The rain always seemed to fall harder in Seoul when Soo-ah felt the most alone.
She stood by the window in the second-floor bedroom watching at the perfect family she sees playing outside. She watched them long and felt her heart aching while she's watching the perfect family to her eyes, and then she didn't realize tears where falling from her eyes. She curled her fingers into the soft fabric of her cardigan sleeves, her schoolbag resting untouched in the corner, a silent witness to the day's indifference.
Today was her nineteenth birthday, not that everyone remembered. To her seeing her adopted family happy is enough for her to be happy, but sometimes on her lonely days she wishes to be with them, smiling, laughing, cuddling and playing together but Soo-ah never expect things to be like that, she just dream and wish because she already know that won't happen.
----MORNING----
Today Soo-ah left the house without saying a word — not that anyone was there to hear her. The apartment was silent, as always. Just the soft creak of the door closing behind her, the click of her shoes against the cold pavement, and the hum of a city too busy to notice someone like her.
She adjusted the strap of her backpack and began walking to school, earbuds in, half-listening to the same playlist she always did. At school her name will only get heard during class rolls and then she would sit quietly in her seat next to the window.
school is just a place for her to sit, to listen on other's, and to wait for the day to end. Then when the school bell rings she would quietly go out the classroom and walk outside the school heading to a small street walking to a little bookstore in the corner.
For her, the bookstore she always goes to after school is like home, because there she can find peace and lose herself in stories, she can dream of places far beyond her small world and she feels safe whenever she reads books in a quiet and a simple place.
In the bookstore, she walked in and headed straight to the large bookshelf. There, she picked up a book with a tag that had her name written on it a small smile tugging at her lips. The bookstore felt like a secret place made just for her — a quiet world where no one judged her, where she didn't have to try so hard to be noticed or liked. Just stories and silence.
She slid the book into her bag, whispered a thank you to the elderly shopkeeper, and stepped back into the noise of the street.
The sky was fading into burnt orange. The smell of bread from the corner bakery mixed with car exhaust. She sighed and put her AirPods in, welcoming the familiar hum of her favorite playlist.
"Just one more week until break," she told herself. "Then I can spend hours here, no school, no people... just pages."
She crossed the road without thinking, gaze on the glowing clouds above.
"Maybe I'll read tonight. Maybe I'll write. Or maybe—"
A horn. Tires screaming.
"Wait, what—?"
A blur of metal. The world flipped sideways. Then — silence.
Everything went black.