The soft, warm pool of light from Seo-jin's desk lamp illuminated her teenage girl’s bedroom. She sat hunched over her desk, still in her school uniform, a page of notebook paper in front of her, ink scratched out, rewritten, then torn. Another crumpled ball of paper landed with a soft thud in the growing pile in her trash can.

She started again, biting her lip in concentration. She wrote three words, stopped, then crossed them out with a frustrated sigh. Her eyes flicked to a photo stuck to the corner of her mirror, a class picture. She wasn’t smiling in it, but Hyun-woo was, if only faintly. Just barely, but it was there.

She exhaled sharply, pushing the air from her lungs, and began writing once more. When she was finished, she carefully folded the letter, staring at it, as if willing it to convey every unspoken feeling. Finally, she slid it into a clean, white envelope and then placed it into the front of her school bag.

She moved back and sat in the chair, looked blankly at the surface of her desk, unsure if what she had written really needed to be delivered. She flicked a look at the school photograph again. Hyun-woo's hint of a smile, for some reason, made her irritable, not at him, at herself. There had been weeks of actively avoiding him.

Was it too late to give him this?  

The school hallway buzzed with the usual afternoon chaos. Students gathered in huddles, laughed, shoved each other near lockers. Seo-jin wove through the crowd, the scuffing of her shoes on the school polished wooden floors sounding louder than she expected in her own ears. She clutched the envelope tightly in her hand, her knuckles pale against the white paper.

She stood in the hallway, peering into his classroom. It was empty. Silent. She stepped inside, her gaze sweeping the desks. His was near the back, remarkably immaculate, even for him. She made her way slowly toward it, her heart thumping.

Voices from the hallway abruptly stopped her.

"I’m serious. Gone. Just like that," Soo-hyun’s voice carried clearly. "One suitcase, one phone call, poof. Transferred."

"Transferred? With only three months till finals?" his classmate sounded incredulous.

"Didn’t even say goodbye. Just disappeared," another added, a note of bewilderment in their tone.

"Exactly," Soo-hyun confirmed. "Like we were radioactive or something."

Seo-jin froze, mid-step. Her hand tightened around the envelope, crushing the paper slightly. She stepped back, reversing her way out of the classroom, unseen by the casual hallway chatter. Her breathing was sharp, ragged.

Seo-jin walked swiftly across the school courtyard, her face unreadable, still clutching the unopened envelope in her hand. Halfway past the covered walkway, she stopped abruptly. With a sudden, decisive motion, she pulled the envelope from her hand and tossed it into a nearby trash can. There was no pause, no hesitation in the action itself.

But as she kept walking, her thumb unconsciously rubbed over the space on her palm where the edge of the envelope had pressed into her skin, like a ghost of words never read.