Chapter 13 : No One Noticed
The weeks passed without sound.
Autumn settled over Seoul, soft and golden, brushing the schoolyard in quiet breezes. The leaves turned amber, then rust, then brittle.
And through it all,
the two of them sat in the back of Class 2-B
like two shadows carved into the wall.
Mu Yichen still ate on the staircase.
The fourth step creaked under his weight now—a soft protest he had grown used to.
He drank his tea slowly, head tilted just enough to see the rusted metal railing. The thermos was always warm, the sandwich always plain, the silence always welcome.
He brought no phone.
Listened to no music.
Just the ticking of his watch and the world spinning somewhere far away.
Han Seri still disappeared to the peach tree.
No one followed her.
No one even remembered the tree existed, except perhaps the janitor and a few crows who sometimes nested in its crooked branches.
She ate quietly, reading the same novel every day—
a story about a girl who could speak to ghosts but chose not to,
because silence was the only place she ever felt safe.
Sometimes she didn't read.
Sometimes she just listened—to the wind rustling the dry branches above, or to her own breathing.
She never noticed how steady it had become.
At school, the world moved on.
The class had grown tired of mocking them. The "Twin Ghosts" joke had faded.
New gossip replaced it—about crushes, test scores, homecoming.
And Yichen and Seri remained exactly as they had been.
Unmoving.
Unchanged.
Unseen.
Until one day
A group of boys passed the stairwell, cutting through the hallway early from gym class. One kicked open the stairwell door just to be loud.
The bang echoed.
They froze
surprised to see someone inside.
Mu Yichen looked up from his sandwich, eyes calm.
The tallest boy squinted.
"Why do you eat here?"
He didn't reply.
Another laughed. "Is this your nest or something? What, scared of the cafeteria?"
Still nothing.
Then the third boy frowned. "Wait… you're one of the Ghosts."
The first boy grinned. "Where's the other one? Your girlfriend haunting the tree again?"
That… caught Yichen's eyes.
He didn't stand. Didn't threaten.
Just looked.
And whatever they saw in that quiet stare—
it was enough.
They muttered something and left.
He finished his sandwich in peace.
That same day, behind the school, Han Seri watched two girls pass the path to her tree. They paused, looked around, whispered, then kept walking.
She heard one of them say,
"Seriously, how can someone like her stand being so alone all the time?"
She didn't react.
She only tore off a piece of her rice ball,
fed it to a bird nearby,
and kept reading.
That night, neither knew the other had been mocked.
Neither knew they had been defended or dismissed.
But they both looked out their windows before bed
and thought the same thought.
"I don't mind being alone.
But I wonder…
does the other mind?"