Chapter Text
A small butterfly, as pale as the woman in front of her, landed on Jeongyeon's left shoulder. The Wood White, or, as Jeongyeon well explained, Leptidea sinapis, was a small, fragile creature with soft cream-colored wings that moved in slow, gentle flaps. There was nothing flashy about it, yet Nayeon couldn't take her eyes off it. She watched the way the butterfly stayed tranquil, mesmerized by the calm rhythm of its wings.
Yoo Jeongyeon, as written on the identification badge pinned to her shirt at the butterfly garden, was a lepidopterist, a fact she made clear from the very beginning to Im Nayeon, Park Jihyo, and their group of high school students. Before anyone could mistake her for a tour guide or gardener, she introduced herself with a brief explanation of her work, speaking with the confidence of someone who had spent years studying butterflies.
"The Wood White is one of the quieter species you'll find here," she explained, carefully glancing at the butterfly resting on her shoulder. "People usually expect butterflies to be bright and colorful, but this one survives by blending into its surroundings. Its pale wings make it harder for predators to notice it."
A few students leaned closer, their attention fixed on the tiny insect.
"Its caterpillar is just as discreet," Jeongyeon continued. "It's small, green, and spends most of its time feeding on plants from the pea family. If you're not looking carefully, you'll probably mistake it for part of the stem or a leaf."
"So it's hiding its whole life?" one student asked.
"In a way," Jeongyeon replied with a smile. "From the moment it hatches until it becomes a butterfly, camouflage is one of its best defenses. It doesn't have bright warning colors or toxins. It simply survives by being overlooked."
Nayeon watched the butterfly open and close its wings again, suddenly finding the little creature far more interesting than she had a few moments before. Something so delicate had spent its entire life becoming invisible, only to emerge into something people admired without ever realizing how much it had already endured.
But the Wood White wasn't the only creature making Nayeon's eyes shine that day.
Her attention had drifted from the butterfly a few seconds ago, and it lingered on the woman beneath it instead. On the calm way Jeongyeon spoke, on the professional tone of her voice whenever she answered a question, on the effortless patience with which she guided the students through facts that could have easily sounded dull in someone else's hands.
Nayeon barely noticed she had been staring until Park Jihyo nudged her side with an elbow, subtle enough that the students wouldn't notice, and firm enough that Nayeon nearly stumbled.
"What?" Nayeon whispered without taking her eyes off Jeongyeon.
Jihyo suppressed a grin.
"If you keep looking at her like that," she murmured, low enough for only Nayeon to hear, "you're going to start drooling sooner or later."
That finally broke the spell. Nayeon blinked, cleared her throat, and forced herself to look anywhere else. At the flowers, at the students, at the signs describing butterfly species, anywhere but Yoo Jeongyeon's face. Unfortunately, every few seconds, her gaze wandered right back.
Jeongyeon, completely oblivious to the silent crisis unfolding a few feet away, continued the tour. "As adults, Wood Whites only live for a few weeks," she explained, gesturing toward a cluster of pale flowers. "Most of that time is spent looking for food and reproducing. They don't migrate very far, so you'll often find them in the same meadows year after year, provided the habitat stays undisturbed."
The twenty-five high school students gathered around her listened with varying degrees of interest. Some leaned in, others hung back, and a few were already distracted by anything that moved. Nayeon was supposed to be helping keep them all in line.
As the school's literature teacher, she had only joined the trip to accompany Jihyo, the biology teacher, and help supervise the class while they visited the butterfly reserve. She wasn't expected to know the difference between species or memorize host plants, just make sure none of the teenagers wandered off or trampled the flowers.
Unfortunately, she was proving to be just as distracted as they were.
A student raised a hand. "How can you tell if it's male or female?"
Jeongyeon smiled, clearly pleased by the question. "It's not always easy," she admitted. "The males usually have darker markings near the tips of their forewings, while the females are paler and more rounded, but they can be difficult to distinguish unless you've spent a lot of time observing them."
Nayeon wasn't sure whether she was talking about butterflies anymore. She watched the way Jeongyeon tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear before kneeling beside a patch of wild plants, inviting the students to come closer. She spoke with slow movements, never rushing through an explanation, never making anyone feel embarrassed for asking a simple question. Even her hands seemed patient.
When one of the students pointed excitedly at another butterfly fluttering past, Jeongyeon looked up immediately, her expression brightening with genuine enthusiasm. She corrected the identification gently, explaining the differences.
Nayeon caught herself smiling at that.
She hadn't learned much about butterflies in the last ten minutes. Scientific names drifted in one ear and out the other, replaced by details that no biology textbook would ever mention, like the slight curve of Jeongyeon's smile when someone was curious, the softness of her voice when she talked about caterpillars, the way her eyes instinctively searched the flowers as if she expected another butterfly to land at any second.
"Ms. Im?"
Nayeon straightened suddenly, and one of the students from Jihyo's biology class was staring at her, waiting for an answer. "Hm?"
"The answer?"
"The answer…?" Nayeon repeated, buying herself a second.
The student frowned.
"Jeongyeon just asked what plant the caterpillars feed on." Jihyo murmured.
Nayeon's eyes darted to Jeongyeon, who was waiting politely, not a trace of judgment on her face, but she had absolutely no idea.
Beside her, Jihyo sighed into her sleeve. "I asked you to help me keep an eye on twenty-five teenagers," she whispered under her breath. "Instead, I'm going to have to keep an eye on you."
Nayeon shot her a look, and Jihyo only smirked.
