The gardenia's scent, once a comfort, now felt cloying and suffocating. Seol stared at it for a long time, the note crumpled in her fist. 'The victim in my second novel.' It wasn't a slip of the tongue; it was a deliberate choice. A flourish. A writer toying with his subject.
Her initial fear curdled into a sharp, cold anger. She was not a character in his book. She was a florist up to her elbows in debt, yes, but she was also Ha Seol, who could read the unspoken language of flowers better than he could ever read the human heart. If this was a game of narratives, she would not be a passive victim. She would be a formidable co-author.
The next morning, she arrived at his penthouse for their first "private session," as stipulated in Clause 4.2: 'Scheduled Intimacy for Data Gathering.' She carried a large, woven basket.
Siheon opened the door, already dressed in his uniform of dark, expensive casualwear. His eyes, those analytical instruments, flicked from her face to the basket. "You're early."
"I brought materials," she said, her voice breezy, a stark contrast to the tension coiling in her stomach. She swept past him into the sterile expanse of his living room. "You want to observe a romance, Author-nim. But you're trying to write a symphony by only studying sheet music. You need to hear the music."
She set the basket on his pristine white coffee table, a bold invasion of his minimalist space. It was filled with an assortment of flowers, greens, and tools.
"What is this?" he asked, his tone neutral but his posture wary.
"A lesson," Seol said, pulling out shears and a roll of twine. "Sit. Observe."
To her surprise, he did, choosing an armchair opposite her like a scientist settling in at a microscope. He produced a small, leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen.
"Please, don't," she said, not looking up from her work as she began to sort the flowers. "You'll be tempted to write what you see instead of seeing what's there."
A beat of silence. Then, she heard the soft click of the notebook being closed and set aside. A small victory.
"Romance isn't just a series of gestures, like your list in the car," she began, her fingers deftly stripping leaves from a stem of eucalyptus. Its sharp, clean scent began to cut through the apartment's odorless air. "It's a language. And like any language, it has dialects and nuances. A bouquet can say 'I'm sorry,' 'I adore you,' or 'I'm deeply worried about you,' all with the same dozen roses, depending on how they're arranged."
She held up a sprig of lavender. "This means devotion. But it can also mean distrust. Context is everything." She then picked up a vibrant orange gerbera daisy. "And this? It means cheerfulness. Innocence. But pair it with something sharp and thorny, and the meaning twists. It becomes a warning disguised as a gift."
She let her gaze meet his. "Much like a white gardenia placed where a black rose used to be."
Siheon's expression didn't change, but a new intensity focused in his eyes. He was intrigued. "You're implying my gesture was threatening."
"I'm interpreting the subtext," she corrected. "A writer should appreciate that." She returned to her work, her hands moving with practiced ease. "You want to experience a romance? Then we start here, with the building blocks. Not with choreographed dates at galleries."
For the next hour, she worked in silence, building a bouquet. She didn't create something pretty and placid. She built a narrative. She started with a base of dark, leathery magnolia leaves for endurance and dignity. She added spires of purple delphinium for levity and fun, but tucked behind them, almost hidden, were the delicate, bell-shaped flowers of fritillaria for persecution. The central focus was a cluster of deep red camellias, their waxy petals perfect and enduring. 'You're a flame in my heart,' they traditionally said. But in the language of flowers Seol was weaving, they spoke of a relentless, unspoken excellence, a perfection that demanded a price.
It was a bouquet about her. About this situation. A performance, yes, but one layered with truths he was probably too clinical to decipher.
When she was finished, she held it out to him. "This is a feeling. Not a data point."
He took it, his long fingers careful around the stems. He studied it, his brow furrowed slightly. He wasn't seeing a collection of flowers; he was trying to parse a code.
"It's… conflicted," he said finally.
"Most real things are," Seol replied, gathering her tools. "Your contract calls for a 'believable deep emotional connection.' You can't get to deep without first navigating the conflicted, the uncertain, the afraid." She stood. "Our time is up for today."
She left him there, standing in his perfect apartment, holding a tangled, fragrant, emotionally complex piece of her artifice.
---
The following week, their "dates" took on a new, unsettling quality. Siheon seemed to have taken her lesson to heart, but he processed it through the filter of his own twisted genius.
He took her on a moonlit picnic, just as the synopsis had foretold. But it wasn't in a peaceful park. It was on the grounds of an abandoned observatory, the skeletal dome of the telescope silhouetted against the full moon. The blanket was spread over cold, flagstone tiles.
"The setting introduces a variable of sublime isolation," he explained, unpacking a basket of exquisite, tiny sandwiches. "It heightens the sense of two people against the world, a common trope in the second-act consolidation of a romantic arc."
Seol wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "It's also the setting for at least three murder scenes in various thrillers I've read."
He almost smiled. "You're well-read. Good. It adds verisimilitude."
