The day unfolded with a strange softness, the kind of calm that felt wrong beneath the surface. The sky was bright, the breeze gentle, and the campus glittered with morning sunlight — but Sera felt a thin veil of heaviness resting somewhere beneath her ribs, as if she were breathing through cotton.
She walked across the courtyard with measured steps. Students were everywhere — laughing, complaining, racing toward their classes — but their voices drifted past her like background noise. They sounded distant, not because she was absent, but because something inside her was… slow.
Still. Listening.
She didn't know what she was waiting for.
Only that something felt different today.
She reached the lecture hall door and paused with her hand on the frame, steadying her breath before slipping inside. The early students barely glanced her way. She sat down near the window, the sunlight pooling over her desk in a warm, gold sheet.
Her pen rested between her fingers. Her notebook lay open. Everything looked normal.
But she didn't feel normal.
Her heart was too quiet. Her thoughts were too loud.
She pressed her thumb against the paper, grounding herself.
Then he entered.
Julian walked in like he always did — composed, neat, precise — but today there was something clipped about the way he moved, something slightly too controlled. His coat folded over his arm, papers held with exact pressure, steps measured in perfect, almost mechanical rhythm.
He didn't scan the room the way he usually did. He didn't look for her.
He just walked straight to his desk and began setting up.
She waited. She watched.
Then, like a delayed response, he lifted his eyes.
They brushed past her.
Not lingering. Not softening. Just a brief acknowledgement — the kind he might give any student.
Something fragile inside her dipped.
Not broken. Just lowered.
She didn't look away though—not yet.
She wanted to see if he glanced back.
He didn't.
Her fingers curled gently around the edge of her notebook.
A quiet voice inside her whispered: How long can I keep pretending this doesn't sting?
How long can I keep feeling something he refuses to name?
How long can I… wait?
And another voice whispered softer: You don't have time to waste your heart like this.
She swallowed.
She wasn't leaving.
She wasn't giving up.
But she wasn't endless either.
There was only so much silence a heart could hold before it began aching against its own walls.
---
The lecture began, crisp and precise, but Sera noticed the difference immediately.
Julian wasn't teaching today. He was performing.
Every word perfect. Every movement clean. Every formula controlled.
But there was no softness between the lines — nothing that used to appear without his permission:
the tiny pauses,
the almost-smiles,
the brief flickers of warmth
meant only for her
and meant only when he forgot to guard himself.
Today, he forgot nothing.
He guarded everything.
Her throat tightened.
She wrote her notes anyway. She listened. She answered questions, but less, softer, measured. Her voice didn't rise with its usual clarity. Her eyes stayed on the page more often than the board.
Still, she felt him watching her once or twice — quick, worried glances that he immediately pulled back from.
It was like watching two people slipping past each other in the dark, reaching in opposite directions but both too scared to touch.
---
When the class ended, students packed up quickly, filling the air with scraping chairs and books zipping into backpacks.
Sera remained seated for a moment.
She wasn't waiting for anything.
She just didn't want to rush.
She didn't want to leave the room without giving him a chance — even a small one.
But Julian didn't speak.
He didn't look up when she stood. He didn't hold her gaze. He didn't say her name.
He only straightened his papers with mechanical care — aligning them perfectly, stacking them evenly, placing them into his bag like a man trying to keep his hands busy so he didn't have to look at what mattered.
She walked toward the door, and just when she reached the threshold—
"Good afternoon, Miss Kim."
She stopped.
Turned.
His expression was polite.
Too polite.
"You too, Professor," she said softly.
His eyes flickered — not warmth, not pain, just a quiet falter — then he nodded.
She stepped out.
And something inside her tugged painfully, like a thread pulled too tight.
---
Her friends found her soon after in the courtyard. Minji grabbed her sleeve dramatically.
"You look like your soul left your body and went on vacation without telling you."
Haerin elbowed her. "Be normal."
Sera smiled, but it was the kind of smile that stayed behind her teeth.
"I'm fine. Really."
They didn't believe her.
But they didn't push.
---
Sera spent lunch listening more than talking. She watched sunlight pour through the leaves. She watched Haerin sketch nonsense patterns in her notebook. She watched Minji spill crumbs everywhere. She watched Eunwoo join with a bright grin that didn't reach her mind the way it usually did.
It was like she was holding a thin sheet of glass between herself and the world.
She wasn't sad. She wasn't detached. She wasn't broken.
She was thinking.
Thinking too much. Thinking too quietly. Thinking in circles she couldn't step out of.
Why did her chest feel like this? Why did silence hurt more today? Why did she feel like something inside her was slipping through her fingers?
She wasn't losing him.
He was still here. Still in class. Still teaching. Still speaking to her.
But she was losing something else—
the sense of direction.
The sense that their quiet, delicate connection could keep surviving his silence.
The sense that she could keep pretending she had endless time to wait.
She didn't.
Not emotionally.
Not realistically.
Not truly.
Time was something she could feel pressing now — not because she had somewhere to go, not because she planned to leave, but because she could feel herself reaching a point where silence wouldn't be enough anymore.
She couldn't keep loving him quietly forever.
She couldn't keep swallowing every ache until it hardened.
She couldn't keep waiting for a moment he may never allow.
Something had to shift.
Something in her heart whispered that she couldn't waste another day holding her feelings like a secret bruise.
Pain was fine.
Waiting was fine.
But unspoken love?
That was something she knew she couldn't carry endlessly without it breaking her from the inside.
---
That night, she sat at her desk, staring at her reflection in the darkened window.
She looked calm. She looked steady. She looked exactly like Sera Kim.
But inside her chest…
something had already begun to fracture.
Not heartbreak.
Just the beginning of truth.
The beginning of a courage she didn't know she possessed.
The beginning of a confession forming like a breath she couldn't hold anymore.
She rested her forehead against the cool glass.
And whispered to herself, not as hope, not as despair, but as something finally honest—
"I can't keep waiting forever."