Present Day – Seoul, Three Weeks Later
Yoorin hadn't told anyone about the letters.
Not her coworker Jiwoo, not the quiet professor from the history department who always lingered in the archive. She kept them hidden—folded in cloth, tucked beneath her pillow like secrets too fragile to explain.
But they haunted her.
She began dreaming in ink.
Paintings of women with wind-swept hair. Temple bells that rang in the distance. The feeling of stepping into a memory that didn't belong to her—and yet was hers completely.
One night, she wandered back to the bookstore basement. The scrolls hadn't moved. The drawers hadn't shifted.
But something was different.
A faint shimmer at the edge of the floorboards. A draft, carrying scent—almond blossom and old paper.
She knelt and found a hidden compartment she'd never noticed before.
Inside: a diary.
Old leather. Tied with silk cord. No name.
She opened it.
And her heart stopped.
March 1915
Today I painted her for the last time.Not from life—but from memory.
I cannot bear the ache in my hands. Or the tremor in my voice when I say her name aloud.
Hana.
The entry blurred as her eyes filled.
More followed. Pages upon pages. Drawings. Fragments of poetry.
"The sea remembers what we forget.""I found her in every life, in every mirror.""Even when my name was gone, she called it back."
Yoorin couldn't breathe.
"It's me," she whispered.
And for the first time, she believed it.
Not just emotionally. Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Somehow, in some quiet way the universe could not explain, she had been Hana. And Seon had written her into existence again and again. Across countries, wars, centuries.
She reached into the bottom of the compartment.
A final envelope.
Inside: one name.
To Yoorin.You found me.
So now... find yourself.
Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
Outside, the city continued—cars, lights, phones.
But inside her chest, the almond tree bloomed.