Everyone in town knew about the girl who lived behind the old greenhouse.

She was beautiful in the kind of way that made people look twice, but she rarely spoke to anyone. Every morning, she wore a different green dress and disappeared into the greenhouse before sunrise.

No one knew what she grew in there.

One afternoon, a curious girl finally followed her inside.

She expected flowers.

Instead, she found hundreds of tiny glass jars arranged across wooden shelves. Each jar contained a single green leaf, carefully preserved in water.

"What are these?" she asked.

The girl smiled.

"Memories."

She picked up one of the jars.

"This one is from the first garden my mother ever planted."

Another.

"This one is from the tree I climbed when I was seven."

The girl pointed toward the very last shelf.

"And those?"

Her smile disappeared.

"Those are memories people asked me to keep."

The curious girl looked closer.

Every jar had a name.

Then she saw one with her own.

She turned around.

The girl was already holding it.

"How did you get that?"

"I haven't."

She looked at the jar.

Inside was a tiny green leaf.

Still wet.

"I think," she whispered, "you gave it to me tomorrow."

Everyone at the university knew Kai and Ren hated each other.

Kai was the campus golden boy, popular, charming, and annoyingly good at everything.

Ren was the opposite.

Quiet. Sharp-tongued. Impossible to impress.

They had been competing since their first year.

Then, one morning, Ren's ex posted a photo with someone new.

Kai saw it.

And, for reasons he refused to explain, walked over and put an arm around Ren's shoulders.

"He's lying," Kai said.

Ren looked at him.

"About what?"

"That you don't have a boyfriend."

"I don't."

Kai smiled.

"You do now."

Ren stared at him.

"You've lost your mind."

"Probably."

By lunch, the entire university knew they were dating.

Neither of them expected the lie to become so convincing.

Kai started waiting outside Ren's classes.

Ren started stealing Kai's hoodies.

They argued constantly.

They held hands whenever someone was watching.

And somewhere along the way, they stopped pretending.

One night, Ren pulled away after Kai kissed him.

"This wasn't part of the deal."

Kai looked at him.

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"Because I've been pretending to hate you for three years."

Ren's expression changed.

"Why?"

Kai smiled sadly.

"Because liking you was much more embarrassing."

Ren stared at him.

Then grabbed his collar and kissed him again.

"You're still annoying."

Kai laughed against his lips.

"You're still pretending."

Everyone in the restaurant knew not to bother the woman at table seven.

She always arrived alone, wore black, ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, and left without finishing her wine.

One evening, a man took the seat across from her without asking.

She looked at him over her sunglasses.

"You're either very brave or very stupid."

"People usually say both."

She smiled.

"Then we're going to get along."

He slid an envelope across the table.

Inside was a photograph of her.

Taken twenty years ago.

Her smile disappeared.

"Where did you get this?"

"Your father gave it to me."

She slowly put the photograph down.

"My father has been dead for fifteen years."

"I know."

He leaned back.

"That's why he couldn't tell you himself."

She stared at him for a moment, then picked up her wine.

"So you've come here to threaten me?"

"No."

"Blackmail?"

"No."

"Then you're wasting my time."

He smiled.

"I'm here to offer you your father's empire."

For the first time that evening, she laughed.

"You came to offer me something that already belongs to me?"

He paused.

Then nodded.

"Now I understand why he was afraid of you."

She stood, picked up her handbag, and looked down at him.

"Tell him I'm not afraid of dead men."

She walked toward the door.

Then stopped.

"And next time you want my attention, don't send an envelope."

She glanced over her shoulder.

"Send flowers.

Everyone in the palace knew that Princess Lian was impossible to impress.

She received flowers every morning, yet never kept them.

She received love letters from nobles across the kingdom, yet never opened them.

Then, one summer, a girl arrived at the palace.

She was the daughter of a traveling painter, with ribbons in her hair and paint stains on her sleeves.

Lian noticed her immediately.

Not because she was beautiful.

Because she never looked at the princess.

For weeks, Lian found excuses to visit the palace garden whenever the girl was there.

"You never look at me," she complained one afternoon.

The girl continued painting.

"Should I?"

"Everyone does."

"Then perhaps everyone is boring."

Lian stared at her.

Then laughed.

It became their little game.

Lian would sit beside her while she painted, pretending not to care whether the girl noticed her.

The girl never said anything.

Until the day she was leaving.

Lian found her at the palace gates with a suitcase in her hand.

"You didn't say goodbye."

"I thought you'd be busy being adored."

Lian stepped closer.

