Seo-ah's POV
She couldn't sleep.
Not because of a nightmare. Not because of caffeine. Not even because of the pressure of finals or upcoming assignments. But because of that poem.
Jae-hyun's poem.
It was still folded neatly in the center of her notebook, nestled between ink-heavy pages and empty lines begging for meaning. She'd reread it four times since coming back to her dorm. Not because she didn't understand it, but because it understood her.
It was too much.
And yet, not enough.
She reached for her phone and played the voice note again.
"You once said writing helped you breathe again. I think reading your words — even the ones I haven't read — might've done the same for me."
He didn't know.
He couldn't know, right?
And yet, when he said those things, when he looked at her like he was reading between her lines... It felt too precise. Too familiar.
She got up, bare feet cold against the tile, and pulled on her hoodie. A half-moon hovered above the buildings, pale and watchful. She didn't want to write. And she didn't want to not write. Her fingers hovered over her keyboard before she slammed the laptop shut and returned to her notebook.
You're losing it, she told herself. You're falling for a boy who feels like your own creation.
She opened the latest page of Paper Planes and Moonlight.
He didn't touch her. Just sat beside her. Like proximity itself was the confession.
She knew she should say something. But the silence felt like a safety net she wasn't ready to break.
How do you admit you're scared of reality when it finally starts to look like the thing you've dreamed of?
She chewed the inside of her cheek.
Jae-hyun wasn't Seon-woo. Seon-woo was written to be perfect. Gentle. Golden. The kind of boy who always said the right thing, because Seo-ah made him say the right thing.
But Jae-hyun? He hesitated. Fumbled. He paused before speaking and sometimes didn't speak at all. He wasn't perfect.
So why did it feel like he was realer than the boy she'd written?
Because he is, a traitorous part of her whispered.
She nearly texted him.
Just a thank you.
Just an emoji.
Just something.
But her fingers stopped.
What if he was pretending?
What if he was kind because he was kind to everyone?
What if she confessed too soon?
The ache of uncertainty hollowed her chest.
She flipped the page. Wrote instead.
She didn't say the words. Not yet.
Because saying them would mean hoping. And hoping was dangerous.
So she let the moment pass. Let it live unwritten.
But she carried the silence like a bookmark. Waiting.
Her phone buzzed.
A message.
From him.
"Did you sleep? Or did your brain decide to write instead?"
She smiled. Her heart betrayed her with how quickly it lifted.
"Somewhere in between. You?"
"Still thinking about metaphors. About what it means to wait without asking someone to hurry up."
"That's a poem."
"Maybe. Or maybe it's just how I feel."
Seo-ah stared at the screen.
She could say it now.
She could tell him that the boy he wrote to... was her.
She could tell him she wanted him to stay.
But she didn't.
Almost.
But not yet.
She looked around her dorm room — the string lights draped over her shelf, the quiet potted plant her best friend gifted her at the start of college, the scattered books with highlighter scars across their pages. Everything felt strangely suspended. Like time had paused, waiting for her to write the next sentence.
"What if he's too good to be true?"
She whispered it aloud.
Her reflection in the darkened window didn't answer.
She picked up the notebook again. Her pen hovered over the page.
They sat close, not touching.
Her hand was inches away from his, and yet she couldn't bring herself to close the gap.
Because once the distance was gone, there would be no more pretending.
It would be real. Or it would break her.
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
And still, she wrote.
"He made her believe in softness again."
Then paused.
"But she feared what would happen if the softness was only borrowed."
There was a knock on her door. Gentle. Three slow taps.
Seo-ah stiffened.
She wasn't expecting anyone. Her roommate was out for the night.
Another knock.
She padded to the door and opened it.
Jae-hyun.
Holding two paper cups of vending machine hot chocolate.
"I couldn't sleep," he said, half-smiling. "Thought maybe you couldn't either."
She stared at him.
At the warm condensation curling at the rim of the cup. At the slight tremble in his fingers. At the quiet in his eyes.
And she took the cup.
"Five minutes," he said. "You don't even have to talk."
They sat in the hallway, backs against the wall, silent.
Seo-ah watched him out of the corner of her eye. The curve of his knuckles. The fall of his lashes. The way he existed in his own stillness.
"I almost wrote you into my story tonight," she murmured.
He didn't look at her. Just sipped his drink. "Almost?"
"But not yet."
He smiled.
"I can wait," he said.
And somehow, that was enough.
Later, when he left, and the door clicked shut behind him, she opened her notebook once more.
And this time, she wrote the name of the boy — not Seon-woo — but someone who stumbled into fiction by being real.
Jae-hyun.
Not perfect.
But maybe... just right.