The Last Page of Spring

The Forgotten Letter

The rain began seven minutes before the last class ended.

By the time Professor Lee finished his final sentence, half the students were already staring through the classroom windows. Groans filled the room as umbrellas opened outside, buses disappeared behind silver curtains of rain, and carefully planned afternoons fell apart.

Han Seo-yun didn’t complain.

She simply closed her notebook, slipped her pen into her bag, and waited for the crowd to leave.

She had never understood why people hated the rain so much. It made the campus quieter. It softened the sharp edges of the world and gave everyone a reason to slow down.

Most importantly, rainy days gave her an excuse to disappear.

“Seo-yun, aren’t you coming?”

Her classmate called from the doorway.

“I have something to do.”

“You always have something to do.”

Seo-yun offered a small smile. “Then you should be used to it by now.”

The girl laughed before hurrying away.

When the classroom finally emptied, Seo-yun stood alone beside her desk. For a moment, she watched the rain slide down the glass, joining other droplets before disappearing along the window frame.

She wondered what it would feel like to have someone wait for her after class.

Not because they needed her notes.

Not because they wanted a favour.

Just because they wanted to spend a little more time with her.

The thought was embarrassing enough that she pushed it away.

She picked up her bag and left.

The university library stood at the far end of campus, behind a row of cherry blossom trees that had begun shedding their pale pink petals.

It was an old building, older than most of the lecture halls. Its wooden staircases creaked beneath hurried footsteps, and the windows on the upper floors rattled whenever the wind grew stronger.

Seo-yun loved it.

The library smelled of paper, dust, and the bitter coffee sold by the vending machine near the entrance. The air was always cool, the lights slightly dim, and the silence comforting rather than uncomfortable.

Nobody expected her to be cheerful here.

Nobody asked why she rarely spoke about her family.

And nobody noticed when she sat at the same desk for hours without turning a single page.

On rainy afternoons, she could almost convince herself that being alone was a choice rather than a habit.

She climbed to the third floor, where the university kept its oldest books.

Most students avoided this section. The shelves were crowded, the catalogue was outdated, and the books seemed to belong to another century.

Seo-yun ran her fingers along their faded spines until a particular cover caught her attention.

A small blue book.

Its title had nearly disappeared, leaving only a few pale letters visible beneath a layer of dust.

She pulled it free.

The book was lighter than she expected. Its pages had yellowed at the edges, and a faint crease ran down the centre of its spine.

It looked as though someone had loved it once.

Or hidden it.

Seo-yun carried it to the window seat and opened the cover.

The first few pages contained nothing unusual. Old poetry, handwritten annotations, and a library stamp that had faded almost beyond recognition.

She turned another page.

Then another.

When she reached the final section, a folded piece of paper slipped from between the pages and landed on her lap.

Seo-yun frowned.

It wasn’t a bookmark. The paper was too old and too carefully folded.

She glanced around.

The nearest reading table was empty. Beyond the glass, the rain blurred the campus into a landscape of grey buildings and trembling trees.

She unfolded the paper.

There was no name.

No date.

No greeting.

Only one sentence, written in dark blue ink.

Sometimes, the loneliest person in a room is the one everyone thinks is doing fine.

Seo-yun read it once.

Then again.

Something about the words made her fingers go still.

She knew what it felt like to be told she was doing well when nobody had bothered to ask how she was doing.

She knew the strange exhaustion of answering I’m fine so often that people eventually stopped questioning it.

At university, she had become very good at appearing ordinary.

She attended lectures, submitted assignments, and smiled when someone spoke to her. Her grades were respectable. Her clothes were neat. Her messages were answered, eventually.

From the outside, her life looked perfectly manageable.

Perhaps that was the problem.

Everyone believed what they could see.

Seo-yun lowered her eyes to the paper.

At the bottom, beneath the sentence, someone had written another line in smaller handwriting.

If you found this, please don’t throw it away.

She stared at the words.

A strange ache settled in her chest, quiet but unmistakable.

Whoever had written the note hadn’t left a name or an explanation. They hadn’t asked for help or offered a way to contact them.

They had simply left a few words inside an old book and trusted a stranger to find them.

Why?

Had they wanted someone to understand?

Had they been afraid of being understood?

Or had the note been written for a particular person who had never arrived?

Seo-yun turned the paper over.

Blank.

She examined the edges, searching for a hidden signature, but found nothing.

Outside, a gust of wind shook the cherry blossom branches. Several petals struck the window before drifting out of sight.

She looked at the empty space beneath the final sentence.

For a moment, she imagined the writer sitting in this very spot, years ago, holding the same book and wondering whether anyone would ever read their words.

Perhaps they had returned to the library every afternoon, hoping to find the note missing.

Perhaps they had forgotten it existed.

Perhaps they were still somewhere on campus, carrying a secret nobody had thought to ask about.

Seo-yun carefully folded the paper along its original creases.

She should have returned the note to the book and forgotten about it.

Instead, she slipped it into the pocket of her notebook.

She didn’t know why.

Maybe she wanted to protect something that had survived being forgotten.

Maybe she simply understood the feeling of leaving words behind because saying them aloud was too difficult.

Whatever the reason, she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.

By the time Seo-yun left the library, the rain had softened to a drizzle.

The campus lights had switched on, casting pale reflections across the wet pavement. Students hurried toward the main gate beneath umbrellas, their voices fading into the evening.

Seo-yun paused beneath the library entrance.

Across the courtyard, someone stood beneath a cherry blossom tree.

A young man in a dark coat.

He wasn’t carrying an umbrella.

His head was lowered as he looked at something in his hand, though the distance made it impossible for her to see what it was.

For a brief moment, he lifted his face.

Their eyes met.

Seo-yun couldn’t make out his expression, but she noticed the way he looked at her—not with the vague curiosity of a stranger, but with the startled recognition of someone who had seen a ghost.

Then a group of students crossed between them.

When they passed, the young man was gone.

Seo-yun stood beneath the entrance a little longer.

She told herself there was nothing unusual about it. The campus was full of students she didn’t know. He might have mistaken her for someone else.

Still, as she walked toward the dormitories, she found herself touching the pocket where she had hidden the note.

The paper was there.

The words were there.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, an unfamiliar question had begun to take shape.

What if the note hadn’t been left for a stranger?

What if someone had been waiting for her to find it?

That night, Seo-yun sat at her desk with the blue book open beside her laptop.

She had intended to study.

Instead, she read the note until she could remember every word without looking.

Then she opened a blank page in her notebook.

For several minutes, she held her pen above the paper.

She wasn’t sure what she wanted to write. She wasn’t even sure who she was writing to.

Finally, she began.

To the person who left this letter,

She stopped.

It sounded ridiculous. The writer might have graduated years ago. They might have moved away, forgotten the book, or never expected anyone to answer.

Still, she continued.

I don’t know who you are, but I hope things are better for you now.

She paused, listening to the quiet hum of the refrigerator in the corridor.

Then she added one more sentence.

And if they aren’t, I hope you know that someone read your words.

Seo-yun stared at the page.

For once, she hadn’t written something for an assignment, a grade, or a future application. She had written it because a stranger’s loneliness had somehow reached across time and touched her own.

She folded the page and placed it inside the blue book.

Tomorrow, she would return it to the library.

That was what she told herself.

She closed the cover and switched off her desk lamp.

Outside, the rain began again.

And somewhere on the university campus, a phone lit up in the darkness.

A message appeared on the screen.

She found it.

A reply arrived less than a minute later.

Are you sure it’s her?

The first person stared at the message for a long time before typing three words.

I saw her.

Then the screen went dark.

And the last page of spring began to turn.