When the Han River Sleeps
The Weight of Silence
Winter’s quiet had settled over Seoul like a soft shroud. Yuna’s studio felt colder than usual, streaked with slanting afternoon light that did little to chase away the shadows gathering in her heart. Her sketches lay untouched on the desk, her fingers idle, as memories pressed in like the chill outside her window.
The note Jihoon had left—the one she had reread countless times—held a secret she wasn’t sure she was ready to face. Yet, beneath her uncertainty was a growing ache to understand, to reach beyond the silence that had stretched between them like an unseen wall.
She wrapped herself in her coat and stepped out, drawn as if by the river’s call. The 한강 was stretched before her, vast and still beneath the pale winter sun. Snow dusted the banks, the city’s hum muffled under the blanket of cold.
Jihoon waited where the bridge met the path, his breath visible in the sharp air. He looked smaller somehow, weighed down by the invisible heaviness between them.
“Yuna,” he began, voice rough but steady. “I’ve been afraid. Afraid that the past would always overshadow the now. That I wouldn’t be enough… for you, for myself.”
She reached out, her palm warm against his frost-tinged fingers. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be here.”
His eyes searched hers—hope tangled with vulnerability. He drew a shaky breath and pulled a small photo from his pocket: a glimpse of a boy and a woman, smiling beneath a ribbon of cherry blossoms.
“That’s my sister,” he said quietly. “She died before I could say goodbye. Music has been my way of holding onto her—and running from the pain.”
Yuna’s heart throbbed with compassion, the ache of shared loss threading their souls. She took his hand fully now, grounding him.
“Maybe,” she offered softly, “we can write our own song. One where the past is part of the melody, not the silence.”
The river whispered beneath them, its endless current a reminder that healing was a journey—a slow unfolding of trust and courage.
As the first stars blinked awake, Yuna and Jihoon stood together, fragile but unbroken, beginning to bridge the silence with the language of hope.