O Gods who rule the dark and silent world, All lovely things at last go down to you. But I seek one who came to you too soon.

She ran for his life down the corridor. She had no idea how she found the building block, nor the floor, nor her way in the city without a word of the vernacular on her tongue. She rapped against the door, "hello?" she uttered in English. The natural response, the only one she had.

No rustling, no murmur, no sign of life, nothing, save for the haunting burn of smoke.

Not wasting a moment, she spun on her heel and ran down the hall, crying for help.

On the ground floor, she spotted a security guard, his face twisted in annoyance and confusion. She started spewing words at the man and another wave of shock rippled through him.

Damn it, I don't know any Korean. She held up three fingers.

"THIRD FLOOR."

No response. Just confusion.

"SMOKE."

A smattering of Korean from the frustrated guard, which she imagined were curses. No time for a dictionary.

"FIRE!" She tried and thank God, finally, the man understood one urgent word.

She tugged him by the arm, acknowledging in her head how stupid that was but they flew up the stairs.

When they charged through the stairwell door, he recognized the floor and yanked her back. He wagged his finger.

No I'm not a careening fan girl, she wanted to cry out. It's amazing how she could understand every smiting word. So she made him chase her. "Smoke! Fire!"

The smell became more apparent as the guard approached and to appease his own gnawing worries, he knocked. Again, how could she understand every word?

"Excuse me sorry for the interruption. Is anyone there?" No response from inside. "Hmmm, maybe a stove has been left on?"

She was aghast when his urgency extinguished. "Smoke! Fire!" Could he not smell it? The toxic chemical smoke.

He knocked more firmly, also firming his tone. Again, no response.

"No one is in but we should call police." He said one word in English.

"Door key! Key!" she cried, shaping her hand and twisting it as if she were unlocking a door.

The guard slapped her hand away.

He shook his head. "I cannot force entry."

A disquieting curl of smoke from under the door frame filled the hallway. She closed her hands around , tears stinging as they streamed down her face to her neck. "Death! Dying!"

Overwhelmed by a cold sense of foreboding, the guard fumbled with a giant ring of keys at his belt.

Each clink! and clank! of the tumblers sent a shudder through her. What if they were already too late?

The guard cracked open the door and tried to poke his head through but a wall of smoke hit them, smothering their mouths and burning their sight. He bent down to untie his shoes but she pushed in, coughing like mad.

The suite was larger than she thought and impossible to see through the wall of suffocating smoke. The man yelled behind her. "Get out! It's too dangerous!"

With my tears
I will soften Demeter's daughter, 
I will soften the Lord of the Dead, 
Moving their hearts with my sorrow. 
I will bear him away from Hades.

In the same miraculous way she found the right building, the right hall, the right apartment, she found the right room.

She saw his ash blond hair. His body lay near the burner and the smoke turned solid in her lungs. Jonghyun, the man who always seemed larger than life on stage looked so vulnerable. A shadow of his self.

The guard appeared behind her and grabbed him and together they cradled him out into the open air of the hall, as far as they could. The smoke triggered the alarms in the halls and a piercing noise joined their coughing.

They lay him near the elevator and finally she could see his face entirely. He sought peace in this act and yet his face was contorted with pain, vomit smeared on his lips and his black shirt.

She pressed her hand on his chest, no heaving, no breathing. The guard performed CPR. Noticing for the first time in entire situation a weight in her coat pocket: her mobile phone. She called the emergency. 911 isn't the number in Korea, nor should her phone even have service in Korea, yet she knew it was the emergency services that answered.

She cried into the phone. She knew no Korean and yet the address formed perfectly in , the floor name, desperate pleas to hurry, hurry, hurry. "Someone is coming to help," said the voice on the other end. She dropped the phone when she heard, finally, a desperate of air and his ribs compressed and expanded in a weak rhythm.

Drew iron tears down Hades's cheek, 
and made Hell grant what Sorrow did seek.

Weak breathing, but alive. Jonghyun was alive. After sobbing for ten days, tears stung in the corners of her eyes. 

Commotion in the stairwells, tenants evacuating, and emergency personnel arriving.

His eyes fluttered the tiniest bit open. Glassy brown eyes met hers and her breath skipped. Her own humanity seemed to flood back into her. How her legs ached from running, her own lungs burned from the smoke, almost felt ripped out from her desperate cries.

It was an unbelievably far journey, from the living world, down to the underworld, only to travel the painstaking trek back to the land of the living.

