, turning the bottle to look at the amber liquid against the bleeding light of the sunset. A wide, unguarded smile lit up his face. "Shit, I could drink it even hot." His voice sounded sweet, laden with a joyful nostalgia as palpable as the smell emanating from the bottle.

You watched him, your head tilted at an angle of genuine bewilderment. The complexity of his human emotions, this ability to find joy in a simple, foul-smelling liquid, was an enigma deeper than any creature inhabiting the abyssal plains.

"What is it?" you asked, your voice regaining its melodic tone, though tinged with pure curiosity. He blinked, bewildered for a moment. "What is that foul-smelling liquid inside the bottle?"

Jaehyun laughed again, softly, and swirled the bottle gently, making the liquid hit the glass walls with an inviting tinkle.

"Whiskey," he declared, as if the word explained it all. Seeing your expression of bewilderment didn't change, he added: "It's a drink. Made from grains, aged in oak barrels for years... and when you drink it, it burns a little, but it's delicious."

He brought the bottle to his lips and took a swig, unbothered by the liquid's warmth. A sigh of satisfaction escaped him as he lowered the bottle, and a drop of amber glistened on his lower lip before he wiped it with the back of his hand. His eyes met yours, full of a glint of mischief.

"Do you want to try?" he asked, almost as a challenge.

What followed was a spectacle of pure perplexity. Your face, always a serene marble of disdain or curiosity, cracked. Your brows furrowed in a gesture that was almost offense. Your eyes, which habitually reflected the indifference of the depths, moved between the bottle and his face with palpable incredulity.

What arcane power, what absurd human alchemy resided in that amber, pestilent liquid to draw such a carefree smile on Jeong Jaehyun's lips?

With a quick movement that belied your usual languor, you snatched the bottle from him. Your cold fingers closed around the glass with instinctive possessiveness. You turned it, tilted it, examined it. Your thumb, of pearly pallor, traced the cold surface of the glass as if you could read the whiskey's story through touch.

Then, with reckless decision, you brought the mouthpiece to your lips.

The first sip was an assault on your senses. A harsh bitterness that reminded you of rotten mangroves. But just as you were about to push the bottle away with contempt, it happened. A heat spread from your throat, a liquid fire that burned and caressed you from within simultaneously. It was a paradox: a cool fire that coiled in your veins and relaxed your muscles with a seductive heaviness. The taste was still repulsive, but the sensation... the sensation was intriguing. Without realizing it, you had tilted the bottle further, taking a long, deep gulp, defying the liquid to reveal its secret.

Jaehyun's laugh brought you out of your trance. A warm, husky sound that vibrated in your chest. Before you could process it, his hand rested on the bottle with gentle firmness.

"Okay, that's enough," he murmured, his voice sounding strangely close, veiled by amusement that didn't hide an undertone of concern. With a practiced movement, he pushed the cork back into the bottle.

It was then that the world, so solid and predictable for a creature of currents, betrayed your senses. The ship's deck swayed with exaggerated slowness, though the sea remained a mirror of lead. A sweet, heavy drowsiness began to cloud the edge of your perception. The mast tilted at an impossible angle and then lazily returned to its place. You grimaced, a gesture of disgust, and shook your head sharply, as if you could dislodge the fog from your mind.

A cold, familiar anger began to grow in your chest.

The audacity? This ephemeral, fragile human had tried to poison you? But the anger felt distant, muffled by an intoxicating warmth that enveloped you like seaweed in a quiet seabed.

Before indignation could find words, his hands took your shoulders with a mixture of softness and firmness, and in a gentle motion, guided you towards the solid base of the helm.

"I forgot to warn you," he said, his breath, carrying the faint scent of whiskey, reaching your cheek. His voice was a husky whisper that ran down your spine. "These drinks are usually taken in small amounts. Otherwise, you'll get drunk."

As he spoke, his hand rose. His fingers, rough from the touch of ropes and salt, closed with devastating delicacy around a strand of your hair that the wind had blown across your face. With a gesture as natural as it was unconscious, he tucked it behind your ear.

The contact was almost as electrifying as lightning.

It wasn't the eternal cold of the depths, nor the burn of the whiskey. It was a living temperature, a rough, warm caress that left a trail of fire on your skin. A completely new, unknown, and alarmingly pleasant sensation. An unsettling tingle was born in the pit of your stomach and spread like a stain of heat, making your pulse, normally slow and powerful as the tide, accelerate disconcertingly.

Jaehyun, sensing the sudden intensity of your fixed gaze on him, pulled back abruptly. He broke the contact as if burned.

Your gaze, even clouded by alcohol, still sent a primal shiver down his spine, making the hair on his arms stand up. But now, beneath that shiver, something else beat. A dull, quickened rhythm in his chest, a wave of heat creeping up his neck and tingeing his ears red. It was a sensation he had forgotten, a sweet and alarming vulnerability he hadn't felt since he was a teenager.

You, disturbed to the core by that furtive caress, looked away with a brusque gesture. Your pride rebelled against the complacency that simple touch had awakened in you.

To regain control, you grabbed the bottle from the deck, not to drink, but to study this artifact of the human world that had suddenly become too complex. Your thumb, with its sharp, slightly curved nail, traced the worn label, following the indecipherable scribbles and the blurry drawing of a face that, you supposed, must be another of his insignificant species.

"What else is there in your world?" The question came after a long silence, as twilight painted the sky purple. Your voice was a lower whisper, stripped of its usual mocking tone. You looked up at him, seeking his eyes, and found him already looking at you. Not with the fear of prey from the first days, nor with the captivated fascination of a while ago. It was a serene, deep gaze, laden with a curiosity that mirrored yours. That silent intensity made the tingle in your stomach turn into a sharp dagger of heat that cut off your breath.

Jaehyun smiled kindly. He slid down next to you, until his shoulder brushed yours against the solid wood of the helm. The contact, though light, was another spark. A long, laden sigh escaped his lungs, a sound containing a world of feelings you couldn't name, but that intrigued you with a force almost as powerful as the whiskey.

Then, his voice, naturally rough and now softened by emotion, wove you a tapestry with threads of his life. He told you about the island he lived on: about the taverns where sadness and joy were drowned in rivers of that drink and other, stronger ones, capable of felling even the sturdiest men. He painted with words the market at dawn, where the stench of fish mixed with the sour sweat of merchants, a smell that now, in the immensity of the solitary ocean, felt almost homely.

He told you about his mother. About the soft texture of her hands, how her laughter sounded like little bells, the sharp anxiety he felt imagining the wrinkle of worry on her brow. His voice broke then, just a tremor, but enough for a grimace of pain to cross his tanned face. He noticed it, felt exposed, and quickly steered the conversation to safer ground.

He told you the stories of sirens his grandfather told him, legends of soul-splitting songs and tails that shone under the moon. You laughed, mocking humans limited imagination, their need to adorn terror with pure fantasy. He laughed with you, and it was a liberating laugh, as if shedding a weight by admitting his own ignorance.

"You're right," he said, shaking his head, "we didn't have the faintest idea."

Finally, almost as a slip, the conversation drifted towards the women of the island. "Some are attractive," he commented, with a shrug that pretended to be casual but couldn't hide an undertone of discomfort. "I see them often when I go for a drink."

At another time, that phrase would have been inflated with male pride, with the cheap vanity of knowing oneself desired. Now, the words tasted like ashes in his mouth.

He saw himself with painful clarity: the hollow man who used smiles and flattery as currency, the kind of man who would have made his mother hang her head in shame.

But beyond his self-flagellation, there was you. And in the center of your chest, a new and unpleasant emotion welled up like a poisoned spring. A sharp, bitter acidity, stinging, that ran to the tip of your tongue, leaving a metallic aftertaste.

Pretty women? What did this insignificant, audacious human mean by that?

You were sure, absolutely sure, that compared to the ancestral and savage beauty you possessed, those human females must be gangly, crude creatures, more horrible than a barracuda with a mouth full of parasites. Yet doubt, corrosive and unpleasant, began to gnaw at the edges of your certainty, eating away at your thoughts with irritating persistence.

"Do you think I'm terrifying?" The question left your lips unfiltered, laden with naked honesty and an innocence that caught him completely off guard.

His eyes widened, his pupils dilated. His mind, still clouded by whiskey and proximity, became a whirlwind of possible answers, each more dangerous than the last.

What was he supposed to say in these cases to avoid offending you and being killed afterward? The truth? A flattering lie?

"Oh, well, you're definitely terrifying," he stated, the words rushing out in a nervous torrent, driven by panic.

You frowned instantly. A flash of displeasure crossed your eyes like a threatening shadow. He saw it and, interpreting it as a prelude to his doom, rushed to correct himself, raising his hands in a gesture of pleading and peace.

"B-but you're very beautiful, no doubt! Don't get me wrong," he stammered, feeling cold sweat bead on the back of his neck.

You raised your chin then, a gesture of pure pride. The whiskey fog was lifting, giving way to much sharper curiosity.

"More beautiful than those women on your island?"

Jaehyun nodded, somewhat confused by the conversation's direction, by the sudden fire he saw ignite in your eyes. But then, looking at you properly, observing the way the last light of day clung to the scales on your cheekbones, the perfect and lethal curve of your jaw, and the unfathomable depth of your eyes, which now shone with a mix of challenge and a vulnerability he had never seen in you before, he didn't have to think about the answer.

For the first time in years, his words were absolutely sincere, springing not from his ego, but from a well of truth he had rediscovered on the brink between life and death, a well that seemed to have your name written on its walls.

"Definitely."

The word hung in the air between you, heavy and solid. Jaehyun stood still, feeling the echo of his own statement. For a moment, he thought he had made another catastrophic mistake, for your expression remained impassive, and that was worse than any sign of anger.

He himself was surprised by his own frankness. But he knew clearly it wasn't a lie. In all his years of sailing, visiting ports, and meeting countless women, he had never seen anything or anyone that compared to you.

He swallowed hard as you began to approach. Each breath of yours was silent and deliberate. Instinctively, he braced for the worst. He squeezed his eyes shut, expecting to feel the cold of your hands around his neck or the edge of your nails tearing his flesh.

Instead, he felt the surprisingly gentle touch of your fingers on his cheek. It was a slow, almost experimental caress. Your thumb, cold and damp, traced the line of his jaw, where his beard was just beginning to show, rough and uneven. It was a strange contrast: the softness of your touch against the roughness of his unshaven skin and the heat it gave off.

A low laugh, more a mocking sigh than a genuine gesture of humor, made him open his eyes wide.

"Humans lie when they're scared," you murmured, watching him intently, not quite carried away by his flattery which you sensed was false. Your voice was so low it almost got lost in the sound of the water, but he knew you heard it clearly, so close that your cold breath brushed his skin.

"I wasn't lying," Jaehyun replied. His own voice sounded firmer than he expected. The previous fear being overshadowed by a confidence he didn't know he had.

Your fingers stilled on his skin. The pressure didn't increase, but he felt the sudden stillness, the way your attention focused completely on him.

"You're interesting, captain," you concluded, catching him off guard. Your finger lowered to the corner of his lips. The contact was brief, a light brush that, nevertheless, seemed charged with an intention he couldn't decipher. "And definitely reckless."

Something changed in your expression then. It wasn't a drastic change, but a slight gleam in the depth of your eyes, a flash of genuine curiosity that seemed to go beyond mere interest in a human like Jaehyun.

Before he could articulate a word or even understand what you had said, you withdrew your hand, leaving his skin missing your touch.

Without further ado, you turned gracefully and headed to the railing, apparently indifferent. You threw yourself into the water in a clean, efficient movement, with the same naturalness with which you appeared the first time. The surface closed over your form with a slight splash, as if the sea claimed you without resistance.

Jaehyun took an unconscious step towards the railing, his hand reaching out to where you had been. There was nothing to grab. Only the growing darkness of the water and the accelerated beat of his own heart, hammering in his ears with a question he couldn't formulate.

No trace of you remained. Only the racing beat in his throat.

+

Several days had passed since that encounter with the whiskey. Your presence remained intermittent: you appeared when you wanted, disappeared without warning, and yet, something had changed.

He couldn't name it precisely, couldn't find the exact word in the dictionary of his mind, but it was real. It was a small crack in the wall of distrust he had built since that first day, a crack through which something like trust was seeping.

It wasn't friendship. It wasn't something he could explain to his mother in a letter. It was more of a tacit agreement, a certainty that neither of you had spoken but both seemed to accept: he could ask you questions without you getting angry, and you could answer him without him taking offense. And so, without either of you planning it, your conversations had become a ritual of questions and answers.

You wanted to know everything about the human world, and he, in return, had started asking you about the depths. About the currents you knew like he knew the winds. About the creatures that lived down there, in that darkness that froze his bones just imagining it.

And the strangest part, what Jaehyun couldn't quite process, was that he was beginning to enjoy it.

"So, you humans exchange colored pieces of paper to own things," you said, your head tilted. "Why don't you just take them?"

You asked the question with the same naturalness with which you spoke of currents or fish, while rummaging through his belongings with a shamelessness that no longer bothered him. It was your way of fighting boredom, and he had learned to accept it.

Jaehyun smiled to himself, without looking up from the notebook he had found that morning at the bottom of the chest. The pages, yellowed by humidity, crackled under his fingers like dry leaves. It was his grandfather's logbook, and although most of the entries were technical, there was something about the old man's trembling handwriting that made him feel less alone.

"Yeah, well," he replied, turning a page carefully. "It's complicated, but basically, if you don't have those colored papers, you can't live comfortably in the human world. The more you have, the more comfortable you live."

He had been scribbling for an hour, trying to record the days he'd been stranded. It wasn't easy. Time had become a shapeless mass, and the marks on the wood he had been carving to track the passing days were quickly lost among the oak's grain. But the act itself, the simple gesture of putting charcoal to paper, gave him the illusion of control.

"How absurd," you murmured after a while, and there was no contempt in your voice, only wonder. "In the sea, things belong to whoever takes them and can defend them."

"Right," Jaehyun said, and this time he did look up. "That's why you guys don't have wars, I guess."

You blinked. You didn't catch the sarcasm, or maybe you did, but you let it pass. Instead, you sat down on the deck in front of him, crossing your legs with a fluidity that imitated his human gestures without ever being quite natural. And then, without asking permission, you took the notebook from his hands.

"What is this?" you asked, flipping through the pages with voracious curiosity.

"My grandfather's logbook," Jaehyun replied, and although snatching the notebook would have bothered him coming from anyone else, from you he found it strangely comforting. "He logged the voyages. Wind direction, wave height, the ports he docked at."

"Why did he write all this? It's pathetic."

The question came out with a brutal honesty he knew well. It wasn't a challenge, not mockery, and honestly, he didn't dare ask what it was exactly. But he supposed it was just genuine curiosity, and that disarmed him more than anything else.

"To remember," Jaehyun said, closing the notebook. "And to know where you've been, in case you pass that way again."

You stared at him, squinting, as if you really thought he was pulling your leg.

"Creatures of the ocean don't need maps. They know where they've been because the water remembers for them."

"Humans aren't fish."

"I know," you replied with obviousness. "That's why you're always so lost."

Jaehyun looked up then, feeling slightly offended. He wanted to answer, to defend his species, his grandfather, the centuries of cartography and exploration that had led men to cross entire oceans. But the words stuck in his throat when he saw you watching him so intently.

In your eyes was something he couldn't interpret, a mixture of contempt and a tenderness so unexpected it stole his breath.

"Don't look at me like that," he dared to say, his voice sounding harsher than intended.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm... a specimen. Something you study."

You blinked. Once. Twice. And then, with a slowness that seemed deliberate, you slid from the mast and stood in front of him. You were so close he could feel the cold emanating from your skin, that deep-sea smell that no longer scared him, but something worse: comfort.

"You are a specimen," you said, and there was no cruelty in your words, just fact. "All humans are, to me. But that doesn't mean you're not interesting enough for me not to care."

The confession came out too naturally. Without artifice, without the dance of human seduction. And it was precisely that lack of artifice that caught him off guard.

"You care about me?" he repeated, as if the word didn't fit in his mouth, as if it were an oddly shaped object his lips couldn't hold.

You simply nodded, as if your simple confession wasn't tightening his chest, and took a step towards him. Jaehyun, by pure instinct, stepped back until he stumbled against the edge of the ship.

He couldn't understand you. A creature like you, caring about him? Was it part of a plan? A strategy to soften him before devouring him? Were you really that cruel?

And then, the question he didn't want to ask made its way among the others:

Did he care about you?

Jaehyun stood still, his gaze lost somewhere beyond your shoulder, while the question swirled in his head like a treacherous current.

He analyzed every corner of his consciousness, every gesture of the past weeks, every time he had felt something other than fear. He did it for so long he barely noticed your gaze still fixed on him, scrutinizing him with that patience of yours that disarmed him so much.

In the end, he had to admit it to himself. Maybe yes. Maybe he did care about you. Not because he was rational, he wasn't, nor because he could explain it with the logic that had governed his life until then. But because if he didn't, if he didn't care at all, he probably would have gone mad by now. And that thought, paradoxically, was the only thing keeping him sane.

He didn't understand why. But there was the truth, uncomfortable and rough, lodged in his chest like a poorly driven nail.

"I don't understand humans," you said, your voice almost indifferent. "They spend their lives recording things the sea has already forgotten. They cling to papers and words and promises that the wind takes away. But still... some of you end up stranded in nothingness, just like you, Captain Jeong."

The honesty suited you so strangely, so out of place in a creature like you, that Jaehyun didn't know how to respond. He stood there, speechless, with his grandfather's logbook in his hands and your confession echoing in his ears like a torment.

You didn't wait for an answer. You turned and threw yourself into the water, as if you had said all you needed to say.

And Jaehyun stood there, watching the circle of foam close over your head, wondering if you had meant that you cared about him, or that you had simply been watching his reaction as with your usual mockery of humans, as always.

This time, for the first time, he didn't know which of the two options was more terrifying. And for the first time, he felt completely confused about his feelings towards you.

Did he hate you, or at least find you tolerable?

He didn't have the faintest idea.

+

Your visits started becoming more constant after that.

During the long, hot days, you would often come aboard with him while he cleaned the deck in a vague attempt to pretend there was still some purpose to fulfill in that floating prison. You would sit with your legs dangling over the water, or sometimes lean against the mast with that languor of yours that seemed to mock gravity, while simply watching him with a look Jaehyun would call indefinable.

Don't get it wrong: you still scared him. A sharp fear, rooted in some primitive part of his brain that remembered not to trust creatures with such sharp teeth and such hungry gazes. But fear, Jaehyun was learning, was a docile animal when fed consistently.

Little by little, the sensation had stopped stabbing his guts every time you emerged from the water, becoming something more like a guard dog: still alert and vigilant, but willing to coexist with the threat if it showed no intention of attacking.

The naturalness with which you addressed him lately struck him as curious. As if you had decided, at some moment he hadn't identified, that the predator-prey ceremony was no longer necessary. You spoke to him with a familiarity that made his hair stand on end, with questions that arose with voracious curiosity. And Jaehyun discovered, in those endless, sunny days, that beyond your crude death threats, there was a creature far more curious and attentive than he would have imagined.

He saw it in the way your eyes lingered on every object as if you could absorb its story just by looking at it. In the way you frowned when something didn't make sense to you, as if the problem were the object's and not your understanding.

In those small gestures, which seemed so human and yet so yours, Jaehyun began to see not the monster of legends, but someone. Someone as lost in their own world as he was in his.

You would rummage through his trinkets with a mixture of disdain and fascination, asking the origin of each thing. From rusty compasses to something as simple as a notebook with pages yellowed by humidity. Jaehyun would explain, with a patience he didn't know he had, what each object was for, what it meant in the world of men, why someone had once considered it valuable. He talked and talked, and you listened as if you really wanted to understand.

And honestly, to his surprise, you were quite good at listening.

So, without either of you noticing, your company became one of the few interesting things, if not the only one, in his days stranded on the ocean. The sun still punished, thirst was still a constant reminder of his fragility, loneliness was still that slab on his chest that prevented him from breathing deeply. But there was you. And for some reason his rational mind refused to examine too closely, that seemed enough.

Jaehyun found himself looking forward to your arrival every day. With that warm pang in his chest he had only felt before when, as a child, he waited for his father's return from the sea after weeks without seeing him. It was a sweet and bitter wait at the same time, because it implied recognizing that without you, his days had no color, no flavor, nothing to distinguish them from one another.

And no matter how much he wanted to avoid thinking it, each of those days he spent by your side, you seemed even more beautiful and captivating.

There was something in the way you smiled when you understood something new, in the gleam in your eyes when you contradicted him, in that way you had of tilting your head when something intrigued you.

You had become his entire world: a beautiful, terrifying, and completely inscrutable world. And the truly pathological thought, the one whispering in the deepest, most honest part of his being, was that he was starting to enjoy the crumbling.

Fear was no longer for his survival, but for the fragile thread of his sanity. And the worst, the most atrocious part, was that preserving that sanity barely seemed to matter to him on certain occasions.

