On his second evening, he met Jiho.
He was quiet, gentle in movement, with long sleeves and hair tied in a low knot, strands of midnight silk that caught the lantern light just so. He lit lanterns for the local shrine and swept the stone path each dawn, his motions deliberate, as if in conversation with the wind itself.
Minho first noticed him from a distance. A figure alone beneath the pine trees, moving with such grace that he almost seemed part of the mist, not a man but a spirit shaped by devotion. The air between them was heavy with silence. Not an awkward kind, but something sacred. Like the hush inside a temple, or the pause before a prayer.
The shrine Jiho tended was nestled at the edge of the village, half-hidden by old bamboo. Its wooden beams were worn smooth by decades of touch and time. Red cloth fluttered gently from its eaves, embroidered with protective symbols. At its base, villagers left offerings throughout the seasons: tiny porcelain bowls of soju, paper cranes, rice cakes wrapped in lotus leaves, the occasional bottle of honey citron tea. During festivals, children would hang bells and fresh flowers on the gate.
Jiho moved like someone who had been part of this place for a long time, long enough that the shrine responded to him. When he swept the steps, the bristles of his straw broom whispered across the stone like wind over silk. When he lit the lanterns at dusk, they always caught the flame on the first try. No flicker. No struggle. As if the fire itself recognized him.
Some villagers called him "the calligrapher who disappeared from the world." Others just called him strange.
It was not a cruel judgment, just a resigned one. Haedam was not unkind, but it did not ask many questions. People in the village carried their own shadows and sorrows, and perhaps that was why they left Jiho to his own rhythm. He walked through the fog each morning with a worn satchel slung across his back, the hem of his coat often damp from the dew, never hurried. His face was calm, unreadable but never cold.
But to Minho, he seemed like someone who had learned how to listen to things too subtle for most to hear.
He greeted Minho with a nod when he passed by the temple. They said nothing at first.
Minho would stop and watch him sometimes, pretending to admire the ancient tree beside the shrine. He liked the sound of Jiho sweeping. The slow, steady rhythm felt grounding, like a drumbeat buried beneath the chaos of his thoughts. Every now and then, their eyes would meet. Jiho's were dark and steady, framed by long lashes and always carrying the same soft alertness, like he was half-looking into another world.
Minho wondered what Jiho saw when he looked at him. Could he sense the storm behind the quiet? Did he notice the way Minho's fingers trembled when they brushed against cold stone or how he held his breath when someone got too close?
One morning, Minho passed the shrine and found Jiho kneeling beside the incense altar, carefully lighting a stick of sandalwood. The smoke curled upward like a ghost released from its prison, sweet and ancient. The smell tugged at something buried in Minho's memory — childhood visits to his grandmother's ancestral shrine, the way she whispered names he did not know, her voice barely louder than breath.
Jiho looked up and nodded, the same quiet greeting.
Minho bowed slightly and kept walking, but his heart was not as still as his face. Something in Jiho's presence made him feel as though the ground beneath him was shifting. Not in a dangerous way, but like a current pulling him toward something old and inevitable.
The next morning, Jiho was waiting by the trailhead that led up the mist-shrouded mountain. He wore a thick knitted scarf, pale gray with subtle waves of blue running through it, and in his hands, he held a second one. Without a word, he offered it to Minho.
The wool was soft, almost impossibly so, like petals pressed between the pages of a diary. It carried a scent that was not quite identifiable, a mixture of pine needles, roasted chestnuts, and something human. Jiho's scent. Clean but warm, grounded in earth and fabric.
Jiho turned and began walking uphill. He did not ask Minho to follow, but he did not walk quickly either. His steps were measured, mindful. Minho adjusted the scarf around his neck, the fabric a quiet promise against the chill of dawn, and followed.
They walked together in silence, their footsteps muffled by pine needles and fog. The earth beneath them was soft and slightly damp, the kind of cold that seeps gently into your soles, not to hurt but to remind you that you are alive. Occasionally, a bird would stir in the branches overhead or a squirrel would scurry across the path, its tiny claws clicking against the stones. But mostly, the world remained still.
The fog thickened as they climbed. It pressed against their cheeks like a wet cloth, curled into their hair, clung to their eyelashes. Every exhale hung in the air like a ribbon, briefly visible before fading into the gray. The trees loomed like statues, their bark dark with moisture, their needles catching droplets of mist that shimmered like tiny stars.
Neither of them spoke, but the silence was not empty. It was a language of its own. The sound of two sets of breathing. The rhythm of two hearts beating in different chests. The unspoken agreement that words could wait.
At the ridge, Jiho stopped and pointed. Below them, the village roofs floated above the clouds like boats adrift on sky. From that height, the fog looked like a vast ocean, soft and shimmering, and the houses like islands barely tethered to the land.
Minho's breath caught, a cold pinch in his chest. He had never seen fog like this. It did not obscure. It made everything gentle. It softened the hard edges of the world. It turned the mountain into something mythic, like a dream remembered from a previous life. The colors around them — muted greens, grays, the occasional flicker of copper in a leaf — seemed to bleed into each other, painting the air itself.
"That's what I call cloud-walking," Jiho said softly. His voice was not loud. It didn't need to be. It flowed through the space between them like a stream winding through moss. A secret shared not in words but in tone.
Minho did not answer. He only nodded, feeling something unnamed rise in his chest. A feeling as light and shifting as the mist around them. A recognition, perhaps. Or the beginning of one.
After that day, they hiked like that often. Not always speaking. Sometimes Minho would ask about Jiho's calligraphy, and he would reply with quiet metaphors. On one such morning, as the wind rustled the trees in low murmurs, Jiho simply said:
"Ink is like water from the heart. It only settles where it is allowed."
Minho had not known what he meant, not exactly. But he felt something tighten in his chest when Jiho said it. A truth he could not name.
If Minho was being honest, he liked that Jiho did not explain things. He let meaning float between them. Delicate and unforced. Like the mist curling around pine boughs. Like breath shared in the quiet of a shrine.
Their paths had crossed by accident. Or maybe by intention older than either of them could remember. But in each silent step, each shared glance, Minho began to realize that sometimes, the deepest connections were not built from words.
They were made from presence.