Chapter 14: Deep Silence
Some silences are empty.
Others… are alive.
This one lived between a boy on a staircase and a girl beneath a dying tree.
Neither sought the other.
Neither waited.
But somehow,
neither could forget the other's stillness.
At school, they remained unchanged.
Mu Yichen walked in early, left late.
He carried only what was needed. Never smiled. Never frowned.
During class, his gaze rarely lifted.
But if Han Seri answered a question—softly, reluctantly
his pencil would pause for half a second.
He never looked at her.
But he always heard her voice.
Han Seri did the same.
She pretended not to notice his rhythm—
the way he turned his pages with exactly the same motion each time,
how he tapped his pen only when solving math, never during literature.
When he was absent one day—just once—
she kept glancing at the empty desk beside her.
She told herself it was just because the balance of the room felt off.
But she ate slower that day.
Even the birds under the peach tree didn't come.
One afternoon, it rained.
Not hard. Just soft drizzle—enough to blur windows and mute footsteps.
After school, students ran toward buses, umbrellas blooming like sea anemones.
Mu Yichen waited beneath the awning near the back exit.
He wasn't in a rush.
He liked how rain erased the world.
Han Seri stepped into the hallway, stopped when she saw him.
He didn't move.
She didn't either.
The rain was too quiet to hide her footsteps.
He didn't turn. But he spoke—first time in weeks.
"It sounds better when it hits the trees."
She blinked.
"…What?"
"Rain. It sounds better on leaves than on rooftops."
She looked at the sky, then at the soaked pavement, then at him.
"That tree… doesn't have leaves anymore."
A pause.
Then he said, quietly,
"Still makes sound."
She didn't answer.
He didn't press.
She walked past him, out into the rain, hood up.
He stayed behind, watching the drops collect on his sleeve.
And for the first time…
he wondered what her voice would sound like
if she ever said his name.
The next day, they didn't speak.
They sat as they always did.
But when Seri reached into her desk and found her eraser missing,
a new one had already been placed at the edge of her table.
She didn't look.
Just took it.
But later that night, she opened her book and wrote:
"He didn't ask if I needed it.
He just left it there.
And somehow,
it was the loudest thing anyone's done for me in years."