Like Paper Lanterns: Always You: Book Two
Like Paper Lanterns
Sohee is finally learning what it feels like to let someone stay.
For most of his life, keeping people at a distance has felt safer. His father left when he was seven, turning a childhood memory of glowing paper lanterns into a reminder that even the people who promise to stay can disappear. Since then, Sohee has learned to make himself small, keep his feelings hidden, and expect as little as possible from the people around him.
Then Jeno came along.
Patient, warm, and willing to sit beside Sohee without demanding anything from him, Jeno slowly became the person Sohee trusted most. What began with quiet mornings on the school rooftop grew into shared walks, late-night texts, intertwined hands, and the realization that whatever existed between them had become something neither boy wanted to lose.
Now Sohee and Jeno are trying to figure out what comes next.
Being together should make things easier.
Instead, Sohee begins noticing things he never saw before.
Jeno looks exhausted. His smiles don't always reach his eyes. He changes the subject whenever Sohee asks how he's doing. Between school, family expectations, college plans, and the pressure to keep everything under control, Jeno seems to be carrying something he refuses to put down.
Every time Sohee asks, Jeno gives him the same answer:
He's fine.
Sohee knows those words better than anyone.
For so long, Jeno has been the one who noticed when Sohee was struggling. He waited when Sohee needed time. He listened when Sohee found the courage to speak. He reminded Sohee to eat, walked beside him when the world felt overwhelming, and never made him feel like something that needed to be fixed.
But Jeno has become so good at being the strong one that neither of them knows what happens when he can't be anymore.
As the silences between them begin to change, Sohee faces a frightening realization: loving Jeno means more than allowing himself to be cared for. It means learning how to care for someone else. It means asking difficult questions. Speaking when silence would be easier. Reaching for Jeno even when an old voice inside him insists that getting too close will only make it hurt more when someone leaves.
And Jeno must learn something equally difficult-that being needed isn't the same as being responsible for holding everything together.
Against the glow of paper lanterns and memories Sohee has spent years trying not to revisit, two boys who once found safety in silence must discover whether they can find the same safety in honesty.
Because paper lanterns are fragile things.
They can tear.
They can burn.
They can be carried away by the wind.
But even something fragile can carry light.
Tender, emotional, and quietly romantic, Like Paper Lanterns is a YA BL romance about first love, vulnerability, abandonment, and the terrifying courage it takes not only to let someone love you-but to love them well enough to be there when they need you, too.
Book Two of the Always You series.
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