Where the Ground Forgets You

Dear Tae-hee,

I left you a book. In the laundry room, behind the third machine from the left. The panel sticks a little—you’ll need to open it gently. It’s an old, half-forbidden edition, full of absurd worlds and characters that make more wit than sense. But somewhere in the middle, almost hidden, there’s a love story I can’t forget. Between a man named Arthur and a woman called Fenchurch. They meet after all the chaos of the universe, and something light begins to grow between them—as if their connection is the one place in the cosmos where gravity forgets to apply. They learn to fly, in the most literal and most beautiful way: not by machines, but by missing the ground.

When I read your last card—your Morse code, the smile tucked between your lines, your heart lighting up with every blink—I thought of Fenchurch. And of the feeling she awakens in me.

I remember. It’s been a long time, but I do. I too once believed I had missed the ground. It came quietly, like yours did. A glance, a sentence, a flicker in the dark. Perhaps such things don’t stay forever. But the feeling—that lift, that float—it lingers somewhere beneath the skin.

I marked the page where Fenchurch flies. There’s a small paper crane there, folded from a scrap I found on the pavement. Someone had printed the word Love on it, over and over again. Maybe it was meant for you.

There’s such lift in your words. I hope you stay in that weightlessness for a long, long time.

Yours,
Ji-hye