The guard greeted the emergency personnel. "I was on patrol downstairs…then she rushed me...wasn't breathing…but…resuscitated."

More commotion. She saw the police catch sight of her and charged by pure instinct, she fled past them to the stairwell. They shouted after her but she was far less important than Jonghyun who was still in critical condition.

She ran away as fast as she came, hoping to never to be seen again.

She meandered for hours, aimlessly. Her sense of precise direction had left her as soon as he took his first gasp. The winter air was colder than she's used to. She only wore her plaid coat and that was as good as paper against the snowy mist.

A jumbo public TV confirmed the time: 20:30, 18th of December 2017. Somehow, some way, time rewound ten days and somehow she woke up clear across the globe in a place she has only seen in pictures and film.

News leaks. Jonghyun was caught in the midst of a suicide attempt, but he was found in the nick of time. He was taken to a hospital, but doctors worry about a second attempt and put him under observation and suicide watch.

His family by his side in the hospital and his band mates were alerted. One abroad has cut his activities short for an early return for the sake of his mate.

The police issued a statement they are searching for someone of her description. They didn't say why or that she's a criminal, only that they searched for answers.

She slipped away, trying to hide away from the Police Commissioner's stern face on the jumbo screen.

She had arrived in Korea with one mission and then? She had absolutely nothing to do. If the job was done, what should she do now? Thirsty and hungry and night had swallowed the city. She wondered, looking for a bathroom. No Korean money in her pocket. No money, no ID, and she had lost her phone.

What do I do now? she thought. Am I stuck here in this time? Well it's no real loss. Ten days at most and I don't mind reliving that. Unless I'm still in this time? Two mes in this time; that's an unsettling thought. 

She merged with the pace of the crowd, faster than the gridlocked traffic. The biting air only grew colder. She shivered in her coat. Maybe she ought to call home? That would be fun. Hi family, I'm in Korea. They would help her in a heartbeat despite the confusion. She was confused too.

In the meantime, what should she do? Maybe find a McDonalds, she bitterly laughed at the suggestion. McD in any country she had visited at least had a bathroom. Maybe a foreigner might be able to help. The embassy? No she was wanted but they might be able to shield her? No they would endlessly pry.

Find a bathroom and clean up her face. After that, she'd have to walk all night, but that was fair.

Again, she didn't know any Korean and yet she plucked grapes of understanding from the crowd. Rumors were circulating fast and she caught bits of pieces: A suicide attempt. Just dreadful news. He was found in time, luckily. Just think of what could have happened.

Please don't think of it, she thought. You don't wish to know like I do.

In the warm glow of the city lights, with the most peace she felt in days, she vowed to tell no one. Having that made her swell, despite her cold, hunger, and loneliness in a foreign country.

In the blur of people, she didn't notice the security guard from the building encroach. She didn't notice his shirt collar and jacket and the faint sense of deja voo, until it was too late. She was apprehended. She didn't fight it. Four men larger than her appeared. They didn't cuff her. They didn't want to frighten her. They took her to a police car though it might have been faster to walk.

Oh well, I didn't have anywhere else to go anyway.

She was taken to the station but not into a cell. They gave her a steaming cup of tea and convenience store kimbap. She ate it, not despising the turn of events yet. It was warm, she was warm and besides some furtive glances, no one had acknowledged her yet...

A man she didn't recognize from the group who caught her sat opposite her. He bowed his head in greeting and she did the same, while swallowing an unchewed chunk of seaweed and rice.

He spoke fluent English with an Aussie twinge.

He asked her name.

"I have none," she lied.

"You must have a name."

She touched her face, wondering if the body she remember was still the same one she strolled around in. She recognized her round face, full cheeks, her painted nails, silver dolphin ring, her scarred wrists.

I'm still me, she thought with relief and disappointment.

"You must have a name," he repeated.

So she contextualized the whole situation in her head and she uttered the first that came to mind.

"Eury," she said.

"Yuri?" he said and scribbled it down. "Where are you from?"

Another time? Ten days down the river. Instead she said, "I don't mind going home. You can send me home, but I don't have a passport. I would like to make a phone call.

"Did you report the loss of your passport?"

"I didn't come here with one."

His eyebrows flew up. "Then how did you get here?"

"I wish I knew," she said honestly.

"Do you know any Korean?" he asked.

She shook her head but then tried the greeting she sort of knew. "Annyeonghaseyo," she butchered in pronunciation that somehow lent legitimacy to her claims.

"But you spoke fluent Korean on the phone with the dispatcher?"

