The snow near Hyesan was the color of gunmetal that night—unforgiving and silent. Every step Haemi took broke the crust of it like glass underfoot. Behind her: the river. Ahead: nothing she recognized, only black trees and the ache of breathing cold air too fast.
She hadn't planned to run, not really. But plans didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that she was across.
Barely.
Her boots were soaked through. Her thighs ached. She'd clung to the underside of a diplomatic convoy ferry until the checkpoint guards had vanished behind mist. Her hands still smelled like diesel and river rot.
South Korea wasn't supposed to look like this. She'd imagined lights, neon, noise. Warmth. Instead, there were shadows and the occasional bark of a dog—territorial, not curious.
By the time she collapsed behind the skeletal frame of an old greenhouse, the tips of her fingers had turned pale blue. She didn't cry. There was no energy left for fear.
She didn't know the girl had seen her.
Jiwon was walking home with a takeout bag swinging from one hand, earbuds in, music playing quietly: IU's voice soft against the rhythm of her boots. Her grandmother's old greenhouse had become her shortcut again—it was just faster, even though the cracked panels sometimes whistled in the wind like a warning.
Then she saw the shadow. A shape barely visible behind the warped glass.
Jiwon froze.
Her first instinct wasn't fear. It was curiosity—then something sharper. The figure wasn't moving much. Just curled in on itself.
A girl.
Maybe her age. Maybe younger. Soaking wet. Trembling.
Jiwon lowered her music, stepped closer, heart racing. The girl flinched.
Jiwon lifted both hands, slowly.
"Don't call anyone," she said in a low voice. "please."
Silence. Then, hoarsely:
"You're South Korean."
It wasn't a question.
Jiwon's breath caught. The accent was strange. Not Chinese. Not countryside. No... it was flatter. Clipped. Like a movie she'd once half-watched in her dad's study.
The girl was from the North.
And she was real.
YOU ARE READING
Borderline
RomanceJiwon lives a careful life in Seoul-her days filled with exams, expectations, and her father's work at the Ministry of Unification. But everything changes when she finds a girl hiding in her grandmother's abandoned greenhouse: Haemi, a runaway from...
