Drip... drip... drip...

The rain played its gentle melody against the windowpanes, like fingers tapping on glass, soft, rhythmic, and endlessly patient. Outside, the world was blurred in gray, soaked in a quiet calm. It was the kind of rainy afternoon that made the old wooden orphanage creak and sigh as if it remembered every storm it had ever weathered.

Most of the children were tucked away under blankets in the dorms, dozing off or whispering stories under dim lights. But not these two.

In the corner of the aging library, where dust motes danced lazily in the amber glow of a flickering lamp, Kim Jiwon and Han Nari sat like two mismatched pieces of a single puzzle.

Nari leaned against a bookshelf, her legs curled beneath her. A thick, worn out novel sat in her lap, its pages weathered and soft from endless rereads. Her expression shifted constantly as she read: a small smile curled her lips one moment, a faint gasp the next. Sometimes, her brow would knit in frustration, only to soften again into a dreamy sigh.

She giggled once, quietly. Then turned a page and frowned like the book had just insulted her.

Jiwon glanced at her. "...You okay?" he asked.

"Huh?" She looked up, blinking. "Yeah. Just... this part's ridiculous."

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have to. This was the fifth time she had read the same book.

Jiwon smirked to himself and returned to his mystery: an old photo album resting on his knees.

His brows furrowed as he studied the black and white images inside. A man held up a deck of cards mid performance, his grin captured in motion. A woman levitated just above the stage floor, eyes closed, hair flowing like she was caught in a dream. Another page showed a coin vanishing between fingers. No wires. No props. Just... magic.

But it wasn't magic. It couldn't be.

Jiwon, age seven, wasn’t the type to believe in miracles. But he believed in questions. And this album, this puzzle left beside him when he was just a baby, was full of them.

How did they do it?

"Still trying to figure it out?" Nari asked, not looking up.

He nodded slightly. "There's no way a person could float like this," he murmured. "Not without cables or mirrors... but I've flipped through this a hundred times. There's nothing to see."

"Maybe that's the point," she said, smiling faintly.

Jiwon didn’t answer. His mind was chewing through the details, the possibilities. What angle was the photo taken from? What kind of stage was it? Was it edited? Could someone back then even edit something like this?

He didn’t notice how he leaned forward, lips slightly parted in thought.

Nari looked up from her book, her voice softer this time. "You’re always so serious when you read that thing."

"I’m not being serious," he muttered. "I’m thinking."

She laughed quietly. "You think too much for a seven year old."

Jiwon turned another page. "You read the same book over and over."

"So?"

"What’s so special about it?" he asked, glancing sideways. "You never tell me."

Nari held the book up like a sacred treasure. "It’s called The Heroine and the Swordsman."

He blinked. "That’s it?"

She shrugged, but her smile turned thoughtful. "It’s about a girl who falls in love with someone she probably shouldn’t. And... she tries her best, even when everyone else gives up on her. There’s also this villainess who tries to protect the one she loves from being stolen by the heroine."

Jiwon tilted his head, studying her face. She didn’t elaborate. Her eyes had gone distant, like they were watching scenes unfold in a different world.

"...Sounds dramatic," he said.

"It is. That’s what makes it good." She hugged the book to her chest. "Sometimes... people like me need a little drama."

Jiwon arched an eyebrow. "People like you?"

"Cute and kind big sister with a bratty little brother," she teased.

He scoffed but said nothing.

The room returned to quiet, broken only by the drip of rain and the soft rustle of pages.

Jiwon stared at a photo of a man smiling with his arms outstretched, cards blooming between his fingers like petals.

"Why would someone work so hard just to fool people?" he asked aloud, mostly to himself. "Isn’t that just lying?"

Nari looked at him for a moment. "That’s the magic part," she said. "A good magician can make sadness disappear."

Jiwon's eyes didn’t leave the album. "That doesn’t make sense."

She chuckled. "It doesn’t have to. That’s what makes it magic."

Magic, he repeated in his mind.

Jiwon flipped to a page showing a man pulling a dove from an empty hat. "How did he do that?" he mumbled.

Nari walked over and flopped onto the floor beside him. Her knees were scraped, her sweater sleeves too long, and her black braid flopped forward as she leaned in.

"He probably just put the bird in the hat when no one was looking," she said matter of factly.

"But how?" Jiwon insisted, frowning. "Where was it hiding before that? The picture before this shows his hands empty. No bird."

"Maybe he’s a real magician," Nari whispered, her eyes wide with playful wonder.

