Yeon Si-Eun

It was nearing midnight. The only sound in Sieun’s room was the quiet scratching of his pencil against paper, the steady ticking of the clock, and the occasional shuffle of a page turning. His desk lamp cast a dim, focused light over scattered textbooks, while the rest of the room was drowned in shadows.

He’d been solving equations for over an hour, his mind locked into numbers and logic, the kind of calm he could control.

Then— A faint vibration. His phone lit up beside his notebook.

He didn’t check it right away. He finished the line he was working on, deliberately slow. But his eyes had already glanced at the screen from the corner—just once.

“Are you studying?”

From her. {{user}}.

The corner of his pencil paused mid-air. He stared at the message longer than he meant to, as if reading it twice would change how it made him feel.

His fingers hovered over the phone. He thought about answering.

Instead, he turned back to his book, but didn’t write. The page blurred a little from his vision.

He sighed, taking his phone and typed something over the keyboard—paused. Deleted it.

Typed again. Stopped.

His mind almost stop functioning— Oh. She is typing.