"I was."

The girl looked at her.

"Then why are you here?"

Lian took the ribbon from her own hair and tied it around the girl's wrist.

"Because I was hoping you'd finally notice me."

The girl smiled softly.

"I noticed you a long time ago."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

She looked down at the ribbon.

"Because princesses aren't supposed to fall in love with girls like me."

Lian took her hand.

"Good thing I'm a terrible princess.

Princess Rosalie had been told to smile since the day she was born.

Smile for the portraits.

Smile for the royal guests.

Smile when a prince asked for her hand.

So when Prince Adrian proposed to her in front of the entire court, everyone expected her to say yes.

Instead, she took a sip of champagne and said, "Absolutely not."

The ballroom went silent.

Her mother nearly dropped her fan.

The prince blinked.

"Excuse me?"

Rosalie smiled sweetly.

"I said no."

Then she walked away in her enormous pink gown, leaving the entire royal court staring after her.

By midnight, she was sitting on the palace roof, eating strawberries from a silver bowl.

"You know," a voice said behind her, "most princesses don't reject princes in front of three hundred people."

Rosalie turned.

Her lady-in-waiting, Elodie, was standing there with two cups of hot chocolate.

"Most princesses have terrible taste."

Elodie laughed and sat beside her.

"You could have at least pretended to consider it."

"I did."

"And?"

Rosalie took another strawberry.

"He was boring."

Elodie shook her head.

"You're impossible."

Rosalie leaned against her shoulder.

"That's why you like me."

Elodie smiled.

"Unfortunately."

Below them, the palace bells began to ring.

Rosalie looked toward the ballroom.

"They're probably still talking about me."

"They definitely are."

She smiled.

"Good."

For the first time, the princess wasn't smiling because someone had told her to.

She was smiling because she had finally chosen something for herself

Princess Seolhwa lived in a palace where everything looked as though it had been made from sugar.
The walls were ivory, the curtains were pale pink, and every spring, thousands of peach blossoms covered the royal gardens.
Everyone in the kingdom adored their little princess.
She was graceful, polite, and always smiling.
But Seolhwa had a secret.
Every night, she climbed over the palace wall and visited the small village beyond the river.
There, dressed in a simple pink hanbok, she listened to ordinary people talk about their lives.
One evening, an old woman handed her a tiny paper flower.
"Keep this," she said. "It brings good luck."
Seolhwa laughed.
"I think I need more than luck."
The next morning, the king announced that she would be married to a prince from a neighboring kingdom.
Seolhwa didn't protest.
She simply smiled.
But that night, she disappeared.
The entire palace searched for her.
They found her at the old village shrine, sitting beneath the peach trees with the little paper flower in her hands.
The king arrived furious.
"Why did you run away?"
Seolhwa stood.
"Because everyone keeps telling me what a princess should want."
"And what do you want?"
She looked toward the village.
"I want to know the people I'm supposed to rule."
The king was silent.
Then the old woman from the night before stepped forward.
"Your Majesty, perhaps that's exactly what a princess should want."
Years later, people would still talk about the princess who refused to marry a stranger.
But they remembered something else even more.
She became the first queen in their history to open the palace gates every spring.
And whenever the peach blossoms returned, Seolhwa would sit beneath them with her little paper flower beside her.
She never forgot the night she learned that being a princess wasn't about living in a beautiful palace.
It was about making the kingdom feel like home.

Every morning, Elia left her window open.

Not because she liked the fresh air, but because she believed sunlight carried stories.

She kept a notebook beside her bed and wrote down whatever came to her whenever the first ray touched the page.

Some mornings, it was a sentence.

Some mornings, a poem.

Once, she wrote an entire story about a woman who had forgotten how to laugh.

She never showed anyone.

Until one afternoon, she found a handwritten poem tucked inside her notebook.

She knew she hadn't written it.

For the girl who leaves her window open,
so the light has somewhere to go.

Elia stared at the page.

The next morning, there was another.

Then another.

Every day, a new poem appeared.

Some were funny.

Some were strange.

Some made her cry for reasons she couldn't explain.

She began leaving replies beneath them.

Soon, the notebook became a conversation between two people who had never met.

One evening, she wrote:

Who are you?

The next morning, the answer was waiting.

Someone who has been reading your stories for a very long time.

Elia looked around her empty room.

Then she noticed something she had never seen before.

A second chair beside her window.

On it was a cup of tea, still warm.

And beneath it, one final poem:

You don't have to know who writes the light.

Sometimes it's enough to know it found you.