The wind swept across the little bay.

The dirt road twisted along the shore, quiet as a faint scar etched in the earth. Back then, people still called this place simply: “the southern fishing village.” The air smelled of salt and smoke from old corrugated roofs. Time seemed slower here, and the sea breeze preserved everything even sorrow.

Minho stepped down from the silver coach, dust clinging to his clothes. He had travelled far, yet few places had ever made him pause like this. The wind carried the sound of the waves, whispering something familiar he couldn’t name.

Before him, the bay opened like a gentle crack between sea and sky. Wooden boats bobbed in the water, their sails tattered yet stubbornly fluttering. On the pier, someone sat quietly, legs dangling above the waves. From a distance, Minho recognized the slender figure, still and faint as twilight light.

Newt turned at the sound of footsteps. His eyes were bright, yet there was a subtle weariness, like a winter that had not yet thawed.

“You’re new here?”

Minho nodded, hiding a hint of nervousness.

“Yes. I came looking for work at the dock. Heard you’re short-handed.”

Newt smiled faintly, a smile incomplete yet enough to light the bay for a moment.

“We’re short of more than people,” he said softly.

They fell silent. The wind tugged at Newt’s pale blond hair. Minho realized it was this quiet that made him truly hear the waves, the cry of seagulls, and the irregular beat of his own heart.

He sat down beside Newt. The wooden pier creaked beneath them, groaning with age.

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough that I can’t remember who or what I’ve been waiting for,” Newt said, eyes on the horizon. “Some days, when the wind blows across the bay, I think… maybe someone will arrive.”

Minho smiled softly, struck by something unseen. He didn’t know if he had come for work, or for some meeting the wind had quietly arranged.

The next day, Minho started at the dock. The labour was hard, the smell of fresh fish and oil thick in the air, the shouts of men hauling nets echoing all around. Yet amid the noise, he kept glancing toward the familiar figure on the pier. Newt rarely spoke to anyone unless approached. He was part of the bay itself, silent, yet impossible to ignore.

Once, after finishing his shift, Minho found Newt holding a stack of old letters. Yellowed paper, handwriting curling like waves breaking on the shore.

“What are you writing?” Minho asked, wiping sweat from his brow.

Newt looked up, a rare spark in his eyes.

“Letters from the wind.”

“Letters from… the wind?” Minho raised an eyebrow.

Newt nodded, serious as if stating an undeniable truth.

“The wind is different every day. Sometimes from the north, bringing the forest’s chill. Sometimes from the south, salty and mixed with drying fish. If I don’t write it down, I’m afraid I’ll forget. And if I forget… I won’t know what remains of me.”

Minho stayed quiet. In this tiny village, where people lived to haul nets, Newt kept a strange job: remembering the wind.

“Maybe you’re like the wind,” Minho said suddenly.

Newt looked at him, eyes flickering with surprise.

“Impossible to hold, but remembered by everyone,” Minho added, realizing he had said something true.

In the days that followed, they met more often. Sometimes Minho brought Newt fresh bread from the shop. Sometimes Newt handed him a scrap of paper, a few hurried words: “Today the south wind blew, salty as tears.”

One afternoon, they sailed on a small boat. The waves rocked them, the wind whipped around, and the sky stretched wide, making them feel like tiny dots on a boundless blue canvas.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Newt asked, voice louder than the waves.

“No,” Minho replied, steady. “As long as someone sits beside me.”

Newt laughed, a rare, genuine smile.

“That’s good. I never wanted to sail alone anyway.”

In that moment, Minho realized that amidst all uncertainty, he had found one certainty: he wouldn’t leave this little bay anytime soon.

That night, the wind howled. The window rattled, moonlight fractured across the sea. Minho tossed and turned, recalling every word, every glance of Newt. The wind outside seemed to knock at the door, asking if he had come only to work, or to hold something fragile but truer than anything.

In Newt’s journal that night might have been written:

“Wind from the east roars, wild and vast. Yet in it, I hear a heartbeat that is not mine.”

And so the wind swept across the little bay, carrying two people who had never planned to meet, yet now sat together as if they had always belonged there.

The nights in the coastal village always felt longer than anywhere else. Perhaps it was because the waves never slept, and their restless rhythm seeped into the wooden walls of every house. Minho had grown used to the constant thrum of the ocean pounding against the shore, the salty scent drifting through the cracks of his window. Yet, there was one thing he could never get used to: Newt’s eyes.