He remembered reading, months ago, in a book with yellowed pages smelling of mustiness, that the human brain, when loneliness envelops it so densely, is forced to cling to the nearest object, like a castaway to a drifting plank. And that object, or person, in this terrible case, was you.

However, he couldn't help but ponder that if the heavens had been less miserly, if you had been a flesh-and-blood woman, or if you had just met under other circumstances, perhaps in a bustling market, or under the light of a lantern on a stormy night, you would still have seemed captivating to him. And probably, damn it, you would have attracted him anyway.

But now, watching you stir through his belongings with a shamelessness bordering on innocence, your hair falling over your face with almost cruel delicacy, he wondered if that was true. Were you beautiful because you were the only living being—apart from himself—with whom he had shared the air these past days? Or was it a true feeling, born from some honest fold of his heart, with no debt to his deplorable situation?

He sighed, perhaps more forcefully than he would have liked, and that sound startled you from your pilfering. Between your fingers, long and pale as jellyfish tentacles, gleamed some of his silver chains and a handful of trinkets Jaehyun couldn't clearly distinguish.

The way you tilted your head, like a curious bird before an unknown object, struck him as almost adorable. And it was absurd, ridiculously absurd, that those gestures came from you, a creature capable of snatching life without a single blink, and yet, for some reason beyond his understanding, made you extremely endearing.

"Why are you sighing?" he heard you ask, breaking the deafening silence.

He shrugged, watching you from the corner of his eye as the generous, fleeting sunset light caressed your extraordinary beauty.

"Just tired," he lied, his voice rough from little use. "It's been a very long day."

He heard you approach while he kept his head down. The smell of ocean and freshness, that aroma that had terrified him the first few nights, invaded his nostrils when you planted yourself right in front of him.

"Every day is long for you," you said with a disarming naturalness. "It's not like you have many things to distract yourself with."

There was no mockery in your words, Jaehyun knew. But he had been frustrated, confused, tangled in his own thoughts like in a thicket of thorns for so many days, that he couldn't help the bitterness twisting his mouth.

“Oh really? I had no idea,” he replied, the sarcasm snapping from him.

You raised your eyebrows, surprised. Your tone sounded more aggressive and sharper than you were used to hearing. Jaehyun watched your confused face and was surprised, if only for an instant, that you didn't say anything. Just a few weeks ago, such a response would have been enough for you to threaten to devour him alive.

"I just want to go home," he admitted after a while, looking up at the sky. It seemed fascinating to him, as always, the number of stars burning there, and he wished with all his might that one of those distant lights would grant his desire: to return to his island, to his home, to get rid of this horrible feeling of not being master of his own thoughts or his most intimate sensations.

"You're sad," you stated, after examining his face with a slowness that felt eternal to him. Furrowed brow, crystalline eyes, sighs that came like broken waves. You had heard many men cry for their lives, just seconds before dragging them to the depths to eat them. But something about seeing Jaehyun like this, so fragile, squeezed your chest in a way you couldn't name.

It was strange. Creatures like you didn't usually feel anything other than hunger and lust, two forces as pure as a knife's edge. Yet, in these past weeks, you had managed to deduce that Jaehyun's human behavior, like his clumsiness, his melancholy, his way of talking to himself in a low voice, was seeping into you like water through a crack. You didn't know how or why, and no matter how much you wanted to avoid it, and something in you said you should, you couldn't stop coming to meet him every day.

You enjoyed Jaehyun's company. He was an attractive human, the kind you wanted to look at for a long time. And his stories, about his island and his people, were objectively entertaining. The truth, though you barely dared to touch the thought, was that the desire to eat him had completely disappeared. You had grown so accustomed to him that the mere idea of harming him now seemed incomprehensible, almost offensive.

"I'm exhausted," Jaehyun replied, after a long silence. "And hungry. And desperate. But mostly... I'm confused."

"Why?" you asked, kneeling in front of him.

Jaehyun bent his knees and rested his head on them, while remaining reclined against the mast.

"I'm afraid I'm going crazy, you know?" he said, and deep down he didn't know why he was telling you. You probably wouldn't understand a word of what that meant, and you probably wouldn't care either. But he needed to spit out his frustration, even if into the void.

“I miss the island, my home, my mother’s kisses… Shit, I’m going to sound like a little kid, but I really miss my mother’s kisses. And I don’t want to go back and be unrecognizable to her. Especially because I’m starting to become unrecognizable to myself”

Silence fell between you like a leaden cloak. Jaehyun didn't expect you to answer, or even to understand. You weren't human. Empathy, that painful muscle of vulnerable hearts, was as foreign to you as dry land to fish. But his clumsy, sensitive heart, the one that was still beating despite everything, hoped, in some impossible way, that you would comfort him.

"Kisses?" you pronounced, the word rolling on your tongue, savoring it syllable by syllable.

Jaehyun couldn't deny feeling a deep discouragement, the kind that settles in the chest like a cold stone. Was that the only word you had managed to rescue from the torrent of his misery? He had spoken of loneliness, fear of becoming unrecognizable, maternal tenderness as a beacon in the storm... and you got stuck on kisses. Nothing but kisses.

Somehow, it was to be expected. He shouldn't be surprised that a creature like you, born in the cold of the depths, could barely distinguish between the nuances of human pain. But even so, with that lucidity that sometimes landed low blows, he couldn't help feeling even emptier, as if he had poured his heart into a bottomless barrel.

He was about to tell you it didn't matter, that he would go to sleep, to forget his ramblings. The phrase was already forming on his lips, tired and defeated. But then he noticed the tilt of your head, that slight veer to the left he had learned to recognize as the prelude to a question. It was such an oddly human gesture in you, so full of genuine curiosity, that sometimes he forgot you weren't the same species.

He nodded, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the question, though the movement was clumsy. The conversation had drifted into territories he never intended to explore, at least not with you. He had mentioned his mother without thinking—again—and now you, with that gaze of yours that stripped him naked without effort or permission, had taken that confession like someone taking a loose thread from a fabric and preparing to pull.

Jaehyun swallowed. The sea wind brought him the smell of your skin, that scent of salt and something else he couldn't name. He wondered, for an absurd moment, if sirens understood the concept of tenderness, or if for you every act of care was just another mystery, like gravity or fire to a child.

"What do kisses do," you insisted, your voice now having a different nuance, something he couldn't decipher, "that makes you miss them so much?"

The question hung in the air, swaying with the ship's roll. Jaehyun felt the knot in his throat tighten. It wasn't an easy question. Not for someone who had been asking himself for weeks if he still deserved to be called a man.

Jaehyun blinked. For a moment, his mind went blank. How do you explain a kiss to a creature who probably sees the mouth as a tool for tearing flesh? The popular and experienced Jeong Jaehyun, who had kissed more women than he could remember, suddenly felt like a clumsy teenager again.

"Uh, well, they are..." he began, his voice sounding hoarse and unsure. "They're a way of saying things without words."

"What kind of things?" You immediately replied, not taking your eyes off him, and without giving him time to even think of an instant answer.

That was another thing he had learned about you in recent weeks: when you wanted to understand something, you didn't look away. It was an intensity that at first paralyzed him with fear. Now... now he wasn't so sure what it did to him.

He could have told you the truth. That a kiss could be a goodbye, a promise, an apology, a declaration of war, or the most absolute surrender. He could have told you that he had kissed dozens of women in port taverns and now, stranded in the middle of nowhere, he barely remembered their faces. He could have told you that none of those kisses had meant anything, and that maybe that's why he remembered them so poorly.

"Things I can't explain," he admitted finally, looking down.

Silence stretched between you. It wasn't uncomfortable—silence had long since stopped being uncomfortable with you—but it was charged with something Jaehyun couldn't name. He listened to the gentle lapping of water against the hull, the occasional creak of wood, and his own breathing, which suddenly seemed too loud.

When he looked up, you were closer.

He didn't remember seeing you move. It was another of your skills: that way of appearing where you weren't, of closing distances without him being able to follow the path. Now you were kneeling in front of him, at eye level, and your face was close enough for him to see how the starlight fragmented on the micro-scales of your cheekbones.

"Then show me," you said.

It wasn't a question. It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order in that tone of yours that brooked no reply, the same one you used when demanding detailed, immediate explanations.

The air escaped his lungs.

"What?"

"Show me," you repeated, your head tilting a little more, as if that would help you understand better. "If it can't be explained with words, then it must be demonstrated. I want to understand that... 'closeness.' Why you miss it so much."

Jaehyun swallowed. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. This was madness. A line he shouldn't cross. All his survival instincts screamed at him to refuse.

But there was something else. A lower, more insistent voice, which had been gaining ground in the weeks filled with your constant presence. That voice whispered that he was already lost long before this moment. That the line had been crossed the first time he found himself waiting for your arrival.

"This is a terrible idea," he whispered, more to himself than to you.

You didn't move. You didn't smile. You just looked at him with that curiosity of yours, relentless and patient, as if you knew that despite his refusal, he couldn't really refuse.

And you were right.

Defeated by your silent, penetrating, and above all insistent gaze, he leaned towards your face slowly. It wasn't a brave kiss. It wasn't the confident, experienced kiss of the great Jeong Jaehyun who had once conquered entire taverns with a single look. It was a trembling, hesitant kiss, the kind a teenager gives when he's not sure how to kiss. His lips barely brushed yours at first, as if asking.

Your lips were softer than he had imagined, and they were cold, like everything about you. They remained motionless under his, not responding, but not pulling away either. It was like kissing a statue, a beautiful, living statue that held the power of life and death over him and that, for some reason, was allowing him to do this.

He closed his eyes. The world shrank to the pressure of his lips against yours, the faint scent of salt and something he couldn't identify but already associated with you. His hand, which he didn't remember moving, found your jaw. Your skin was cold and smooth as a pearl, and the contact ran up his arm like an electric current.

He pulled away after a few seconds, or was it hours? He didn't know, his face burning and his chest heaving as if he had run miles. His entire being vibrated with a mix of shame, terror, and a dizzying, undeniable excitement he dared not name.

You hadn't moved. You were still in the same position, your eyes fixed on his, your expression indecipherable. For a moment, Jaehyun feared he had offended you, crossed some invisible boundary. His hands, still trembling, withdrew as if your skin burned.

Then, you raised your hand. Your fingers, cold and webbed, slowly traced your own lips where his had been. Your brow was slightly furrowed, in that gesture of deep concentration you used when something didn't quite make sense.

"Interesting," you murmured, your voice barely a whisper. "The pressure was... pleasant. But I don't understand why people miss it. It doesn't seem necessary for survival."

Jaehyun let out a trembling sigh. A nervous, almost hysterical laugh threatened to escape his chest. He had kissed a creature of the depths, and she had reduced it to simple "pleasant pressure."

"It's not the kiss," he said, his voice sounding hoarse in a way he hadn't anticipated. "It's who you kiss."

Your eyes narrowed. That analytical intensity of yours sharpened, as if you had just found a variable you hadn't considered.

"So," you said slowly, testing each word before releasing it, "when you say you miss your mother's kisses, you don't miss the act. You miss her."

Jaehyun nodded. Not trusting his voice.

"And when humans kiss each other..." you continued, and Jaehyun saw your gaze drop to his lips for a fraction of a second before returning up, "they're not seeking the pressure. They're seeking the other person."

"Yes," he whispered, almost panting.

The silence that followed was different. It wasn't the silence of confusion or analysis. It was the silence of someone who had received more information than they could process.

"That is..." you began, then stopped. You searched for the word. When you found it, your voice sounded strange, almost hesitant. "Inefficient. And yet..." another pause. "Not entirely unpleasant as a concept."

Jaehyun didn't know how to respond to that. He wasn't sure there was an answer.

And then, for the first time, it was you who leaned in.

It wasn't fast. It wasn't the fluid, predatory movement he expected from you. It was slow, almost hesitant, as if you weren't sure of the mechanics. Your face approached his, and Jaehyun felt your cold breath brush his skin. Your nose gently bumped his, a miscalculation, he supposed, and then your lips found his.

It was different from how he had kissed you. Different in every way: in the urgency, in the temperature, in the desperate way your mouth sought his without quite knowing what to do once it found it.

It wasn't tender or expert. It was clumsy and desperate, almost childish. You bumped against him without measure, your teeth clashing against his lips before you learned to soften the gesture.

Your hands gripped the back of his neck with a force bordering on panic, as if you feared the moment would dissolve between your fingers. There was an instant when you stopped, just a heartbeat, your mouth pressed to the corner of his, your breathing ragged and confused, as if you didn't know the next step. And then you tried again, this time slower, even clumsier, your lips moving with a lack of grace he found almost perfect.

But Jaehyun, despite the surprise, or perhaps because of it, didn't stay still.

Because something in that clumsiness of yours, in that failed imitation of the human gesture, stirred his insides with unexpected force. And when he felt the brush of your teeth against his lower lip, when he perceived that taste of salt and sea that had haunted his dreams for weeks, something in him snapped. Something he had kept tied down with ropes of silence and distance, something he hadn't allowed himself to feel even in the solitude of the night.

It was he who closed his eyes first. It was he who, with a softness that contrasted with your fierceness, placed a trembling hand on your cheek. His fingers, rough from rigging and salt, traced the edge of your jaw with an almost reverent slowness, as if he feared you would break under his touch. And then, with a sigh that seemed to drag all the world's weariness, he tilted his head slightly to adjust the angle, to find that exact point where your mouths fit without pain.

He kissed you then, without restraint, without calculation, without that artificial care he had learned to use with the port women. He kissed with an urgency that trembled on his lips, with a hunger for real contact, for closeness, to know he wasn't alone on that damned drifting ship. His other hand found your waist and pulled you against him with a desperation that dampened his lashes. He could feel your heart—if you had one—beating against his, or perhaps it was his own, beating so hard it hurt his chest.

When you finally parted lips, Jaehyun kept his eyes closed. His forehead rested against yours, and his breath came out in gasps, warm, brushing your skin like an involuntary caress. His fingers were still on your cheek, and he noticed, with a surprise that completely disarmed him, that they were trembling.

"That..." he whispered, his voice sounding like another man's, a broken man he barely recognized. "That was a kiss."

He opened his eyes then and looked at you. He looked at you as if it were the first time he saw you, or perhaps as if it were the last. And in his dark pupils, flooded by a moisture he dared not let fall, was something he had never shown anyone: the fear that this would end, the vertigo of having tasted something he didn't know if he would ever taste again.

Maybe because it was you. Maybe because it had been weeks—or months? how long had it been?—since anyone had touched him without wanting something in return. The caresses of the women in the port always had a price, his brothers' hugs measured strength, the pats on the back from his companions always came with an order. But you didn't want anything. Or maybe you did, but you couldn't name it, and that made it more real than anything he had received in years.

And when you opened your lips to say something, though he didn't know what, maybe nothing, he kissed you again. Slower this time. This time to teach you. To enjoy it once more, even if just for an instant, in the only place in the world where he had stopped feeling alone.

They separated after a few seconds. Your eyes were slightly open, pupils dilated. You said nothing. You just stared at him in silence for a few seconds that felt like decades to him.

"You're... very warm, Jaehyun," he heard you say after a while, and for the first time, your name on your lips didn't sound like a label or a passing curiosity. It sounded like a discovery.

And before he could respond, before he could even process what had happened, you stood up with that fluidity of yours and headed for the railing. You threw yourself into the water without looking back, without a goodbye.

The surface closed over you with a slight splash.

Jaehyun stayed there, sitting against the mast, his lips still cold from the memory of yours and his heart beating with a rhythm he no longer recognized.

Outside, the sea remained calm. The stars continued to shine. And he, for the first time in weeks, didn't pray for rescue.

+

You haven't visited Jaehyun for what he, in his heart of hearts, has dubbed an eternity. Four days. Just four days, yet time has become a thick, sticky substance dragging along like a snail on glass. Four days since your webbed feet last slid over the side, four days since your eyes looked at him with that intensity he has learned not to fear.

Your absence has shown him something he preferred to ignore, a mirror where his reflection returns the image of a man in chains. Not to a mast, not to the dead calm keeping him prisoner, but to you. Your company, what he thought was mere entertainment in the monotony of his stranded days, has revealed itself as a necessity. A need so deep, so visceral, that it shames him to acknowledge it in the privacy of his own thoughts.

He has spent these last days trapped in the solitude of his brain, spinning in a spiral leading nowhere. The silence, once broken by your voice and incisive questions, now crushes his eardrums with almost physical force. He has had time, too much time, to think. To dig into the cracks of his own psyche with a meticulousness bordering on morbid.

He is aware, with a lucidity he doesn't know whether to call good or bad, of his terrible mental state. He has examined every plank of his ship for an escape route, studied the implacable calm of the horizon as if his eyes could conjure a saving wind. But above all, damn it, he has thought of you. More than he would like to admit, more than would be prudent, more than any survival instinct should allow.

And above all, beyond anything else, he has thought about the kiss.

The memory of your lips, cold and clumsy, clashing against his, has kept him awake more than one night. He has wondered, to the point of exhaustion, if your absence is because that gesture was, in fact, terrible. If you pretended to like it only to spare his fragile human ego. And if so, if a creature like you is capable of pity... what does that imply? What does it imply that you needed to pretend? What does it imply that you cared enough to do so?

He is exhausted. It's not a big enough word for what he feels, but it's the only one he has. Exhausted from going in circles, from asking himself the same questions over and over, from scratching the walls of his own mind for an answer that doesn't come. Exhausted from this thick, salty air sticking to his skin, from this relentless sun that vents its fury on him as if trying to tear his skin off in strips. But above all, exhausted from missing you. A tiredness that resides not in muscles or bones, but somewhere deeper.

And then, like a child who's had a toy taken away, he can't help feeling a pang of resentment towards you. He knows you never had an obligation to keep him company. You weren't his friend or anything like it. But still, with absurd logic, he can freely admit he feels betrayed. Because you left him alone. Because you left. Because it was you who did it.

And as if everything could get worse, an illness came to him without warning. Like everything else in this damned place.

Jaehyun felt it first as a chill. Despite the sun that had been beating down on the deck for hours with its fiery whip, a cold tremor ran down his spine, a harbinger of something he couldn't name. Then came the internal fire, a fever that devoured his bones from within and clouded his vision with a golden, cruel haze. His skin, always tanned from years of sailing, had taken on a sallow tone he preferred not to look at in the trembling reflection of the water.

A cold.

It seemed so banal, so absurdly trivial, that something as simple as a cold could become a death sentence in an environment like this. On his island, with his mother and her steaming soups, with a warm bed and wool blankets, a cold was just a nuisance for a few days. An annoyance, a hindrance. Here, stranded in nowhere, barely surviving on the remnants of his provisions and the intermittent company of a creature from the depths, a cold was the beginning of the end.

He was never a man who got sick easily. Not even as a child, when his mother prepared soups almost every day to keep any virus lurking in the port at bay. He complained, of course, as any foolish child who doesn't understand the love hidden behind each spoonful does.

But as he grew older, as he moved away from that house and his mother's shelter, he began to silently appreciate it. And now, lying on the deck with his shirt soaked in sweat and his vision blurred by fever, he appreciated it more than ever. But he also cursed it. Because if he had been a weaker man, if he had gotten sick earlier, maybe he wouldn't have had to go through this. Maybe he would already be dead, resting at the bottom of the sea or being devoured by some creature that, unlike you, didn't bother to keep him alive.

And now, as the fever consumed him and the world became a blurry, distant place where contours blurred, the only thing he wished for with all his might, with the little consciousness left, was to go home. To go back to his mother, who would make him a steaming soup and put her hand on his forehead to check for fever. To return to that simple life that once seemed so insignificant, so routine, so lacking in adventure, and which he now missed with a fierce, devouring nostalgia.

But the island was far away. The sea was infinite, a cruel expanse mocking his desires with its imperturbable calm. And you, his only company, his only chance of salvation, were nowhere to be seen.

"Shit," he cursed under his breath, but his voice turned into a grimace of pain when another spasm, followed by a dry, tearing cough, ran through his body. "Look how far I've come. The great Captain Jeong Jaehyun, dying like a dog on the deck of his own ship. How dignified."

He sighed deeply, a sound that scraped his throat like swallowing glass, and dragged himself into the shade that gave him slight coolness, barely a comfort. But the fever, capricious and cruel, played tricks on him.

At times he thought he saw you on the side, silhouetted against the fiery sunset sky, and he reached a trembling hand out to you. But it was just a mirage, a cruel trick of his feverish mind, a mirage that vanished when his fingers brushed the empty air.

Other times he heard your voice, barely a whisper coming on the wind current, asking him why he didn't get up, why he didn't come find you in the water.

"Because I can't, damn it," he answered the void. "I'm exhausted."

Hours became a shapeless mass of heat and chills, of delirium where he saw himself as a child, running on the rotting wooden dock while his grandfather taught him to tie ropes with the patience of a saint. Then there was his mother, with that worried look he had always tried to erase with smiles and empty promises, promises the wind carried away as it carried away cigar smoke in the harbor. "Come back soon," she said in the dream, her voice a distant echo, muffled by distance. "Come home, Jaehyun."

