To Become a Single Orchid

Life has always been about looking after others. Ji-Eon spent her days devoted to her frail mother, her aunt, and the struggling neighbors around her. Then, in the winter just before her senior year of high school, she attends the funeral of her only childhood friend, Ui-Ju—and there she meets Ui-Ju’s older brother, Ui-Tae. “You’re Yang Ji-Eon, aren’t you?” He is a man who cannot even handle chopsticks properly and whose occupation remains a mystery, and though he unsettles her, she finds herself unable to look away. Before long, she is bringing him homemade side dishes and offering to tutor him. To Ji-Eon, he is the most pitiable man she has ever encountered. What begins as simple compassion, however, slowly deepens into something far more complex. “I like you.” “Ji-Eon… that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me.” For Ui-Tae, who had always believed he stood alone in the world, meeting Ji-Eon awakens a longing he has never known—the wish to spend the rest of his life beside her, to make this very moment last forever.