**“The Message You Never Sent”**

It started with a message he never received.

Lizi Lee was sitting in the back of a taxi, rain beating down against the windows, phone clutched in her hand like a lifeline. Her thumb hovered over the screen.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Can we talk? Please don’t leave.’

She hit send.

A green bubble.

Not delivered.

No signal.

Her chest tightened, panic blooming fast. She was headed to Incheon Airport. Too late, maybe. But she had to try.

Twelve hours earlier…

Shin Ho stood in the kitchen of their shared apartment, toast forgotten in the toaster, coffee cooling untouched. Lizi’s words still rang in his ears. “You only love me when it’s convenient.”

It wasn’t true.

It wasn’t true and yet, it had cut so deep he didn’t even defend himself. He just stood there as she stormed into her studio, the door closing like the final note in a song neither of them wanted to hear.

All he had said was, “I can’t make it to your gallery preview tonight. My agency scheduled an emergency shoot.”

But to her, after weeks of him missing dinners, staying late, turning quiet and it felt like rejection. Again.

That night, he packed a bag and left.

Not out of anger.

Out of grief. Out of fear that maybe he really wasn’t showing up the way she needed him to. Out of pride, maybe, the kind that doesn’t yell, but walks away silently.

Now, 7AM, she stood at the departure gate, hair damp from rain, mascara smudged from tears she refused to cry in public. She didn’t even know why she had guessed Incheon.

But there he was.

Back turned, boarding pass in hand.

She ran.

“Shin Ho!”

He paused.

She was breathless, voice shaking.

“You left without a word. I sent a message and..”

“I never got a message,” he said softly, eyes searching hers. “I thought you didn’t want to see me again.”

Silence.

Her fingers gripped her phone. She opened the message thread.

The text still sat there unsent, unsent, unsent.

Her voice broke. “I… I tried. I didn’t know it never delivered…”

His expression shifted pain giving way to something else. Something like hope.

He took a step closer.

“I thought I was the only one hurting,” he whispered. “I didn’t know you ran after me.”

“I didn’t want us to end like that,” she said. “Not over something like this. Not when we didn’t even talk.”

He looked at his boarding pass.

Then he tore it in half.

“Let’s talk now,” he said.

Later, they sat in a café near the terminal. Rain still poured outside, but something warmer began to settle between them.

It would take time. They knew that.

But they also knew this.

‘Sometimes, the worst things don’t come from betrayal. They come from silence.’

‘And sometimes, healing begins with one message finally sent and finally received.’