He began to ask her questions, not about her preferences or her life, but about fear. "What is the first thing you remember being truly afraid of? Not a childish fear of the dark, but a deep, rational dread."
She played along, telling him about the terror of hearing her mother's diagnosis. He listened, rapt, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. He wasn't listening with empathy; he was mining for raw material.
"Excellent," he murmured, jotting a note in the small book he now carried discreetly. "The intersection of love and loss is a potent catalyst for character motivation."
Then came the rain-soaked confession. He orchestrated it perfectly, luring her to the Han River under a pretext just as the skies opened. They stood under his large black umbrella, the world dissolving into a grey curtain around them.
"In this scenario," he said, his voice a low rumble against the drumming rain, "the external chaos of the storm forces internal clarity. The characters are stripped of pretense."
He turned to her, water droplets catching in his dark lashes. He looked tragically beautiful, a hero from a classic film. "Seol," he said, and the use of her first name, without honorifics, was a calculated shock. "These past weeks… have been the most analytically stimulating of my life."
She almost laughed. Analytically stimulating. Even his confession was a thesis statement.
But then his hand came up to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheek. His touch was surprisingly warm against her rain-chilled skin. His eyes searched hers, and for a fleeting, heart-stopping moment, the analysis was gone. There was only a profound, bewildering intensity. It was the chaos he claimed to despise.
"I find myself… preoccupied with your data," he whispered, his breath a ghost against her lips.
It was the most romantic, most terrifying thing anyone had ever said to her. She felt her carefully constructed performance waver. Her breath hitched. Her heart, the traitorous organ, hammered against her ribs. This was no longer her controlled performance. This was his script, and he was a devastatingly good director.
She was saved by the violent buzzing of his phone. He pulled back, the moment shattered, the intense novelist replaced by the irritated professional. He looked at the screen, his expression hardening. "It's Taek. The publisher is demanding pages."
The spell was broken. But the residue of it clung to her, cold and unsettling.
The real dread began a few days later. Soo-ji, her ever-cheerful best friend, had been growing increasingly quiet. Finally, over a late-night cup of tea in the shop's back room, she confessed.
"It's probably nothing, Unnie," Soo-ji said, stirring her tea nervously. "But that guy, Kim Minjae? The one who came in last week and would not stop flirting with you, even after you told him you were seeing someone?"
Seol remembered. A boisterous, good-natured photographer who'd wanted a bouquet for a gallery opening. He'd been a little persistent, but harmless.
"What about him?"
"He was in an accident," Soo-ji said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "A lighting rig at his studio fell. They said it was faulty equipment. He broke his arm and got a concussion."
A cold knot tightened in Seol's stomach. "That's… terrible. But accidents happen."
"I know, I know," Soo-ji rushed on. "But remember that director at the gallery? The loud one who was all over you two? Park Director?"
Seol nodded, the coldness spreading.
"His company… it's being investigated for massive embezzlement. The story broke this morning. It's a huge scandal. His career is finished."
Coincidence. It had to be coincidence. The world was full of random, tragic events. But Siheon's words echoed in her mind: 'The victim in my second novel…' His stories were blueprints of perfect crimes, of tragedies that looked like accidents, of ruin that appeared self-inflicted.
Was this his way of editing the narrative? Removing characters who posed a threat to his central plot? The overly flirtatious rival. The nosy side character.
That night, alone in her apartment above the shop, she did what she should have done weeks ago. She pulled up the synopsis and early reviews of Yoon Siheon's second novel, The Silent Garden.
The story followed a reclusive botanist who becomes obsessed with a beautiful woman who moves in across the street. He admires her from afar, learning her routines, her preferences. He leaves her anonymous gifts—her favorite flowers, of course. When a charismatic new neighbor begins to court her, the botanist doesn't confront him. Instead, the rival is stung by a rare, venomous bee that somehow found its way into his apartment. When the woman's boss makes a pass at her at a company retreat, he suffers a fatal fall from a cliff during a solitary hike.
The police rule both incidents as tragic accidents. The botanist continues his quiet courtship, until the woman, isolated and vulnerable, finally turns to the only person who seems to understand her—the kind, quiet man next door.
Seol's blood turned to ice water.
Kim Minjae. The photographer. A lighting rig fell.
Park Director.The boisterous director. His career was ruined by a scandal.
It wasn't a direct copy. It was an adaptation. A refinement. In Siheon's world, reality was just a first draft, and he was the ruthless editor.
She walked to her window, looking out at the quiet street. A movement across the street caught her eye—a shadow detaching itself from the deeper shadows of a doorway. Or was it just a trick of the light? Her heart leapt into her throat.
Was he here? Was he watching? Not just for data, but for the next plot point?
She was no longer just an actress in his play. She was the damsel tied to the tracks, and the train, whistling in the distance, was a story he had already written. The question was, could she rewrite the ending before the final chapter arrived?