"What We Never Said Out Loud."
I. Dohwa Ahn 🩷🌸
~"I feel everything as if someone turned the volume up too high and broke the knob."
~"Sometimes I cry not because I'm sad, but because my heart is too full. And then it hurts that I have nowhere to put all that fullness."
~"When Haneul looks at me, I'm terrified he'll see the parts of me I haven't even admitted to myself yet."
~"If loneliness had a color, it would be the pale pink of petals that fall before they really bloom."
~"I wish he would hold me without asking why I need it."
~"I think love, or whatever this is, might be the place where everything in me trembles at once."
~"He's gentle in ways he doesn't realize. And that's the most dangerous kind."
Spring had always made her emotional, but this year the feelings bloomed differently — deeper, heavier, almost tender in a way that frightened her. Dohwa didn't know when everything inside her grew so sharp, but it often felt as if her chest was too small for her heart. Every joy, every worry, every fleeting thought swelled until it pressed against her ribs like it needed to spill out.
She hated crying in front of others. Not because she thought it made her weak, but because the world often didn't understand tears that weren't caused by pain. Her cries were small, trembling things — little gasps, the sound of someone trying not to disturb the quiet. She covered her mouth with her hands, shoulders shaking, but never loudly. Never enough to demand attention. Crying was her body's way of releasing emotions that had piled up without permission.
In her mind, she carried an entire season:
soft wind, too-sensitive petals, a heart that wilted and bloomed at the same time.
And then there was Haneul.
He wasn't a storm. He wasn't sunlight either. He was something steadier — the kind of grounding presence that made her want to rest her head on his shoulder, even though the idea alone made her heart beat painfully fast.
She didn't know when she started noticing how he noticed her.
How he handed her things before she reached for them.
How he hovered just close enough that she could lean if she ever lost her footing.
How she felt warmer in the space beside him.
She didn't know what this feeling was — admiration, yearning, or the beginning of something she wasn't ready to claim.
But she knew this:
If she had to cry again — and she would, she always did — she wished, secretly, achingly, that he would be near enough to hold her hand.
Just once.
Or maybe more than once, if the world allowed it.
°______________________________________°
II. Haneul Kang 🩵☁️
~"She cries softly, like she's apologizing to the air for taking up space."
~"Dohwa thinks she's fragile, but she doesn't see how she keeps choosing to feel in a world that teaches people not to. That's strength."
~"When she's overwhelmed, I want to gather her into my arms and tell her she doesn't have to explain a single thing."
~"She calls herself emotional like it's an inconvenience. I call it honesty with a pulse."
~"I'm not gentle by nature. But around her, I watch myself more carefully than I ever have."
~"She thinks she hides things well, but the truth leaks from her eyes before her words."
~"I don't know how to tell her she makes me nervous — in a way that feels like standing at the edge of something warm."
~"If she cries again, I want to be the one she turns toward… not the one she hides from."
~"Some people walk into your life quietly, but their presence echoes. She's one of them."
Haneul was not easily moved. He was calm by habit, quiet by nature, and steady because that was easier than being anything else. But Dohwa had a way of slipping past all of that without trying.
He noticed her long before he admitted it to himself.
The way her eyes softened at small things people overlooked.
The way she covered her mouth when she cried, as if she was afraid of burdening the air itself.
The way her emotions filled a room like perfume — faint, gentle, but impossible to ignore.
He wasn't used to wanting to protect someone.
But with her, the instinct came naturally.
It wasn't the dramatic kind of protectiveness. It was quiet.
The urge to stand closer when she looked overwhelmed.
The restraint he practiced to keep his voice soft when she grew flustered.
The way he watched her reactions out of his peripheral vision — not to intrude, but to make sure she wasn't alone in whatever she was feeling.
She thought she was hard to handle.
He thought she was the easiest person to understand.
Because Dohwa felt everything fully, rawly, honestly — and Haneul envied that. She cried when her chest got too full. She trembled when her heart overflowed. She apologized for her emotions without realizing those emotions were what made her beautiful.
He didn't have the right to be jealous of her softness, yet he was.
He wished he could tell her he didn't find her feelings burdensome.
He wished he could confess that every time she cried, something inside him ached — not because she was breaking, but because he wanted to be the person who caught her before she fell apart.
He wished he could tell her that she looked like early spring to him —
not fragile, but blooming.
Not weak, but alive.
Not temporary, but unforgettable.
But he didn't say any of it.
Not yet.
Instead, he stood beside her, quietly, hoping she would see all the things he wasn't brave enough to tell her.
And wondering how long it would take before she knew that his heart softened first.