There was a kind of silence that blanketed Jihoon's world—not peaceful, not comforting, but suffocating. It was the silence of being unseen, of walking through corridors lined with laughter and chatter and knowing none of it belonged to him. He had grown used to it over the years, but that didn't mean it stopped weighing down on his shoulders like wet wool. By the time he turned fifteen, Jihoon no longer flinched at whispers. He no longer looked up when someone called his name unless it was a teacher. And he certainly didn't expect kindness from anyone.
But even in that silence, something had begun to stir.
It started with a pen.
At first, he only wrote in the margins of his notebooks—small scribbles, fragments of thoughts too sharp to leave rattling inside his head. A sentence about a boy with wings who couldn't fly. A paragraph describing a house that hummed with sorrow. Little things. Meaningless, maybe, but they made him feel real in a way the outside world never did.
At school, Jihoon was still the ghost boy—quiet, invisible, and painfully average-looking. His uniform hung loosely on his bony frame. His chestnut brown hair often fell in his eyes, not because he thought it looked good but because he didn't care enough to push it away. His classmates called him names sometimes—"beggar," "mute," "freak"—but most had simply grown bored of bullying him outright. That didn't mean they accepted him. They just ignored him harder.
And yet, in the quiet corners of his days, Jihoon found solace in stories.
It was the school library where he discovered his first escape. The building itself was dimly lit and smelled faintly of mildew, but it was quiet, and more importantly, it was often empty. There, between chipped wooden shelves and faded book spines, Jihoon began to read.
He read anything he could get his hands on—classic literature, fantasy novels, psychology textbooks. He read until the real world blurred and the ache in his chest lessened. He liked stories where the broken boy was chosen for greatness. He liked characters who suffered but survived, who found magic in the dirt and light in the dark.
And sometimes, just sometimes, he wrote stories of his own.
He never showed them to anyone, of course. That would mean inviting eyes into the only space that felt safe. But at night, after washing the rice pot and sweeping the floors of the small room he now shared with three other orphans from his former institution, Jihoon would pull out a notebook and write under the flickering lightbulb.
He wrote about boys like him who were forgotten by the world. He gave them secret powers, loyal companions, homes that waited with warm meals. He gave them happy endings—not because he believed in them, but because he needed them.
In class, Jihoon's hand was always the first to finish tests, but the last to be noticed. Teachers praised his grades without ever remembering his name. He was just another good student—silent, obedient, easy to overlook. No one suspected how fiercely he clung to each exam paper as if it were a lifeline, how each perfect score felt like a tiny rebellion against the world that had failed him.
He never spoke unless he had to. And even then, his voice came out quiet, threadbare, like something unused to the air.
Other students sometimes glanced his way during group projects, only to sigh and mutter, "Let's just let Jihoon do all the work." He didn't argue. He preferred it that way. It was easier to handle things alone. Safer.
But inside, Jihoon had a world so rich with words, it nearly burst from the seams.
His stories became more ambitious. They sprawled across dozens of pages—tales of kingdoms hidden beneath cities, of lonely boys befriending ghosts, of heroes who wielded silence like a sword. He wrote on old notebooks, on scrap paper, on napkins he stuffed in his backpack. Words were his secret companions. He could bend them, mold them, make them sing when nothing else in his life could.
He stopped trying to smile in hallways. There was no one to smile at. The faces around him blurred into a constant parade of indifference. Jihoon wasn't bullied as much anymore—he had faded into the background so well, most forgot he was even there. Still, when someone knocked his books out of his hands or whispered something cruel in passing, he didn't react. He only bent down, collected his things, and carried on.
He was used to being unwanted.
The orphanage had taught him that. School simply confirmed it.
One rainy afternoon, the teacher asked the class to write a short essay on "What Home Means to Me."
The words stuck in Jihoon's throat like thorns.
Home?
