If I Don’t Return

Dear Myung-ho,

I am sitting here, writing this letter with trembling hands, knowing that in just a few days, I will step inside that rocket and leave the Earth behind. The sky that has always felt endless to us will become something I pass through, and the stars—those tiny, faraway lights—will become my new home, if only for a while.

I should be excited. I am excited. But, Myung-ho, I am also afraid.

We both know what it took to build this mission. The long nights, the calculations, the endless adjustments, the failures we had to keep quiet. We know the things that almost went wrong, the parts we had to fix at the last moment. And yet, we press forward. Because that is who we are—we build, we push beyond, we do what others have only dreamed of.

But now, as I stare at the stars through my small window, I feel their vastness swallowing me whole. I wonder, what does it mean to leave the place where we were born? To drift into the unknown, knowing there is no way back if something fails? What if I never see your face again? The thought tightens around my chest like a cold fist, and I find myself wiping away tears I didn’t expect to fall.

And yet, Myung-ho, there is something deeper than my fear. It is us. It is the love we have shared from the moment we first met among the blueprints and fuel lines, our hands covered in grease, dreaming together of reaching the stars. It is the way your voice steadies me when my hands shake, the way you always remind me that we were meant to do this.

I carry that love with me into the darkness of space. It will be my anchor, my guiding star when the Earth becomes just a small blue dot beneath me. No matter what happens, know that you are with me. Always.

If I return, I want to sit with you beneath the night sky, hand in hand, and finally breathe without the weight of duty pressing on my chest. And if I don’t—know that I left this world thinking only of you, of us, and of the dream we built together.

With all my love,Eun-ha