The Airport Collision

The arrival hall roared like a stadium. Fans held glowing boards, cameras blinked like lightning, and a chant rolled through the glass building—

“Sangwoo! Sangwoo!”

Tara pressed her passport to her chest. Seoul already felt too big, too loud. She was just an intern chasing a small dream in a foreign country, yet suddenly she stood in the center of a storm she didn’t understand.

Someone shoved from behind; her suitcase tilted. Papers scattered. When she bent to grab them, a shoulder hit hers hard enough to spin her around. She stumbled—until a hand caught her wrist.

The world stilled.

He wore black from head to toe: cap, mask, and eyes sharp as winter rain. Even hidden, his face looked unreal—angles carved by fame, skin pale under the fluorescent lights.

“Watch where you’re going,” he said, voice low and smooth, tinged with irritation.

“I’m— I’m sorry.” Tara’s words tangled with her breath.

He didn’t move away. The grip on her wrist eased, but his gaze stayed locked on her. Cameras flashed behind him; bodyguards shouted something she couldn’t hear. For a heartbeat, it felt like there was no crowd at all—only that quiet stare pressing against her skin.

A guard touched his shoulder. “We have to go, sir.”

Sangwoo released her slowly, as if the motion itself cost effort. He turned, walking toward the gates while fans screamed louder. Tara watched his back disappear into the blur of security lights.

When silence finally returned, she realized her pulse was still racing. She had met a stranger for five seconds, and somehow those seconds refused to end.

Outside, the city was drenched in twilight. Taxi lights swept across wet pavement, and Tara sat inside one, replaying the scene over and over.

That name—Sangwoo—echoed from every billboard. The driver’s radio murmured, “The nation’s idol has returned from tour…”

She frowned, glancing at the photo on a passing bus. Same eyes. Same black coat. So that’s who he was.

A celebrity. A world she would never belong to.

Still, when she closed her eyes, she could feel the heat of his hand around her wrist. It had been cold—yet strangely alive, like an electric warning.

Across town, in a hotel suite veiled by tinted glass, Sangwoo stood before a mirror. Cameras had chased him for hours, yet the only image replaying in his mind wasn’t from a lens—it was the girl’s face.

Dark eyes, startled yet soft.

Skin touched by sunlight, a contrast he couldn’t forget.

He poured water, set it down untouched. The noise of his team outside the door faded.

“Who was she?” he muttered to his reflection. He didn’t know, and that ignorance irritated him more than it should.

For years he’d learned to keep emotions locked behind choreography and camera flashes. But that one touch had cracked the mirror he lived in.

He ran a thumb over the faint mark her bracelet had left on his skin.

Somewhere in the city, she was probably unpacking, forgetting him already.

He smiled—cold, determined. “We’ll see.”

That night, Tara stood by her apartment window, watching neon spill through the rain. A chill passed through her, like the whisper of eyes she couldn’t see.

She told herself it was imagination. Just jet lag. Just nerves.

But the moment she turned away, a black car slowed beneath her building. Inside, a man looked up once, expression unreadable, before the car slipped back into traffic.

Their story had already begun—quietly, inevitably, like a song neither could stop.

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