Many days passed in a blur of routine. Alara had almost forced herself to forget about the GoldenChalk hidden in the dark, dusty corner of her cupboard. Life had returned to its usual, predictable rhythm—simple, quiet, and filled with the weight of domestic responsibilities. She didn't feel the immediate urge to reach for that dangerous magic again; the icy fear of that midnight encounter in the garden was still fresh in her mind, a constant reminder of how easily her reality could shatter.
But while her hands were busy with chores, her heart remained firmly anchored thousands of miles away, in a city of neon lights and melodic dreams.
Alara sat by her window, the dying evening sun casting a warm, amber glow over her worn notebook. She wasn't sketching today. Instead, she was writing—not just words, but pieces of her soul. She was pouring her deepest emotions into a song for LeeSu-ho, a melody that sought to express the beautiful, haunting ache of loving someone from an impossible distance.
Her pen moved softly, almost reverently, across the paper as she wrote the first verse in Korean. It was a language she had taught herself through sheer willpower, spending late nights with dictionaries and online tutorials just to understand the world he lived in.
Verse 1:
우린 같은 세상에 살지만 (We live in the same world)
다른 하늘 아래 서 있어 (But we stand under different skies)
손을 뻗어도 닿지 않는 (Even if I reach out, I can't touch you)
그 먼 거리 속의 너 (You, in that far distance)
화면 속의 너를 보며 (Looking at you through the screen)
나는 조용히 웃어 (I smile quietly)
You don't know me
But you're my everything
She whispered the lyrics to herself, her voice barely a breath against the quiet air of her room. Alara was a girl who despised fake emotions or the overacting so common in the world around her; her passion was raw and pure. To the neighbors and her family, she was just a simple, obedient girl doing her chores with a bowed head. But inside the fortress of her mind, she was a poet, an architect creating a bridge of music across the ocean.
As she finished the final line of the verse, her gaze involuntarily drifted toward the cupboard where the chalk lay dormant. LeeSu-ho was a constant presence in her reality, a ghost she talked to when the house was too quiet. Every song he released felt like a personal letter to her, and now, she was finally writing back.
She closed her notebook, the ink still wet. Alara didn't know yet that the universe was listening. She didn't realize that soon, her lyrics wouldn't just be ink on a page—she was about to find herself standing in the very world she had only ever dared to write about. The silent melody was about to become a roar.