"Seriously," she added, glancing toward Jeongyeon. "You're going to drool before this field trip is over."
"I don't even know her."
"Exactly."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Jihyo shrugged. "It means you've known her for thirty minutes and you've spent twenty-eight of them staring."
Nayeon opened her mouth to defend herself, only to close it again when Jeongyeon beckoned the students toward another enclosure. A mesh habitat stretched across a section of the garden, filled with climbing plants and delicate white butterflies drifting lazily through the warm air. Jeongyeon held a leaf between two fingers, careful not to disturb what rested beneath it.
"If you're lucky," she said, "you'll find the caterpillars before you notice the butterflies."
The students crowded around. At first, all Nayeon saw was a stem, then Jeongyeon shifted the leaf ever so slightly. A tiny green caterpillar clung to its underside, almost perfectly matching the color of the plant.
Several students gasped. "I didn't even see it."
"That's the point," Jeongyeon replied with a smile. "Their camouflage is remarkable. They feed almost exclusively on plants in the pea family, and their color makes them nearly invisible among the leaves."
One of the boys frowned. "So they just eat all day?"
"They eat a lot," Jeongyeon said with a small laugh. "Growing takes energy, and the caterpillar's entire purpose is to gather enough nutrients for metamorphosis. Once it becomes a butterfly, its priorities change completely."
"What happens then?"
"It looks for nectar, for a mate, and it repeats the cycle."
Nayeon wondered how many years it had taken to know something so thoroughly.
Jihyo had mentioned, during the drive to the reserve, that an old friend from university worked there, and she had expected someone loud enough to match Jihyo's energy, someone who would turn a biology lecture into a performance, but instead, Jeongyeon was quiet and apparently, her enthusiasm lived in the details. She not once raised her voice to capture attention, she simply spoke and everyone listened, even the students who had spent the bus ride complaining about an educational field trip now stood patiently around her, waiting for the next fact.
Nayeon caught herself doing the same.
"The chrysalis over there is empty," Jeongyeon continued, pointing toward a translucent shell attached to a stem. "The butterfly emerged yesterday morning." She reached out, her fingers stopping just short of touching it.
"It looks fragile, but it's surprisingly resilient. The difficult part isn't getting out, but waiting until you're ready."
One of the girls tilted her head. "How do they know when they're ready?"
Jeongyeon smiled. "I don't know if they know. Nature simply has remarkable timing."
For a brief moment, the garden fell quiet. The students looked at the empty chrysalis. Nayeon looked at Jeongyeon, and there was something about her tone when she explained things that made every answer sound like it belonged in a poem rather than a biology textbook, and that was probably why it worked.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jihyo noticed where Nayeon was looking and shook her head. College had taught her many things, and apparently, recognizing when her friends had developed an immediate crush was one of them.
A flutter of white wings broke the silence as several Wood Whites lifted from the grass at once, circling briefly before settling again among the wildflowers. The students followed them with excited chatter, their attention scattered across the meadow.
Jeongyeon's attention, however, drifted somewhere else. For the first time since the tour had begun, her eyes landed directly on Nayeon's. Nayeon had expected the glance to pass in an instant, another quick check to make sure the group was together, but it didn't, actually, Jeongyeon held her gaze for just a second longer than necessary, her expression was almost curious, as though she had noticed that the literature teacher had been watching far more than the butterflies.
Nayeon forgot to blink, and Jeongyeon smiled at her. It disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.
"So," she said, turning slightly toward Nayeon while the students continued examining the enclosure, "you said earlier that you're the literature teacher."
Nayeon nodded. "I am."
Jeongyeon glanced toward the empty chrysalis still hanging from the stem. "Can I ask you something, then?"
"Of course."
"If you were teaching this transformation in one of your classes, what would you compare it to?"
The question caught Nayeon by surprise. Not because she didn't know the answer, but because she knew it immediately. She looked at the delicate shell for a moment before speaking. "I don't think I'd compare it to becoming someone new."
Jeongyeon tilted her head as she heard the answer.
"I think I'd compare it to finally becoming visible."
A few nearby students fell quiet enough to listen.
"The caterpillar spends its whole life hidden," Nayeon continued. "It blends into leaves, survives by not being noticed, and disappears into a chrysalis before anyone pays attention. Then it emerges, not because it changed into something else entirely, but because it can finally be seen."
The garden seemed strangely still, and even Jihyo looked over. Nayeon gave an awkward little shrug. "At least that's probably how I'd explain it to sixteen-year-olds. My students tend to understand metaphors better than facts."
For a moment, Jeongyeon simply looked at her, then she let out a quiet laugh. "That's beautiful."
Nayeon felt heat climb into her face. "It was just the first thing that came to mind."
"You must be a very good teacher." Jeongyeon said before turning back toward the students.
Nayeon, who had spent the last half hour forgetting every butterfly fact she had heard, suddenly found herself unable to remember how breathing was supposed to work. From somewhere behind her, Jihyo cleared her throat softly, once, then twice, and when Nayeon finally looked back, her friend was wearing the kind of expression reserved for people watching a predictable disaster unfold in slow motion.
Jihyo folded her arms. "So," she said quietly enough that only Nayeon could hear, "she compliments your teaching once, and now you've forgotten your own name."
Nayeon kept her eyes fixed stubbornly ahead. "I hate you."
"No, you don't."
"No."
Nayeon watched Jeongyeon kneel to answer another student's question, sunlight catching against the edge of her hair.
"I really don't."