Home? Where was that now? The island was just a blurry memory among his feverish delusions, a gray smudge on a horizon he no longer even remembered clearly. Faces blurred, names slipped away like water through his fingers. His home was this ghost ship, this motionless sea that refused to take him anywhere, and you. Especially you.

He sighed. He really was going mad. And the worst part, the one that chilled his blood even with the fever devouring his insides, was that now he didn't care at all.

He considered himself lost. He had resigned himself to waiting for death with open arms, or at least a miracle he was almost sure wouldn't come.

He was never a man of faith, one of those who cross themselves before a storm, but in recent days he had learned to pray. He doesn't know exactly to whom or what, but he begged whoever might be watching him from above right now for wind, for rescue, for a quick death.

Or at least to see you one last time.

And then, for someone as unbelieving as Jaehyun, it was as if heaven had heard his prayers.

At some point in the night, or maybe it was day, he had lost all sense of time, he felt something cool on his forehead. It wasn't the breeze, which in recent days had become his only caress. It was something deliberate, soft, with intention behind it. He opened his eyes with a superhuman effort, his eyelids heavy as anchors freshly pulled from the bottom.

And when he finally opened them completely, there you were.

It wasn't a mirage. He knew by the way his heart, weak and accelerated by the fever, lurched so violently it almost hurt. You were there, leaning over him, water still dripping from your hair and that expression on your face he couldn't decipher. Concern? Curiosity? The interest of a collector watching their favorite piece decompose?

He tried to murmur something, a greeting, a reproach, your name, he didn't know what, but his voice barely came out, scraping his throat like sandpaper. It was a pathetic sound, a whimper that didn't become a word.

You didn't say anything. You didn't make any of your incisive questions, didn't utter any of your sharp observations. Simply, your hands pressed a pile of soaked seaweed against his forehead. The relief was so intense, so overwhelmingly good, that a groan escaped his lips before he could stop it. It was as if the fire consuming his veins finally found a worthy adversary. He closed his eyes, letting himself be carried away by that liquid caress that seemed to absorb the heat from his skin, drop by drop.

"Stupid," you finally murmured, and although the word was an insult, your tone had no edge. It was flat, strangely flat, and in that flatness Jaehyun thought he heard something he had never heard in your voice: Fear. "Stupid human. Why didn't you say anything?"

Jaehyun took a moment to process the question. His brain, clouded by fever, worked slowly. He managed to articulate an answer after a while, though each word cost him a titanic effort.

“Tell you what? That I’m dying?” A broken laugh escaped his lips, the sound hurting his chest, echoing through his ribs. He didn’t know why he was still upset with you. He had no right to be. You weren’t his; you owed him nothing; you hadn’t signed any contract obligating you to look after his health. But still, with a stubbornness he recognized as childish, he felt you had betrayed him. He needed to be upset with someone. He needed the blame to fall somewhere other than himself. “How was I supposed to tell you? I thought it was part of the show. ‘Observe how pretty things unfold when the yoke of need is removed’, wasn’t that what you said?”

Your fingers stopped for an instant on his cheek. The pressure of the seaweed ceased, and in that small gesture, in that minimal hesitation, Jaehyun felt the world stop. Then, when you moved again, the gesture was slower and more deliberate. As if, for the first time, you weren't touching a specimen, but as if you were touching something that mattered.

"Jaehyun," you murmured, and it was the first time he heard you hesitate. Your voice, always so sure, so sharp, wavered over the syllables of his name. You paused, and then, in a whisper he could barely hear: "I'm sorry."

Jaehyun blinked. The blow of surprise pierced the fever haze like lightning. It wasn't the word itself, but the fact that you knew it.

'I'm sorry.' An apology. A concept so human, so intricate and so laden with nuance that even he, on his best days, didn't always know how to handle. Since when did a creature of the depths, a devourer of men, an entity that saw compassion as a luxury of mortals, know that word?

He was about to ask you, to open his mouth to let out the curiosity writhing in his chest, when the answer came to him unbidden.

He had taught it to you.

The memory came in fragments. It was during one of those long conversations at sunset, when the sun painted the sky with blood and he answered every single one of your questions about the human world and humans as such.

He doesn't remember exactly how that conversation came up, ending up explaining the meaning of a concept as strong yet as confusing as 'forgiveness,' but still he had tried to explain it, to translate such a complex feeling into words a creature like you could understand. Though unsure if he had succeeded.

But apparently, you had remembered it. You had stored it in some corner of your mind, along with the origin of compasses and the taste of whiskey and the name of his ship. And now, at the most unexpected moment, you had used it.

With him.

The thought cleared his mind more than any cold seaweed. He opened his eyes again, fighting against the weight of his lids. He wanted to see you. He wanted to etch in his memory, somewhere the fever couldn't reach, the image of you leaning over him. Your wet hair sticking to your cheeks, your eyes, now lit by a different light that made you look almost human.

He closed his eyes again, but this time not from weakness. It was by choice. He wanted to capture that feeling forever. To feel the coolness of the seaweed, the brush of your fingers tracing circles on his skin, the weight of your presence leaning over him. And although the fever was still there, although the ship was still motionless, although the horizon remained an empty promise, at that moment, Jaehyun didn't feel lost.

+

Jaehyun woke with the sun in his eyes the next morning, his head clearer than it had been in days. The fever had subsided sometime during the early morning hours when you stayed by his side the whole time, watching over his health, leaving him only residual tiredness and a mental clarity that, at that moment, he would have preferred not to have.

Because with clarity came questions.

He remembered everything. The way you had leaned over him during his delirium, the coolness of the seaweed on his forehead, the word "sorry" on your lips. He also remembered what he had thought in that semi-conscious state, what he had admitted in the silence of his own mind and could now finally admit aloud in his own thoughts.

He liked you.

It wasn't just the situation. It wasn't just dependency. It wasn't just fear transforming into something more bearable. It was that, simply and terrifyingly that. He liked you. He liked the way you tilted your head when something intrigued you. He liked your laugh, so cruel and so beautiful. He liked the clumsiness with which you had tried to kiss him. He even liked your danger, that constant threat that kept him alert and alive.

The idea churned his stomach, but not from fear. From something worse. From something dangerously close to hope.

"No," he murmured to himself in a vague attempt to deny the obvious, sitting up with an effort that hurt his bones.

He stood, ignoring the slight dizziness, and forced himself to walk the deck. He needed to move, needed to do something other than think about you. He checked the sails, though they remained as limp and useless as ever. He counted his remaining supplies, which at this point were barely enough to survive another couple of weeks if he kept skipping certain meals.

The outlook was bleak. And yet, what weighed on his chest wasn't the imminent hunger.

It was the waiting.

Because you knew he was better, that's why you had left earlier that morning with the vague promise that you would visit him later. He didn't have to call you, didn't have to signal. You would know, as you always knew when to come aboard, when to bring food, when to appear in his nightmares to turn them into something else.

And then, as if the thought had been an invocation, he heard the splash.

His body reacted before his mind. His shoulders tensed, his hands clenched into fists, and for a moment, a moment that lasted only a heartbeat, he considered hiding. Going down to the hold, pretending to be asleep, anything to avoid having to look at you.

He didn't.

You appeared at the rail with that fluidity of yours, water dripping from your hair as if the sea itself were releasing you reluctantly. You stood there for a moment, watching him, and Jaehyun knew you were evaluating him. Looking for signs of illness, checking that your work had been of some use.

"You're better," you stated, not a question.

"Yes," Jaehyun replied, his voice sounding drier than intended. "Thank you."

You nodded, as if that closed the matter, and prepared to come fully onto the deck. Jaehyun saw you move and something inside him, some survival instinct he thought extinct, made him take a step back.

"No," he said.

You stopped. An eyebrow rose, and for a moment, your expression was so human it hurt to look at.

"No?"

"Don't come up," Jaehyun swallowed. He didn't know what he was doing, didn't know why he was saying it, but the words came out on their own, pushed by something he couldn't control.

Silence stretched between you, thick as fog. You didn't move, but your head tilted slightly, that gesture of yours that meant you were processing something you didn't quite understand.

"Why?"

Jaehyun exhaled. He ran a hand over his face, feeling the days-old beard, the warm skin even though the fever had passed. He hated himself a little for what he was about to say, but he said it anyway.

"Because I don't want to need you."

The truth tasted of salt and defeat. You received it in silence, your eyes fixed on his, and Jaehyun forced himself not to look away. He wanted you to see. He wanted you to know it wasn't just fear, wasn't just the fever talking. It was him, Jeong Jaehyun, the great captain who had always sailed alone, telling you that your presence had become an addiction and he didn't know how to stop consuming you.

You didn't take offense. You didn't mock. You didn't do any of the things Jaehyun expected. Instead, you sat on the rail, your legs still dangling over the water, and looked at him with that curiosity of yours that disarmed him so much.

"You humans are very strange," you said after a while. "You spend your lives wanting things, and when you have them, you want to push them away."

"It's not the same," Jaehyun replied, his voice sounding weaker than he would have liked. "You're not a thing."

"What am I, then?"

The question hung in the air, swaying with the ship's roll. Jaehyun could have lied. He could have been cruel, which was the most human way of being a coward. But weeks ago he had discovered, with a mix of relief and horror, that he couldn't lie to you. Not because he didn't want to, but because his lips refused to form false words when your eyes looked at him like that.

"You are..." he began, the phrase sticking in his throat, not from lack of words, but from an excess of them. Because he knew exactly what you were. The problem was that saying it out loud would make it real, and what was real couldn't be undone. "You're the only thing that's kept me sane. And also what's driven me most insane."

He paused. Swallowed. The sea wind brought him the smell of your skin, and he knew he couldn't stop even if he wanted to.

"I know what you are," he continued, his voice now sounding firmer, like a man who has decided to walk into the abyss with his eyes open. "I know the depths are your home and humans are nothing more than food to you. But I've been looking at you for so many time that I can't remember what fear feels like anymore. Or maybe I remember it too well, and it's just stopped mattering."

He didn't say ‘I like you.’ He didn't say anything resembling it. But his words, clumsy and sincere, weighed in the air like a confession.

You didn't respond immediately. You stayed there, head slightly tilted, your eyes fixed on his with that intensity that disarmed him so much. And then, without saying a word, you sat right in front of him, and let the silence stretch between you.

It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. It wasn't a rejection. It was something more like a pause, a parenthesis in time, as if you were storing his words in some corner of your memory where you kept important things.

Jaehyun didn't know if that was good or bad. But when he looked up at the horizon, he felt something he hadn't felt in weeks: a gentle breeze, barely a whisper, moving his hair.

The wind.

+

Jaehyun was probably in love with you.

That, at least, was the only thing he could state with absolute certainty after so many time by your side.

It wasn't a blazing revelation, like a lightning bolt in a clear sky, but rather the gradual discovery of a truth that had been there from the beginning, hidden under layers of fear, mistrust, and that primal survival instinct that had governed him so much at the start.

He no longer longed for the port women, nor the bearded men in the taverns who boosted his ego with hollow words and pats on the back. His heart, that stubborn muscle he thought trained in lovelessness, now beat for you. Only for you.

He loved you, the creature he had initially feared to the bone, whose teeth he imagined sinking into his throat every night. He loved you, the same one who now caused him a fear he would define as nobler: the fear of losing you.

But as the old sailors' saying goes, good things don't last forever. It was a sentence Jaehyun had heard a thousand times from the lips of men toughened by salt, and which lately had become a constant echo in his thoughts.

That early morning fell upon him with colossal peace, the kind found only in the moments before a definitive change. Prostrate in the wooden chair where he had fallen asleep the first time before being stranded in the middle of the ocean, he watched the trail of stars stretching like bright freckles on the vast back of the sky.

You, meanwhile, were lying on the bow, listening to the tranquility of the waves crashing against the sailboat. He watched you from the corner of his eye, as he had learned to do so as not to disturb your silence, and thought you were the biggest star not only in the firmament, but in the entire ocean.

He had learned to love you in a way that any other human being would have found disturbing, unnatural, perhaps even sinful. But to him, it simply seemed like love. And he was convinced that no one else but him could understand what he felt.

A soft smile slid onto his lips as he took a deep drag from his cigarette, lit with the help of a half-worn match he had found at the bottom of a pocket. He hadn't smoked in a long time, but somehow his body craved something beyond the leftover food on his ship, which at this point was practically non-existent and only gave him a bitter, bland taste. Nicotine, on the other hand, left him a soothing enough taste to hide the hunger and thirst that had been consuming him even more in recent days.

But honestly, he didn't give a damn.

Your figure was so hypnotizing from that angle: deep curves the moon dressed in silver, eyes bright as the night star but as dark as the ocean depths themselves. And your hair, usually damp but so soft to the touch... He loved to touch it when he kissed you. It made him feel much more real, as if by caressing you he could convince himself he wasn't dreaming, that all of it, your presence, your company, the strange romance that had blossomed between a man and a creature of the abyss, was true.

Because yes, it had happened. Without either of you planning it, without grandiloquent words or impossible promises, something had been born between you. He couldn't say exactly when. Perhaps the first time you stayed by him during the fever, watching over his sleep with that gaze of yours that disconcerted him so much. Perhaps the night when, for the first time, it was you who reached for his hand. Or maybe it was later, when you finally understood what that weight in your chest meant, the one that prevented you from thinking about devouring him, that worry that kept you awake on nights when he didn't seem to feel quite well.

The point is that at some point along the way, fear had given way to trust, trust to closeness, and closeness to something that Jaehyun, with all the poetry his sailor's heart could hold, didn't hesitate to call love.

And still wrapped in his thoughts, he watched how, suddenly, a gentle breeze moved your hair, making you seem even more fantastic and unreal before his tired eyes, like an apparition that could vanish at any moment.

Jaehyun would have let that puff of air pass without further notice if it weren't for the sudden sound that followed: the roar of the sails reacting to the first airflow after what he thought were months stranded in the middle of the ocean due to a dead calm.

His heart leaped.

You immediately turned towards him, and your gazes clashed with intensity: yours, surprised and confused; his, wide as the horizon, lit by a spark he hadn't seen in his own eyes for weeks.

Jaehyun rushed to the mast almost automatically. His hands, though trembling with adrenaline, remembered the knots and maneuvers as if he had never forgotten them. Tying here, knotting there, while all the tiredness accumulated over weeks disappeared, swept away by the adrenaline of the moment. The breeze, increasingly firm, moved the sailboat from side to side, and the wood creaked under his feet like an animal waking from a long hibernation.

You watched, stunned, from the bow.

Had the moment really arrived?

Your human. Your sailor. Your Jaehyun. Was going to be freed from the clutches of the ocean thanks to that miraculous breeze, that wind that seemed to have been sent by the very gods who had punished him.

Something writhed in your chest. Something you had learned to recognize in recent weeks thanks to Jaehyun's explanations and that new vocabulary he had been planting in you: it was selfishness. And it enveloped you completely, hot and ugly, like a dirty tide.

Why now? Why just when you had started to feel... like this?

Unable to help it, or perhaps not wanting to, you approached Jaehyun's figure, standing behind him as he struggled with the sails, his back tense, his bare arms shining under the moonlight.

Feeling your presence, he turned.

A sigh overcame him, deep and trembling. You both knew what this wind meant. You both knew the hours you had left together could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Jaehyun approached you. His hand, rough and bony, rose to your cheek with a sweetness that seemed impossible in a man so battered by life. He looked into your eyes, searching for something he knew he wouldn't find: an alternative, an escape, a way to stay by your side without dying in the attempt.

"I don't want you to go," you confessed, looking away.

It was the first time you said it out loud. The words tasted of defeat, of something slipping through your fingers. For the first time, you didn't dare look him directly in the eyes, because you feared that doing so would make everything more real and inevitable.

Jaehyun felt slight surprise. But soon his expression transformed into something full of sweetness and compassion, that mix of tenderness and sadness that only men who have learned to lose a thousand and one times can harbor, like him.

Gently, he took your chin with his fingertips and lifted your face with a delicacy that contrasted with the urgency of the wind in the sails. He tucked your hair behind your scaly, pointed ears, gently stroking the nearby skin, as if wanting to memorize every centimeter of you. Then, unhurriedly, he left a soft kiss on your lips.

As he pulled away, Jaehyun smiled softly against your mouth. A small, almost imperceptible smile also played at the corners of your mouth.

"I don't want to be apart from you either," he admitted.

His voice sounded muffled, worn by the sadness beginning to take hold of him. Because inside him, a silent battle raged, the kind you don't see but feel in every bone. One part of him wanted to stay. He wanted to tear the sails, break the helm, do anything to keep him by your side for the rest of his days. But the other part, the one that had matured through blows of loneliness and hunger, the one that knew his body wouldn't survive another week with barely any food and water, whispered to him with harshness: You can't. You won't last longer. And you know it.

Because he had learned, in those months of captivity, that love isn't always enough. That sometimes, no matter how much the heart longs to stay, the body screams for solid ground, hot food, a roof overhead. And although it hurt to admit it, especially for him, who had spent his life boasting of his strength, he was no longer the indestructible young man he thought he was. He was exhausted. Hungry. Broken inside in ways he couldn't even name.

So he forced himself to smile, even though the smile felt completely foreign and uncomfortable.

"But you know I couldn't have survived much longer on this boat either," he joked dryly, but not entirely joking.

His voice lacked the playful tone of old. Instead, there was only a defeated sigh, the tacit acknowledgment of a truth neither of you wanted to face.

Nevertheless, he managed to smile at you again, this time with more conviction. He urged you with his eyes to look at him, and you did, though it cost you, and he left another chaste kiss on your cheek before speaking again.

"But I promise I'll come visit you. Just try to be a little closer to the island, to avoid getting stranded again," he said, and this time his joke did sound with the appropriate tone, that mix of mischief and tenderness in equal measure.

You forced yourself to smile. Or at least tried. You watched him as if he were the center of your world, and perhaps he was, perhaps he had been since that first night when you decided not to eat him, and simply, you took his cheeks and kissed him.

There was no restraint or measure in it. It was a deep, voracious kiss, the kind born in the gut and rises to the surface like a drowning man gasping for air. Your webbed hands tangled in his hair, damp and salty, and his traveled down your back with an urgency he didn't try to hide.

You gasped against his mouth. He did too. The sound of your breathing mixed with the creaking of the sailboat and the constant murmur of the wind in the sails, but none of that seemed real. Only your lips against his, the warmth of his skin, the way he held you as if you were about to vanish.

His hands descended to your waist, pressing you against him with a need bordering on desperation. You responded with equal fierceness, biting his lower lip softly at first, harder after, as if wanting to leave a mark, proof that this had happened.

He groaned, low, husky, a sound that seemed to come from deep in his chest, and you felt that vibration run through you entirely, from your lips to your fingertips. You parted your mouth for a moment to catch your breath, but he didn't allow it: he kissed you again, slower this time, deeper, as if wanting to memorize the taste of your tongue, the shape of your teeth, the moisture of your breath.

Your body tensed and relaxed simultaneously, caught between desire and sadness. Because you knew, in some corner of your newly minted consciousness, that this kiss was also a goodbye. That every caress, every brush, every little moan escaping his lips was a farewell disguised as confessions.

When you finally pulled apart, your foreheads remained pressed together, your breaths intermingled, warm against each other's skin. Jaehyun had his eyes closed and his hands still firm on your hips, as if fearing that releasing you would make you disappear.

"Promise me you'll come back," you whispered.

For the first time it wasn't an order. It was a plea, though you didn't know to name it as such.

Jaehyun opened his eyes. He looked at you for a long time, and in his gaze was something you had never seen in any human: a mix of certainty and vulnerability, of strength and fear.

"I promise," he said.

And although the words of men were usually as inconsistent as the wind to you, this time you decided to believe him.

+

Dawn found you together, still in silence.

The wind had calmed, and the sea stretched, calm and almost transparent, under the timid light of a sun just appearing over the horizon. Jaehyun had decided to set course for the island shortly after, with your closeness as his only sustenance, while his chest churned with emotions as clear as they were confusing. The breeze brushed his face gently, but he barely felt it: every heartbeat seemed to resonate louder than the murmur of the waves, reminding him of the strange, new feeling of being accompanied.

The morning light caressed his face, revealing a serene tiredness, a stillness he hadn't felt in weeks.

Little by little, the island began to emerge from the mist: its rotting wooden dock, the first early-rising merchants, the daily bustle he had thought lost.

It was real. He was coming home.

He turned instinctively, searching for you in the fullness of the bow. But in your place, he found a silence too deafening and the void of your presence.

The water stretched calmly, indifferent, as if you had never inhabited its depths. Only the marks and the sensation of your lips against his and the stubborn rhythm of his heart remained, reminding him that what he had lived was not a dream.

A pang of disappointment shot through him, brief but sharp, like the sting of a spinefish.

Of course. It was logical. What did he expect? That a creature of the sea would stay until he touched dry land? That you would say goodbye with a white handkerchief, like sailors' wives on the docks?

It was ridiculous.

And yet, it hurt.

