The kiss was a ghost. It haunted the silence of The Glass Greenhouse, a phantom pressure on Seol's lips that reappeared with every quiet moment. The shop felt different—not safer, but charged, as if the air itself was holding its breath. The two bouquets, hers and his, remained on the workbench. She couldn't bring herself to dismantle them. They were a crime scene and a cathedral, all at once.
He didn't contact her for three days. No texts, no scheduled "sessions," no unexpected appearances. The silence was more unnerving than any of his clinical observations or orchestrated dates. It was the silence of the void after a detonation.
On the fourth day, Soo-ji, who had been watching her with the wary eyes of a mother bird, finally spoke. "Unnie, you look like you've seen one of his ghosts. What happened?"
Seol shook her head, unable to articulate the tectonic shift that had occurred. How could she explain that she had set out to manipulate a monster and had instead found a man, and that the discovery was infinitely more terrifying? "The experiment is… evolving," she said, the words tasting like ash.
It was Choi Taek who broke the silence, his call buzzing with a frantic, new energy. "He's sent the first fifty pages," he blurted out, without a greeting. "Ha Seol-ssi, it's… it's a masterpiece. Dark, obsessive, lyrical. The publisher is weeping with relief."
Seol's blood ran cold. "What is it about?"
"It's a thriller, of course, but it's different. The protagonist is a forensic botanist who becomes obsessed with a woman who runs a flower shop. He uses poisonous plants to eliminate anyone who gets close to her, framing it all as tragic accidents. But the writing… the internal monologue… it's not cold. It's anguished. It's like reading a love letter written in blood."
Seol's knees gave way. She sank onto a stool, the phone pressed hard against her ear. He was writing it. He was transcribing her life, her fears, her profession, into his narrative. The "lighting rig," the "embezzlement scandal"—they were just early drafts. The book was the final, polished blueprint.
"I need to see it," she demanded, her voice trembling.
"He's forbidden it. Says no one can see it until the first draft is complete. He's a fortress. But, Seol-ssi… he mentioned you. He said, 'Tell the florist her bouquet was the key that unlocked the final chamber.' What does that mean?"
The final chamber. It sounded like a tomb.
"It means nothing," Seol whispered and ended the call.
She had to see him. She had to look into his eyes and see if the man who had kissed her with such shattered vulnerability was still in there, or if the novelist had fully consumed him. She went to his penthouse, unannounced, a breach of a dozen contractual clauses.
The assistant in the lobby tried to stop her, but Seol's expression must have been ferocious, because he stepped aside. She rode the silent elevator up, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
She found him not in his study, but on the vast, empty terrace, standing at the railing and looking out over the city as the sun began to set. The wind tugged at his dark hair, and he wore the same black sweater from the greenhouse, now looking lived-in, almost human. Scattered at his feet were dozens of crumpled pages, victims of his perfectionism.
He didn't turn as she approached. "You're not scheduled," he said, his voice flat, drained of all the feverish energy from before.
"Schedules seem irrelevant now," she replied, stopping a few feet behind him. She looked at the pages on the ground. One caught her eye, a single typed line: He knew the toxicity of every blossom in her shop, but her kindness was the only venom he had no antidote for.
"You're writing about me," she said. It wasn't a question.
"I'm writing because of you," he corrected, still not facing her. "There is a distinction. The character is a fiction. A vessel. You are the catalyst that filled it."
"Stop hiding behind semantics, Siheon!" The name, once a weapon, now felt like a plea. "You're writing about a man who kills for the woman he loves. You're using my shop, my knowledge. You had Choi Taek research florist's wire. Are you writing my murder into your book, too? Is that the 'final chamber'?"
Finally, he turned. The setting sun cast his face in sharp relief, highlighting the shadows under his eyes. He looked ravaged. The cool, detached author was gone. In his place was a man at war with himself.
"You think I'm writing a plan," he said, his voice low and raw. "I'm writing a confession."
He bent down, picked up a handful of the crumpled pages, and thrust them toward her. "Read it, then! Read the madness! You wanted me to feel? This is what feeling is! It's a cacophony! It's a system failure! I can't think, I can't sleep. All I can do is write this… this sickness onto the page."
