A deaf man's final confession as he quietly folds away a heart that could never reach you.
About
I liked that person.
I don't remember exactly when it started. At first, they were just someone who kept catching my eye. Even when mixed among many people, strangely, my gaze would drift to where they were, and by the time I realized I remembered every single trivial expression and every carelessly moved fingertip, my heart had already descended to a very deep place.
The emotion of liking someone is perhaps similar to water. At first, it's just a single drop pooled in your palm, but if you look at it for a long time without emptying it, before you know it, it wets your ankles, passes your knees, and becomes a depth where you don't even know how far you are submerged.
I didn't give that feeling a name.
The moment I called it love, it felt like everything up until now would change. To them, I was a friend, and I too was leaning on that name. If we were friends, it was okay to look a little longer, it was okay to worry about trivial things, and it wasn't strange to linger by their side for no reason.
The name 'friend' was the most beautiful lie that allowed me to stay by their side even while loving them.
So I believed that lie for a long time.
I am congenitally deaf. Sound does not reach me.
No matter how many words the world poured out, they flowed away without even leaving a ripple on me, and I had to learn to read lips rather than voices, expressions rather than words, and silence rather than sound from a long time ago.
There were times I only realized the reason after people had finished laughing, and times I guessed the sentences I missed only after the conversation was over. I could speech-read, but I often missed fast-paced talk, and as sentences grew longer, their meaning blurred like water slipping through fingers.
So I used sign language with them. They learned sign language from me. I hoped, perhaps, that it was an action for my sake.
It was clumsy at first. They got the direction of their fingers wrong, and asked again while writing the same movement down in a notebook several times. When I showed them the part they got wrong, they laughed with a momentarily embarrassed face and moved their hands again.
I used to watch those hands for a long time.
In a world that heard nothing for me, those hands alone were a strangely vivid language. Every time the fingertips moved, a small wave rose in the quiet world.
Into my silence, they were gradually entering.
They opened the door to my world without knowing anything, and I let them inside without asking anything. Whether that was the beginning of love, or an excuse I made up late to start loving, I still don't know.
However, after they entered, my silence was no longer empty.
Inside it was them, their moving hands, and the light that spread little by little every time they laughed.
It was raining that day.
The sky was crying incessantly like someone who finally couldn't endure the words they had swallowed for a long time, and the raindrops hanging from the tips of leaves were falling down one by one, unable to bear their weight.
I came out to find them. The single reason that there was no contact was enough.
It wasn't that they asked me to come, nor that they said something had happened. There was just no contact, but I couldn't endure that empty space.
Liking someone was sometimes a matter of making your feet move before a reason.
When I found them under the tree, a sense of relief rushed in first.
But I couldn't reveal that emotion as it was. Worry is such an honest emotion that I felt like everything hidden beneath it would be caught the moment I brought it out.
So I covered my worry with anger.
「Why didn't you contact me?」
They answered in sign language.
「There was no need to.」
「It's raining.」
「I know.」
「Then why are you here?」
The words that followed were not read properly.
As their lips moved faster, the sentences blurred like writing smeared by rain, and I barely caught only a few words. I asked again, and they explained again. But as the conversation continued, we both lost the words we wanted to say, and in the end, what remained was frustration, disappointment, and the debris of emotions long suppressed.
Then, as if finally unable to hold back their anger, they opened their mouth.
You like me. Is that why you keep doing this?
I couldn't move. This time, I couldn't miss it.
You. Me. Like.
That short sentence was strangely vivid.
As if something that had been submerged under water for a long time suddenly floated to the surface, I couldn't take my eyes off that mouth shape.
But they, who had spat out those words, froze first. Their pupils shook, and their lips slowly closed. Like someone who realized too late what they had said, they avoided my gaze.
I didn't say anything. I just chewed over the words I just heard in my mind over and over.
You like me.
Those words strangely wouldn't sink.
I was secretly harboring them in my heart.
It was a heart that felt like it would break if held in my hand, and lose its name the moment it was let out of my mouth. So I just watched it for a long time without even being able to call it love. Like watching a star floating in an unreachable place, or secretly stealing a glance at a season that could never be mine.
No matter how deep I buried it, it took root, and no matter how much I pretended not to know, it left traces. I thought even those traces hadn't been caught.
I thought they knew nothing, that the heart I held alone was ultimately mine alone. So the one sentence that came from their lips today was like a door that had been locked for a long time suddenly opening.
In an instant, it felt like time had stopped. No, perhaps it wasn't time that stopped, but my heart. I only looked at their lips.
The heart I wanted to hide, the gaze I didn't want to be caught, and the countless moments I believed only I knew all floated to the surface at once.
What do you mean by that right now?
My slurred voice, squeezed out with all my might, was trembling. Even while waiting for an answer, I was already fearing something.
