Jisoo rubbed her thumb over the side of her cup and ignored the way the heat of the coffee gently burnt her palms. The sting of the heat was kind of comforting. Across from her Jinyoung was sitting quietly, patiently, waiting for her to speak. 

“I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here,” she said softly, her voice still low and breathy from crying. 

“It’s fine,” Jinyoung said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Jisoo took a deep breath and shut her eyes for a minute. Her mind was reeling with the memory of Dara looming over her as she screamed. Her heart still had tremors from the moment. But she opened and decided to begin as slowly as she could and ease into it.

“I wrote a short story for the upcoming issue’s feature,” Jisoo said.

“You did?” Jinyoung said, leaning forward a bit. “That’s… great.”

Jisoo nodded.

“I was supposed to submit it to Dara, she’s my supervisor,” Jisoo said, pausing to drink from her cup. “But I knew she said that new girls aren’t supposed to write features, so I thought if I sent it straight Julie, I might actually have a chance of being published.”

The cafe they were sitting in was playing soft, acoustic music and the lighting was dim. Jinyoung was looking down at Jisoo’s hands as she spoke, watching wordlessly as she ran her thumb over the knuckles of her other hand in a comforting gesture. He resisted the urge to reach out and let his own hand take over the task. 

“She must have liked it since she included it in the mock-up,” Jisoo continued, furrowing her brows as she tried to keep her emotions in check. 

“But Dara got the copy just now,” she said, her voice breaking again. She wiped at a stray tear. “And she just—exploded at me, I don’t know. She accused me of going behind her back and trying to take her job when I really just wanted a chance to show her I could be trusted with bigger responsibilities—”

“Hey. Shh, calm down—”

“Instead of just calling printers and fetching coffee and reading through submissions,” Jisoo said. “I was just trying to help.”

“I know you were.” 

Willpower giving out, Jinyoung reached across the table and touched Jisoo’s knuckles softly, hesitantly with his fingers. Jisoo looked down at their almost-touching hands and swallowed. She slowly took her hand from the cup and turned her wrist until the backs of her fingers were leaning into the curve of his palm. 

His hand was warm. Not as warm as the coffee in her cup, but it was soft and warm and felt worlds better.

“You were right,” Jisoo whispered.

“About what?”

“Maybe Embrace isn’t where I’m meant to be,” Jisoo said, her eyes gleaming with the tears-strained lashes. “I don’t belong there. It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be.”

It was disheartening. 

“All my life, I’ve read Embrace and imagined being counted as one of their writers,” Jisoo said. She dreamed of joining the ranks of acclaimed novelists who’d got their start by working at Embrace. 

“But since I started there,” she continued. “All I’ve done is monitor Dara’s inbox and sit in on meetings.”

Though, of course, she was grateful. If she wanted to get anywhere, she had to start somewhere. But still, Jisoo wanted… more.

In her dreams, she pictured herself in the many years ahead living somewhere far and remote. Perhaps in a cabin on a mountain, where she’d be alone except for a dog maybe, where she’d have her books and a comfortable chair and a window with a view of a wide meadow, where she could write peacefully.

It was simple, really. Just a quiet house somewhere where she could write. Yet the path towards that dream was murky and came with endless perils, and at the moment she couldn’t even see it clearly. 

“I’m losing sight of it,” she said after a beat of silence. “I always thought of myself as someone who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. But now, I’m not so sure about anything.”

Even though she had spent years cultivating her writing, nothing made Jisoo more terrified than a blank piece of paper. Even more terrifying now, however, was seeing the scrolls of her future suddenly turning into blank pages as her plans came undone. Panic set in again. She. Had. No. Plan. 

Jisoo and Jinyoung stayed at the cafe until closing time, but even then Jisoo didn’t want to back home yet, and Jinyoung didn’t want to leave her alone.

