Jihoon didn't know why he applied. Maybe it was because the notice said "only one seat," and something in him stirred at the idea that maybe—just maybe—it could be his.
The process wasn't easy. It required recommendation letters, transcripts, essays, interviews. The guidance counselor at school looked bewildered when Jihoon approached him.
"You want to apply to Yeonhwa Academy?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "That place is full of chaebol kids. Rich kids. You know that, right?"
Jihoon nodded.
"And the application is… extensive. Do you have anyone to help with it?"
Jihoon shook his head. "I'll do it myself."
The counselor gave him a long look before sighing and printing out the forms. "Don't get your hopes up, kid. Places like that… they're not made for people like us."
Jihoon didn't answer. He just took the forms.
He worked on them at night, under the thin light of his desk lamp while the other boys in the group home snored or fought or cried themselves to sleep. He wrote about resilience. About survival. About reading books as a way to make sense of a world that never wanted him.
He didn't write about the bullying, or his mother, or the times he went hungry. But it was there, between the lines. Every sentence carried the weight of a boy who had learned to carry too much.
•
The weeks that followed were torturous.
Rumors spread around school that Jihoon had applied. Some people laughed. Others looked at him like he'd grown a second head.
"You?" Minjae scoffed one day in the hallway. "You think a place like that would take a ghost like you? You'll just embarrass yourself."
Jihoon ignored him.
But at night, the fear gnawed at his chest. Maybe Minjae was right. Maybe he was setting himself up for disappointment.
Still, he waited.
He kept his head down. Kept going to school. Kept dodging insults and tripping feet in the halls. He didn't hope. He didn't dare.
But he waited.
•
Then one day, the letter came.
He almost didn't recognize it at first. The envelope was thick, cream-colored, with gold-embossed lettering. Ms. Park tossed it onto the shared kitchen table with a bored look. "Looks fancy," she muttered.
Jihoon stared at it for a long time before picking it up. His hands trembled as he opened it.
And there it was.
A single sheet of paper with his name at the top.
"Congratulations. We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Yeonhwa Academy on a full merit-based scholarship…"
The rest of the words blurred. His vision swam. He sat down slowly, heart pounding.
He had done it.
He had clawed his way out of invisibility—if only for a moment.
•
But triumph was fleeting.
He knew what this meant. A new world. A world of polished shoes, tailored uniforms, chauffeur-driven sedans. A world that would see right through him, because he had none of those things.
He would be an outsider again. A ghost with a different uniform.
But this time, he wouldn't let himself disappear.
If there was one thing his years at the public school had taught him, it was how to survive when no one wanted you.
He was good at being overlooked. At being quiet. At listening. Observing. Enduring.
Maybe that was enough.
•
His last few weeks at the old school were uneventful. He didn't tell anyone about the acceptance. Not the other students, not the teachers, not even his friend Minho at the orphanage.
He packed his things quietly when the time came—just his usual worn out backpack, his small article of clothings and a few old books he saved from the rubbish at the back of the school courtyard. The rest of his life fit into a plastic folder: documents, identification, school forms.
There was no one to say goodbye to.
No one will ever noticed when he walked out of the orphanage for the last time.
•
On his final day, as he stood outside the school gate waiting for the bus, he glanced back at the building.
It looked smaller than he remembered. Less like a fortress, more like a relic. A place that had shaped him in silence.
He didn't hate it. He didn't miss it.
It had never been home.
It had just been another step on a road he hadn't chosen.
But now… now the road turned. Not toward something brighter, perhaps. But at least it turned.
He was going somewhere.
And for Jihoon, that was everything.
Jihoon had written nearly three full journals. He kept them in a shoebox hidden behind a loose floorboard in the orphanage. Sometimes, he'd reread old entries and barely recognize the trembling boy behind them. He was still quiet. Still afraid. Still alone. But there was a core of something stronger inside him now—something that refused to give up.
He didn't know what the future would hold. Didn't dare to dream beyond the next exam, the next page, the next breath. But in his stories, he was free.
And freedom, even imagined, was a kind of light.
On his Sixteenth birthday, Jihoon didn't expect a celebration.
No cake. No candles. No voices singing his name.
But that morning, he awoke earlier than usual, feeling… still.
