Snow is falling quietly outside.

It is now December, Wendy thought.

"Heavy snowfalls will continue in the next few days. Everyone, please take care while you go out and come back home." She used this as her lead-in on the radio earlier today.

Wendy has been hosting radio for several years. In the early days, she was used to looking through the scripts written by the elder radio writer during commercial breaks, then thinking about how to answer listeners' questions. After she became well acquainted with how to work as a radio host, the elder woman no longer guided her carefully by writing all details. Instead, she now has the freedom to start improvising anytime, just as she did this morning.

In fact, Wendy couldn't remember how many days it had been since she has become a radio DJ. Numerous days and nights, they have all passed in the blink of an eye. Four seasons also seem to have come and gone a million times since she started telling Irene her first story.

"Seungwan, can you tell me some stories? Even if they're just several sentences." And that's how it started.

However, Wendy still feels amazed whenever she sees the sparkles in Irene's eyes while she does this — she tells nothing more than ordinary stories. Sometimes, the story is long that it will take her days to finish it. Sometimes it's short, just as winter's daytime, but thankfully, they never failed to make Irene smile.

Almost every day, after finishing their dinner together, the first thing Wendy does is telling something for Irene.

Wendy always remembers to take a few sticky notes and a pencil with her. "I need to write down my thoughts anytime," she once said.

Now she's writing something on them again.

"Once upon a time…"

"Yah, Son Seungwan, isn't this opening usually for children's books? I'm not a child."

"Em, okay, then maybe, 'There is a knight and a princess?'"

"You've repeated this millions of timessss!"

"No I haven't! Oh, what about this?" Without raising her head, Wendy writes another line fast. "A winter fairy with a girl lost in the forest?"

"You'll say 'The fairy guided the girl to a warm cottage' next!"

"I'm sorry ma'am, Wendy's book store is closed today, please come early next time."

"I don't accept thissss!"

"My dear Bae Irene ssi, I know you just love to annoy me so much. This is already your 221329th time to interrupt me even before I finished my first line today." Wendy sighs while looking at Irene, pretending to feel a bit annoyed.

She knows the elder woman always listens to her attentively, but when Irene chooses to show her playful side, then that's a different story. And yeah, she probably has to admit she's nearly run out of ideas lately.

As expected, the only response she got is seeing Irene smiles brightly.

"Are you still five years old, unnie?"

"No, I'm only five months old." Another bright smile from Irene. Wendy can even see her teeth clearly this time.

Irene is a popular freelance writer. She contributes to different literary magazines monthly while works on short projects. Sometimes, Irene also works for blog owners by writing posts.

She knew how amazing Irene's writing skills are from day one. Thus, until day, she still doesn't understand why this woman would need her stories — she's already a great writer herself.

Shaking her head, the younger woman tries to continue, "Then perhaps, you'll love this… There are two people living together happily, and they named themselves wani and hyuni."

"Aren't these two characters us?"

"No, my dear Bae Irene ssi, they're literally wani and hyuni and, sadly, they're not us." Wendy says this in a somewhat exaggerated tone.

Irene watches the woman in front of her with great interest.

"They became close in a winter."

Before Wendy finally realized the passage of time, over a decade has elapsed since the day she met Irene.

They were in the same high school. When she entered their school, Irene was in her second year.

"Wani hopes one day, she could get the chance to ask hyuni a question."

Ok, so now she's here, alone, Wendy thought.

It's a Friday afternoon. Wendy looked at the piece of paper in her hands, sighed inwardly. She and some other students were in the school library.

Members of the literary club usually gathered together for a few hours on Friday afternoons. They debated a certain topic with each other, then read a story or a poem they had just finished.

And she shouldn't be here in the first place because she has never been interested in literature. Even for a second. Additionally, one of her new friends should be here with her — the one who brought her here and was nowhere to be found now.

And Wendy realized why that friend chose to join literary club. They started earlier than a lot of clubs, thus it gave that girl an excuse to leave the classroom early.

Why I didn't say no to her? Wendy asked herself.

Because among her new friends, that girl — Kim Eunae — was the closest to her. She didn't want to lose her. That's it. Besides, she just couldn't say no to anyone, no matter they're close to her or not.

The letters written on papers gave her a headache, so Wendy raised her eyes and looked at the girl standing across from her.

It's a girl with long black hair, plus a pair of round silver glasses. She's stunning, just like a goddess, Wendy thought.

To her surprise, the host is this girl rather than a teacher. More accurately, the teacher was sitting in the corner of the room, looking at her quietly.

In addition, since a real meeting table was unavailable, Wendy found they made a large table themselves from small ones existing in the library. Thus, it felt like they were going to have an actual meeting, plus that girl was literally standing across from her. Wendy couldn't feel more stressful because of these.

"Please let me introduce myself." The girl looked straight at her, "My name is Irene." Irene? An English name? Wendy was quite surprised since usually, students prefer to use Korean names. But yeah, she named herself "Wendy" too.

"As several members here are still new to our school, I will introduce our rules again. The members of our club refer to each other by pen names. Please check the piece of paper you have. It has the pen names of members written on it."

Sure, it has everyone's first name and last name on it, but, "Irene", Wendy thought. There's only "Irene" here which means she wouldn't even find that girl's surname in the near future. Though Wendy didn't put her family name there either.