Newt had eyes that never seemed to close, even in the dark. Whenever night fell and all the lights went out, he would often be found sitting on the wooden pier, staring at the sea as though something far beyond the horizon were calling him. Minho had watched him like this a few times, from a safe distance, hesitant to interrupt the quiet ritual. Each time, he felt that Newt’s gaze held secrets older than the village itself like a forgotten letter left to soak in the tide. Sea eyes that never closed.

One particularly cool evening, Minho decided to join him. The moon hung low and silver above the restless water, casting long, wavering shadows along the pier. A gentle wind carried the scent of salt and the faint aroma of seaweed. Minho stepped quietly beside Newt, letting the wooden planks creak under his weight.

“Can’t sleep?” Minho asked softly, afraid the words might shatter the fragile silence.

Newt did not turn to look at him. His eyes remained fixed on the horizon, where the dark water met the black sky. “Some people aren’t born to sleep peacefully, Minho. I think I’m one of them,” he said without a hint of bitterness, only quiet acceptance.

Minho said nothing. Instead, he tapped his fingers lightly against the rough wood of the pier, letting the sound mingle with the whispers of the waves. Newt’s voice came again, patient and slow, like the tide rising against the shore.

“When I was younger,” Newt began, “I thought I could leave this place. Run off to some city bright with lights, where the world doesn’t march to the same dull rhythm as this village. But in the end… I stayed.” He smiled faintly, a smile that was at once bitter and resigned. “And staying too long… it feels like even the sea wants to swallow me whole.”

Minho turned to look at him, studying the sharp angles of his face, softened by the moonlight. In that silver glow, Newt’s features seemed to dissolve into shadow, leaving only his bright, restless eyes behind. It struck Minho that Newt’s story was not just a personal one it was the story of the sea itself, a vessel of forgotten dreams and sunken hopes.

“Is that why you write… the leaves of the wind?” Minho asked quietly, his voice almost carried away by the breeze.

Newt nodded. “If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll disappear. And disappearing… is easy. One night, and no one would remember I ever sat here, staring at the waves.”

For a long moment, the two of them sat in silence, listening to the sea’s relentless chant. Minho felt a strange ache in his chest, as though he were staring not at a person, but at a memory shaped by the ocean itself. He wanted to reach out, to tell Newt that he mattered that someone did remember. But the words stuck in his throat, hesitant and fragile.

The moonlight shifted, glimmering across the ripples of the water. Minho imagined that each wave carried pieces of stories lost to the world, fragments of people who had once lived, loved, and vanished like footprints in the sand. Newt seemed to draw strength from the endless motion, as though the sea’s rhythm alone could keep him awake, keep him anchored.

“Do you ever wonder,” Minho whispered after a while, “if we’re just small things to the ocean? That one wave could erase us?”

Newt’s eyes remained on the horizon, unflinching. “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted. “But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we need the sea to remind us we are alive, even if we are small. Maybe we need the night to show us how precious every fleeting moment is.”

Minho felt a chill, but it was not from the wind it was from the weight of understanding. He realized that Newt’s sleepless eyes were not a curse, but a kind of vigilance, a refusal to let life slip by unnoticed. And in that quiet revelation, Minho felt a strange comfort.

The night stretched on, the waves carrying the soft music of eternity. For the first time, Minho didn’t feel the need to speak. He simply sat beside Newt, letting the sea and the stars and the unbroken gaze of those “eyes that never close” tell their own story.

And in that moment, the village, the ocean, and the two of them existed in perfect, fragile balance, suspended between the pull of the tides and the weight of unsaid words.

There were nights when the sea did not roar, when it whispered instead, as if speaking to itself. Minho had begun to recognize this whispering-the sound of waves striking the wooden walls of their small seaside inn, repeating over and over like a question with no answer. It was unlike the storms of past nights, unlike the chaotic sounds that drove people to flee. This was soft, persistent, delicate-enough to awaken memories that had been quietly sleeping in the corners of his mind.

He guessed that Newt could hear it too. Perhaps that was why he often stayed awake, eyes wide open, unblinking. Occasionally, Minho would glance over to see Newt leaning against the window, moonlight casting a silver glow across his hair, glimmering like a fragile ribbon of glass. Newt spoke nothing, only listened, and Minho realized that this silence was his way of conversing with the sea, and with the silent ache he carried within himself.