There was a letter under his pillow. No stamp. No return address. Just folded paper, creased with care.
His hands trembled as he opened it.
It was typed in neat lines:
"If no one tells you this, I will.
You matter.
Even if no one sees you.
Even if the world keeps walking past.
Your silence speaks more than noise ever could.
Keep surviving. Keep writing.
One day, someone will read your story and remember your name."
There was no signature.
For the first time in years, Jihoon cried.
Not from pain. Not from loneliness.
But from the unbearable relief of being acknowledged.
Even anonymously.
Even once.
Later, he would wonder who had written it.
A teacher? A fellow orphan? The librarian?
He never found out.
But it didn't matter.
That letter became his talisman.
He folded it and kept it in the back of his notebook. When days were especially heavy, he read it again. And again.
He didn't believe in miracles. But he began to believe in small mercies. In quiet truths. In the idea that maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere had seen him—really seen him—and chosen not to walk away.
By the time the before the new school year starts, Jihoon had filled two notebooks with stories.
He didn't share them. But he began rewriting the best ones, editing with the same precision he used in exams.
He had a goal now—not spoken aloud, not shared—but one that kept his hands moving when the world turned its back.
One day, he would write a book.
Not for fame. Not for attention.
But for that invisible boy in some other corner of the world, surviving in silence the same way he had.
Jihoon would write it for him.
The winter of Jihoon's Sixteenth year arrived without celebration or warmth. Seoul's early snow flurried across his coat as he stepped onto the grounds of the prestigious Yeonhwa Academy. It blanketed the polished walkways like a quiet challenge, daring the unwanted, the uninvited, to cross through gates forged for the elite. Jihoon, with his secondhand shoes and plain black backpack, didn't belong. Not here. Not among children born into old money, political names, and international legacies.
But he'd scored the highest in the nation on the pre-university mock exams.
And so, the school let him in—begrudgingly, quietly, like one might accept an unwanted truth.
Jihoon paused at the gate, heart thudding beneath the scratchy wool of his uniform blazer. His hands, half-chapped from Seoul's biting wind, gripped the strap of his bag. Around him, luxury cars purred to soft stops, and students with gleaming shoes and designer coats spilled out like royalty. The girls' hair was styled, nails done in soft pastels. The boys laughed in deep, relaxed tones—comfortable in a world that always knew their names.
Jihoon's name meant nothing to them. He intended to keep it that way.
The entrance ceremony was a grand display of wealth masquerading as tradition. Marble columns towered over the newly admitted class. Velvet banners bearing the academy crest—two golden cranes circling a mountain—hung from the vaulted ceiling. Jihoon sat at the end of the last row, away from everyone. He kept his head down, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on the program in his lap. Around him, students whispered.
"Did you see Taeho? He came back early from Switzerland."
"He's not in our class, idiot. He's already in a special class"
"He still walked right through with the chairman's son. They're best friends, right?"
"Yeon Sungjae? Of course. Kang Taeho and the Yeons are like chaebol royalty."
"I also saw how close he was as well with Yeon Heesa. They truly perfect together, perhaps she is his girlfriend or something?"
"Oh…Yeah! I always saw her together with her brother, Sungjae, Taeho and their circle of friends wherever they go, such perfect people indeed."
The names stirred something in Jihoon, but he dared not look up. Instead, he focused on the crest—on the stitched cranes flying in circles that never ended. A metaphor, he thought bitterly. You fly in circles when you have nowhere else to go.
Kang Taeho arrived not as a student but as a presence.
Academically, Jihoon ascended quickly. He placed first in nearly every class exam, second in others, and gained a reputation among professors as a "special case"—a scholarship student who actually outperformed the sons of CEOs and heirs to fortune. But his classmates didn't see brilliance.
They saw poverty.
He wore the same coat every day, and his notebooks were secondhand—purchased from a charity store downtown. His lunches were quiet affairs of plain rice and pickled radish. He never spoke unless called upon. When teachers praised him, the room chilled.
They mocked him with polite cruelty.
"Wow, you must really need to study, huh? No money to fall back on."
"Do you even live in Seoul proper? Or just some outskirts with shared bathrooms?"
One boy—a smirking heir named Doyoung—once spilled milk over Jihoon's books during break and smiled as if he were doing Jihoon a favor. "Now they match your lunch," he said casually, brushing his designer sleeve.