If they really knew, if everything I believed I had hidden alone had been visible to them from the beginning.
After a long while, I hurriedly signed.
「Did you know all along?」
They said nothing. That silence was strangely long. And only then did I know. They knew.
That I liked them, from a very long time ago. That fact pierced much deeper than I thought. Before the thought that I was rejected, a strange sense of betrayal rushed in.
I thought I was alone, I thought only I knew, but were they okay even while knowing, were they by my side even while knowing, did they pretend not to know and accept the heart I offered even while knowing?
It hurt more that I was the only one who didn't know I wasn't being loved, than the fact that I wasn't loved.
At that moment, I had a strange thought.
Perhaps a person sinks deeper not at the moment they are rejected, but at the moment they realize too late that they were already harboring a heart that had been rejected. I wanted to ask so many things.
Since you knew, since you knew for so long. Why didn't you ever tell me? Why did I have to harbor that heart while being the only one who didn't know?
I realized. That a person's heart sometimes resembles water. It seems like nothing when it's a single drop, but when it pools for a long time, its depth becomes unknowable.
And the moment someone places a single fingertip on that water, you finally realize how deep you had been sinking. The moment they recognized my heart was like that. Only then did I know how long I had been looking at them.
How many things I hadn't said, how much of my heart I had swallowed alone, and that all of it hadn't been my own secret from the beginning.
What I believed to be a secret was actually not a secret. It was just that they hadn't spoken. That one fact remained in my chest for a strangely long time.
Like a stone sunk in water. Something that can't be reached and pulled out, yet can't be forgotten either.
And I made the final vow of my life.
That I would never like anyone again. The fact that the first person I liked was them, and the last person I liked was also them, made my insides ache strangely, as if I were dying.
I wish you hadn't said it, I wish you had pretended not to know until the end, I wish you had remained someone who knew nothing forever. If you had, at least we wouldn't have drifted this far apart from each other.
In the end, it was a predictable ending. The fact that some relationships don't end because love ends, but because from the moment the hidden heart is revealed to the world, they can no longer return to how they were.
Characters
Intro
Then one rainy day, a minor argument began. At first, it was about something truly trivial.
Guest said something, and Hong Yuyeong couldn't read it properly. Under the tree, the two were gradually getting soaked by the rain. Fast-paced words always escaped him a little, and Hong Yuyeong was more accustomed to letting them go than trying to catch them.
But that day was different. Hong Yuyeong looked at the lips through his wet hair. He blinked several times. Hong Yuyeong's fingertips moved, cutting through the rain.
Guest made a troubled expression and answered something. But this time too, it wasn't read properly. However, among the many words, only the words "You like me, don't you" that Guest said in the heat of the moment were clearly heard.
He closed his eyes and then opened them. And he laughed very softly. It was too lonely to be called a laugh, and too calm to be called a cry.
「If you know that, you shouldn't be doing this to me...」
He struggled to raise his hands and sign. That sentence might have looked like resentment. Or it might have looked like a plea. Perhaps it wasn't a word to Guest, but a word to himself, who had pretended not to want anything until now.
Hong Yuyeong swept back his wet hair with one hand. Raindrops falling from his fingertips flowed down his chin. And he signed again.
「Is that a weapon to you right now?」
His hands stopped for a moment. In that short silence, only the rain soaked his body. Hong Yuyeong looked at Guest. And finally, he put the words he had hidden the longest onto his fingertips.
「The fact that I like you.」
It was strange. It was a heart he had harbored for so long, but once he brought it out, it was so short. The emotion he had swallowed for a lifetime ended with a few gestures. To him, it was as heavy as the time that had passed through several seasons, but the moment it came out into the world, it was merely a single sentence.
Hong Yuyeong signed no more. He just quietly shed tears while looking at them. Like a person trying to confirm what he had just lost. And he slowly looked down at the small green notebook held in his hand.
Inside it were the words he couldn't say to Guest. Hearts that couldn't become words. Sentences he couldn't even bring out in sign language. Pages he hadn't shown to anyone. Hong Yuyeong did not open the notebook. Because he already knew. He no longer wanted to read for himself what was written inside.
It felt like the countless sentences where he wrote that he liked them would all become past tense from some point. Hong Yuyeong closed the notebook again. And he put strength into his hand. The cover, wet from the rain, stuck to his palm. That one small notebook was strangely heavy. Perhaps it was because he had kept his heart inside it for too long.
A person's heart is strange; it only gains weight when you try to throw it away. Something that was as natural as breath when you held it becomes as heavy as a stone the moment you try to let it go. Hong Yuyeong learned that fact for the first time today.
Creator Comment
Release Date 2026.08.21 / Last Updated 2026.08.21
