Chap 50 : The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Pt 5) : The Boy Who Remembered
The Boy Who Remembered
Minjae worked harder than anyone he knew.
He studied until his eyes burned. He took extra classes. He stayed after school to ask teachers questions until they ran out of answers. He read textbooks on the bus, on the subway, in the few minutes between his part-time job and dinner.
Seo-ah told him to slow down.
Jung-hoon told him to keep going.
He kept going.
When the acceptance letter from Korea University arrived, Minjae stared at it for a full minute before he allowed himself to believe it was real.
Korea University.
One of the best schools in the country.
He had done it.
Seo-ah cried. Jung-hoon shook his hand with a grip that said more than words ever could. His foster siblings—all five of them—cheered and tackled him in a group hug that left him laughing and breathless and, for just a moment, almost happy.
Almost.
Because even in that moment—even with the letter in his hand and his family around him—he thought of her.
The girl with the purple hair.
The girl who had fallen from the sky.
Would she be proud of him?
He didn't know why it mattered. He didn't know why her opinion—the opinion of someone he had seen for maybe ten minutes, someone he had never spoken to, someone who might not even exist in any way that mattered—meant anything at all.
But it did.
It mattered more than he wanted to admit.
University was different from high school.
Different in good ways and bad ways. The good: no one knew who he used to be. The bad: no one knew who he used to be.
He was a blank slate. A new person. He could be anyone he wanted.
He chose to be someone quiet. Someone observant. Someone who listened more than he spoke.
He made friends—not many, but enough. He went to classes. He studied. He worked his part-time job at a convenience store near the university, stacking shelves and ringing up customers and pretending not to see the ghosts that drifted through the aisles.
And then he met Sera.
She was in his economics class.
He noticed her on the first day—not because she was quiet and brooding. Quite the opposite. She was, at times—or most times, if he was being honest—loud and dramatic, yet she never demanded attention. That was what Minjae liked about Sera.
She always loved sitting at the back before classes began, and she always kept her head down. She looked at her textbook like it was written in a language she didn't speak.
They became friends gradually.
Minjae recognized something in Sera—something familiar. She was driven, like him. Poverty had carved her into shape the same way it had carved him. The scholarships she had earned were proof of that. And what Minjae admired most, what made him decide to be her friend from the very beginning, was that she wore her achievements without a trace of the arrogance he saw in so many other girls on campus. She had earned everything on her own, and she never once acted like that made her better than anyone else.
Their friendship didn't happen all at once—it was the kind that built over time, over shared silences and small conversations, over the space between desks in a crowded lecture hall.
She was a lovely girl. Funny. Witty. Cheerful. She had two best friends who had been with her since middle school, and the way they laughed together made Minjae believe that some things in the world were still good.
She talked about things that didn't make sense. She laughed at things that didn't make sense. She was like a glowing firefly, always flying with so much glee that you couldn't help but watch her light up the dark.
But she was also kind.
Kind in a way he came to appreciate more and more over time. She remembered small things—his favourite ramen flavour, the way he took his coffee, the fact that he hated it when people stood too close behind him. She asked questions and actually listened to the answers. She laughed at his jokes—the bad ones, the ones that weren't actually funny—and somehow made him feel like they were.
She was easy to be around.
Easy in a way that most people weren't.
He liked her.
Not in love with her. Not that kind of like. The kind of like you feel for a younger sister—protective, fond, quietly grateful that she existed in the same world as you.
Everyone else thought differently, of course.
His friends called it a situationship. His coworkers at the convenience store winked at him whenever she came in. Even his foster siblings asked about "the girl" with knowing smiles and teasing voices.
He let them think what they wanted.
It was easier than explaining the truth—that he wasn't interested in her that way, that his heart already belonged to someone else. Someone he had seen once when he was twelve years old and had never been able to forget.
Someone who probably didn't even know he existed.