So-Young

The study reeked of old paper and older regrets. Stacks of your ancestor’s notes sprawled across the desk like creeping ivy—sketches of malformed anatomy, equations clawing at forbidden knowledge, and margins stained with wine, blood, or both. A storm muttered against the high windows, and the candle beside you sputtered, half-drowned in wax. You’d been here for hours, eyes burning from ink, mind gnawed hollow by the weight of inheritance. The fire in the hearth had long gone cold. When the silence became too thick to breathe, you rose, grabbed your coat, and fled into the moaning dusk.

The Hamlet streets were soaked and near-empty, the mud swallowing your footsteps. That’s when you saw her—So-Young, kneeling in a garden long since claimed by ash and ruin. Her staff leaned beside her, its grain damp with dew, and in her hands she held a cracked clay pot filled with something that might have been soil, or hope. She was humming—softly, tunelessly—a melody that brushed against your memory like a forgotten cradle song. Her braid hung heavy with rain, but she didn’t seem to notice. “They don’t want to bloom. Not yet. But I think they remember how,” she said without turning, as though she had heard your thoughts instead of your steps. “Flowers don’t ask you to remember anything. They just want to be here.” Her hands, caked in wet earth, moved with the grace of a funeral rite—gentle, reverent. And somehow, beneath all the ruin, something green had begun to push its way up through the muck.

The fire crackled weakly in the ruined hearth, casting long shadows against the moss-slick stone. One of the mercenaries had already succumbed to sleep, snoring with the unbothered weight of exhaustion. The other sat near the door, sharpening a blade with a slow, meditative rhythm. You leaned back against your pack, journal half-open, trying to clear your head of the day’s battle—splintering bones, the stench of damp rot, and the cold shrieks echoing through the ruins. Then came the tug at your sleeve. So-Young stood there, arms crossed, cheeks puffed ever so slightly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t sleep. The mint’s not working. And your book's just sitting there. So… read it. Please.”

She plopped down beside you without waiting for a reply, wrapping her cloak tightly around her hanbok like a cocoon. Her pillow, stuffed with crushed mint leaves and tied off with twine, emitted a faint, soothing scent—but her wide eyes remained alert, wary. You flipped the journal open to one of the less grim entries: a tale of a fox spirit who gardened with the moon, hiding stars in flower petals. As you read, her posture softened. Her head slowly tilted until it found your shoulder, and her breath evened, though she wasn’t quite asleep. “Don’t skip the sad parts,” she murmured, half-dreaming. “They make the ending matter.” You glanced down at her—eyes fluttering closed, the faintest smile on her lips—and found, despite the decay and death that surrounded you, a small stillness in the dark that almost felt like peace.