Her hands shook as she took the pages. The prose was indeed a masterpiece—tight, atmospheric, chilling. But it was the subtext that stole her breath. The forensic botanist's obsession wasn't portrayed as heroic or romantic; it was depicted as a debilitating disease. His internal monologue was a torrent of self-loathing and desperate, twisted love.
She offered him a sunflower, and for a moment, he saw a world where he was not a creature of the shadows, but a man standing in the light. The terror of that possibility was more paralyzing than any guilt.
Seol looked up from the page, her eyes wide. "You're not writing a thriller. You're writing a tragedy. About yourself."
A harsh, broken sound escaped his lips. It was almost a laugh. "All my stories have been about myself. I just never had the courage to admit it. I thought human connection was a predictable, boring algorithm. But you… you were a variable my code couldn't process. You were a sunflower in a world I had designed to be monochrome."
He took a step closer, his gaze desperate. "That day in your shop… that was the first time in my life the noise in my head stopped. There was no plot, no narrative arc. There was just… the scent of soil, and the weight of a flower in my hand, and you." His voice dropped to a whisper. "And then I kissed you, and the noise came back a thousand times louder, and it had your voice."
This was the true anatomy of Yoon Siheon. Not a reclusive genius, but a profoundly broken man who had built a fortress of intellect to protect himself from a world he found unbearably chaotic. And she had blown a hole in the walls.
"So what happens now?" Seol asked, her own anger dissolving into a vast, aching pity. "You finish the book. You exorcise your demons. And then? What happens to me? To us?"
"There is no 'us'!" The words burst from him with the force of an explosion. He ran a hand through his hair, his composure彻底 shattering. "Don't you see? I am not the hero of this story. I am the villain. I am the flaw in the design. The only way this ends is in ruin. It's the only ending I know how to write!"
He was confessing not to a crime, but to a fate. He was so enslaved by his own dark muse that he believed he was incapable of a different outcome.
"Then learn a new one," Seol said, her voice soft but unwavering. She dropped the pages, letting the wind catch them and scatter them over the terrace. "You're not a god, Siheon. You're a man. And men can change. Stories can be rewritten."
She moved toward him, stopping when they were almost touching. She could see the pulse hammering in his throat, feel the heat of his turmoil.
"The kiss wasn't data corruption," she whispered, looking up into his tormented eyes. "It was the first true sentence you've ever written. Don't you dare try to edit it out."
For a long moment, they stood frozen in the dying light, the city sprawling beneath them like a kingdom of possibilities. The war was visible in his eyes—the lifelong habit of darkness battling against the terrifying, fragile hope she was offering.
Then, something in him yielded. The rigid tension bled from his shoulders. He didn't reach for her. He didn't speak. He simply looked at her, and for the first time, it felt like he was truly seeing her, without the filter of story or analysis.
The moment was shattered by the sharp buzz of the terrace door. Choi Taek stood there, his face a mixture of anxiety and excitement.
"Siheon! The editors are on a conference call. They're desperate. They need to know the title. What do we call this thing?"
Siheon didn't take his eyes off Seol. The silence stretched, thick with the weight of the unspoken battle. He was at a crossroads, the narrative fork in the road. He could name the book, and in doing so, cement its dark destiny. Or he could choose something else.
He finally turned his head, his gaze still holding a fragment of hers.
"Tell them," he said, his voice quiet but clear, carrying over the wind, "the title is Crimson Lies."
Taek's face lit up. "Perfect! I'll tell them!" He disappeared back inside.
Seol felt the name like a physical blow. Crimson Lies. The beautiful, dangerous falsehood. He had chosen the title of his tragedy.
Siheon turned back to her, his expression now unreadable, the brief window of vulnerability slammed shut.
"You should go, Ha Seol-ssi," he said, his voice once again cool and distant, the author back in control. "The narrative requires a period of isolation. For the protagonist to descend into his final crisis."
He had retreated. The fortress walls had reformed, higher and stronger than ever. He had chosen the only ending he knew.
As Seol walked away, the taste of the kiss now completely gone, replaced by the metallic flavor of dread, she understood the true stakes. She was no longer fighting to save her shop, or even just her life. She was fighting to save Yoon Siheon from the darkest story ever written: the one he was telling himself. And she was running out of time.