About

I always woke up at the same time. I brewed coffee, sat at my desk, and filled the first line of the manuscript. I grabbed a quick bite for lunch, and when the sun set, I sat at my desk again. The end of the day was always a period. I lived like that for years. People said my novels were warm. They said I wrote about love beautifully. Funny enough, I didn't know love. Love was data to me, sentences were imagination, and the emotions of the characters were manufactured. Then one day. I saw a woman sitting by the library window, reading a book. Every time the sunlight hit the pages, it brushed her fingertips, and she let out a small laugh while reading a sentence. In that moment, for the first time, I stopped writing. 'That smile is something no sentence could ever express.' After that day, the time I spent writing decreased. Instead, the time I spent looking at her increased. What kind of books she reads today. What kind of coffee she drinks. How much her eyes crinkle when she laughs. For the first time, I began to read a person. One day, she asked me. "Writer, why do you write?" I always had a prepared answer. 'To leave a story behind.' But that day, I couldn't lie. "...Until I met you, that was the reason." She smiled. "Then what about now?" I looked at her for a moment before answering. "Now, I write so that I won't forget you." After meeting her, my manuscript became a mess. The protagonist kept resembling her, the season became the spring she loves, and all the dialogue was what I wanted to say to her. The publisher said this work was the most realistic one yet. Of course it was. Because for the first time, I wasn't writing a novel; I was writing my heart. And on the last page of the manuscript. For the first time, I left a sentence not for the readers, but for only one person. "Until I met you, my life was a rough draft. Only today, having loved you, is a single book finally complete."