He stared at the blank page, pencil trembling in his grip. He thought of the damp walls of the orphanage, the way the caretakers barked orders instead of speaking. He thought of the small tin cup he drank from, the itchy secondhand clothes, the nights spent curled up facing the wall so no one would steal from him. He thought of Yejun—his mother—and how even the sound of her name made his stomach clench.
Eventually, he wrote:
Home is a place where I do not have to flinch.
Nothing more.
He handed it in like that. The teacher frowned when she read it, but said nothing. Jihoon saw her glance at him after class, her brow pinched in concern. She never brought it up again.
That was fine. He hadn't written it for her anyway.
At night, when the city's noise faded into the hum of distant traffic and cicadas, Jihoon would lie awake and stare at the cracked ceiling. His roommates snored or talked in their sleep. One of them cried sometimes, but Jihoon never asked why.
Everyone was carrying something.
He kept a small notebook tucked beneath his mattress. It was filled cover to cover with his writings. Not just stories anymore, but thoughts. Observations. Lists of things he wanted to remember—like the way rain sounded on the roof, or how the librarian always smelled faintly of lemon candy. Things that reminded him life wasn't entirely gray.
One entry read:
There's a cherry blossom tree near the school gate. Today, a petal landed on my sleeve. It stayed for three steps before falling. It was the first time something touched me gently this week.
He reread that entry often.
Despite the loneliness, Jihoon never stopped going to school. He never skipped class. Never missed a homework deadline. It wasn't because he loved learning—it was because school was the only place where he could pretend to have a future. Where effort, at least on paper, meant something.
He imagined, sometimes, a world where his academic achievements would be his ticket out. Maybe he'd win a scholarship. Maybe he'd be noticed. Maybe someone, someday, would say his name and mean it.
It was a fragile hope. But it was enough to keep him going.
Just barely.
The scholarship brochures at the school counselor's office became Jihoon's secret treasure maps. While other students joked in the hallways or whispered about cram schools, Jihoon sat hunched over the cracked table outside the office, leafing through each pamphlet with wide, hungry eyes.
They all promised a better life.
Top academic achievers eligible for full tuition.
Boarding opportunities for gifted youth.
Need-based funding available.
He memorized the criteria. He made checklists. He whispered the application deadlines to himself like prayers before bed. The idea of escape—of a different world where no one knew his past, where he could start again—became the pulse that kept him alive.
And yet, when it came time to speak with the school counselor, his feet froze in place.
She was kind enough, Ms. Shin. But she was always in a rush, papers piled high on her desk, her eyes tired from years of trying to help students who barely listened. Jihoon had visited her office once—just once—and stood at the door silently for several long minutes before she looked up.
"Yes?"
He opened his mouth. But the words wouldn't come. His throat closed.
He bowed stiffly and turned around. She didn't call after him.
It was easier to do things alone. Safer.
During winter, the classrooms became unbearably cold. The ancient heaters barely worked, and Jihoon's threadbare uniform did little to keep him warm. His fingers cracked and bled. Still, he continued to take notes meticulously, his handwriting precise even when his hands shook.
Other students wore padded jackets and slipped hand warmers into their pockets. Jihoon made do with layering—old undershirts from the orphanage, sometimes newspaper tucked beneath his coat.
No one noticed.
In fact, the only time people did notice was when he did too well.
"Hey," a boy sneered after a test score was returned. "Are you trying to make the rest of us look bad, freak?"
Jihoon said nothing.
The boy shoved his shoulder as he passed. His friends laughed.
"You think you're better than us? Just 'cause you read books all day?"
He wasn't. Jihoon knew that. He didn't think he was better than anyone. But he also didn't want to be like them—loud, cruel, desperate to belong.
If being quiet meant he was weird, then so be it.
He found small comforts.
The school library became his refuge. It was small and often deserted, but the warmth of the dusty shelves and the scent of aging paper gave him a strange sense of calm. He read everything—from translated Russian classics to children's fairy tales. Each book was a doorway, each chapter a soft escape from his own hollow world.