He sighed, looking away towards the horizon where the mist was beginning to clear. The ship, obedient, guided him to the dock. Every thud of the anchor against the sand sounded like a reminder of the tangible world, the world he belonged to. The smell of rotting wood, fish, and salt mixed with the distant clamor of seagulls: a familiar aroma that anchored him, but didn't completely fill him.

Something was missing. Something he couldn't name, but weighed on his chest like a stone.

As soon as he touched land, a cry broke the air.

His mother.

She came running towards him, eyes red and cheeks wet with tears. Her thin, trembling arms wrapped around him with a strength that didn't seem her age. She wept inconsolably while uttering her son's name between sobs, over and over, like a litany.

"Jaehyun... Jaehyun, my son..."

He held her just as tightly. He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaled her familiar scent, and felt something crumble inside him. Her warmth, her presence, anchored him to the mortal world. The comfort he gave his mother also comforted him, more than any of the clumsy words he murmured could express.

"I'm here now, Mother. I'm here."

But the words were really more to comfort himself than her.

He should feel complete. Safe. He had come home, survived, had his mother in his arms. What more could he ask for?

And yet, something inside him still floated out there, lost among the waves.

He stayed a moment longer, still, feeling the solid ground under his feet. The brush of the dock's damp wood against his boots. The weight of his shirt fabric, soaked with dew and sweat. Everything was familiar, safe, and mundane.

And yet, his mind returned to you again and again.

A mix of gentle anger and melancholy ran through him. Why hadn't you been there to say goodbye one last time? Why not leave some sign of your presence, even just a flicker on the surface, a whisper in the wind?

But he was aware he couldn't blame you. He couldn't expect a creature of the sea to act as a human would. Your nature was different, infinite and free, subject to laws he couldn't comprehend. And he, mortal and limited, bound to earth, to hunger and sleep, had to accept what he couldn't control.

He noticed the new gray hairs in his mother's hair, the way her arms trembled as she hugged him. Time hadn't stopped while he was stranded. And somehow, that was also a relief.

He looked up at the sea unconsciously. For an instant, he let his eyes get lost in the deep blue, in that diffuse line where the sky kissed the water. Every wave seemed to call him. Every breeze seemed to remind him of your touch, your warmth, your voice that never said goodbye.

He could feel the memory of your closeness in every fiber of his being, in every muscle relaxed by the ocean's calm. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, filling himself with salt, air, and nostalgia.

The wind stirred his hair and brought him a faint, salty, familiar aroma. A memory that wasn't there, but felt alive. His heart, still beating with the emotion of the sea and what he had shared with you, accelerated without him being able to stop it.

He smiled. Tired. His eyes still moist from the breeze and the memory.

Jaehyun finally turned.

He walked down the dock feeling the weight of his mother beside him, her warmth and tears mixing with his own relief. Each step was firm, but his mind returned again and again to the horizon, to that blue line that was now just a memory.

The sun was already illuminating the whole island. Fishermen mended their nets on the beach. Children ran barefoot among the rocks. Life went on, indifferent and beautiful, as it always had.

Jaehyun breathed deeply.

He felt satisfied. Not complete, perhaps he would never be completely whole again, but at peace. Because although you had left, although the sea had reclaimed you, something of you remained there, floating in every beat of his heart.

And for the first time in a long time, Jaehyun understood that loving could also mean learning to let go. Letting what was lost remain as a memory that burned, beautiful and infinite, in the very center of his chest.

i had a HUGE writer's block with this story, but i'm really happy with how it turned out, so i hope you guys like it too! ♡ REBLOGS & COMMENTS are always appreciated.

+

This story begins not so very long ago. Yet so much has happened since then, that it seems more like an eternity.

At that time, Jaehyun lived with his pet in a bachelor flat just off a park.

It was a beautiful spring day, a tedious season for bachelors like Jeong Jaehyun.

Fresh air drifted through the open window, blending the scent of damp grass with the faint aroma of old paper and the wood of the piano. Outside, the distant song of a bird broke the stillness, while a gentle breeze slowly stirred the curtains, barely making a sound. Everything seemed paused, except for the light shifting with the sun’s path, marking time without hurry.

Jeong Jaehyun was something like a composer. For him, the old notion that bachelor’s life was so glamorous and carefree was pure nonsense. In truth, it was downright dull.

It was plain to see he needed someone beyond his dog, Pongo. But if it were left up to him, he would remain a bachelor forever.

Jaehyun was married to his work. Writing songs. Songs about romance, of all things. Remarkable, considering he knew nothing about it.

One might say he was intelligent enough, though his wit was more surface than depth. Still, he was undeniably handsome, which made it all the more curious that he had no partner.

That afternoon, as Jaehyun sat at the piano, lost among melodies and words, the window’s light illuminated the silent room. Outside the glass, where Pongo rested his head on the sill with a thoughtful air, the streets were wide awake, and with them, a small procession of women walking their dogs.

There was no rush or clear destination in their strolls. They were simply women with distinct traits and dogs that curiously seemed like extensions of their owners.

A tall, red-haired woman, wrapped in a somewhat worn brown coat, walked hunched alongside a slow, elegant Afghan greyhound. Another, short with black hair, carried a bulldog with a stern face, taking short but steady steps. A third, dignified and dressed in impeccably cut dark garments, strolled a black poodle whose fur looked sculpted with care.

It was a scene of stillness and everyday life, yet it held a silent promise of meetings to come.

Jaehyun, however, remained focused on the melodies he improvised at the piano, utterly unaware of the world beating beyond his window. But for Pongo, who had rested his head on the sill with a lost gaze, the quest for an ideal companion for his master had become almost a personal mission.

Then, just as the evening parade seemed to end, a distinct figure appeared. A young woman walking calmly, holding a book in one hand while gripping her female dog’s leash in the other. Her gait was unhurried and distracted, as if the pages she read were more real than the path beneath her feet. She wore simple clothes, a light suit with a long skirt that swayed with the breeze, but there was a charming naturalness about her that immediately caught Pongo’s attention.

Her dog, a Dalmatian of elegant bearing and smooth movements, walked alongside her with the same calm grace. Its white coat, spotted with dark patches, seemed to glow with the filtered light through the trees.

Pongo stood instantly. Something in that scene, the effortless harmony between the young reader and her Dalmatian, felt simply perfect. It was as if fate had dropped a clear clue in the middle of his quest.

He knew he would never find a pair as perfect as them, even if he searched for a hundred years.

And luckily, they were headed to the park. A perfect place for romance.

Now, all that remained was to arrange the meeting. The problem was that Jaehyun never stopped working till after five… and by then, it would be too late.

For weeks now, Pongo had watched his owner’s routine with growing concern. While Jaehyun lost himself in sheet music, the dog spent afternoons with his muzzle pressed to the windowsill, studying the parade of people and their pets beyond the glass. He noticed the occasional woman stealing glances toward the apartment, specifically toward the distracted pianist who never looked up from his sheet music, but Jaehyun, stubborn as a mule, seemed to have forgotten that other rhythms existed beyond his own melodies.

And so, the Dalmatian resolved that if fate moved too slowly, he’d have to hurry it along with a nudge of his furry paws.

Pongo trotted to the mantelpiece, where a small wooden clock marked the passage of time. With some effort, he nudged the slender hands with his snout until they stopped at five o’clock sharp. Then, he ran to the door, grabbed the leash in his teeth, and began barking insistently, his tail wagging with excitement.

Jaehyun stopped, and with him, the melody he had been repeating for hours. He stretched and yawned, letting his body remember how to move after so long sitting by the piano, surrounded by sheet music. He frowned at the clock on the mantelpiece, then checked his wristwatch, more confused to find they didn’t match.

“After five already?” he murmured, puzzled, glancing again at his watch. “"Looks like I haven't wound it."

Jaehyun smiled sleepily and rose with a slow stretch from his uncomfortable seat. Pongo kept barking by the door, insistent and thrilled.

"All right, my boy," he said, slowly slipping on a brown coat, still half-asleep, while his dog circled excitedly around him, as if sensing that something momentous was about to unfold.

The path to the park unfolded like a procession of small revelations: the crunch of new leaves beneath Jaehyun's shoes, the distant hum of cars like a dissonant chord. He walked on, oblivious to the conspiracy of magnolias and the breeze tangling at his collar, but Pongo trotted ahead, leash taut and ears perked toward the park's wrought-iron gates.

As they crossed the threshold, sunlight slipped through the trees like secrets traded between leaves. The fountains’ murmur, the gravel’s crunch, even the damp grass underfoot, all seemed to hum in anticipation.

Jaehyun walked with one of his hands buried in the pocket of his brown coat, his hat slightly askew over his hair, eyes still somewhat sleepy from routine. Pongo, however, tugged at the leash urgently, setting a clear course.

“Pongo, calm down. What’s all the hurry?” Jaehyun murmured, half-heartedly, more out of habit than annoyance.

But the dog paid no heed. His restless snout moved side to side, tracking with precision, as if he knew exactly whom he sought. The park was bustling, as every morning: mothers with strollers, elderly gentlemen reading newspapers on benches, carefree young women strolling with parasols.

At first, it seemed they might not find them, perhaps they hadn’t stayed in the park.

But then, as if summoned by desire, there they were.

Seated beneath a wide-crowned elm. The young woman, her long skirt falling in soft folds over crossed knees, held a book delicately in her hands. The wind toyed with a strand of her hair, persistent, as if it also wished to read with her. Beside her, the same calm Dalmatian lay curled among the leaves, as if knowing there was nothing to fear in this corner of the world.

Jaehyun stopped at the sight.

Not because he chose to, but because for the first time in a long while, his feet didn’t know where to go. There was something in that woman that seemed torn from a painting hung in a silent gallery. The way she turned the pages gently, as if each held a secret. The peaceful curve of her lips as she read. Her delicious jasmine aroma. The serenity of one who does not expect to be seen, but is.

Pongo, satisfied, rose with determination and advanced toward the young woman, dragging his master without remorse. Jaehyun barely had time to react when his heart suddenly began to beat a new rhythm. It was not the usual tempo of a song. It was… something else. Something he had never yet composed.

Then, she looked up.

Their eyes met in a moment both fleeting and immense. A second suspended, fragile and perfect, where all around seemed to fall silent. No words were exchanged. Only that kind of silent recognition that happens when two souls cross paths for the first time.

He blinked awkwardly and averted his gaze as if nothing had happened. He walked a few more steps and sat with Pongo beside the pond, pretending interest in the water’s reflections. But his thoughts were no longer there.

Pongo, of course, was not willing to let fate be timid.

With deliberate mischief, he seized Jaehyun’s hat between his teeth and trotted away with it as if it were a stolen prize. Jaehyun reacted late, startled by the maneuver.

“Pongo! Come here, you silly thing!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet.

The scene did not escape the young woman’s notice, who watched from behind the pages of her book. The Dalmatian beside her tilted its head slightly, sharing her owner’s curiosity.

On the other hand, Jaehyun did not seem particularly delighted by his dog’s antics. His eyebrows, once relaxed, furrowed with mild exasperation, but Pongo seemed convinced his plan was working perfectly.

Everything was unfolding with promising fortune.

Until suddenly… the young woman and her Dalmatian had vanished.

Pongo perked up, anxious, scanning the park with eager eyes. He wanted to run after them, but Jaehyun, still not fully understanding his pet’s urgency, held the leash firmly.

“Where are you going now?” Jaehyun murmured with a mix of annoyance and resignation.

But Pongo would not relent. His will was stronger than any hesitant, single composer. With a bold tug, he made Jaehyun stumble a step forward. Then another. And another. Until, almost without realizing it, the young man was dragged through the park with a gait as clumsy as inevitable.

That was when he saw them. The young woman and her Dalmatian had reappeared just at the edge of the path, only a few steps from the pond.

But in his rush, Pongo tangled the leash around the legs of Jaehyun and the young woman just as she stepped forward to continue reading on another bench. The impact was sudden: a collision of clumsy bodies and poorly contained surprise. Chest against chest, breath against breath, and eyes wide open as if the world had turned to glass.

“Oh! I-I’m so sorry… please…” Jaehyun managed to say, his heart racing, far too close to lips he had not expected to meet so soon.

Startled, the young woman tried to step back. “I must say, what on earth!”

“I’m truly sorry, miss…” he stammered, words trailing behind his thoughts while she was struggling with the leash’s knot, which seemed tied by fate itself.

And so it was.

In a sort of absurd ballet, with uncertain steps and bodies tethered, they stumbled clumsily toward the pond’s edge. A slip. A muffled scream. And a loud splash! that shattered the park’s calm like a sour note in the midst of a symphony.

The cold water welcomed them without ceremony. Splashes, soaked clothes, and the surprised murmurs of some curious onlookers who had witnessed the scene. The spring breeze, which before caressed gently, now pierced through the damp fabric like a small punishment.

Jaehyun, still dazed, rose as best he could, hair plastered to his forehead and shirt clinging to his chest. He looked at the young woman, who splashed bitterly, and hurried to offer his hand.

“Oh, my new spring suit…!” she sobbed, gathering her soaked skirt with dignity broken by the water.

“Forgive me, miss. I am truly sorry,” Jaehyun babbled. “Please, let me help you…”

With gentle clumsiness, he helped her to her feet, careful not to worsen the sorry state of her clothes. Then, in a desperate gesture of courtesy, he removed his own soaked coat, which offered no warmth at all, and draped it over her shoulders.

She refused at first, even as gooseflesh traced paths down her arms. But when Jaehyun insisted, settling the garment around her once more, something in her relented. Perhaps it was the way the damp fabric still held the warmth of another body. Or how the scent of piano wood and ink bled through the wet wool, mingling with the petrichor of their mishap.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into this dog…” he muttered, casting a fleeting glance at Pongo, who watched from the shore with attentive eyes and tail between his legs, almost as embarrassed as his owner.

The young woman, soaked to the bone and without humor for gallantry, stepped back a little, shaking off drops as if to also dispel discomfort.

“Nevermind. Nevermind. Please, just leave me alone,” she said firmly, trembling slightly. “You’ve done enough.”

She turned around, lips pressed tight and dignity wavering, as if trying to preserve what little decorum remained among the shreds of ridicule. She bent awkwardly, still shivering from the cold seeping through wet clothes, and took her Dalmatian’s leash with trembling fingers, her dog waiting patiently.

Jaehyun’s coat, too large and just as soaked, slipped from her shoulders, loosely buttoned like a borrowed relic that never quite belonged to her. Still, she did not remove it. She held it firmly, clinging more to the courtesy than the garment itself.

And so, without another word, she began to walk away along the park’s cobblestone path, the silhouette of her and her dog fading among the morning mist and whispering branches. Each step left a trail of drops, as if the water did not want to let her go completely.

And though she had taken his coat,that beloved brown coat of his, he did not feel he had lost something. On the contrary, the image of that indignant lady, walking away with her pride intact despite the spectacle, seemed a memory valuable enough to justify any loss.

+

For years, Jeong Jaehyun had dwelled in a serene existence, marked by the steady rhythm of his art. The piano dictated the tempo of his days, and the silent, faithful staff was his only confidant. His life passed without upheaval, as orderly as a well-written score, with no dissonance and no improvisation. And that had always been enough for him.

Or so, at least, he had persuaded himself to believe. For now, after a single encounter, as fleeting as a melody that fades before it can be grasped, his meticulously built inner harmony had been shaken.

It was Monday, though it could just as well have been any other day, for time had lost its usual shape since that afternoon in the park, since the clumsy entanglement of leashes, nervous laughter, and an undignified fall into the pond. And yet, in so brief a moment, Jaehyun could say with certainty that he was no longer, by any measure, the same man.

Before, his world had been as precise as a Swiss watch: breakfast, composition, a walk with Pongo, a frugal dinner, a bit more work, and then to bed with a soul as empty as the teacup resting on the piano. Everything revolved around his music and, though he denied it, his immutable routine.

But now, something had changed. Pongo was no longer the only one who rushed to the windowsill when evening fell. Jaehyun, feigning indifference, found endless excuses to linger near the window, as if the spring breeze had suddenly become essential to clarity of thought.

And though he would not admit it, not even to himself, he waited.

He waited to see her cross that narrow street once more, just outside his window, as if her mere presence might restore something he hadn’t known was lost.

That afternoon, like the others since that incident he dared not name aloud, Jaehyun sat at his piano, improvising with the same devotion as always, but yielding strangely foreign results. The notes came, yes, but they refused to form a song.

They were fragments of something greater, as if his heart and hands could not agree on what story to tell.

He sighed in quiet resignation and leaned back against the chair, which creaked beneath him. From that angle, he could see the wooden clock on the mantelpiece more clearly.

He clicked his tongue when he noticed it wasn’t yet five o’clock.

It was absurd to wait with such anxious hope just to see that woman again, but it was simply impossible to keep her away from his thoughts.

With a soft sigh, he rose slowly to his feet. Pongo, sprawled out on the sill with his chin resting on his front paws, perked up one ear at his master’s movement.

Jaehyun approached in silence, retrieving a teacup he had left forgotten on the table. He took a sip. It was still lukewarm, with the bitter yet comforting aftertaste of his usual afternoon Earl Grey.

Without thinking too much, he unlatched the window and opened it with a faint creak. The warm air struck his face with a mixture of scents he hadn’t noticed before, too immersed in his work to appreciate them: the dampness rising from between the cobblestones, a floral perfume wafting from some neighbor’s balcony, and that faint, yet inevitable, hint of cigarette smoke that always floated in the air, like the invisible signature of the city.

Jaehyun inhaled deeply, eyes closed, letting the scent pass through him unguarded, as if it might hold answers.

And perhaps, unknowingly, he was searching for her perfume.

Jaehyun sighed long and slow, exhaling all the air from his lungs as though he might also empty the tangled thoughts plaguing him. Beside him, Pongo stuck his nose through the open space in the window, sharing the wait with that expectant stillness only dogs possess, those who’ve learned to read their owner’s soul.

All of this was, of course, utter foolishness. He never would have imagined himself like this: a sensible, almost ascetic man, now lost in emotional naïveté. And yet, here he was, breathing the air as if hoping to find a trace of jasmine, or something like it, an ethereal fragrance his memory had chosen to preserve as the only relic of that encounter.

He closed his eyes once more, letting the murmur of the city ride in with the breeze: the roll of modern carriages, the distant whistle of traffic, a conversation fading down the street… and then, something else.

Jasmine.

He opened his eyes at once, a startle shaking his teacup as he set it down on the sill.

And there she was.

Walking with that dignified bearing, slightly stiff, as if the world had not yet stolen her sweetness. Her face, serene, bathed in the golden warmth of sunset.

Jaehyun leaned against the window frame, just for a moment, as if his body needed an anchor to withstand the tide of emotions stirring inside him. His heart, so accustomed to the precise beat of sheet music, had surrendered to the whim of a new melody: unpredictable, pulsing and alive.

For a moment, the act of watching was everything. The world became a blank canvas, and she alone was the vivid stroke of paint.

Was it possible to feel devotion toward someone he barely knew?

Him, who had spent his life dissecting emotions into exact measures now found himself cast into the abyss of the inexplicable.

But spells do not last forever. And like every symphony, this moment, too, had an unexpected end…

Just then, with an eager huff, Pongo leapt up and barked, shattering the stillness like a glass splintering on stone. His tail wagged furiously, thumping against the window frame, his paws scratching at the sill in a desperate attempt to get closer.

“Pongo,” Jaehyun hissed through clenched teeth, horrified. “For the love of God…”

But it was already too late. The lady looked up, startled by the commotion, and their eyes met, for one fleeting, almost unreal instant.

Jaehyun felt time halt, the moment hanging by an invisible thread.

He stumbled backward from the window, catching the edge of the curtain with his heel.

With trembling hands, he tried to hush Pongo, who was now howling with fervor. Jaehyun fumbled with the window until it finally closed, all the while feeling her curious gaze like a pinprick on the back of his neck.

Only when the glass was sealed and the murmur of the outside world reduced to a distant hum did he dare to take a full breath.

He retreated, vanishing into the dusty shadows of his apartment, as if they could hide him from the evidence of his own cowardice. He collapsed backward onto the couch, undone by a ridiculous blend of shame and longing, his heart still galloping beneath his lightly rumpled shirt.

Pongo stared at him, then trotted to the door and sat regally before it, leash held between his teeth, tail beating the floor with insistent rhythm.

Jaehyun groaned softly.

“No, Pongo. Don’t do this to me now…”

The dog tilted his head, reproachful, letting out a short snort of protest.

Jaehyun narrowed his eyes, exasperated and defeated all at once.

He knew exactly where his dog wanted to go.

And though he would never admit it, not even under torture, he knew that, deep down, he wanted the same.

Thus, overcome by the sweet stubbornness of longing, Jaehyun found himself standing before the oval mirror in his living room, in that bachelor’s flat where silences weighed heavier than melodies just before dusk.

Bathed in the pale evening light filtering through the window, he examined his reflection with great care. His fingers, fine and trembling, slid slowly through the ends of his dark hair, taming a rebellious strand conspiring against decorum and he smoothed his brows with the tip of his index finger. Finally, he adjusted the collar of his shirt, now neatly ironed, with meticulous grace.