 So they ended up wandering the city and ended up climbing the hill upon which rested the central radio tower, glowing bright blue against the night sky. From the walking path along the hillside park, the city whirred and writhed in neon and fluorescent unrest. Cars zoomed in and out through wide and narrow streets. Windows glowed in tall buildings, turning on and then turning off like a switchboard with lights. 

One thing she missed most about home were the stars. In their semi-rural hometown, it was dark enough at night that she could look at the sky and see stars. But here in the city, there were too many buildings and too many cars and too many people. There were no stars in the sky, but the city lights below were a nice consolation prize. 

Jisoo felt a kind of calm taking over her. 

She didn’t say a word as they walked along the path, looking over the railing at the swirling, iridescent light show below that was their city. When she first moved here, she was nervous. In their sleepy hometown, almost everyone knew each other. When she went away for college, the city swallowed her up and for the first time she felt what it was like to be small.

But in time, she realized she actually kind of liked feeling small.  

She liked the freedom that came with the ability to fade into the background and move unseen. She liked feeling immersed in the vast, bottomless ocean of stories that was their city, both observer and recorder.

The path of a writer was often a solitary one. 

When Jisoo wrote her stories, she always wrote alone. Jisoo had spent a lot of time hiding out in her room, pounding out words on a keyboard, hiding from the world. Yet it was a comfort knowing that even while she was deep in the world of her own mind, the real world still swirled and turned and would be there to greet her when she emerged. 

Maybe that was why for so long she never noticed that she was lonely. She realized it only now, standing by the railing, watching the city lights from the dark side of the hill and thinking about all the lives being lived around her. 

Then suddenly Jinyoung was at her side, leaning against the low stone wall and looking out at the city with her. She noticed that he was rubbing his arms, and it occurred to her that it was the middle of the night and she had called him out here out of the blue and he didn’t even have a jacket.

“Are you cold?” she asked. Jinyoung stopped rubbing his arm for a minute and turned to her.

“No,” he said and then smiled to assure her. “It’s actually a really warm night. I… I just have a fidgeting habit.”

It was a warm night, actually. Summer was coming, and the sun was setting later and its heat lingered in the air well into the night. 

“How long are you planning on staying out here?” Jinyoung asked. Jisoo laughed simps because she didn’t how else to react to the suddenness of the question.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” she said playfully. “You can leave if you want to.”

Jinyoung raised a brow as he turned to face her. “If you’re so determined to get rid of me, why’d you call me in the first place?”

Jisoo paused for a minute, trying to think of something clever to say, but in the end, she decided that what she really wanted to tell him was the truth.

“I just wanted to talk to you again,” she said. “I like talking to you.”

Jinyoung was caught off-guard by her answer. He was under the impression that they were settling back into their usual playful banter, but she had hit him instead with a candid reply. He blushed and tried not to look as affected as he was. 

“How did those words taste coming out of your mouth?” he said, joking. Jisoo smiled and giggled.

“Not as bad as you think,” she said, pushing off the wall and starting to walk along the path. Jinyoung fell into step beside her. Despite the warmth of the evening, there was a gentle breeze that made the bushes and the branches sway. The park was empty besides the two of them, and it was so quiet, Jinyoung could hear their breaths starting to synchronize.

“When was the last time you went home?” Jisoo asked as they neared an old traditional pavilion. Jisoo hopped up onto the benches and walked alongside Jinyoung who stayed on the ground.

“A few months ago,” Jinyoung said. “For Mr. Hong’s funeral.”

Jisoo stopped at the edge of the bench.

“Oh. Right,” she said, wishing she’d had more tact to remember. “What was it like?”

Jinyoung took Jisoo’s hand and guided her down as she hopped off the bench and back to the ground. Their hands stayed holding each other a beat longer than usual.

“Going back?” Jinyoung said as he took his hand from her. “I mean, it’s not as if I don’t go back every few months, during the summer and during breaks. It’s kind of surreal, I guess. It’s a place filled with a lot of memories. It’s a place where a lot of things got started.”

Jisoo s