THE STORY " THAT LOVED HER BACK

I was tired.

Not the kind of tired sleep could fix.

The kind that lived in my bones, in my chest, in the quiet spaces between heartbeats.

Every night ended the same way.

Crying alone.

Trying to breathe through the ache in my chest.

Trying to remind myself there was a reason for the heaviness pressing down on me.

I’m physically sick.

Mentally sick too.

That’s what I always told myself.

Maybe that was why it hurt this much.

With trembling fingers, I reached for the medicine bottle on my bedside table.

The cap clicked open too easily, like it had memorized my pain.

No one was coming to protect me.

Not anymore.

The people who once loved me unconditionally — the ones who made me believe I mattered — were gone now.

And the people who were supposed to stay?

They only blamed me.

For being born a girl.

For existing too loudly.

For breathing wrong.

For every crack in the house that had nothing to do with me.

They forgot I was young.

They forgot hearts this age could still break.

When they hurt me, it didn’t feel like words.

It felt like someone taking my heart apart piece by piece with bare hands.

I swallowed the medicine and curled into my bed, tears soaking into the pillow.

At some point, sleep came.

It always did.

Because morning had its own cruelty.

By sunrise, I would forget enough to survive another day.

But that night, something was different.

Instead of darkness, I opened my eyes to light.

Soft silver moonlight spilled across a field of endless white tulips, glowing under a sky dusted with stars.

The air smelled sweet, like rain and spring.

I turned slowly, my bare feet brushing soft grass.

“Where am I…?” I whispered.

It was beautiful.

So beautiful it hurt.

White tulips stretched in every direction, endless and pure.

Then my gaze caught something strange.

In the middle of all the white…

There was one single red tulip.

Its crimson petals glowed like a heartbeat among snow.

I stepped closer, drawn to it.

Before I could touch it, a voice spoke behind me.

Low. Warm. Familiar in a way that made no sense.

“Do you want them?”

I turned.

A young man stood there, tall beneath the moonlight.

Dark hair falling softly over his eyes.

A face so beautiful it felt unreal.

And eyes that looked at me as if he had known every hurt I’d ever hidden.

I couldn’t find words.

So I only nodded.

A small smile touched his lips.

He walked into the tulip field, kneeling among the flowers.

With careful hands, he gathered a bouquet of the white tulips… and then gently plucked the single red one too.

When he returned, he placed them in my hands.

The white petals felt cool.

The red one felt warm.

He looked down at the bouquet, then at me.

“The white tulips,” he said softly, “are the people who hurt you.”

My breath caught.

His fingers brushed the red flower.

“And this one…”

His voice gentled, almost reverent.

“This is you.”

I stared at him.

He stepped closer.

“Surrounded by pain, yet still untouched by it.

Still innocent.

Still pure in your heart.

You stayed red while the world tried to turn you white like them.”

A tear slipped down my cheek, though I didn’t know why.

He lifted a hand, brushing it away so gently it felt like moonlight.

“Never let them make you forget who you are.”

The wind moved through the tulips, making them whisper.

For a moment, the whole field felt alive.

And standing there beside him, holding those flowers, the pain inside my chest… eased.

Not gone.

But softer.

Like someone had wrapped a bandage around a wound no one else could see.

The next morning, I woke with sunlight in my eyes and a strange fog in my mind.

I couldn’t remember why my pillow was wet.

I couldn’t remember what I cried about.

But something remained.

A feeling.

A quiet relief in my heart.

And a face.

A dark-haired man in a field of tulips.

I sat up slowly, my fingers drifting toward my notebook.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe writing was the only way to keep whatever peace he gave me.

So I opened the first page.

And I wrote him into existence.

Jeon Jungkook.

The villain for the world.

The protector of one innocent soul.

A man who would burn everything to keep her safe.

I didn’t know it then.

But every word I wrote was already bringing him closer.