Jihoon didn't respond. He merely cleaned the pages with a tissue and returned to his desk.
He had long since learned: speaking invites more punishment.
During a morning ethics class, Jihoon sat in his usual seat by the window, fingers poised over a borrowed pen. The teacher droned on about moral frameworks in leadership—some tired case study involving a business merger. Jihoon had read it already. Twice.
His eyes drifted out the window to the practice field below.
That's when he saw them.
Kang Taeho. Yeon Sungjae. Yeon Heesa.
Three names, powerful as empires, walking side by side on the track.
Heesa, elegant in her school uniform with a silk scarf and long flowing wine brown hair, laughed and pushed Sungjae's shoulder. Sungjae, dark brunette-haired and charming, tossed a smirk at her before turning to Taeho with his nonchalant and cold demeanor, who only nodded as if slightly amused. Their pace was unhurried, their world separate from everyone else's.
Taeho was tall and broad-shouldered, with raven-black hair cut cleanly above his brows and sharp eyes that revealed nothing. Even from afar, Jihoon could see the effortless way the crowd adjusted to him. They made space, laughed at his rare words, glanced toward him as if waiting for silent approval.
Jihoon didn't stare longer. He didn't allow himself to.
But the pull was there.
Jihoon didn't know why the sight caused a hollow ache in his chest. He had never been spoken to by any of them. He didn't even know their voices outside of what echoed through the halls in passing.
But he knew of them. Everyone did.
And in some cruel twist of fate, they were part of his story—though they didn't even know his name.
Heesa, the eldest daughter of the woman who replaced his mother in public. Sungjae, the eldest son with the face of the Yeon legacy. And Taeho, their confidant, the boy who lived as if untouched by hardship and the future heir of the K Group's Empire.
Jihoon turned back to his notes.
He had no place in their world. He never would.
But he would remain top of the class. That much, he could control.
He pulled out a poetry anthology and began to read.
It was the first time in months that he read something just because he wanted to. Not to escape. Not to perform. Just to feel.
The words were soft and aching and beautiful.
One line stayed with him: "We are all quiet things, waiting to be named."
Jihoon closed the book and held it against his chest.
He didn't cry.
Jihoon first noticed Taeho during lunch, standing at the far end of the upper terrace that overlooked the marble courtyard. Taeho's coat fluttered gently in the winter breeze, his posture elegant and detached. He wasn't talking—others spoke around him, orbiting like satellites. He only nodded occasionally, his gaze distant, as if even the school's grandeur didn't impress him.
He looked… unreachable.
But something deep inside him loosened.
Maybe it was okay to want more. Not just survival, but something gentler.
Not just endurance, but maybe… one day… a life.
Jihoon looked down at the notebook, flipping it open.
Inside was his own handwriting—scrawled, small, uncertain. But beneath some of the pages, there were notes in another hand. Encouraging, thoughtful, curious.
This part is beautiful.
You're onto something here.
Don't stop writing.
Jihoon closed the notebook, holding it close.
For the first time, he felt something stir in his chest—not grief, not fear.
But a fragile, impossible thing:
Hope.
Jihoon didn't dare to visit the orphanage.
He stayed in Seoul, as an only scholar living in the academy's exclusive dormitory with other elite students from across the country.
His usual routine consists of sitting in lectures. He took notes. He listened to topics. He wrote down ideas.
In those few short weeks, Jihoon felt something shift.
He wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was becoming someone.
And though he still walked alone most days, he no longer felt like a ghost.
He had a voice.
He had a mind.
He had worth.
One evening, as the lecture for the last subject ended, Jihoon wrote a letter.
Not to anyone.
Just to himself.
Dear Jihoon,
You made it to sixteen.
You've survived every door slammed in your face. Every night alone. Every day of silence.
You learned to read, to write, to think.
You found a world no one could take from you.
You're still here.
You're still trying.
And that's enough.
He folded the letter, placed it in his journal, and stared out at the Seoul skyline.
The lights were bright and far away, just like the dreams he never thought he'd be allowed to have.
But maybe, just maybe, they were no longer out of reach.
Maybe sixteen years of endurance was enough.
Maybe the next chapter could begin with something more.
Something real.
Something his.