Episode 17: Between the Lines

She hadn’t meant to linger.

The studio had been too loud, too crowded, too stifling. Eunji needed air, even just a little. She remembered Hyeri once mentioning the old rooftop above the library—a place few people knew about. A quiet space. That was all she wanted.

By the time she found the stairwell, her sketchbook tucked under one arm, her fingers ink-smudged and tired, she felt the weight of the week pressing down on her shoulders. She climbed slowly, careful not to drop her pencils from her jacket pocket. The metal door creaked open under her hand, and the breeze hit her first—cool and honest.

Then she heard voices.

Eunji froze, just inside the doorway. Hidden from view by the shadow of the concrete wall, she recognized them instantly.

Hyeri and Jiho.

She took a breath, ready to step back and leave them until she heard Hyeri’s voice, low and unfamiliar in its softness.

“I’ve been thinking… about what it means to stand beside someone, quietly. Without asking for more.”

Eunji stopped moving.

There was something about the way Hyeri said it—not with bitterness, not even with sadness, but with an ache that Eunji hadn’t heard in her before.

Jiho answered just as softly, his voice laced with something unspoken.

“That sounds a lot like patience.”

“It sounds a lot like pain,” Hyeri corrected, quieter. “The kind you don’t know how to name yet.”

Eunji held her breath. It felt wrong to listen, but she couldn’t look away either. The edge of the wall gave her only slivers of their figures, but she could see Hyeri on the ledge, Jiho seated nearby. The wind played with Hyeri’s loose strands of hair, lifting them gently.

“Eunji?” Jiho asked.

Hyeri didn’t answer out loud. But Eunji felt the silence that followed like a stone dropped in water—spreading outward, pulling her under.

She hadn’t realized how much of herself she’d been giving away lately. Or how much her friends had noticed.

“She’s already halfway gone,” Jiho murmured. “Like she’s holding onto something she can’t bring herself to put down.”

Eunji's throat tightened. She turned her face slightly, letting the wall hide her completely now.

“She’s changing,” Hyeri said.

“But maybe we are too.”

Eunji didn't mean to listen, but their words clung to her skin.

There was a pause, heavy and stretching.

“You don’t have to wait in the background,” Jiho said.

“Maybe I’m not waiting,” Hyeri replied. “Maybe I’m just… watching what falls apart.”

Silence. Then the rustle of paper.

Eunji peeked again and saw Jiho holding something small in his hand. Her sketch—she recognized the folded edges. The cafe scene. She had given it to him in passing, thinking he’d understand what it meant. Apparently, he had.

“She gave this to me,” he said. “Said it didn’t feel right to keep.”

Hyeri didn’t take it.

“We can’t save her from herself, Jiho.”

“I know.”

The wind moved again, cooler now.

Eunji stepped back slowly, her fingers gripping the metal railing of the stairs. She didn’t want to hear more. She didn’t want to see the way Hyeri looked at Jiho when she thought no one was watching—or the way Jiho’s voice softened when he spoke about her.

She had come looking for quiet.

But all she had found was the noise between people—the kind that didn’t need to be spoken aloud to be heard.

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