And when at last he felt… presentable, though not quite content, he took Pongo by the leash with a sigh barely audible, and set out toward the park.

The walk was as short as ever, but his heart marked each step with impatient beat. As he passed through the iron gate, the whisper of memory enveloped him without remorse.

Pongo strode ahead, sniffing the air intently, dark eyes scanning every corner with urgency, searching for even the vaguest trace of that lady and her Dalmatian.

Jaehyun, by contrast, tried to mask his search beneath a thin veil of composure, striving not to look too interested.

But he was, down to the bone.

After a while, he settled on one of the wrought-iron benches by the pond, precisely where fate had played its most charming trick on him. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the breeze stir the shores of his memory. Everything looked the same, and yet, nothing truly was. For now, every corner of that park seemed stained with the possibility of reunion.

And indeed, at some distance from the bench where he waited, unmoved in appearance, but not in spirit, there you stood. Wrapped in the trembling folds of the afternoon, surrounded by a warm breeze that could not quite scatter the fluttering unrest in your mind.

You held a brown coat to your chest now infused with the subtle scent of lavender and castile soap. You had washed it by hand, dried it with care over the back of a chair by the window, and folded it with a tenderness that bordered on reverence.

Your gloved fingers, encased in fine beige lace, toyed nervously with the buttons, in a blend of anxiety and tenderness so ridiculous it bordered on endearing. But there was nothing ridiculous about how you felt: a whirlwind of conflicting emotions you couldn’t begin to untangle.

Beside you, Perdita, your dalmatian, sat with her natural poise, casting you the occasional inquisitive glance, as though she sensed, by that mute wisdom loyal creatures possess, that your thoughts were currently in complete disarray.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you muttered with a sigh, lips pressed in a taut line. “It’s nothing. I’m just… a little nervous.”

A little. What a generous understatement.

In truth, your heart pounded in your chest as though it had forgotten the normal tempo of the afternoon. You had avoided this park for days, as though the trees might judge you for what had transpired here.

You had tried to convince yourself that the mishap at the pond was nothing more than a minor anecdote in the vast catalog of urban misfortunes. The kind to recount over tea with a laugh.

But no.

It went deeper than that.

Because every time you thought of the pond, you did so with a pang of embarrassment. Because there, in front of the eyes of a stranger of unforgettable bearing, your carefully cultivated image of a composed, elegant lady had come crashing down.

Not only had you fallen, literally, into freezing waters, but in the panic and tangle of it all, you had spoken to him with a verbal clumsiness that still today stole the breath from your lungs with sheer mortification.

And to top it off, you had run off with his coat, wet, no less, which he, with a chivalry bordering on the implausible, had offered you.

You had rehearsed your apologies in front of the mirror more times than you cared to admit. But not until today had you summoned the courage to go out, determined to return the coat and, with it, some portion of the dignity you believed lost.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. You wore your simplest yet most flattering dress, the one that revealed just the delicate line of your collarbones, and your favorite perfume, jasmine: sweet but never cloying, evocative but ethereal, wrapped you in the kind of confidence no armor could ever bestow. You felt capable. Slightly shaky, yes, but resolute.

The coat had become a symbol of your clumsiness, your emotional disarray, of all that you failed to say or do. And paradoxically, it also became a thread. An excuse to see him again. A silent promise that maybe, just maybe, this time you could try to do things right.

The universe seemed to conspire in favor of your longing earlier that afternoon, without warning, without omen. You saw him, there with his dog, leaning in the luminous rectangle of a window on the first floor of a small building that, until then, had remained invisible to your memory.

You hadn’t expected to run into him again so soon. Least of all while you were walking down the opposite sidewalk, with his brown coat carefully cradled in your arms and your heart beating with a hope as quiet as it was stubborn.

You saw him even before he noticed you, granting you the fleeting privilege of observing him for a brief moment: his upright posture, his absorbed expression, and that rebellious lock of hair the spring breeze had dared to tousle. And then, falling into an immodest thought, your eyes lingered on the shape of his arms, strong, defined even beneath the light fabric of his shirt, and on the way his large, serene hands rested upon the Dalmatian’s back, as though the entire world could be contained in a single gesture of his.

Heat flushed your face instantly, and you looked away, flustered by a sudden shame at having gazed at him with such little decency, as if guilty of a sweet and silent sin, one that was, deep down, deliciously unforgivable.

But it was then, as a taut string snaps in the stillness, that the vibrant bark of the Dalmatian at the window, the one who, if your memory served you right, answered to the name Pongo, shattered the moment, forcing you to glance back.

It was in that very instant, in that brief crossing of souls through the glass, that his eyes met yours. A deep surprise lit his face and, as swiftly as a curtain falls at the end of an act, his figure vanished behind the window.

And with that single gesture, the fragile equilibrium of your courage collapsed.

You continued passing by, pretending not to have seen him, though your heart beat with tragic unease.

The conclusion came swiftly, painfully logically: that man wanted nothing to do with you. And his sudden retreat could only mean one thing: a tacit rejection, a silent plea for distance.

And yet, here you were.

You couldn’t flee now. Not after having come this far. Not after replaying that moment a hundred times in your head, imagining how you’d apologize, how you’d return the coat with a shy smile, and maybe, if the heavens were merciful, he would smile too.

You felt a bit ridiculous, there was no denying it, but also alive. Foolish, yes, but brave, too. Because despite everything, you had chosen to face that most civilized and necessary of gestures: to return his coat and offer your sincerest apology.

And because beyond the shame, beyond wounded pride and the fear of rejection, there was something more.

Longing.

An inexplicable need to hear his voice again. To discover whether that shared moment, clumsy and soaked, yes, but genuine, had meant something to him too.

So, swallowing your fear like a sip of bitter, cold tea, you hugged the coat to your chest one last time, smoothed the invisible wrinkles of your dress with both hands, and took a step forward.

Just one.

But immediately, like a sudden gust, not of wind but of awareness, you stepped back just as quickly, startled by the magnitude contained in such a small gesture, by what it might imply.

There, in that almost imperceptible hesitation between boldness and retreat, you felt yourself shrink before the vast stage of the world.

Your fingers, those same ones that still toyed with the coat’s dark button, polished, round and cold, trembled with an anxiety increasingly hard to master.

You cast a brief glance, heavy with silent pleading, at Perdita, who watched you with the gleaming eyes of a well-rehearsed patience now on the verge of breaking.

The creature, lady of serene temperament, released a faintly disdainful huff. And as if her soul could no longer bear your syrupy indecision, she broke into a run, toward the bench where the man in the coat awaited.

“Perdita!” you cried, your voice strangled between surprise and panic.

But it was no use.

Still clutching the coat, you dashed after her, nerves exposed, heart stumbling in your chest, and dignity swaying with every uncertain step. You lifted your skirt slightly to avoid tripping, which turned out to be a futile effort.

Because what you felt next was a subtle, treacherous misstep, and an inevitable fall, softened by a pair of arms that caught you just in time.

They were firm, warm, unmistakably masculine. Arms that spoke of restrained strength and unconditional protection. The vertigo stole your breath, and for an eternal moment, you didn’t know where you ended and he began.

You lifted your gaze, intending to thank the kind soul who’d spared you the fall, but the breath caught in your throat when you saw him.

It was him.

The same man who had vanished behind the window hours earlier. The man from the pond. The one with the coat. The one who had haunted your thoughts since that uncertain afternoon.

His eyes: dark, intense, veiled with a melancholy depth, met yours in a moment that seemed torn from time. Not the distant barking of dogs, nor the rustling leaves in the breeze could break through.

He was everything. You were everything. This moment was everything.

Your faces were alarmingly close. So close you swore you could feel his breath: warm, slightly citrusy, with a trace of bergamot and damp wood, and the subtle rise and fall of his chest, with a rhythm not entirely unfamiliar.

A faint expression of disbelief passed over his face. And you, suddenly aware of your most ungraceful posture, straightened up awkwardly. Brushed imaginary dust from your skirt, combed your hair with trembling fingers, and tried to restore a semblance of composure.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice deep and calm, like it had been drawn from the warmest corner of an autumn afternoon.

And as he spoke, his eyes moved over you with no rush and no judgment, seeking any trace of injury.

You found no words. You nodded silently, your mind still blank, suspended between the adrenaline of the stumble and the improbable closeness of the man whose name you did not know, yet whose presence you recognized like a poem read in a dream.

He watched you intently. There was no judgment in his gaze, only a quiet kind of wonder, as if still trying to understand where you had come from and why fate insisted on intertwining his days with yours.

And then, almost without realizing it, your body, braver than your spirit, extended the arm holding the coat.

He looked at it with slight hesitation, as though it were something foreign to him, something that didn’t belong to him at all, and yet, inexplicably, touched him.

“It’s yours,” you said softly, your voice barely a murmur in the afternoon hush.

The silence that followed was long. So, with a courage you had rehearsed countless times in front of a mirror, you took a breath and spoke.

“I want to apologize,” you said, lowering your gaze to your hands. “I feel deeply ashamed. I was terribly rude. Bitter, even. And all over an accident that didn’t deserve such harshness. Also, taking your coat was unacceptable. Though I washed it, I swear.”

You added, a faint smile on your lips. “Lavender and castile soap, as an offering to your patience.”

You couldn’t meet his eyes as you spoke. But when the silence grew nearly unbearable in its purity, and you found the strength to look up, you saw him with parted lips, as if the words had gotten stuck between his chest and his throat.

He seemed about to say something. But only cleared his throat. Awkwardly adjusted his expression, and took the coat with both hands as though it were something fragile. His “thank you” was brief, but wrapped in an unaffected warmth, a sincerity that seemed to stem from deep roots.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again, and this time his voice held a closer softness, a shy note of familiarity, as though, in seeing you, he too recognized something he’d been searching for.

His concern was not rhetorical. It was real. And for the first time in that strange day, you felt steady enough to reply.

“I’m fine… thank you. Just… forgive me for…”

He shook his head urgently, as though your apology pained him. As though every word you spoke was a weight he could not bear.

“No, please. You have nothing to apologize for. I was the one who…”

He paused, searching for words that wouldn’t sound hollow. “I was the one who caused that accident. And the least I could do… was offer you my coat. I would’ve done it a thousand times more.”

The way he said it, without grandeur, yet with so much quiet tenderness, washed away the last drop of guilt still lodged in your chest.

And so you stood there, face to face. You, with fingers still taut from nerves. He, with the coat in his arms and his eyes locked on yours.

The dogs, now resting beneath the lime trees, seemed to have signed a sacred truce, as if sensing that something important was unfolding between the two humans.

“Would you like to sit for a while?” he asked at last, with a shyness that, in someone of his stature and presence, was utterly and endearingly out of place.

Without thinking too much, you smiled and sat beside him.

The wooden bench creaked faintly beneath the shared weight of two expectant souls. A moment of silence unfurled between you, vast and heavy, yet not without its warmth. It was a thick silence, yes, but not a hostile one.

Before you, the linden leaves danced in a melancholic sway, recalling summers long past. At your feet, Perdita and Pongo had settled on the damp grass, their black-and-white bodies entangled like puzzle pieces meant to fit. The female rested her head on the male’s back, and he welcomed it with gentle delight.

It was Jaehyun, the man of long silences and velvet voice, who at last raised the invisible baton of conversation.

“I remember seeing you reading a book… just before we fell into the pond,” he said in a low voice, with a hint of jest, careful not to disturb the ethereal balance of the moment. “You were sitting on this very bench. You looked very focused.”

You nodded with a faint smile, still cloaked in your own shy reserve. “That’s right.”

“May I ask… which book was it?”

His question surprised you. Not so much for the curiosity, but for the way he asked it, with genuine interest, not with the urge to speak, but with the reverence of one who longs to listen.

“The Secret Garden,” you replied. “I suppose I’m fascinated by how nature, and human kindness, can revive even the most withered thing. It’s a story about what can bloom when something is cared for. About hope hidden in quiet places. Sometimes, it makes me believe we all have a secret garden inside us, waiting to be opened to the sun… even if we don’t yet know it.”

He nodded slowly, as though your words were music, and he needed time to digest each note.

“How beautiful,” he murmured. “Something similar happens to me… but with melodies. With music.”

You looked at him more intently. The blush on his cheeks, the seriousness in his expression.

“Are you a musician?”

“One could say that. I’m a composer. I work at a music publishing company and, from time to time, I write my own pieces. Some for other artists, others… well, for myself.”

You listened with a kind of interest that cannot be feigned. You watched him, sensing that each of his words shimmered with a private glow.

“It must be wonderful to turn emotions into chords. To create something that, without a single word, can still touch someone’s soul.”

Jaehyun looked away, almost embarrassed by the praise.

“Well, it’s not always as romantic as it sounds,” he replied, with a crooked smile. “But there are moments… fleeting, invisible… where everything makes sense. Like finding the right note among a thousand mistakes. Those seconds are worth everything.”

Their gazes met once more, as if something deeply intimate, almost unspeakable, had been revealed without either of them needing to name it.

“And you? What do you do?”

“I’m an illustrator. A fashion designer, actually, though lately I spend more time among fabrics and sketches than runways,” you said, with a new light in your eyes. “There are days when the pencil feels as heavy as lead… but when I draw a line that comes to life… it’s like magic.”

“I can imagine,” he replied softly. “Just looking at you, one can sense your inner world is… far more beautiful than what’s usually shown on the outside.”

And though his words were spoken with the ease of a casual observation, you felt each syllable cling to your skin like indelible ink.

“I’m Jeong Jaehyun, by the way. And he’s Pongo. A scoundrel disguised as a gentleman.” He said as he approached Pongo, gently placing his hand on the dog's back.

You let out a charming laugh.

“A pleasure,” you finally said, gently stroking your Dalmatian.

“She’s Perdita. A lady, though not a particularly cordial one.”

They both laughed softly. Words now flowed more naturally, as if the air itself had grown lighter and more conspiratorial.

They talked for a while longer. About books, about music, about the silence they both seemed to cherish as much as they feared. And when the words ran out once again, a new silence rose between you two.

But this time, it wasn’t awkward at all.

It was you who broke it this time, with a confession barely disguised as an anecdote.

“I think… I think I saw you this afternoon. At a window, with Pongo. Though I’m not entirely sure, you vanished the moment I looked.”

Jaehyun tensed at once, as if reality had caught him off guard and without a coat.

“Oh… is that so?” he murmured, sitting up straighter, visibly flustered. “I had something urgent to take care of at that moment, you see…”

He paused, cleared his throat, clearly nervous.

“I’m terribly sorry about that. And for… everything that happened, of course. If only I could make it up to you…”

“Oh, don’t worry at all, Mr. Jeong…”

“No, no, I insist, miss,” he interrupted with sudden vehemence.

“I’m truly sorry and I don’t think it’s fair to just let it go… especially after you went through the trouble of washing my coat and bringing it back personally.”

“It was the least I could do…”

“Not at all,” he replied firmly, though his tone never lost its gentleness. “You deserve to be compensated for my carelessness. And for your kindness.”

You looked at him closely for a few seconds. Your eyes, searching his, seemed to seek the root of such sincerity.

“Well… in that case,” you began with a soft smile. “Actually… I'm planting flowers in my garden right now and I needed help. But it’s no problem if you…”

“Done then, miss!” he exclaimed, interrupting you again with charming enthusiasm. “Tell me the address, the day, and the time, and I’ll gladly come to help with whatever you need.”

And then, as if just realizing his own eagerness, he softened his expression and added with a shy smile, accompanied by unexpectedly charming dimples:

“…if it’s not too much trouble, of course.”

“Not at all,” you replied, with a warmth that betrayed more than mere courtesy.

The look you exchanged afterward was the kind that defies clocks. Only a few seconds passed, but something in your eyes seemed to recognize each other in a language older than time.

You both looked away at the same time, ashamed. Then, you searched for a pen among the folds of your dress, rummaging through seams and hidden pockets, until you finally found one.

Gently, you took one of Jaehyun’s hands in yours. He said nothing and made no move. The slight tremble in his wrist was the only sign that his pulse had quickened.

You took his silence as a sign. And with the trembling ink of your fingers, you wrote, on the palm of his hand: the address, the day, and the hour you expected him.

Your touch was warm, firm, and delicate. And when you finished, you whispered:

“All set then.”

He lowered his gaze to his palm, reading the faint signs you'd written there.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Jeong.”

“O-Oh… of course. No problem at all,” he replied, his voice slightly shaken by emotion.

You smiled at him. Then you stood up, and Perdita rose with you. Before leaving, you leaned down to gently stroke Pongo’s back, who already seemed used to your presence.

“We’ll see each other then!”

And with those words, you began to walk away, the sun dyeing your silhouette in amber tones, the wind playing with the edges of your dress.

Jaehyun sighed, remaining motionless on the bench, still with his hand outstretched and the ink fresh on his skin.

That woman had undoubtedly stolen something far greater than his coat.

She had stolen, without warning, his heart.

+

From that reunion in the park, Jaehyun had not touched the earth with certainty.

He walked as if his steps floated just above the world, as though gravity itself had softened since your fingers wrote, with the delicacy of a spell, the address of your home onto the palm of his hand. That brief contact, a caress cloaked in ink, had been enough to awaken within him an obsessive tenderness: he remembered every tiny detail of your face, the liquid lilt of your voice, the laughter lingering at the corner of your lips.

Of course, the ink was gone. It had faded at the first brush of water and the passage of days. But Jaehyun did not concern himself even for a moment. He had embroidered each word into his memory with stitches so firm that, were he asleep, he could have recited every number, every street, every hour with unwavering precision.

But If anyone had asked him,casually, over coffee and confidences, if he had ever planted a flower, he would have replied without hesitation that he had not. That he had never touched a shovel for decoration’s sake, that his experience in gardening was as minimal as his interest in it. But in this instance, incompetence was no obstacle; rather, it presented itself as the sweetest, most irreproachable excuse.

And now, the promised afternoon had arrived.

In his apartment, chaos ruled: shirts draped over the sofa, coats scattered across the bed, trousers hanging from doors like puppets without strings. In the midst of this textile whirlwind, Jaehyun stood, torn between a navy sweater and a beige linen shirt with an almost tragic intensity. Neither option convinced him fully.

“I cannot wear just anything,” he murmured, as if the words had slipped from his lips without permission.

From her usual spot on the windowsill, Pongo watched silently, following his master’s restless comings and goings as though witnessing a peculiar dance. Jaehyun’s hurried, disordered footsteps rang against the parquet like a disjointed sonata that was already dizzying the dog.

When he finally chose what he believed made him at least moderately presentable, he approached the oval mirror in the entryway. The glass reflected his figure with merciless honesty. Jaehyun sighed. He brushed his hair to one side, then the other. Changed his expression. Tried a smile and discarded it. His reflection regarded him wordlessly.

One shoe on, the other not. Chaos enveloped him like a halo.

He checked his watch. Again.

He could not be late. Not today. By nature, he was a punctual man, though he admitted in a low voice that, sometimes, he enjoyed being a few minutes late for the pleasure of it. But this was different. If he did not arrive on time, if he made you wait even a minute, he would appear in your eyes as careless, disorganized, unworthy. And that, quite simply, was unacceptable.

“No,” he murmured sternly, shaking his head in the mirror, as if the denial alone could banish his insecurities.

Pongo lifted an ear, as though considering intervening, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. To him, this whole charade of preparations felt overblown. After all, he might have mused, if dogs were philosophers, they were simply going to plant flowers in a garden. Perhaps have tea. Perhaps enjoy dessert. What need was there for such ceremony?

But Jaehyun knew. It was not about the garden. Nor the tea. Nor punctuality.

It was about you.

And that changed everything.

While Jaehyun battled his reflection and nerves crawled along his spine, somewhere else in the city, you too found no peace.

Your home, usually a refuge of gentle lines and harmonious silence, had been transformed into a stage of feverish preparations. From one end of the living room to the other you went, straightening vases already straight, flattening cushions with the palm of your hand as though taming an unease that refused to remain still. You shook the curtains, smoothed the table linens, swept away motes of dust visible only to you. Everything, absolutely everything, had to be perfect.

Perdita, watching from a corner of the room, observed you with half-closed eyes, her head resting on her paws, emitting a sigh each time you passed the dining table again. Her expression was that of a sage contemplating mortal fussiness: resignation and a touch of pity.

In the kitchen, the aroma of fresh herbs and delicate spices perfumed the air. Mrs. Park, your housekeeper, your confidante in silence, the most loyal companion you had for years, practically family, stirred a stew with movements shaped by habit and affection. Each ingredient had been chosen with care, each spice measured in time with a recipe she claimed she had carried in her blood since memory.

This was the dinner you had been planning in your mind from the moment he had accepted your invitation to plant flowers in your garden.

You shook out your skirt with determined hands upon finishing the arrangement of a hallway vase, as though that final gesture might quell the tumult within. But as soon as you stopped, the silence grew too loud, and the voice of doubt seeped into your soul’s crevices.

Perhaps… maybe you were overdoing it.

After all, he would only be in the garden, outside, with shovels and stones and dust. Why all this ceremony? Why insist that everything gleam as though meeting you for the first time? What if he wasn’t interested in you in that way? What if he had accepted out of mere courtesy? What if he had forgotten to come at all?