One particular novel stuck with him—The Little Prince. He read it in a single sitting, tucked into a corner behind the shelves.
He wept silently at the ending.
That night, he wrote in his notebook:
The Little Prince left his flower behind, even though he loved her. Maybe sometimes, love isn't enough. Maybe silence is the only thing that doesn't betray you.
One day, after a particularly rough afternoon—a group of boys had cornered him near the bike shed, jeering, taunting, throwing his bag into a puddle—Jihoon walked home with soaked socks and a stomach full of stone.
He passed a convenience store and paused.
Inside was warmth. And light. And food he couldn't afford.
He pressed his hand to the glass door. Just for a second. Just to feel warmth through his palm.
Then he kept walking.
Something inside him hardened—not into bitterness, but into quiet resilience. He began to see his silence not as weakness, but as a weapon. If they couldn't hear his thoughts, they couldn't hurt them. If they couldn't break through the shell he built around his heart, they couldn't twist it. That silence, cultivated over years, became a wall—cold, invisible, but strong.
Jihoon still responded when teachers called his name, still answered questions when no one else raised their hands. But he never volunteered, never asked for help, never lingered longer than necessary. His presence at school was like the wind—there, but easily ignored.
And yet, his grades soared.
Jihoon ranked consistently in the top five of his year. Some teachers praised him briefly, but most simply moved on, not bothering to get to know the boy who never smiled and always sat in the back row.
He didn't mind. It was better that way.
Sometimes, Jihoon dreamed.
In his sleep, he imagined being somewhere else—on a train that sped away from everything he knew, through snowy fields and starless skies. In these dreams, no one called him names. No one shoved him or glared at him for his silence. Sometimes, in the dream, he had a friend. Just one.
A blurry figure who sat beside him on the train and didn't ask questions.
Someone who just… stayed.
But every morning, the sun rose the same. His cramped bed in the orphanage creaked beneath him. The paint on the walls peeled a little more. His roommates—other boys who carried their own wounds—grunted awake. And Jihoon got up, washed his face in cold water, and went to school.
Again.
One winter afternoon, he returned to the library and found an old manual typewriter in the back corner, buried beneath unused supplies.
It was rusted and slow. Some of the keys stuck. But Jihoon stared at it as if it were a miracle.
He asked the librarian timidly if he could use it.
She blinked at him, surprised he'd spoken. But after a beat, she nodded.
He came every day after school.
He brought blank pages from the recycling bin and typed short paragraphs, slowly, carefully, like building something sacred from broken bones. He wrote stories about orphans with wings. About silent boys who could talk to stars. About a kingdom where sadness could be bottled and tossed into the sea.
He didn't show anyone.
Didn't need to.
The words didn't belong to anyone else. They were his alone. A world that couldn't be taken or mocked or bruised.
Jihoon stood taller, though still frail. His face had begun to change—cheekbones a little sharper, eyes a little darker—but his expression remained the same: calm, unreadable, distant.
Students still left him alone. Some now whispered rumors that he was cursed, or that he came from a mental hospital, or that he had rich relatives watching from the shadows. Jihoon let them believe what they wanted. He wasn't interested in correcting lies that gave him more space.
One boy tried to befriend him once—Wooseo, a cheerful kid who had just transferred from another district.
He smiled at Jihoon during lunch.
"You don't talk much, huh? That's okay. I talk enough for two."
Jihoon blinked.
The next day, Wooseo was shoved in the hallway after laughing too loudly beside Jihoon. The look in Wooseo's eyes afterward said it all: You're trouble.
Jihoon returned to eating lunch alone.
He found an abandoned rooftop near the school's gym building. It wasn't locked. Almost no one went there. From that height, the city looked strangely peaceful—rows of tiny houses, smoke from food stalls curling into the sky, the occasional plane dragging a white line through the clouds.
That rooftop became his sanctuary.
