Seo-ah's POV
"Maybe I didn't want a real boy. I wanted a fictional one—because they never forget how to listen."
The charcoal smudged again.
Seo-ah sighed, pulling her sleeve down to rub the smear off the paper gently. The jawline was too sharp. Not the way she imagined it. Not cruel. Just unreadable. Like a detective who'd seen too much and still didn't flinch at corpses.
She tilted her head.
"Too sad," she murmured, adding a faint line under the eyes—emphasis on the tiredness. Not physical, but emotional. It was the fifth character she'd drawn this month based on a thriller she'd finished two weeks ago. The plot didn't interest her that much. But the protagonist—a morally grey man with a loaded past—he stayed. In her mind. In her sketchbook.
"You and your dead-eyed detectives again?"
Ji-won's voice echoed before she entered the room. Always dramatic. Always loud. Seo-ah barely glanced up as her best friend flopped on the bed with the grace of a falling log.
"They're not dead-eyed. They're… emotionally weathered," Seo-ah muttered, reaching for the blending stick.
Ji-won rolled her eyes. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Picasso."
"I don't want them to look alive. Not like that. Real people... they feel noisy."
Seo-ah's hand paused over the page. "Fictional ones stay quiet until you're ready to hear them."
Ji-won propped herself up on one elbow. "That's exactly what worries me. You spend more time drawing fictional serial killers than talking to boys who breathe."
Seo-ah finally looked at her, dry. "As if breathing automatically qualifies someone to be interesting."
Ji-won snorted. "You're right. The boys at Geumhwa High barely qualify as sentient."
They laughed, though Seo-ah's was quiet. She looked back at the sketch, darkening the collar of the man's coat, hiding more of him than revealing.
Ji-won stood up and wandered to her desk. "Hey, this guy from last week—what's his deal?" She flipped a page in the sketchbook. "The one who looks like a lawyer but secretly stabs people in alleyways?"
Seo-ah chuckled. "He's a forensic profiler. But yes, he has issues."
"Clearly. But he's… weirdly hot. In a 'please don't stalk me but also ruin my life' way." Ji-won grinned. "Have you ever thought of drawing someone soft? You know, someone who buys flowers instead of autopsies?"
Seo-ah shrugged. "That's not the kind of character I read about."
"Maybe that's the problem," Ji-won said, plopping back onto the bed and tossing a pillow up and down. "You live inside these dark stories and then expect to find light in the real world. Maybe you need to read something different."
Seo-ah arched her brow. "Like what?"
"Romance. Wattpad stuff. Where the guys don't kill people for a living." Ji-won winked. "I've got the perfect one."
Seo-ah didn't answer right away. She stared at the face she'd drawn—haunted eyes, a clean haircut, jaw tension that never left.
"I think I'm just... curious what it would feel like," she said quietly.
Ji-won sat up. "Feel what?"
Seo-ah hesitated. Then:
"To be seen by someone like the way authors describe their characters. Not just pretty. But intentional. Like—someone was written for you. Not at you."
Ji-won looked at her for a second longer than usual. Then she softened.
"Then you're definitely reading the wrong books."
That night, Seo-ah lay in bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars she'd stuck to her ceiling back in middle school. They were peeling now. Faded.
She closed her eyes, and instead of darkness, saw inked profiles. Characters she had drawn, stared at, dissected. But none of them ever looked back.
That was the problem.
Even when she sketched someone kind, someone gentle, there was still… silence. Not the comforting kind. The hollow kind.
Maybe Ji-won was right. Maybe she didn't need another thriller. Maybe she needed a fictional man who asked how your day was and actually waited for the answer.
"Someone with a soul," she whispered into her pillow.
The kind of soul no one had sketched into her real life yet.
But maybe… just maybe… someone had already written to him.
She just hadn't found the right story.
End of Chapter 1