Chapter 18: The Space Between Sound
Friday morning arrived with a pale blue sky, cold and thin as glass.
The heater in Class 2-B clicked faintly behind the teacher's voice.
The hum of chalk. The scratch of pens.
The rhythm of routine.
Mu Yichen sat in his usual seat.
Han Seri sat in hers.
Exactly the same.
And yet.
He noticed it first.
The way she reached for her pen—more slowly than usual.
The way she hesitated before turning the page of her textbook.
The faintest glance—one heartbeat longer—before her eyes dropped again.
She hadn't said anything since the locker.
But she had said his name.
And that name…
still lingered in his ears.
Seri noticed too.
The way his pencil moved—stopping just once, not at a mistake, but at a memory.
The way he tapped his thumb against his notebook, a rhythm unfamiliar to her.
As if he was listening for something.
As if silence had become too quiet.
At lunch, he didn't go to the stairwell.
She didn't go to the peach tree.
They sat in the classroom instead.
Not beside each other.
Still a meter apart.
But neither left.
They stayed.
Eating quietly, separately,
like two strangers who had once shared a secret in the dark and now couldn't forget.
Halfway through lunch, she dropped her chopsticks.
A soft clatter. Nothing dramatic.
He picked them up for her.
No words.
Just a quiet gesture.
But when she took them from his hand,
her fingers brushed his glove.
A second too long.
A moment too real.
She didn't thank him.
He didn't expect her to.
But both looked down at their food afterward,
as if neither could remember how to eat properly anymore.
After school, they left through the same door.
Still not speaking.
But as they reached the gate,
a gust of wind pulled her hood down.
Her hair, slightly damp, lifted.
He looked once.
Not at her face—just the motion.
The soft way she pulled the hood back up,
the curve of her hand as she tucked her hair behind one ear.
It was the first time he realized
how quietly beautiful ordinary moments could be.
And she caught him looking.
Not fully.
Just… slightly.
Her eyes flicked toward him.
But neither stopped walking.
That night, she did not write.
She simply lay on her bed,
holding her notebook to her chest,
listening to the silence in her room.
For the first time in a long while,
it felt like someone else was listening too.
And in his sketchpad,
Mu Yichen drew nothing.
Instead, he wrote a single word at the bottom of a blank page:
"Seri."