You sighed with exasperation, wiping invisible sweat from your brow with the back of your hand.

You sank onto the sofa in defeat, as if the entire house conspired against you. The cushion gave way beneath your weight and the ceiling greeted you with its indifferent whiteness. You closed your eyes momentarily, trying to silence the storm in your chest.

“Sweetheart, come to the kitchen for a moment!” called Mrs. Park, in that tone at once sweet and commanding that only she could wield with such grace.

You opened your eyes and rose without question, crossing the room to the kitchen. Mrs. Park stood there, on her domestic throne, her apron dotted with stains and a wooden spoon wielded like a scepter.

“Here, taste this,” she said, lifting the spoon with conviction.

You blew on it gently before tasting the stew. Its warmth glided across your tongue like a caress, and the flavor… the flavor drew from you an involuntary sigh followed by a satisfied murmur.

“This is… divine,” you murmured, your smile illuminating your once-faded face.

Mrs. Park, though pretending modesty, straightened ever so slightly with visible pride.

“Mmm… not bad,” she murmured. Then, without lifting her gaze, with her small, bright eyes as vigilant as an owl’s hiding among branches, she added: “But now, tell me, what has you looking so pensive?”

“What?” you asked, startled.

She turned to you, one eyebrow arched.

“That expression you’ve worn since this morning…”

You forced a crooked smile, trying to dismiss it lightly.

“I’m just a bit tired,” you answered, without conviction, pressing the spoon to your fingertips.

She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe you for a second.

“Is it because of that man you mentioned?” she asked bluntly. “The one who made you fall into the pond. The same one who said he’d come today to help plant flowers in your garden…”

You rolled your eyes with resignation. Hating how easily she could read you. You shrugged, feigning indifference.

“It’s nothing, Mrs. Park…”

She clicked her tongue, and with a playful elbow nudge, said:

“Ah, dear, love is a wondrous thing, isn’t it?”

“I’m not in love with him,” you said quickly. “I just consider him a kind man. That’s all.”

Mrs. Park chuckled quietly, shaking her head.

“Then why didn’t you ask that young postman, Lee Donghyeok, the one who clearly fancies you, to help with the flowers? Or my grandson, Jisung, who’s always lending a hand around the neighborhood?”

She shrugged theatrically.

“But now that man is coming to help you, and here you are, freshening cushions, scenting the house, and floating about as if you had fireworks beneath your feet.”

You shook your head, pursing your lips, but said nothing more. Deep within, you knew she was right.

Mrs. Park retreated to her pot, smiling contentedly, as if satisfying the last piece of a puzzle. You, however, remained standing by the counter, spoon still warm in your fingers, as though the taste of the stew had mingled with the trembling salt of your thoughts.

Then the clock in the hallway chimed four-thirty, a clear, almost solemn sound. And time, that invisible guest, seemed to stand.

You crossed the room again, this time more slowly. Perdita raised her head from her favorite corner and waggled her tail once, as though sensing what was about to unfold. Outside, birds began singing the sunset’s arrival with soft trills, and a warm breeze brushed the drapes with velvet fingers.

Ding‑dong.

The doorbell rang. A single tone, serene. Yet it resounded in your chest like a major chord.

You froze for a moment, feeling your blood gallop in your temples. Then you hastened toward the door, not allowing Mrs. Park time to peek from the kitchen.

You grasped the doorknob with hands of silk and smoothed the stray strands escaping your chignon with care. You straightened your posture and inhaled deeply, as if that breath could steady your soul.

You gathered every scattered fragment of courage and then you opened the door with the widest smile your face could hold.

There, Jeong Jaehyun, in his light coat, with that disarming smile and those dimples that seemed to greet before his words. Beside him, upright and gracious, was Pongo. The dalmatian wagged his tail with unmistakable joy.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Jeong.”

“Good afternoon, Miss,” he replied softly.

Perdita, who until then had stayed inside, made a graceful entrance. She sprinted to Pongo and began licking his face with a devotion that could only be described as charming. He, for his part, received her overture with gentlemanly enthusiasm, wagging his tail in dramatic accord.

Jaehyun, slightly embarrassed, scratched the back of his neck with his free hand, his other holding Pongo’s leash, and said with a gentle smile:

“I hope it’s not too much trouble that I brought Pongo with me,” he murmured. “I’d taken him for a walk earlier, and well… I happened to come by… pure coincidence.”

You looked at him with a sweet, slightly crooked smile, as though you both knew it was a charming little lie and a timid attempt to disguise his impatience.

“No trouble at all,” you said, softly. “They seem to get along wonderfully.”

You both lowered your gaze to the dainty dalmatians, sniffing and licking in their tender courtship.

Then you looked up at him again, and with an elegant gesture, invited him in.

“Would you care to come in, Mr. Jeong?”

He nodded, inclining his head, as though accepting a waltz instead of a visit, and stepped inside with respectful grace. As he did, his eyes swept over the room: the pale floral wallpaper, the embroidered cushions, the antique piano with open sheet music, and above all, the warm light that seemed to emanate not just from lamps, but from every corner of the home.

“My, what a charming house,” he murmured.

“Thank you,” you replied softly.

“And that aroma… it smells delightful,” he added, eyes shining.

Before you could respond, a figure appeared from the kitchen like a whirlwind.

“Oh, you must be Mr. Jeong!” exclaimed Mrs. Park, making her way forward with enthusiastic warmth. She took his hand in hers and began shaking it with delight. “What a pleasure to meet you at last! I’m Park Sunhee, the housekeeper of this home.”

Jaehyun, surprised yet amused, bowed politely.

“Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Park.”

But the lady seemed unwilling to let him go.

With a diplomatic smile, you stepped forward, gently drawing Mrs. Park away by the hem of her dress.

“Mrs. Park, if you’ll excuse me,” you said softly but firmly, “I was about to show the house to Mr. Jeong.”

“Oh, of course!” she responded, finally releasing him. “My apologies, Mr. Jeong! Please make yourself welcome. Dinner will be ready in a while.”

With a mischievous wink, she vanished as swiftly as she had appeared, leaving behind a scent of bay leaves.

You smiled lightly before turning toward him again. Jaehyun still stood by the doorway, as if reluctant to step too deeply into territory not yet his own. He held Pongo’s leash with quiet resolve, his eyes exploring the interior with careful attention. It was clear he wished not to appear all too curious, but he was. Just enough to notice the smallest details that spoke of elegance in silence.

“Shall I show you the garden?” you asked serenely.

“Yes, of course.”

You guided him down the hallway, where afternoon light slanted through the curtains. With each step, his gaze paused briefly here and there with quiet interest.

Passing a section adorned with framed illustrations and sketches, Jaehyun slowed. He paused before one in particular: a female figure in sober lines, seated in profile, cloaked in a dress of clean cut.

“Did you design this?” he asked, without averting his eyes from the drawing.

You nodded matter‑of‑factly.

“Yes. It’s part of a collection that was never produced. But I liked it so much I ended up hanging it on the wall.”

He turned to you then, and sincerity and dazzlement shone in his eyes.

“You truly are talented.”

Your lips curved with gentle modesty. It was not what you expected to hear, nor something you wished to refuse.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Jeong,” you replied with a hint of shyness.

Jaehyun nodded, without urging you for more words. The moment needed no embellishment. You continued down the hallway, speaking only with the soft creaking of the floor beneath your feet.

At the hallway’s end, you opened the doors with a serene gesture. Afternoon air drifted in, mild and hushed, as though respecting the home’s silence. Outside, the garden awaited in calm splendor, the earth already turned in a corner lit by the sun. On a low table, tools lay arranged in simple order. Everything had been prepared with care, unaffected yet warm, as though the space invited rather than showcased.

Jaehyun gazed at the garden a moment, and, offering a gentle, apologetic smile, glanced at you sidelong.

“I must warn you, I’ve never planted a flower in my life.

“I thought so,” you replied with a spark of humor. You extended a pair of gardening gloves. “But that’s better. It makes the experience more delightful…”

Jaehyun gave a soft laugh and slipped on the gloves awkwardly. Squatting beside you, he watched the soil with curiosity. His fingers, more at home with ivory piano keys than earth, moved with caution. Not clumsy, but inexperienced.

“This is harder than it looks,” he murmured, after a while of working in the garden, his cheeks warmed by the afternoon sun.

You smiled, amused.

“You’re doing quite well for a first effort, Mr. Jeong. I’d say you’re starting to look like a gardener in earnest.”

He chuckled warmly, brushing sweat from his brow.

“Thank you, though I still doubt I can keep pace with you, Miss.” He shook the gloves free of soil and, crouched, studied you with serene intent, lit by more than sunlight. “You truly are skilled. You design dresses, transform gardens…and from what I saw on your bookshelf, you devour books with the same appetite. Is there anything you cannot do?”

You pursed your lips, pretending to ponder, then allowed yourself a secret smile. A wayward strand of hair fell across your forehead, but you chose to ignore it and carried on with a determined grace.

“Neither do you fall short. You play piano, compose music…and now you’re becoming quite a gardener.”

They shared a brief, genuine laugh. For a suspended moment, the air between you seemed to soften, as though you understood each other without a word.

You swept aside the loose hair, and Jaehyun, still kneeling close, watched you. He didn’t immediately return to the task. His gaze drifted down to your temple, where a smudge of earth spoiled your otherwise flawless skin.

“Allow me…” he said softly, almost timid.

He leaned closer. With his gloved hand, he delicately brushed the dirt from your temple. The gesture was careful, measured, almost tentative, as though he feared overstepping. It was unostentatious, yet the proximity carried gentle gravity: that slender space was enough to quicken hearts.

His fingers lingered a fraction longer than necessary, yet neither spoke.

He did not avert his eyes from yours.

And you did not know how to respond. He was so close, every feature accentuated: the curve of his lashes, the restrained breath that lifted his chest, the quiet earnestness of his parted lips. He seemed to study you too, as though that gaze were its own gift.

“Would he kiss me?” you thought, without daring to move.

“Should I kiss her?” he wondered, unsure whether he was hoping for a clear sign, or a graceful reason not to, precisely because he wanted to so much.

Silence wrapped around you both. The shadow of the house fell over the garden in leaden light, stilling even distant birdsong. The dogs frolicked nearby, yet their movement did not disturb the enclave you formed between each other.

All that mattered was that narrow breath between their faces, a fragile space where doubt and desire held their breath together. It wasn’t just closeness; it was the trembling edge of something profoundly intimate, as if the very air had thickened between you, heavy with everything neither of you dared to say. The outside world faded, became remote, irrelevant. His eyes, dark and serene, moved from yours to your lips and back again, afraid to break the moment with a glance held too long. Your hands, resting with feigned composure in your lap, trembled ever so slightly, betraying the quiet storm that stirred within. You could feel the warmth of his body and the faint brush of his breath on your skin; each subtle gesture, an exhale, a slight leaning in, a gaze that lingered and drew you nearer.

It was a reverent yearning, soundless and unhurried, as if a single inch forward might unleash either a miracle or an abyss. And it would take only the faintest inclination, the smallest, most imperceptible gesture, for your lips to finally meet.

And just as the moment seemed ready to surrender itself to the inevitable, the spell broke.

“I’ve made tea!”

The warm, uplifting voice of Mrs. Park rang from inside, snapping you from the spell.

Startled, you both pulled away. You rose abruptly, your limbs trembling, a ripple of disorientation in your chest. You gripped the shovel’s handle seeking anchor. Jaehyun remained kneeling, as if unsure what to do with his hands, or the air.

“I’ll fetch the tea,” you said softly, unable to meet his gaze. “I won’t be long, Mr. Jeong.”

No response. Only the intensity of his eyes following you back into the house.

In the kitchen, the sunset light began spilling through sheer curtains, casting quivering shapes on the pale wood floor. Mrs. Park placed steaming cups on a metal tray, alongside a small platter of biscuits that exuded that warm, nostalgic scent of freshly melted butter.

“Right on time, dear,” she said with calm warmth, an acknowledgment that she knew something more had transpired outdoors. “I was just about to bring this in. The tea is just how you like it, strong.”

She lifted the sugar pot in firm, small hands and held it aloft a moment.

“Would you like a bit more? Mr. Jeong hasn’t said how he takes his either.”

But seeing your hesitation, she paused. Your steps fluttered from side to side uncertainly, and a soft blush still lingered on your cheeks—not entirely from kitchen heat.

“Is everything all right, dear?”

“Yes… I’m just a little warm,” you murmured, drifting toward the window.

Through it, you saw him again.

Jaehyun was still in the garden, his hands buried in earth, but his motions had changed: slower, distracted, as though he dug no longer meaningfully, as though his thoughts halted at a moment he could no longer reach.

Mrs. Park came to stand beside you, drawing back a fold of the curtain with quiet ease, her gaze tracing yours until it, too, came to rest upon the figure of Jeong Jaehyun in the garden.

“He’s a rather handsome man, let me tell you,” she said, casually. Her voice was gentle yet immediate.

“Yes… I suppose so,” you whispered, averting your eyes with fake indifference, but too late. The warmth in your cheeks betrayed emotions words cannot veil.

Mrs. Park regarded you in profile, tender amusement in her expression, uniquely maternal in the art of reading tremors of the heart.

“I’ve heard Mr. Jeong does not go entirely unnoticed in the neighborhood,” she remarked, as if merely commenting on the weather. “They say there are ladies who walk an extra block or two, hoping to catch a glimpse of him at the window.”

Your jaw tightened just so. You said nothing, yet the color in your face spoke volumes, and she allowed a soft, fond laugh.

“Oh… I didn’t know,” you countered, measured, yet heavy undertone lingered in your voice.

“But if you look closely, dear,” she added in a softer whisper, almost a confidence, “you’ll see that with you it’s different. That the interest… is clear.”

“Of course not…” you began to protest, almost offended, yet your voice lacked conviction.

Mrs. Park arched an amused brow and sighed in a nurturing exhalation.

“Come now, dear, do you really think a man like him, a busy composer with half a soul always in writing, would spend an entire afternoon planting flowers in a stranger’s garden purely out of courtesy?”

You remained silent. Shame flooded your cheeks anew. You fumbled with the tray, searching for something to steady your mind.

“Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel,” you confessed finally, hardly above a whisper.

Mrs. Park smiled.

“Well then…if I speak frankly, he seems plainly certain of what he feels.”

You took one of the steaming cups, bringing it to your lips almost automatically, without tasting it. Then you shrugged, almost childlike, trying to hide the smile that threatened to break free.

You weren’t sure if you were trembling inside or if it merely seemed so. Every time you closed your eyes, you could still feel the closeness of his face, the softness of his gloved fingers brushing against your skin.

After a minute, you inhaled and set the cups back on the tray. Your hands were steady now.

You stepped into the garden with slow, careful steps, as though crossing an invisible threshold. Mrs. Park followed quietly behind, cups in hand.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, gazing around the garden. “What a lovely thing you’ve done together.”

Hearing her, Jaehyun raised his head. At your approach, he stood, wordless. He just looked at you. As though the world, this moment, this light, you, was too magnificent for words.

“You two should take a rest. You’ve worked enough,” Mrs. Park said gently. “And the tea is waiting.”

He nodded, eyes still bright with something ineffable. You returned the look, no longer shy or faltering, but with newfound serenity. There was something different in your expression. Something that made you feel more sure of what you felt.

He noticed. And he smiled, just a little, a gesture steeped in understanding.

No more words were exchanged.

Because what had begun to grow between you didn’t require words, only time.

And in that newly planted garden, time at last seemed to be on your side.

+

The brief rest beneath the shade proved more restorative than expected. As the afternoon waned, the sky began to glow with soft oranges and faded blues, melting like watercolor across a stretched canvas. The air grew pleasantly warm, and the contours of the day gently began to dissolve.

Dinner was ready soon after. It was Mrs. Park’s cheerful voice, always eager to fill awkward silences with anecdotes or improvised sayings, that carried the evening along, offering a gentle rhythm to the shy glances and half-contained smiles you and Jaehyun exchanged across the table.

Mrs. Park had always had a taste for extravagant details: baroque clocks, heavy tapestries, china that gleamed like jewels. And it showed in the way she set the table, even for an informal supper like this one. Every dish had its proper place, each napkin was folded with habitual precision. Not out of ostentation, but because, to her, affection was also expressed in such quiet rituals.

The dogs lay nearby, content, sharing their own domestic feast without straying from one another. And as conversation drifted between spoonfuls, the air took on that quiet warmth only found in well-lived homes.

Jaehyun tasted the first bite. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring it, then let out a soft sigh of approval.

“It’s delicious,” he said with an earnest smile, making Mrs. Park lift her chin with pride.

“Oh, it’s nothing extraordinary,” she replied, feigning modesty, though a bright smile creased her aged face. “Just a bit of patience… and a desire to please those who come to the table.”

You gave a quiet, restrained laugh as you took the last sip of your wine. Jaehyun smiled as well, and for a moment, no sound filled the room but the gentle clink of porcelain, cutlery settling against plates, and the faint creak of wood beneath the chairs.

Dinner ended not long after, the empty plates sat scattered across the table, and the clock in the hall discreetly marked the approach of nine. The light, now dimmer, began casting long shadows across the wallpapered walls, while the night breeze slipped a kind chill through the crack of the half-open window.

You stood gracefully, lifting your empty wine glass, as though reluctant to break the spell the evening had cast. Then, with a calm smile, you told Jaehyun, almost casually, that you’d step away for a moment to wash your hands. But in truth, you also needed space to breathe, to settle that subtle tremor that his presence had been stirring in you all evening.

Your footsteps slipped softly across the polished wood, and your heels struck a quiet rhythm on the stairs, a delicate cadence only women who’ve mastered the art of leaving without a sound can achieve. Jaehyun followed you with his gaze, watching until your figure faded into the golden dimness of the upper floor. Only then did he seem to exhale fully.

He remained at the table with Mrs. Park, who sat opposite him in the now-quiet room.

“So…” Mrs. Park said after a brief silence, still not lifting her eyes from her napkin, “what do you think of the young lady?”

Jaehyun blinked, slightly caught off guard. He adjusted his position in the chair.

“Well… she’s a truly charming woman.”

The woman chuckled, gently, knowingly, as if she already knew the answer and was only seeking confirmation.

“Of course she is. Though… all that charm and beauty haven’t yet been enough to find her a good husband, you know.”

Jaehyun raised his eyebrows with quiet surprise.

“There’ve been suitors, certainly,” she went on, beginning to clear the table. “But she refuses to entertain any of them. Says she’s far too busy with work. I, however, believe she simply hasn’t met the right man yet.”

Jaehyun’s face grew more serious, subtly so. The muscles along his jaw tightened, as if those words struck a chord in him. Mrs. Park noticed, and a silent mischief sparked in her eyes.

“Donghyeok, the postman, brings her flowers every week,” she continued at her own pace. “But she insists he’s too young. There was even an attempt to pair her with Kim Doyoung, the son of a wealthy family, no less… but not even a flicker of interest.” She sighed with restrained theatricality. “If only some tall, kind, handsome man could win her heart…”

This time, she looked him squarely in the eye, no more pretense. Her smile was clear, unguarded.

“A man like you, Mr. Jeong.”

Jaehyun choked on a sip of his drink and began to cough.

“L-Like me?”

“Of course!” she said, raising a brow as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You fit the bill perfectly. And don’t try to tell me you’re not at least a little interested. After all, not just any man agrees to come plant flowers in a stranger’s garden.”

He didn’t answer at once. He pressed his lips together, still recovering, eyes lowered. He didn’t know Mrs. Park well enough to fully grasp her intentions, but he could already tell she wasn’t a woman who spoke without purpose. And truly… who was he to question the obvious?

“I can’t deny it,” he confessed, eyes lowered. “But… do you think she might be interested in me too?”

Mrs. Park smiled softly.

“I’ll just say… she never lets anyone touch her garden. Not even me.”

Before Jaehyun could reply, your footsteps descended the stairs once more. Your face, illuminated by the soft hallway light, seemed steadier. More composed. As if the quiet upstairs had given you time to gather your thoughts.

Jaehyun turned to look at you, expression restrained, almost reverent. The conversation dissolved into the quiet. Mrs. Park said no more. She simply continued clearing the dishes with silent efficiency, leaving the moment to those who truly mattered.

The rest of the evening unfolded gently, without pretense. Between sips of wine and occasional spontaneous jokes, you exchanged small anecdotes: about the garden, neighborhood gossip, fleeting memories that didn’t demand meaning but wove a kind of intimacy in their simplicity.

You spoke with ease, surprised by how comfortable it felt to have his company. There was in Jaehyun a rare warmth: hard to name, yet easy to inhabit. His voice wasn’t loud, but it had a soft cadence that never wearied. His composed manners conveyed the kind of respect and closeness found only in men who had learned to listen before speaking.

And he looked at you with quiet, undivided attention, as if every word you spoke carried just the right weight and rhythm. Beside you, he felt light, as though his body, accustomed to the rigidity of work and the noise of the piano, had finally found a place to breathe easily.