One afternoon, after finishing work, Minho found Newt once again on the wooden pier. The scene was familiar: waves lapping gently against the weathered planks, the salty scent of the sea rising into the air-but today, there was a difference. Newt had no “Leaves of the Wind” notebook in his hands. He sat empty-handed, gaze sinking into the murky water below.

Minho stepped lightly on the pier, letting the boards creak intentionally to announce his presence. But Newt did not look up. He remained still, as if trying to hear something only he could understand.

“You always write,” Minho murmured softly, careful not to shatter the delicate hush of the sea.

Newt gave a faint smile, small ripples like waves across the surface. “Some days, the wind has nothing left to tell.”

Minho tilted his head, curious. “Or maybe you simply don’t want to write?”

“Perhaps.” His voice was husky, carrying the salty tang of the ocean. “Sometimes, even the wind grows tired. It blows endlessly, carrying away what people wish to forget. But it also brings back, from somewhere else, things that hurt even more.”

Minho fell silent. Words failed him. He simply sat beside Newt, listening to his quiet sighs merge with the wind. Waves, wind, breaths-all together telling a story of nameless loss, of fragments of life that people could never hold onto.

Night fell, and the village sank into stillness. Minho lay in his room when he heard faint knocks against the wooden wall nearest the sea. At first, he thought it was just the waves. But when he listened closer, he recognized something different-the sound of someone wanting to remind themselves that they were still awake, like memories echoing from past rainy nights in distant cities.

Minho pulled on his jacket and stepped outside. The moonlight shimmered across the pier, silver on damp planks. And there he was: Newt. His hands rested on the wood, tapping slow, deliberate rhythms, as if time itself paused to listen.

“You calling me?” Minho asked, half-teasing, half-worried, and sat down beside him.

Newt looked up, startled for a moment, then shook his head. “I just… don’t want the waves to be the only ones hearing me.”

“Well, now the waves must share,” Minho said with a soft smile, though his chest tightened, feeling part of that quiet sorrow spill into the night.

They sat in silence, listening to the murmuring sea, the tapping of Newt’s fingers blending with the rhythm of the waves. After a long while, Newt whispered:

“Do you ever think that every wave is a reminder? Of what the sea has kept… of what it never returns?”

Minho gazed out at the darkness beyond the shore. The water was black and deep, like ink spilling across weathered pages. “What have you lost here?”

Newt did not answer immediately. A long silence drifted between them, the only sound the gentle caress of waves. Then he whispered: “Not a thing… but a part of myself. Once, I tried to leave. But I didn’t have the strength. I returned, and since then… I’ve never been able to go.”

Minho leaned closer, studying the unblinking eyes that shimmered like a brimming pool. He wanted to reach out, to hold that fragile spirit, but stopped midway, afraid of breaking something so delicate.

Days later, Newt did not appear at the pier. Minho searched everywhere before finding him in their small room, oil lamp casting soft shadows against damp walls. On the table lay the “Leaves of the Wind,” open but empty, pages blank as if daring memory itself to stay silent.

“You’re not writing?” Minho asked gently.

“Sometimes…” Newt looked up, voice caught in his throat. “…if I keep writing, I’ll trap myself in these words. Every line is a tether, tying me to this sea. And one day, I won’t know if I live to write, or write to live.”

Minho quietly closed the notebook, sliding it aside. “Then today, you don’t have to write. Just breathing is enough.”

Newt paused, astonished by the simplicity of the words. His shoulders trembled, like a bay suddenly calmed, unsure whether to continue blowing.

That night, Minho led him down to the beach. Bare feet sank into the cold, salty sand as waves lapped over their ankles, erasing footprints, leaving only glistening trails under the moonlight. Newt spoke little, occasionally picking up a shell and tossing it into the water, as if each shell carried a memory, and the sea alone could hold it without questioning.

Finally, Newt turned toward him, a weary, unspoken smile on his lips. “You know, Minho… some people cannot close their eyes. Because when they do, all they see are what they’ve lost.”

Minho said nothing. He shielded Newt from the wind with his hand, instinctively, silently wishing he could be a wall for those waves inside Newt’s heart, so they would no longer knock alone.

The waves continued their endless pulse. The wind swept through, carrying salt and moisture. In the quiet of the night, Minho realized that sometimes silence itself is enough-to listen, to understand, and to simply be present. He and Newt, two souls touching like wave and shore, learning to endure loss, to endure longing, and to exist together, just through being.