Jiwon snorted. "There’s no such thing as real magic."

She smiled.
"Then... maybe he’s just really good at tricking people."

That made Jiwon pause.

Yes. That was it. Tricks.

Magic wasn’t about spells or fantasy. It was deception, refined, rehearsed, and almost mathematical in its precision. If someone could make you believe a bird came from nowhere, what else could they make you believe?

He traced the edge of the photo with a fingertip, gaze locked.
"I want to figure out how they did it."

Nari tilted her head.
"Why?"

"I don’t know..." He paused. His little brows furrowed.
"If I can understand this... then maybe I can understand why someone would make something seem so real when it’s not."

Because it's not just a trick. It's a question: why do we believe what we see? What makes something real to us?

He turned the page. A new illusion. A coin vanished between two fingers.

Misdirection. That was one word that kept popping up again and again in the books and old pamphlets he'd dug up. The art of guiding someone's focus, not with force, but with suggestion. Movement, speech, and eye contact. Draw attention to the right hand, and the left becomes invisible.

It was counterintuitive at first. But it always worked.
This is because the closer you are, the less you see. When people try to focus on something, they will miss something.

That was the paradox of illusion. Being too close meant being too confident. The mind stopped questioning, started assuming. You didn’t think something tricky could happen right there, under your nose.

People think they need distance to be fooled. But no, standing right in front of the truth is often what blinds us most. The brain fills in what it expects, not what’s there.

Then there was sleight of hand, pure muscle memory. It wasn’t sorcery. It was the years spent learning to move inhumanely smooth. Hiding a card in your palm without blinking. Flipping coins across your fingers so fast the eye couldn’t follow.

The “French Drop.” The “Top Change.” The “Double Lift.” He’d read them all. Memorized the steps. Practiced with paper scraps and bottle caps.

It’s not magic, it’s discipline. Precision. Repetition until the impossible looks natural.

Then came the quickswap, a clean, practiced switch.
Replace a card mid shuffle. Swap a ball mid toss. Do it at the right beat, at the right breath, and no one sees it. They don’t want to. Their mind refuses to believe a switch could be that fast.

And that’s what fascinated him most.
Magic isn’t hiding the truth. It’s about guiding people toward the wrong one, gently, without force. You make them believe they’re in control. And by the time they realize they’re not, the trick is already done.

He had come across an idea in one of the older library books, a quote from a stage magician long forgotten:

“The secret to every illusion lies not in the trick itself, but in the audience’s desire to believe it.”

That stuck with him. Because it meant magic wasn’t about power. It was about perception. 

What if you could control that? Not just on stage, but in real life? What if you could make someone see what you wanted them to see, think what you wanted them to think... trust something completely false?

Nari leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Well, if you’re going to become a magician, I’ll be your assistant!"

"I’m not becoming a magician," Jiwon muttered, though his cheeks flushed pink.

Magicians smile. They bow. They play to crowds. I just want to know the truth hidden behind the curtain.

"Oh?" She grinned. "Then I guess I’ll be the magician, and you can be my audience."

He huffed and nudged her gently with his elbow.
"You’re too loud to be a magician."

They both laughed. It was the kind of laughter only children in old places knew, quiet and bright and echoing off chipped walls like it belonged there.

For now, Jiwon closed the book and leaned back against the bookshelf, sneaking one last glance at Nari. Her eyes were glued to her story again, brows furrowed in concern for a character he didn’t know.

But his mind was somewhere else now. Somewhere deeper.

Magic is misdirection, sleight of hand, switches and shuffles, smoke and silence. But more than anything... It’s control.
And if I can learn to control the illusion, then maybe, just maybe, I can also make sadness disappear too.

Jiwon smiled slightly. "Hey, Nari," he asked.

"Mhm?"

"Do you think... I could learn magic too?" he asked, his gaze drifting to the cover of Nari’s book, where a girl wielded a sword glowing with light.

She looked up, her eyes playful. "You? You’re already a magician, remember?"

He tilted his head. "Says who?"

"Says the time you vanished from the hallway without a trace last week." She grinned. "I turned around and poof! Gone."

"That wasn’t magic," he mumbled, hiding a small smirk. "That was strategy."

"Well, my little magician," she said, poking his side, "next time you disappear, make sure you leave a note."

The rain outside slowed to a gentle drizzle, the last few droplets slipping down the glass in lazy rivulets.

And in that quiet, glowing corner of the world, between fantasy and illusion, two siblings sat surrounded by stories, the beginnings of their own just starting to unfold.

 END ~