None of it was said aloud, yet both of you sensed it: this night felt different. The house, the sleeping dogs, the dishes still waiting to be washed, even the breeze drifting through the open window, seemed to know that something, delicate yet insistent, had been growing longer than either realized.

But inevitably, the night began to close in. The hallway clock chimed its quiet rhythm, and after a subtle grimace, Jaehyun rose slowly.

“I ought to be heading off… it’s getting late,” he said softly, with no hint of haste.

You nodded, a hint of melancholy in your gaze, as he gently took Pongo’s leash. You walked him to the door, your steps unhurried, as if trying to stretch the moment just a little longer.

From the kitchen doorway, Mrs. Park watched with a placating smile and, with a touch of mischief, cast Jaehyun a purposeful glance, followed by a brief wink.

He caught the cue immediately.

Before stepping outside, he turned to you, uncertainty etched softly in his posture.

“Wait,” he began, his voice shaky. “Before I go… I was wondering if… you would…”

He paused, one hand brushing the back of his neck as a warm blush rose to his collar.

“There’s a lovely café a short way down the street… and I wondered if you might… perhaps…” he trailed off, licking his lips nervously. “You know…”

His timidity and tenderness took you by surprise. His eyes, while shy, gleamed with a youthful hopefulness.

You looked at him without a word. Your heart fluttered with that sweet anticipation that heralds something meaningful.

Quickly he added, “I’m not calling it a formal outing, of course… though perhaps it might be, if you’d be willing.”

Mrs. Park let out a soft laugh, part amused, part indulgent at his rambling.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she interjected, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “What the young man is trying to say, dear, is that he would like to invite you on a date. Isn’t that right, Mr. Jeong?”

Jaehyun tensed visibly, lowered his head as though caught in a gentle mischief, then nodded emphatically.

“Yes! Exactly that,” he stammered, clearing his throat. “Only if you’d want, of course.”

You lowered your gaze, suppressing a small smile that threatened to bloom. When you finally lifted your eyes, they shone softly.

“Of course. That sounds lovely,” you replied in a tone both gentle and certain.

“Alright then,” he said softly. “How about tomorrow afternoon? We could walk the dogs… and then, maybe, have a drink.”

You smiled quietly and sincerely.

“Yes. I’d love that.”

He nodded in kind, his smile revealing faint dimples of delight.

“Perfect. Then I’ll be seeing you, Miss.” He inclined his head in a brief bow, and Pongo barked in agreement at his side. “Goodnight, Mrs. Park.”

“Goodnight, dear!” she chimed in, pleased, her hands still damp from her careful work in the kitchen, as though blessing the moment.

As Jaehyun stepped through the thrshold, you remained standing, watching how the night folded around him.

The house settled back into its usual hush, but it was no longer the same silence, it felt subtly warmer. And without words, you knew that this evening would linger in your memory.

+

Jaehyun couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled so steadily.

From the very morning, he had felt a peculiar warmth in his chest, one that showed no hurry to fade. While preparing a cup of tea, he noticed his fingers tapping absentmindedly on the counter, as if already seeking a melody. Pongo seemed to have sensed something in the air too, following closely with his tail held high and a curious gleam in his eyes.

And so, finally, after several days of postponing it, Jaehyun sat before the piano once more.

The instrument, silent and patient, welcomed him like an old friend. His long fingers, the same ones that had recently been buried in the soil of your garden, settled on the keys with ease. He closed his eyes. And then he began.

At first, it was a timid note, then another that slipped like a whisper, and then his heart started translating itself into harmonies.

The melody that flowed from his hands was unlike anything he had composed before. It wasn’t melancholic or anything of the sort; on the contrary, it had a lively, almost playful rhythm, as if reflecting the quickened beat of his heart.

It seemed the day had passed entirely there, accompanied only by the piano’s sound and the occasional approving sighs of Pongo. It wasn’t until the old mantel clock chimed solemnly that he came back to himself.

The gentle metallic dong of the clock seemed to stir Pongo as well, who, lying at his feet, perked his ears at the first chime, tail wagging joyfully. Jaehyun stood at once, still humming the freshly composed melody in his mind, and hurried to change. After all, not every day did one have a date with such an enchanting lady.

With deft hands, he fastened Pongo’s leash, the dog barely able to contain his excitement, and together they left the apartment, descending the familiar staircase with a livelier step.

And though he hadn’t expected it, reaching to your house seemed to take but a single breath.

Perhaps it was the thrill, or perhaps his heart simply outran his feet. But before he could even lift his hand to ring the bell, the door opened gently, and there you were, radiant, accompanied by an equally lively Perdita, whose ears perked at the sight of Pongo.

Jaehyun stopped short, as though the sight of you on the threshold, hair stirred by the wind, the golden evening light brushing your face, deserved a pause.

“You look splendid,” he murmured, barely audible, yet carrying a genuine admiration and a tenderness that was hard to hide.

You tilted your head with a grateful smile, taking Perdita’s leash with a natural elegance that seemed inherited from another era. You said little; it wasn’t necessary. A single exchange of glances was enough to start walking together down the street, the dogs trotting obediently a few steps ahead.

From the doorway, Mrs. Park watched, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. Seeing you both go, she lifted the cloth over her head in farewell.

"Have a good time, my dears!" she called cheerfully, not expecting an answer.

She sighed dreamily, a smile still etched between her wrinkled cheeks.

It was then that Lee Donghyeok, the postman, appeared, walking slowly with a small stack of letters in a leather bag. As he approached the house’s mailbox, he cast a curious glance down the cobblestone street, where you and Jaehyun were already beginning to fade among trees and Victorian townhouses.

“And who might that be, Mrs. Park?” he asked, curious, opening the mailbox flap.

“Oh, that’s the young lady’s date,” she replied naturally, without taking her eyes off the street. Her voice carried a soft tenderness. “Aren’t they lovely?”

With a grimace, Lee Donghyeok let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Tsk… that should have been me,” he murmured, more out of habit than regret. Then he adjusted his cap mechanically and, with a slight nod to Mrs. Park, resumed his route, whistling softly.

Mrs. Park let out a light laugh, accustomed to the young postman’s theatrical manner, who, despite his youth and innocent charm, never went beyond a half-smile of complaint.

Further along, you and Jaehyun continued your stroll to the park, leashes in hand, steps in harmony, as if the street had been made shorter just for the two of you. The soft sound of your footsteps on the cobblestones and the dogs’ quiet panting filled the air with a gentle stillness.

For a long while, conversation flowed naturally, leading you to recall the first time you met just a few weeks ago when you fell into the park pond, a moment that had since become one of your favorite anecdotes, retold together with laughter.

It was clear you didn’t need words to fill the spaces; walking side by side, exchanging glances, letting smiles speak, was enough.

When you finally reached the park, you paused to contemplate the stillness of the pond, the same one that had soaked you last time. The sunlight dancing on the water seemed to sway with the breeze, inviting you to pause time, if only for an instant.

Jaehyun seized a brief silence between you to absorb the warmth your presence offered, that silent yet tangible closeness that seemed to envelop him deliciously. In that fragile, perfect moment, he felt the sweet promise of sharing something unique with you, something beyond words. Yet, amid that quiet joy, a small inner voice whispered caution, a hint of doubt that perhaps your attention wasn’t fully on him, but divided among the men Mrs. Park had mentioned the night before.

With a contained sigh, a mixture of uncertainty and longing, he looked up at you. For a moment, his silence felt heavy, until he finally chose to break it, driven by the urge to seek the reassurance that his heart craved.

“May I ask you something?”

You nod your head gently, gripping Perdita’s leash slightly, almost without noticing.

“Go ahead.”

He hesitated for a second more, choosing his words carefully.

“Mrs. Park mentioned… that perhaps there are some gentlemen interested in you,” he began, pausing with a tone that balanced caution and sincerity. “I wouldn’t want to seem intrusive or make you feel obligated to explain… but I also wouldn’t want to overstep in case…”

“Wait, wait,” you interrupted before his awkward explanation spilled completely, a smile both amused and incredulous on your lips. “Exactly who did Mrs. Park mention?”

Jaehyun scratched the back of his neck with his free hand, a gesture so genuine it made you smile even more.

“If I recall correctly…” though he remembered perfectly, each syllable etched from the previous night, “it was something like Lee Donghyeok… and Kim Doyoung.”

Your laugh rang clear and warm, catching him completely off guard. Perdita and Pongo perked up curiously, yet continued walking without fuss. Jaehyun watched you out of the corner of his eye, both confused and amused, as if trying to catch the joke he hadn’t yet understood.

When your laughter finally faded, you said:

“It’s true that Donghyeok, the postman, has some interest in me. But it’s not mutual, and I’ve made that clear. He’s a charming boy, yes… but also very young. His affection is innocent, more playful than serious.”

Jaehyun nodded, relieved, though not entirely satisfied.

“And Mr. Kim?”

Your expression shifted only slightly, adopting a serene honesty.

“We went out a couple of times, that’s true. But it never went beyond professional. Mr. Kim is a good man… but his heart is in business. And that, frankly, is not for me.”

Silence returned, lighter this time, until he murmured with gentle frankness:

“I won’t lie, it does please me to hear that… very much.”

You offered a soft smile. The air between you seemed warmer. But you didn’t want all the vulnerability to lie on his side alone.

“And what about you, Mr. Jeong?” you asked, feigning innocence. “Mrs. Park mentioned that you’re quite popular with the ladies in your neighborhood… Do you have your eye on anyone?”

Though your voice sounded light, a faint tinge of jealousy softened the edges of the question. But when Jaehyun looked at you, tilting his head in mild confusion, the feeling vanished as quickly as it came.

“To be honest, miss,” he said, “I have no idea what you mean. I’ve been so absorbed in the piano that I barely notice the world around me.”

Your smile was automatic.

“I must admit, that pleases me greatly as well,” you said, echoing his words as you relished the flutter in your chest. The smile you drew from him was as radiant as the day itself, those shy dimples already becoming familiar to you.

Neither spoke for a few moments. You walked side by side, and though neither dared to intertwine hands, the distance between you shrank imperceptibly, invisible to any observer but unmistakable to your senses.

The stroll continued with serene calm. Dry leaves crunched underfoot, and the city’s murmur blurred at the edges.

Then you noticed it: a different breeze, heavy with moisture, bringing a slight shiver and a whisper from the sky. The sun, which had been painting the treetops golden, began to fade behind increasingly heavy gray clouds.

A first drop fell unannounced, timid and light, landing on the tip of your nose. You blinked, startled, as another slid down your cheek. You turned to Jaehyun, who was already watching the sky, amusement and concern mixed in his expression. “Looks like rain,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself, scanning for shelter.

A few steps ahead, a small awning jutted from a closed shop. Without hesitation, he took your hand, and both of you ran, dodging puddles and splashes that soaked you to the knees. The cold bit, your clothes were heavy, yet you didn’t stop until you reached the shadowed shelter.

The world seemed to hush. The rain’s patter on the awning became a steady heartbeat. Water trickled along the edges like an invisible circle, isolating you from the rest.

For a few moments, neither spoke. Only the rain’s drumming filled the silence, accompanied by the gentle trickle along gutters and the growing puddles. You both breathed the same damp air, the subtle warmth of your bodies rising in delicate clouds.

Jaehyun lowered his gaze slightly, as if searching for words within his chest. The closeness between you was natural, comfortable, almost too perfect to break. Yet the cold crept in, and your damp clothes were no longer just a playful trick of the weather.

“Shall we walk a bit further?” he said finally, voice calm, just above the rain’s murmur. “My apartment isn’t far… we could wait out the rain there.”

You agreed without hesitation, resuming your stroll through dodged puddles, small splashes marking each step. The rain persisted, drenching you relentlessly, yet neither seemed to mind. Wet fabrics clung to skin, hair dripped, yet between clumsy slips and brief accidental touches, laughter emerged pure and spontaneous.

When you finally reached Jaehyun’s building, the dogs, just as soaked as their owners, shook themselves enthusiastically at the entrance, droplets glinting briefly in the warm light. Jaehyun, fingers cold and still trembling, fumbled in his pockets for the keys. Opening the door, he let out a quiet sigh of relief, carrying the weight and excitement of the day.

A lightning flash tore the sky in silence, illuminating the room in a cold, fleeting light. The thunder followed almost immediately, vibrating like a distant echo that made even the dogs shiver, huddled by the door.

“Looks like it’s going to rain for a while,” you murmured, more to yourself than him, approaching the window. The drops fell steadily, like a crystal veil over the city. Letting go of Perdita’s leash, she shook once more before curling up beside Pongo, both surrendering to the warmth of home after the damp chaos of the walk.

Jaehyun ran his hands through his wet hair, glancing at the forgotten umbrella by the door. The sight earned him a grimace of regret, a silent reproach toward himself for not bringing it along.

Yet, instead of lamenting, he disappeared down the hall for a moment. Returning, he carried a thick, warm wool coat, slightly worn but cozy and comforting.

Gently, he draped it over your shoulders. A simple gesture, yet laden with care and intent, making your heart skip a beat.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” he began quietly, barely a whisper amidst the storm. “This has been an absolute disaster…”

You met his gaze without judgment, letting the coat’s warmth and his closeness dispel any trace of cold or worry. You breathed deeply, soothed by the subtle scent of tea and wood notes that enveloped you.

“What are you talking about?” you replied with a gentle smile. “It’s been a wonderful afternoon.”

He blinked, visibly surprised.

“Wonderful? But we’re soaked to the bone… we didn’t even make it to dinner… and, curiously, this is the second time you’ve ended up completely drenched because of me.”

You couldn’t help but laugh.

“To be honest, it’s the imperfections of our date that make it perfect,” you said, with a calmness that disarmed him completely.

Jaehyun held your gaze for a few seconds. His dimples appeared in a slow smile, as if your words had illuminated something inside him.

“I suppose that’s true,” he murmured, still looking at you.

Then, without thinking, he reached up and brushed a wet strand of hair from your face, tucking it carefully behind your ear. A small touch, but the intimacy of the gesture resonated through your entire body.

Outside, the rain persisted, wrapping the world in a warm intimacy. Time seemed to shrink to that small corner, where for a moment, it ceased to move. Jaehyun watched silently, eyes clear and unhurried, full of quiet truth.

There was something charmingly disheveled about you, reminiscent of the day you met falling into the pond: awkward, unexpected… and perfect. And now, he understood that his affection wasn’t fleeting, but the kind that grows quietly in details: a sweet glance, a shared gesture, a rainy afternoon one wishes never to forget.

Then Jaehyun leaned toward you slowly, as if savoring every second of the moment. His eyes sought yours once more, asking permission, and when his lips finally met yours, it was with a tenderness so profound it felt like a silent prayer.

Your eyelids closed softly, and in that instant, time seemed to dissolve. There was no patter of rain against the glass, no damp clothing, no dogs curled in a corner. Only the silent music of your contact and the gentle rhythm of your hearts.

Yet, despite the passion, his touch was delicate. Jaehyun’s nose brushed yours from time to time, letting out playful sighs with each contact. His left hand trembled slightly on your cheek, caressed your neck, then rested on your waist, tracing your back with respect.

He drew you closer slowly, and your hands instinctively slid to the back of his neck, tangling gently in his wet hair, while his body leaned further into yours, seeking the warmth the rain had denied outside.

When you finally parted, it was slow, as though afraid to shatter the invisible thread between you. Foreheads rested together, breathing the same air, sharing the lingering warmth, eyes speaking what words could not.

Both of you smiled foolishly, letting the silence seal the certainty you had just discovered.

And so, in that simple corner, amidst wet coats, sleeping dogs, and hearts beating in unison, love was present. A love only those willing to listen with their souls could understand.

+

“…Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her so long as you both shall live?”

“I will,” Jaehyun replied, his voice clear and steady, though his eyes trembled with emotion, making him seem all the more sincere. That vow, simple yet solemn, became the perfect echo of everything he had already begun to live by your side.

You could never have imagined that the man you tumbled into the park pond with a year ago would one day be your husband. Yet here you stand, happily wed and more in love than ever.

The first six months of your marriage were spent in a house by the park, modest in size but immense in warmth, as if the very walls had learned to hold every laugh, every piano note and every shared caress. The Jeong residence was the perfect place for two young lovers, and for a pair of dalmatians who, curiously enough, mirrored in their bond the story of their owners.

In the afternoons, after their daily walks, Perdita and Pongo would settle together on the window ledge, heads tilted outside, as if they too had fallen in love with the neighborhood. From the attic, Jaehyun’s melodies would descend like a gentle river, filling the house with music that seemed tailor-made for the love overflowing in that home.

It was, truly, an endearing picture: you and Jaehyun, so young and full of hope, and beside you the dalmatians, just as smitten. Everything had begun clumsily, suddenly, almost by accident… and yet now it stretched out as something natural, as if it had always been written. Fate had even willed that you and Perdita share the expectancy of new life. She would give birth first, but that coincidence only deepened the sense of wonder.

Your days as a fashion designer were long and demanding, but since Jaehyun had been by your side, no fatigue could defeat you, creativity flowed like a spring. Every pencil stroke on your sketches seemed sweetened by a memory with him, and every fabric chosen carried the promise of a shared future.

One ordinary afternoon, you were curled up on the sofa with your drawings on your lap when Mrs. Park appeared with a silver tray adorned with rolls and tea. She always insisted that a pregnant woman must be well fed, with such endearing devotion that it drew grateful smiles from you every time.

“Jaehyun, dear, tea time!” you called, raising your voice a little above the lingering notes of the piano still floating from upstairs.

At first, no answer came, Jaehyun often lost himself in his melodies as if he lived in another world. Only when Mrs. Park, resigned, tapped the ceiling with her broom, as she had many times before, did his cheerful voice echo from the attic:

“Be down in a minute!”

Seconds later, the stairs thudded with his light step. Jaehyun came down humming the tune he had just been playing, his face glowing with the joy of a man who awaited something precious. Ever since he learned of your pregnancy, and Perdita’s, he had carried an invisible radiance, as if each moment brimmed with meaning.

He approached you with uncontained delight, still humming, and drew from you an inevitable smile, the one he always managed to spark. Leaning down, he brushed a tender kiss over your lips, which quickly turned into a string of playful, messy pecks, as if he couldn’t bear to stop savoring the simple fortune of having you so close.

Mrs. Park stood at the door, tray still in her hands, a tolerant smile on her lips. Finally, she cleared her throat softly, unwilling to interrupt too harshly:

“Well, well, that’s enough romance for now. Take your tea before it gets cold.”

+

Life was truly wonderful, and not long after, the puppies arrived right on schedule.

One wild and stormy night in October.

The wind lashed the windows with fury, and the rain fell like an endless curtain, cloaking the city in mystery. Inside the house, however, the scene was another: the fireplace roared brightly, casting golden flickers across the walls, while the old pendulum clock marked the seconds in rhythm with the storm. Its cadence echoed, curiously, that unforgettable afternoon when you and Jaehyun had kissed for the first time.

Pongo lay stretched by the door, ears perked, eyes gleaming with impatience. A few steps away, Jaehyun sat, his leg bouncing nervously, betraying the calm he tried to maintain. His hands twisted together again and again, his gaze darting endlessly to the door that led to the room where Perdita labored.

Suddenly, hurried footsteps creaked across the wooden floor, making Pongo spring up with ears alert. But to both their frustration, Mrs. Park only fetched a rag before shutting herself back inside, leaving them more restless than before.

Jaehyun sighed, leaning forward in distraction, when suddenly he felt Pongo’s wet nose nudge his hand. The dalmatian, as if to comfort him, gave a brief affectionate lick. Jaehyun startled, then chuckled nervously, deeply touched.

“Good boy…” he murmured, patting his head, as if the gesture soothed his own nerves too.

Then Mrs. Park’s voice broke the tension:

“The puppies are here!” she cried, her joy so contagious it seemed to shake the walls. “Oh, the puppies are here!”

Jaehyun leapt to his feet, eyes wide, a radiant smile transforming his face.

“H-How many?”

“Eight!” she replied, hurrying before vanishing back through the door.

Pongo’s jubilant bark rang through the room as Jaehyun looked at him with a near-paternal pride.

“Pongo! Eight puppies.”

“Ten!” Mrs. Park called again.

“Eleven,” came your voice from the room.

“Eleven?” Jaehyun could barely believe it. “Eleven puppies, Pongo!”

But Mrs. Park emerged once more, flustered:

“Wait a minute now, wait a minute… Thirteen! No, no, no… Fourteen!”

Pongo spun in circles, ecstatic, unable to contain himself.

“Oh, fifteen!”

“Fifteen?” Jaehyun repeated, incredulous, his smile widening more than ever.

“And the mother’s doing fine,” Mrs. Park added with a giggle, stroking Pongo’s back tenderly.

“Fifteen puppies!” Jaehyun exclaimed, heart pounding wildly. “Pongo, that’s marvellous!”

But suddenly, the joy faltered. Mrs. Park came out slowly, face dimmed, a small bundle wrapped in cloth in her arms. Her eyes, usually twinkling, were shadowed.