It's only after everyone was looking in the same direction — that piece of paper — that Irene spoke again.

"By the way, you guys don't really need to call me 'sunbae nim'. You can just call me 'Irene' if you want."

Irene, a girl full of mysteries… Without noticing, Wendy wrote her random thoughts down.

"You can give your opinion on other members' works after our club's activities. And don't worry, you can do it anonymously…" Irene kept talking, however, Wendy was so upset that she couldn't hear a word. Or she should probably say, Irene's voice sounded muffled to her. "… Please put your thoughts down on paper. I'll visit your classes to take these papers every Wednesday afternoon."

She was sure she skipped something important, but she didn't have the energy to care about them.

"No matter you guys will choose a path related to literature or not, I just hope, it can offer you a new way to learn everything in your life."

Irene got a round of applause when she finished.

Wendy didn't remember how the next two hours passed either. The names of writers and poets she has read countless times in textbooks came up constantly in the debate. From their dates of birth to various awards they once received, she couldn't believe anyone can remember all these things so precisely.

Another thing is, when the debate began, as if these students had exchanged their souls with another group of people, they became overexcited and loud. She glanced at Irene in the midst of the debate. The other girl only watched other students calmly and took notes from time to time.

"At that time, wani didn't know that hyuni was also watching her. When wani's not looking at her, when a beam of sunlight shines on the left side of her face, hyuni will look at her, like this moment is eternity."

Wendy forgets how long it took to be Irene's turn. But even after so many years, she still remembers the title of that poem.

It's called "A Winter's Night".

"On a night when snow is falling
when everything starts to fade away
My voice, some noises
Street lights are still on
burning like white flames
…………"

Irene read the poem quite slowly. Wendy was surprised at how intently she listened to her since usually, she couldn't even hold her attention for five minutes.

"…………
The world is brighter than ever
The word is quieter than ever
Everything stays the same
Everything is disappearing"

After reading the last line of the poem, Irene smiled calmly while bowed to the students who were clapping. So calm, and sad, just as the winter night Irene portrayed in her poem.

Everyone feels Irene is good at writing. But for Wendy, it's more than that. Yes, she also hates writing because she often struggled to complete assignments for language classes. However, she still tried to write poems in her spare time. Surprisingly, among all genres of literature, she still likes poetry.

Winter? Night? These words are too familiar to her. It's impossible Irene only used them to describe natural phenomena. Why were other students so quiet? How could they not notice the hints?

She glanced around the room, then saw some students had closed their eyes, seemingly absorbed in the emotions that Irene's poem has evoked. Others were taking notes. Wendy felt a sense of loneliness at that moment.

Everyone here probably has their own unspeakable feelings. They could really empathize with what Irene has been going through.

Irene sat upright at the front of the table. Her gaze was unwavering.

"Wani started to feel curious about hyuni. She wanted to know why the world hyuni portrayed in her poem feels so different from hyuni herself."

It's not Wendy if she just sits there and waits. However, she also noticed there wasn't much she could do. She and Irene were not in the same grade and commonly, students in different grades rarely have interactions (Irene had a valid reason but that's another story). Thus, if she had appeared abruptly in front of Irene's classroom, this might cause the elder girl unnecessary trouble. That's not what she wanted to see.

Additionally, she didn't have any friends who were close to Irene or her classmates either.

So, that literary club is the only chance, Wendy thought.

With a sigh, Wendy resigned herself to this fate.

Since then, Wendy got into the habit of visiting the school library because she didn't own any books on literature aside from her Korean textbooks. In addition, she found Irene was accustomed to using plenty of metaphors and it made her poems difficult to interpret. Thus, she forced herself to organize the works of poets who prefer to write in an abstract way in chronological order, then tried to learn their writing styles herself.

Wendy excelled in almost all subjects, especially maths and science. And yeah, it's almost. She was weak at learning languages. However, she also never developed any interest in the subjects she was excelled at. While people around her found pure happiness through random things and even decided their future paths because of them, she was still there, and felt she's shouting into the void.

The direction of her life? She truly has no idea about it. Though Wendy had just started high school which means she still had time, it literally didn't stop her from being anxious. She felt that achieving high scores in exams does not mean she will also succeed in the future.

Maybe she'll just live like this, until she used up her time.

But Irene, Wendy thought, Irene seemed to have a firm belief about everything she did (plus her passion for literature, Wendy wouldn't be surprised if Irene became a poet or a writer) and students in this small club seems to be very loyal to her.

Irene didn't order anyone around. Nor would she interrupt the students' conversations, even when the debate reached its (though sometimes, Wendy hoped Irene would do it since some students were so close to fight). Instead, the students actively listened to her. She only expressed herself when they needed her. Moreover, it's rare for leaders to say people don't really need to call them in a honorific way. Wendy remembered she felt quite surprised, even confused after hearing it.

Usually, club activities last for a year. After the first year, students can choose to stay or join another club. However, most of the members in this club were in their second or third year. It means they really felt comfortable staying here. Students in their second and third year are often busy with school but Wendy never saw them absent.

These things clearly showed that she has innate leadership qualities: strong, charming, trustworthy. And it felt like Irene's not alone, Wendy thought.

Irene hasn't written anything which felt this heavy since that day. Or at least, they are not that heavy compared to that poem. However, the feelings