The world did not end when Crimson Lies was deleted. The sun rose, customers came to the shop, and flowers continued their silent, stubborn cycle of blooming and fading. But for Seol, the air itself had changed. The constant, low-grade hum of dread was gone, replaced by a fragile, watchful quiet. It was the silence after a storm, where every sound is new and every movement is scrutinized for signs of the next squall.
Siheon had vanished again, but this absence was different. It wasn't the hostile isolation of the writer in his fortress. It felt more like a retreat, a convalescence. Choi Taek, predictably, had descended into a state of near-apoplexy.
"He did what?" he'd shrieked over the phone, his voice cracking. "He can't! The contracts! The money! Seol-ssi, you have to talk to him! You're the only one he listens to!"
"He doesn't listen to me," Seol had replied, her voice calm. "Not in the way you mean. And I won't be your messenger." She'd ended the call, a newfound sense of finality settling in her bones. She was done being a pawn in other people's games.
A week passed. Then, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, he appeared.
The bell above the door chimed its familiar note, and there he was, standing in the entrance of The Glass Greenhouse. He looked… ordinary. Or as ordinary as a man of his impossible looks and notoriety could look. He wore a simple, dark raincoat, beaded with moisture, and he held no tablet, no notebook, no contract. His hands were empty.
Soo-ji, who was arranging tulips at the front, froze, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and fascination. Seol, who was in the back watering the orchids, felt her heart perform a complicated, syncopated rhythm. She set down her watering can and walked to the front, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Yoon Siheon-nim," she said, her voice carefully neutral.
"Ha Seol-ssi," he replied. His voice was the same low baritone, but the cold, analytical edge was sanded away. He sounded… tired. Human.
He didn't offer an explanation. He didn't mention the deleted manuscript. He simply stood there, his gaze taking in the shop—the vibrant life, the organized chaos, the sheer, unscripted realness of it all.
"I…" he began, then stopped, uncharacteristically hesitant. He frowned, as if searching for a word that wasn't in his extensive vocabulary. "I was walking. And I ended up here."
It was the least calculated, most truthful thing he could have said.
Seol felt a knot in her chest loosen slightly. "It's raining," she observed softly.
"Yes," he agreed, his eyes finally meeting hers. They held no grand design, no hidden narrative. They were just… looking at her. "It is."
An awkward, but not unpleasant, silence descended. Soo-ji, sensing the profound shift in the atmosphere, quietly slipped into the back room, giving them privacy.
"Would you like some tea?" Seol asked, the offer emerging from a place of instinct, not strategy.
He nodded, a single, curt movement. "Yes. Thank you."
She led him to the small, cluttered back room, a space he had never seen. It was her sanctuary, filled with drying herbs, bags of soil, sketches for arrangements, and the faint, sweet smell of decaying petals. It was the antithesis of his minimalist penthouse. He sat on a simple wooden stool, his large frame seeming to make the room shrink, while she boiled water in an old electric kettle.
He didn't speak. He just watched her move—measuring the tea leaves, pouring the water, the simple, domestic grace of it. It was a new kind of observation, one devoid of notetaking or analysis. It was just… witnessing.
She placed a steaming mug in front of him. Chamomile. For peace. A choice she made not to manipulate, but to offer.
He wrapped his long fingers around the warm ceramic. "I don't know what to do," he said, the confession quiet, almost lost in the sound of the rain pattering against the window.
"About what?" she asked, leaning against the workbench, keeping the small table between them.
"About any of it," he admitted, staring into his tea. "The publisher. The expectations. This… blank page." He looked up, his gaze vulnerable. "How do you start a story when you don't know the ending?"
"You don't start with the story," Seol said, echoing her lesson from weeks ago, but with a new, deeper understanding. "You start with a single word. And then you add another. You don't worry about the final period. You just… build the sentence you're in."
He considered this, his brow furrowed. "The first word is the most difficult."
"Only if you believe it has to be perfect." She took a sip of her own tea. "Sometimes, the most honest words are the messiest."
He was silent for a long time, the only sound the rain and the gentle hum of the cooler. He looked around the room, his eyes lingering on a bundle of lavender hanging upside down to dry, on a child's drawing of a sunflower Soo-ji had taped to the wall.
"I'm sorry," he said, the words so soft she almost missed them.
Seol stilled. "For what?"
"For the gardenia. For the map on the floor. For using your fear as… raw material." He paused, struggling. "For not seeing you. Only the character I wanted you to be."
It was an apology without justification, without intellectual framing. It was just an admission of wrong. A first word.
Tears pricked at the back of Seol's eyes, but she willed them away. This was not a moment for sentimentality; it was a moment for truth, as fragile as a new seedling.
"I'm not your mother, Siheon," she said, her voice gentle but firm. "And I won't pay the price for her tragedy."
He flinched as if she'd struck him, but he didn't look away. He held her gaze, and in his eyes, she saw the painful, necessary acceptance of that truth.
"I know," he whispered. "I am… beginning to know that."
He finished his tea and stood. The visit felt like it was ending, this strange, quiet interlude in the rain.
"Thank you for the tea," he said, his manners oddly formal and endearing.
"You're welcome," she replied.
He walked to the door that led back into the shop, then paused, his hand on the frame. He didn't turn around.
"The sentence I'm in," he said, his voice barely audible. "It's a good one."
And then he was gone, the bell chiming softly in his wake.
Seol stood in the quiet back room, the scent of chamomile and damp earth filling her senses. She walked to the front window and watched him through the rain-streaked glass. He didn't look back. He just pulled up his collar and walked down the street, a solitary figure gradually being absorbed by the grey haze of the downpour.
He hadn't promised her anything. He hadn't declared his feelings or outlined a new future. He had simply come. He had sat in her space. He had drunk her tea. He had apologized. He had admitted he was lost.
It wasn't a romance. It wasn't a thriller. It was just a man and a woman in a room, speaking a few true words.
Soo-ji emerged from the back, her eyes full of questions. "Well? What did he want?"
Seol watched the empty space where he had been, a strange, tentative warmth blooming in her chest where only cold fear had resided for so long.
"He was just practicing," she said softly, a small, genuine smile touching her lips for the first time in weeks. "He was writing his first new sentence."
It was messy. It was uncertain. It was far from perfect. But it was a start. And for now, in the gentle aftermath of the storm, a start was everything.