“Fourteen…” she murmured, voice breaking. “Just fourteen… We lost one. Oh, poor little thing.”

Silence fell, broken only by the relentless rain against the windows. Jaehyun took the tiny pup in his hands, sorrow clouding his face. Pongo watched intently, his dark eyes mirroring the same grief.

“Oh, Pongo…” Jaehyun sighed softly. “It’s just one of those things.” He breathed again, though a flicker of hope lit his gaze.

Carefully, he tried to rub the pup, hesitant at first, then more urgently, silently pleading for life to return. Pongo leaned closer, watching intently.

The silence was so heavy it seemed even the storm had paused; only his heartbeat thundered in his chest. The damp cloth smeared against his fingers, carrying a faint metallic scent that filled him with dread. For a moment, he feared it was too late. His eyes grew wet, a broken sigh escaping, when suddenly, beneath his trembling hands, the pup stirred faintly, a weak gasp, a tiny whimper breaking through like a miracle.

So fragile, yet so powerful, that Jaehyun let out a strangled laugh, disbelieving, as the pup shook its little head, searching for warmth. Pongo barked with excitement, and that spark of breath restored the room’s lost light in an instant.

“Darling! Mrs. Park! Fifteen! We still have fifteen!”

The bedroom door flew open, you rushed out, heart racing, followed by an equally relieved Mrs. Park. A hand pressed to your chest, you exhaled in wonder.

“Oh, Jaehyun, he’s all right! Thank God.”

“See? He’s just as good as new,” he said tenderly, showing the pup as if it were a miracle.

You stepped closer, voice trembling with emotion.

“Can you imagine, Jaehyun, fifteen puppies!”

Jaehyun looked at you, eyes shining, still cradling the tiny life, stroking it gently, his smile trembling with leftover adrenaline. Pongo, proud, nestled beside Perdita, who lay in the room with the rest of the litter, while Mrs. Park beamed, murmuring between breathless laughs that “heaven had been generous that night.”

“It’s incredible,” Jaehyun whispered, almost inaudibly tender. “Fifteen little miracles. And soon… our own.”

His words, so simple yet brimming with love, felt like a promise that held you captive. There was something about your husband: the gleam of his teary eyes, the tremble of his fingers, the smile that barely fit on his face accompanied by his dimples, that filled you with such aching tenderness. And in that moment, you knew: the man who had just saved the life of a tiny pup would be the most loving father to your future child.

Your lips curved into a soft smile as your hands sought his, fitting together as always, as if made to hold each other. There, amid the storm’s murmur and the joyful chaos of Pongo and Mrs. Park, life revealed itself in its purest form: love expanding, multiplying with every heartbeat, with every new beginning.

And as Jaehyun leaned in to press a kiss to your lips, you remembered that, like Perdita and Pongo, you too had found something extraordinary: a love born almost by accident, yet so true it had filled not only your days with life, but everything yet to come.

Because life, after all, was nothing more than this: a home, a heart beating next to yours, and the certainty that love always knows how to multiply.

    The end…

my second story is finally here! sorry for the delay, i had to make some last minute changes since i wrote this in august last year… P.S. happy late bday jaehyun ♡ REBLOGS & COMMENTS are always appreciated.

+

The park in autumn was a faded painting of amber and rust. Dry leaves crunched beneath your boots, a symphony of finitude that had always calmed you. You wore your green velvet ribbon, as always, fastened precisely against the skin of your neck. It was a part of you, more than the blood in your veins.

It was next to the old oak, the one with branches twisted like ancient bones, where you spoke to him for the first time.

You didn’t stumble into each other, and it wasn’t a meeting forced by fate. You were simply there, reading on a bench, when your eyes met those of a young man sitting across from you.

You knew his name. Jaehyun. You were in the same class. He was quite popular, with a serene, classic beauty. The kind of face that seemed sculpted by the soft light of sunset, the kind that could melt the heart of anyone who looked at him. He was holding a book, but his eyes, deep and curious, weren’t on the pages… they were on you.

A shy smile appeared on his lips. You, used to distrustful stares or indiscreet questions, lowered your eyes to your own book, hoping he would give up. But he didn’t. After a moment, he stood and approached with a calmness that disarmed you.

“Excuse me,” his voice was softer than you expected, a warm note in the cold air. “I couldn’t help but notice your book… It’s one of my favorites!”

You looked up, a little surprised. It wasn’t the usual comment.

“Really?” you answered, your voice barely a thread of sound. “Most people find it too… boring.”

“Then we’re both boring,” he joked, a pair of dimples showing at the edge of his cheeks. “But even boring things have their own kind of beauty, don’t you think?”

His fingers, long and elegant, pointed to the empty space beside you on the old wooden bench, its paint peeling away in small flakes like withered petals. “May I?”

The gesture was so polite, so full of genuine calm, that your nod was almost instinctive. “Sure,” you murmured, making a little space even though there was no need.

He sat with a tranquility that seemed to contradict how crowded the world was. He didn’t invade your space, but his presence was immediately tangible, as if the air around him had grown denser and warmer. The bench creaked softly under his weight, a rough and knowing sound.

A comfortable silence stretched for a moment, broken only by the whisper of dead leaves dancing in the autumn wind. He placed his own book on his lap, revealing it was the same edition as yours, though its spine was more worn, as if it had been read over and over.

“That poem on page fifty-three,” he continued then, his voice taking on a more intimate, almost confidential tone, while his eyes drifted into the distance as if searching for that empty corridor between the park’s trees. “The one about the echo of footsteps in an empty hallway… it haunted me for days.”

A spark of genuine interest lit up inside you. It was rare to find someone who not only liked the book but could quote specific verses.

“It’s one of my favorites,” you admitted, feeling your guard lower by a single millimeter. Allowing a faint smile to adorn your pale face.

You talked a little, about authors and favorite verses. And though the conversation was kind and polite, you could feel it: his attention slowly drifted away from poetry entirely. It was like a magnet, a subtle gravitational pull that returned again and again to your neck.

Finally, he couldn’t contain himself anymore. His eyes fixed on the ribbon, and a flash of genuine curiosity, mixed with something you couldn’t identify, shone in them.

“It’s a… peculiar accessory,” he commented carefully, as if afraid to scare you away. “I like the color… it’s like a vibrant olive. It almost seems alive.”

Your fingers, by pure instinct, flew to the velvet, making sure the knot was perfect. It was such a deeply ingrained gesture it felt like breathing.

“Yes,” you answered, your voice an echo softer than his. “It’s… special.”

Jaehyun nodded in understanding, a soft smile on his face, without taking his eyes off the velvet ribbon.

“Do you always wear it?” he asked with genuine curiosity, though he already knew the answer.

A knot formed in your throat. You nodded slowly, feeling a blush of discomfort color your cheeks. Shame was an almost forgotten feeling, but he had a way of digging it up.

“Why?”

The question, simple and direct, hit you like a dull blow. Your shoulders tensed immediately, and a sudden shiver ran down your spine until it gathered at the nape of your neck. For one delirious instant, you thought you could feel the cold afternoon air seeping just under the fabric, brushing the skin no one else had ever touched.

“I… I can’t tell you,” you managed to say, shaking your head with a firmness born from panic. Your voice broke, almost pleading. “I’m sorry.”

You saw how Jaehyun’s lips pressed into a thin line, and how the light in his eyes, so warm just moments ago, dimmed with a veil of disappointment. An uncomfortable silence settled between you.

“I see,” he murmured, and those two words sounded like a door closing.

However, instead of walking away, he leaned forward slightly. It wasn’t an invasive movement but an intimate one, shrinking the world to the small distance between your faces and the enigma of that olive-colored strip of fabric. His scent, a clean mix of soap and autumn air, surrounded you, making you feel even more vulnerable.

“It must be uncomfortable to sleep with that,” he whispered, and it was the most intimate, the most dangerous observation, because it brushed against the truth of your existence in a way he couldn’t even imagine.

A sad smile, one he would never be able to decipher, formed on your lips.

“You get used to it,” you said, and it was the truest thing and the biggest lie you had ever spoken.

Jaehyun nodded again, though he didn’t seem satisfied. His gaze lingered on the ribbon for another second, and for one instant of pure panic, it seemed to you that you saw an understanding beyond reason in his eyes. As if, on some primitive level, his brain was processing the anomaly, the absolute strangeness of a young woman wearing such an intimate garment twenty-four hours a day.

But the moment passed. He straightened his posture and smiled, becoming once again the handsome, kind young man from the park.

“You’re… strange,” he commented after a moment of reflection, but there was no trace of mockery in his words, only a genuine curiosity that made you feel even more exposed. “But I like you.” The simplicity of his declaration, free of any filter, made it sound more sincere than any elaborate compliment. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow in class.”

A tense smile drew itself on your lips as you nodded, an awkward gesture meant to lighten the weight pressing down on your chest.

“Yes… see you tomorrow,” you managed to reply.

You watched him walk away, his tall, serene figure gradually blending into the long shadows of the sunset. Only when the distance reduced him to nothing more than a silhouette against the orange sky did you allow your hand, which had remained rigid at your side, to rise toward your neck.

Your fingers found the green velvet. Its texture was as familiar as the beating of your own heart, soft and slightly rough at the edges, the constant pressure both a reminder and a warning.

Jaehyun had only glimpsed the surface, the bright and perfect shell of the fruit. He couldn’t possibly imagine the dark rot hidden beneath that flawless skin, nor the horror suspended in the fragile balance of a knot.

+

The following days slipped into one another, turning into years, weaving a golden routine around the mystery that was you. Jaehyun wasn’t just a casual encounter; he became your familiar shadow, your bench companion in the crowded classrooms. The notes you shared, whispered during dull lectures, were full of marginalia and senseless jokes. You were inseparable from that first day in the park, a tacit team against academic monotony.

He carried your books, brought you coffee exactly how you liked it—black and bitter—and laughed at your cynical jokes with an admiration that made the air taste like possibilities. He was your best friend before he was anything else. And in that friendship, the ribbon was, at first, just another peculiarity, a part of the unique and beautiful landscape that was you. A curious detail, like your preference for rain over sun or your ability to recite poems from memory.

But the line between friendship and love is as thin as a knife’s edge. One day, studying late at the library, with the dim light caressing his profile, he looked at you not as a companion but as someone he desired. The world stopped. And when his lips met yours between the dusty shelves of encyclopedias, it was an act of inevitability. You began dating, and the ease of your friendship was stained with the golden intensity of first love.

Your dates were nothing more than a natural extension of your companionship: walks through the withered gardens of the town at dusk, where shadows stretched like bony fingers; visits to bookshops in forgotten alleys, where the dust of centuries lay on your shoulders like eternal snow; and afternoons in quiet cafés, where the solitary tinkling of your cups was the only sound breaking the spell of your words.

It was in that growing intimacy where the question, which had once been a curious comment, began to mutate. It was no longer just about the ribbon; it was about the part of you that was inaccessible to him.

Sometimes, it was a whisper in the darkest corner of the library, a place both of you frequented to kiss passionately in secret, while the pale, lifeless light of a chandelier played across your faces: “The velvet must be soft. I wonder how it would feel… against my lips,” he would murmur, his lips brushing the sensitive skin just below your ear, a centimeter away from the green edge. Other times, it was a practical observation, spoken with a smile that failed to hide his growing fixation as you walked under a scorching sun: “With this heat, that ribbon must be suffocating. Won’t it hurt your skin?” Or on cold winter nights, when your fingers grew numb, he wrapped them between his, rubbing them to warm them, and his gaze, inevitably, drifted toward your neck. “At least that part of you is always warm,” he would murmur, and what had once been a simple comment now echoed like a subtle obsession that chilled your blood.

You had a repertoire of evasive answers, engraved into your soul. A soft “It’s my talisman,” a firmer “It’s part of who I am,” or the ultimate one, the one that always managed to extinguish the light of curiosity in his eyes for a while, replacing it with a wound:

“Never, ever ask, Jaehyun. Please.”

+

Later, the marriage proposal came on a night of full moon, under the same oak tree where you met. The ring shone, a cold star captured in platinum, and his eyes shone with a hope that broke your heart.

“Marry me,” he pleaded, holding your hands in his. “Let me take care of you and love you forever. Let every part of you belong to me.”

All but one, you thought bitterly. But the love you felt for him, the feeling that had grown deep roots in your soul, was stronger than any fear. You nodded, and the joy on his face was so radiant it blinded the darkness looming over you. You hugged him with desperate strength, feeling his heart racing against your chest, promising yourself you would find a way to make him understand, someday.

When the wedding finally took place a few months later, it was a dreamlike event. Candles, white flowers like laments, and you, wrapped in an antique lace dress that had belonged to your great-grandmother. And, of course, the ribbon. Green like an olive, vibrant and discordant against the bridal whiteness. As you walked toward him down the aisle, you could feel the guests’ stares, not on your face, but on that point of intense color on your neck.

“Do you see? Not even on her wedding day does she take it off.”

“What a strange whim.”

Jaehyun waited for you at the altar, impeccable in his suit. His smile was triumphant and his gaze filled with deep love, but when your hands met, you felt the feverish tremor in his fingers. It wasn’t just emotion. It was the final and most intense siege of your fortress.

The reception passed among toasts and dances. He held you close, his hot breath on your cheek.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against your skin. “Perfect. But that green stain… it’s the only imperfection. Let me take it off your neck. Just for tonight.”

“No,” was your answer, a thin thread of voice. “Not now.”

The disappointment clouding his eyes was as tangible as a blow, but he said nothing more.

Later, the wedding night was a silent battle fought in the bridal suite, its walls covered with flowers and the fire crackling in the fireplace. The air smelled of melted wax and his cologne, a scent that now felt bittersweet.

You had put on a silk nightgown, and he approached from behind, his warmth enveloping you before his arms did. At first, his kisses were slow and tender, leaving small marks along your collarbones, but soon urgency sharpened them; his breath became a warm gasp against your covered neck, and his hands began a feverish journey along the curve of your back, tracing the line of your shoulders, shaping the silk as if trying to memorize every inch of you.

Always, without fail, his palms would veer away at the last moment, avoiding the ribbon with a discipline you knew was bitter, a forced respect that made the air between you tense. But that night, the frustration built up over years, crowned by the final refusal on the day meant for total surrender, finally erupted.

“Please!” his voice was a desperate growl as his fingers lunged toward your neck. “It’s enough! I’m your husband! Why won’t you trust me?”

You stepped back so abruptly it froze him in place. Terror, cold and real, coursed through you like an electric shock. For a moment, the mask of the loving wife cracked, and he must have seen the absolute panic, the fear of being destroyed, in your eyes.

“Don't even think about it!" you screamed, your voice shrill, foreign to you. “It’s the only… the only thing that keeps me…!”

You cut yourself off, gasping. The room fell silent, broken only by the crackling of the fire. Jaehyun stared at you, hurt and confused, his desire turning into puzzled anger mixed with disappointment.

“Keeps you from what?” he asked, his voice now cold as marble.

Tears came then, hot and unstoppable. You saw your pain affect him; his anger cracked, revealing the man who loved you above everything, even his obsession with the green ribbon’s mystery. With a voice broken by sobs, you approached him, cupping his face in your hands.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I love you, Jaehyun, you know I do. I love you more than anything in this world. But this… this is the only thing I can’t give you. Not yet.”

His breathing was shaky, his eyes searching yours for a truth you couldn’t give.

“Someday,” you promised, your voice laden with an ancient sadness. “When the time is right, I’ll tell you. I promise. But trust me now. Please.”

Jaehyun closed his eyes, and a deep bitterness etched itself into his features. It wasn’t just frustration; it was the pain of feeling that, after swearing everything to each other, there was still a part of you he couldn’t reach, a distrust boring into his soul. But he loved you. He loved you with a devotion that broke his heart. With a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his being, he wrapped his arms around you with protective, resigned tenderness.

“Alright,” he murmured against your hair, and the word sounded like defeat. “I’ll wait for you. I’ll always wait for you.”

+

The years, like a patient river, had carved silver grooves into Jaehyun’s hair and softened the youthful lines of your face under the weight of the seasons. The obsession with the ribbon never left; it only buried itself, like a poisonous seed waiting in the dark soil of his soul. He loved you, that was a truth as solid as the bones beneath his skin, but that single, perpetual refusal had built a wall of glass between you, invisible but impossible to cross.

Now, the autumn of your lives had come, and with you lying bedridden, that wall was beginning to crack. An unnamed illness, as mysterious as your secret, was consuming you. It wasn’t fever burning in you, but a glacial cold spreading from the very center of your being, from the point where the green velvet rested against your pale, translucent skin.

Jaehyun never left your side. His chair was next to the bed, and his hand, now marked by time and prominent veins, never let go of yours. The room smelled of bitter medicine and the slow decay of flesh. The afternoon light, low and golden, filtered through the window, illuminating the dust dancing like spirits in the still air.

“Don’t go,” he whispered for the umpteenth time, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and pain. “I don’t know how to live in a world where you don’t exist.”

Your eyes, clouded by suffering, rested on his face. You loved him with an intensity that transcended pain, that transcended even fear. And in that moment, you understood that taking the secret to the grave would be the cruelest act toward the man who had devoted his life. And in that moment, you understood that taking the secret to the grave would be the cruelest act toward the man who had devoted his life to loving you, despite the shadow that had always followed him.

With superhuman effort, you squeezed his hand. He leaned closer, bringing his ear to your dry, cracked lips.

“Jaehyun…” your voice was a whisper of dead leaves. “The ribbon…”

His eyes widened, a reckless, ancient hope shining in them, mixed with deep fear. After all these decades, after all the resignation, was this the moment?

“Yes, my love?” he encouraged, his voice trembling.

“Do you remember…” you gasped, struggling for air, “…that I promised I would tell you someday?”

He nodded, unable to speak. Tears began tracing bright paths down his cheeks.

“Now…” you continued, each word a titanic effort, “…you can untie it.”

A supernatural peace washed over you. This was the end. The relief was almost as sweet as the pain was sharp.

Jaehyun looked at you, searching for confirmation in your eyes. You nodded slowly, a sad and final smile playing upon your lips. With a reverence that was both an act of love and the fulfillment of a lifelong obsession, he leaned over you. His fingers, those that had once caressed your face with such devotion, rose, trembling, toward your neck.

The velvet, worn and soft from years of constant use, felt familiar beneath his fingertips. For a moment, he only held the ribbon, feeling the faint, frantic pulse of the artery below. Then, with utmost delicacy, he pulled at the loose end.

The knot: perfect and intricate, as if tied by an ethereal hand, gave way with a supernatural smoothness.

The green ribbon slipped from your neck and fell, soundless, onto the white sheets like a poisonous insect.

Jaehyun held his breath, his eyes fixed on your face, waiting… for what? A transformation? A divine revelation? The final liberation of your soul?

What happened was none of those things.

For an instant, everything remained the same. And then, a dull, wet sound, like that of a heavy, rotted log splitting in two, filled the silent room.

That was when Jaehyun saw. He saw how your head, the head he had loved since he was a young man in the park, no longer rested properly on the pillow. He saw it tilt to one side at an unnatural, horrible angle. He saw the thin line, like a perfect ruby necklace, appear around your neck, right where the ribbon had been. A line that widened quickly, transforming into an open, bleeding gash.

There was no scream. No sound from you at all. Only the dry, definitive crack of cartilage, the brittle sound of vertebrae separating, of muscles and tendons tearing apart after a lifetime of holding together an unnatural union.

And then, before his eyes, while his mind struggled to comprehend the impossible geometry of reality, your head detached completely from your body.

It rolled with a dull, grotesque thud across the pillow and fell to the floor. Your pale cheek pressed against the wood, and your glassy eyes stared straight at him. Your expression was serene, almost relieved. Your mouth half-open, as if the final word, the ultimate explanation, had escaped with your last breath.

Your body, freed from the heavy burden it had borne all its life, seemed to sink a little deeper into the mattress, like a puppet whose invisible strings had just been cut.

Jaehyun didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. His world had shrunk to the circle of the bed, to the obscene contrast between the whiteness of the sheets, the bright green of the now-useless ribbon, and the dark, spreading red that stained your neck, the pillow, and the wooden floor. The smell of dust and death filled his lungs.

The love of his life, the woman he had loved, with whom he had shared his youth, his adulthood, his dreams, and his bed… lay decapitated. Not by a murderer, not by accident, but by the simple untying of a knot. The ribbon wasn’t a whim, nor a talisman, nor an accessory. It was a fastening device. It was the only thing keeping together what should never have been whole.

A sound finally escaped his lips. It wasn’t a scream, nor a word. It was an animal moan, a guttural noise born of a realization so monstrous it shattered forever whatever remained of Jaehyun. He collapsed to his knees beside the bed, his hands clutching at the sheets, staring at his wife’s severed head on the floor, while the green velvet ribbon, now stained with scarlet drops, lay between them like the broken promise of a love that, quite literally, couldn’t keep its head on its shoulders.

thank you for reading ! this was my small contribution to spooky season and also my first story on tumblr. i hope you enjoyed it ♡ REBLOGS & COMMENTS are always appreciated