Once upon a time there lived a boy that loved a girl who didn't know he was real. It was a rule he had made for himself, that he never allow her to believe otherwise. The girl actually wasn’t supposed to know about him at all, but mistakes happen, and sometimes you have to come up with ways on the spot to make them less horrible.

The girl, Tae, was the daughter of a miller who had managed to marry a woman whose family was very well off. When she was younger, Tae would go to the art seller’s shop to look at all the new paintings for sale. Tae loved them, though she was never very good at creating anything with her own hands. Often, she would find something she liked and bring it home, much to the chagrin of her mother who felt she wasted money on paintings they couldn’t even display for lack of sufficient space.

During the summer of Tae’s fifteenth year, back when her family could still afford this extravagant habit, was when he saw her. Lay had come into the shop himself, cloaked, having been tipped off that Boa’s The Dark Forest had somehow wound up there. He had been on the hunt for the painting ever since one of his clients, a thief named Yeol, had used a shrinking potion, which he had bought from Lay, on it and stuffed it into his pocket while Lay had been in another room. The painting was extremely dangerous, as a person could actually be put into it. The inside of the painting, similarly to the actual picture, consisted of nothing but a forest with some poisonous vegetation, and it was always nighttime. The only way out of the painting was for the person who put you in it in the first place to let you back out again.

A pretty uncreative title for an uncreative picture, but considering what it was created to do, Lay didn’t feel Boa was really trying that hard to be unique.

When Lay first saw Tae, he had just walked into the shop. His eyes slid over her while he was trying to locate the painting. When he finally found it, he pretended to study it, noticing it was priced rather cheaply as Boa wasn’t a well renowned painter. He figured if he pretended he thought the painting had less value than what the shop owner believed it did, then he’d be able to haggle down the price and not have to pay too much to reacquire something that was his.

What really set the whole thing in motion was when Tae had noticed Lay.

Tae liked buying the paintings done by lesser-known artists. While part of that was because they were cheaper, she felt quite a lot of them were very good despite not being attached to a prestigious name. Most other people that she would ever see in the painting shop never seemed to think like her, though. Most were too caught up in the artists, rather than the art.

What made Tae notice Lay that day was the fact that he was intently studying a painting done by a nobody. She was pleased by this, and probably wouldn’t have thought much of it anymore except that she saw his face. He had been trying to keep it covered with his cloak, but she had been standing at just the right angle to see it, and it was beautiful.

Normally when Tae came across boys she was attracted to, she would just lock up and barely be able to speak to them. This, of course, was not very conducive to building relationships with them, which she very much wanted to do. Especially so now that she was of age to marry and was finally allowed to be courted, though no one had really tried courting her yet as she was so young.

Lay was a stranger to her, so she assumed he was just a man passing through town, and therefore someone she would never see again. Along this train of thought, Tae had an idea; she could practice talking to this guy. She figured if she practiced talking to guys she was attracted to, it would help her in the long run to actually get courted, and help while she was being courted. She thought that even if she did make a complete fool of herself in front of this man, it wouldn’t matter so much since she would never see him again.

She tried making her way over to stand beside him. While her dress was more comfortable than appealing, her hair had actually been very cooperative this morning and had turned out very nice. She nibbled on her lips to make them look redder but didn’t dare try any other primping for fear others might notice, as the shop was actually quite busy that morning.

She kept hoping he’d turn and see her, but his gaze seemed very firmly fixed on the painting in front of him.

Just as she was about to give up hope of him noticing her, he just happened to turn his head, and locked eyes wither her. Tae was caught off guard, even though this was exactly what she had hoped would happen, and instinctually turned away. She waited a few seconds before looking back at him, but he was already looking at the painting again. Disappointed, but not wanting to be defeated, she moved a little closer to Lay and kept snatching glances at him, hoping he’d look her way again.

He did, and this time she managed to smile at him as she held his eyes this time for a few seconds. She looked down bashfully, and bit her lip, this time in a nervous gesture she couldn’t quite help.

She took another step closer to him, and noticed that even though he had looked away again, the corners of his mouth seemed to want to turn up. She kept looking at him, deciding that if he looked at her one more time, and if he smiled back at her this time, then she would take that final step and stand next to him. Maybe she’d even speak to him, even though it would have been much more proper for him to speak to her first. It would be a lot less nerve wracking for her if he did, but the whole point of this exercise was to work through her nerves.