On his last year in Middle School, Jihoon was topping his class in literature, history, and even math—though he never raised his hand, never smiled when praised. The teachers marked him as "shy but diligent," and most of them barely noticed when he slipped out of class as soon as the bell rang. He was the kind of student who existed more on paper than in real life—a name at the top of the grading list, but invisible in every other way.
The bullying continued, though it grew subtler with time. Snide comments, whispered jokes, an occasional shove in the hallway. He learned to keep his head down, shoulders slumped, eyes on the ground. It was better that way. The less space he took up, the less likely someone was to knock him over.
But inside, something small and stubborn had begun to grow.
It started with the journal.
He bought it with coins he'd found on the sidewalk, hoarded for weeks until he had just enough to buy the cheapest notebook at the corner store. It had a faded blue cover and rough pages, but it felt like something sacred. The first night he brought it home to the orphanage, he hid it under his mattress like a secret. And for weeks, it stayed blank.
Then, one night—after a particularly cruel day at school and a dinner of cold rice and watery soup—he opened it and began to write.
It wasn't anything structured or beautiful. Just thoughts. Fragments. Questions.
Why did Mom leave?
Why do they all look at me like I'm disgusting?
If I disappeared tomorrow, would anyone even notice?
The act of writing them down felt like breathing for the first time after being underwater too long. It hurt, but it helped. And he kept doing it.
The journal became his sanctuary, just like the library. Over time, the questions gave way to stories—short, half-formed tales about boys who ran away from orphanages and found secret gardens, or lonely kids who made friends with shadows that whispered secrets. Some nights, he'd write until his hand ached and his eyes stung. It didn't matter. It made the silence feel less empty.
No one knew. No one asked. No one cared.
But for Jihoon, those words were lifelines.
They didn't erase the pain—not the gnawing hunger, not the orphanage's cold glares, not the weight of always being "less than." But they gave him something to hold on to. Something that was his
He brought a cheap notebook and sat there whenever he could, scribbling silently while the world below carried on.
One afternoon, as he watched a flock of birds arc across the sky, Jihoon wrote:
I think I must have been a ghost in my past life. That's why no one sees me now.
But the words didn't sting. Not anymore. They were just truths—soft and quiet.
Jihoon didn't know yet that life was about to shift again. That something—someone—was waiting on the horizon. But for now, he lived as he always had. Quietly. Silently. Surviving, not through anger or hope, but through the only thing he had ever truly trusted: his mind.
Spring came again. The world thawed, but Jihoon remained unchanged. His silence was no longer just survival—it had become second nature, woven into his very skin.
His teachers didn't expect him to speak unless called upon. The boys at school no longer bothered bullying him much; it was hard to get a rise out of someone who didn't flinch. Girls never looked his way, and Jihoon was grateful for that too. Attention had always felt like a curse, not a gift.
One teacher—Mr. Han, a weary literature instructor with bloodshot eyes and nicotine-stained fingers—once stopped beside Jihoon's desk during afterschool study hours.
"You write well," he said, flipping through one of Jihoon's essays. "Too well for a kid your age. You ever think of becoming a writer?"
Jihoon blinked. He hadn't expected praise. He didn't know what to do with it.
Mr. Han didn't wait for an answer. He just walked away, muttering, "Don't waste it."
That night, Jihoon wrote his longest story yet.
It was about a boy who couldn't speak, living in a town where everyone had forgotten how to listen. The boy built a lighthouse from paper and ink, hoping someone—anyone—would see the light from far away.
His days were still gray, but the writing gave them texture.
Each chapter he finished in his notebook gave him something to hold on to—a flicker, small and fragile, but real.
Books were his other lifeline. He devoured them all: fiction, essays, poetry, even thick historical volumes no one else touched. The librarian, perhaps sensing something sacred in Jihoon's quiet devotion, began saving new donations for him. She never asked him questions. She only nodded when he appeared, and smiled faintly when he left.
It was the closest thing to kindness he regularly experienced.