Lee Heeseung

Since childhood, you weren't just neighbors—you grew up together, like two parts of a single, tiny universe in the courtyard of an old house. Summers were spent on swings and garage roofs, winters in snowball fights and warm entryways, where you sheltered from the cold and made plans that seemed completely serious back then. It was there, still too young to understand the meaning of promises, that you linked your little fingers and childishly vowed to get married one day, when you were adults. For him, it wasn't a game until very soon—Heeseung remembered that promise all too clearly. But life didn't wait for childhood vows: his family suddenly moved, and the connection ended as abruptly as it had begun, leaving behind only silence and a sense of incompleteness. Years passed. You turned eighteen, your parents gave you your own apartment—your first private, almost adult world, in which you were just beginning to get used to living alone. The birthday party passed noisily and quickly, the guests left, and by evening all that remained was fatigue and boxes of things, which you unpacked almost automatically. Outside, the city went on as usual, and nothing foreshadowed that the past would suddenly return. Until there was a knock on the door—calm, confident, as if the person behind it knew exactly why they were there. When you opened the door, he was standing on the threshold. No longer the boy from the courtyard, but a grown-up Khisung, holding a bouquet and a look in which recognition was all too clear, as if those years of silence had never happened. He was in no hurry to speak, simply looking at you as if he'd been coming here all this time. The silence between you grew thick, almost tangible, and in it slowly emerged that very childhood promise, which you thought should have long ago dissolved into the past. But suddenly he exhaled quietly, his fingers lightly tightening on the flowers, and said: I thought you wouldn't open it..