As if commanded by magic, a few seconds later, Lay looked up at her again, and she smiled at him, and his cheek dimpled as he smiled back. It was the kind of smile you could tell he couldn’t help, not like he was laughing at her, but that he genuinely liked what Tae was doing.

“So,” she said as she took that last step and was pointedly looking at the painting even though she could feel his eyes on her. “You like trees.”

She blushed furiously as soon as the words left .

“Yeah, trees are… magical.”

Tae glanced up at him to see if he was laughing at her. While he was still smiling from amusement, it wasn’t a cruel amusement.

“This picture is… charming,” Tae said, only just realizing that she probably should have come up with a plan of conversation before actually speaking to him, but it was to late for that now.

Lay laughed a bit, so she figured it wasn’t such a horrible mistake.

“I know this painting isn’t really all that great,” he said. “I’m more interested in it because I know the artist than the painting itself.” Which was mostly true. Boa had a knack for creating many paintings with magical properties, a fact which she had bragged to his teacher about when he had initially bought this painting off her a number of years ago, when she had been young and in her prime. Of course, it wasn’t the main reason, but it still had to do with it.

“Ah,” Tae said, wondering if she should ask him if he much likes paintings or if she should ask about the painter, but Lay saved her the trouble.

“Do you like trees?”

She was stumped at this, wondering how she was supposed to respond. She wasn’t even entirely sure what the truth would be having never really thought about trees objectively like that. They were just always there, everywhere. It would have been weird to think like that.

“I mean I… I guess I do. They’re pretty and create oxygen and all that.”

He laughed a little at that.

“What’s so funny?” Tae asked, feeling her cheeks redden again. She had thought it was a sensible enough answer for a non-sensible question. She really couldn’t seem to figure this guy out. He seemed to like the things she did that she though she had messed up, but laughed at her when she thought she had done something right.

“You took that question so seriously. Anyone else here would have thought I’d just asked you your thoughts on the famine in the east.”

Tae frowned, feeling made fun of now.

“It’s cute,” he said.

She felt herself blushing at the words, easily mollified by them.

She stole another glance at him and saw him smiling at her, his complete attention on her now instead of the painting. She took this as a good sign.

“So, how do you know the painter?” she asked, trying to keep the conversation going, and also noticing the painter was a woman. She knew after this conversation she would probably never see this man again, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly jealous at the thought that he might have liked another woman. Or that he might currently like her now, and he was just being friendly with Tae. She really wanted to believe that she was at least charming him, if not enchanting him. The latter was probably too much to hope for given this was her first time trying to flirt with someone, but you never know. Stranger things have happened.

“She used to be a family friend. My father bought a few of her other paintings directly from her.” Lay didn’t feel like explaining that he was a wizard or that he didn’t have any parents, so he just decided to refer to his teacher as “father” to make things easier. “Unfortunately, I recently had a bit of a falling out with her, though.”

Falling out was putting it mildly. Her younger brother had been having a fling with some girl and she wound up getting pregnant. The guy had publicly declined ever having a relationship with her and even reprimanded her actions to the people around them. The girl wanted revenge and so came to Lay for help. He didn’t particularly like aiding people in their quest for vengeance, especially since she had gotten on so well with his teacher, but felt this was an exception he could make. Long story short, Boa found out and wanted some revenge of her own and sought out Lay to exact it. She had another painting called The Ocean Floor. Again, a very uncreative name for an uncreative painting. The principle workings of the painting were the same as The Dark Forest with the only difference being that the person trapped in this painting was, of course, trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

Ultimately, she was the one who wound up in the painting. Lay pulled her back out and kept the painting before throwing her out of his castle. She hadn’t bothered him again after, and he made sure that Boa didn’t bother the girl either. They hadn’t spoken since, and last Lay had heard she still held a grudge against him for what he had done to her brother. Lay was never entirely sure why she was doing that.

“So why are you still buying her paintings if you had a falling out?” Tae asked.

“It’s a bit complicated.” Lay’s attention flickered back to the painting for a moment.

“Mmm,” Tae hummed, biting her lip, feeling like she had accidentally pried. Sometimes it was really hard to know when a question is perfectly acceptable to ask and when it was prying, especially since the answer seemed to change with every person you spoke to.

“I hate that I have to buy them. They really aren’t that good.”

Tae couldn’t help but smile and look back up at him again. He was looking back down at her again, his smile this time conspiratorial.

“Tae, it’s time to go,” her mother said, apparently having finished up at the clothing store she had been visiting while Tae was here.

Tae looked at her mom and nodded.

“Well, it was nice meeting you.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” he said.

She walked away reluctantly; suddenly sad that this would probably be the last time she’d see him. She had enjoyed their conversation, and he had seemed to enjoy it as well. At the very least, she hoped that this encounter would make it easier for her to meet new people and talk to them. However, as the day progressed, she couldn’t quite get him out of her head. She kept thinking about his dimpled smile and his laugh. She thought how there was something about him that made her feel light, like inside she was made of clouds. Then she realized she hadn’t learned his name, and all the clouds inside her were set ablaze with the desire to know what it was.

The next day she returned to the shop, which her mother reluctantly allowed since she hadn’t bought anything the day before. Tae asked the owner of the shop about the boy, wondering how much information she could glean about him.

“I don’t remember anyone like that,” the old woman had said. “The only cloaked customer I had was an old man. And it was the same old man who bought that awful painting. Paid me less than I think it was worth, too.”

Tae wasn’t sure what to think of this. It was early spring, and warm enough now that not many people walked around in cloaks anymore, and no one actually wore their hoods up indoors as it was considered very rude. Aside from that, this young man had been far more attractive than the typical traveler that passed through this small town. Surely he would have stood out in everyone’s memory.

She thought it was odd, too, that he hadn’t bought the painting. Or, at least, she had at first. As Tae thought about that one, it had a much easier answer to come to; he had lied about knowing the painter. Besides, the owner didn’t remember Tae talking to anyone, cloaked or not. She just remembered seeing her standing in front of The Dark Forest by herself for a long time, presumably studying it.

Tae wasn’t sure what to make of any of this. She clearly remembered his face and the conversation they had the day before. In fact, her mother had definitely seen him. When Tae asked her about it, though, she claimed to not recall him. It was all strange, and her mother was giving her a very concerned look when she had asked about him, so she decided to drop it. She wasn’t sure what to make of the memory or the fact that no one else seemed to remember the stranger, but since it never came up again, she decided to not worry about it and stopped thinking about it.

Lay, on the other hand, could not stop thinking about it. It had been a lapse on his part that Tae had seen him, and he knew what he had let her see the moment she smiled at him the way she did. He knew he should have used his magic to conceal himself. He had done it before when he had slipped and someone had seen his true form. People always just chalked it up to them seeing things when they look back and see a wrinkled and hunchbacked old man standing where the attractive young man had been.

With Tae, though, it was already too late. Not for any logical reason, not for anything he could explain if anyone asked about it. The reason was just that he had been alone for a very long time, and he had liked the way she had smiled at him.

He had spent a long time hiding his identity so only a select few knew what he looked like, taking on the guise of the old man so people would be less likely to remember him. It had been a long time since a girl had taken interest in him like that, simply because she thought he was attractive, and had even seemed to genuinely like him during those few moments when they had talked. It was refreshing and… nice.

He felt bad, having to hide his existence from her, but he couldn’t take any risks. As a way to assuage his guilty conscience, he periodically checked up on her to make sure she was still doing all right. It did not take him long to notice a pattern in her mother’s behavior that he had seen before in many other people.

He tried to detour her mother’s bad spending habits, hoping she would be one of the few who could pull herself back together. It actually started to seem like she would, too. By this time Tae was eighteen and still unmarried, and Lay was ashamed that he was partly to blame for that. He justified his actions by reminding himself that all those boys he had scared off were all worthless. Most of them wanted Tae because they thought she’d bring a lot of money to the marriage, or they just wanted a pretty wife and figured Tae would do.

It was also around this time that Lay realized his feelings for Tae were no longer exactly what they had been. It became clear to him when he scared off a new match who actually seemed like a good man that seemed to actually like Tae for herself and was fairly well off himself.

Lay new he was entering dangerous territory, developing those kinds of feelings for a girl, so he decided it was time he quit checking up on Tae and her family. He convinced himself that her mother really had stabled out and they would be fine without him watching over them.