"I don't know what that was," she said. "I couldn't repeat it now if my life depended on it."

In a world full of billions of people with thousands of languages, cultures and ways of life, some things are universal, like the look of quiet confusion on the detective's face.

"Jonghyun lived?" she asked.

"He did. These questions are his too. He can't remember your face."

Don't you know the story? If he sees my face I'll be whisked back.

"If you will let me go back home in peace, I will only tell all to one person, Jonghyun."

Logistic problems arose and she realized it. They don't have a common language, nor would she get a translator, for that would spoil the whole secrecy thing.

Time passed. That was all she really understood. Could have been hours or days.

The idol arrived, exhaustion heavy on him physically, but the shadow had become human again. He had traveled the immeasurable distance from life to death and back. She was Eurydice and he was Orpheus, but with a twist of fate. Eurydice led Orpheus back to the land of the living. The fan brings the musician back from Hades' grim dwellings.

At first she didn't see his face purposefully, remembering the myth, worried he would be whisked away back to the underworld by a single glimpse. Slowly, she peeked through her fingers and there he was still.

He bowed his head and she did the same. The same thought in their minds: how are we supposed to speak? Drawing? Charades? A dictionary? She really didn't think that part through, only filled by the sense that everything would turn out fine.

"Do you believe in second chances?" she asked.

Somehow the words reached him and he nodded. "I didn't think new beginnings were meant for people like me."

The words were Korean and yet without any effort she understood perfectly. As if the words pressed their meaning and nuance against her as soon as he spoke them.

"How do you feel? You might as well tell me," she said. "This is the only time you will have to tell me and the only time I will ever say this to anyone."

He then spoke with a strained smile on the cusp of tears. "I feel complicated. An incoherent mix of frustration and relief. I had planned everything. I planned not to be found. The world began to slip away and just when I was sure that it was the end, for a bitter moment, I wanted to stay. Then you appeared, the world appeared and that first breath was the hardest I've ever taken."

"Will you keep trying to live?" she asked.

She had never seen him alive, not even on stage (a regret of hers). Only two dimensional images, all edited, shopped, done up with make-up, all glamorous and pleasing to the eye. Not that she at her best could hold a candle to him at his worst...there was something undeniably sobering about seeing him a couple of feet in front of her face as a vulnerable, living, breathing human being.

"I don't know what tomorrow will bring. The pain never goes away, but I feel like I've grown from traveling the distance," he said.

How can someone travel from the land of the living, fall into the underworld and be whisked back? A journey so long would change anyone.

Finally her words spewed out. "You were supposed to succeed and you did where I came from. I know you were supposed to leave this world. I was given the chance in this time and I used it to give you a second chancd and maybe to have this conversation now. You didn't see the heartbreak, the wailing, the sobbing, and the regret I've seen. Know the world is a better place with you in it, Jonghyun. People love you more than you love yourself. The depression is not your fault, nor a fault of your personality. It is an illness and nothing to be ashamed of. I can't take the pain away and even though it is selfish of me to ask, but please stay."

The worst part was that she had been in that suicidal space before, but was telling him to not go. She almost held that in but with a pain that mimicked that of ripping a part of herself open, she said, "I have been in that space before and I'm telling you that you need to stay. Stay with us."

To all that, to her confession of being from another time, to interferring with his attempt and her selfish request that he continue living because she had done so too, he seemed choked up for words, until he uttered a precious few. "I'm grateful you stayed."

After all she said, trying to save him, he expressed his thanks for her life and not one for his own sake. And yet, maybe that was enough, for her heart shattering to pieces at the four words, that he understood. "I'm grateful you're here," she said.

Time was relative and yet at that moment she was overwhelmed with the sense that hers was wearing thin like air at growing altitude. Time to return to the land of her living.

"What is your name? Your real one," he asked.

She uttered it.

"Why did you say Yuri earlier?" he asked.

She dug her nail into her cuticle. "You'll laugh if I tell you."

"I promise I won't laugh," he said, betrayed by the tiniest semblance of humor glinting his eyes that before seemed so glassy.

"It's short for Eurydice. Earlier I thought of the bittersweet myth and thought this time, it's Eurydice seeking Orpheus in the underworld. When they asked for a name, it was all I could think of."

"Is that why you feared looking at my face when I walked in?" He said with a smile in his eyes and a warm voice that could thaw Hades' cold heart. She couldn't help but blush but before she could dwell on the moment, she heard a gong! like the of a clock tower.

She had slipped into the sunlight. All he heard was one faint word, "Farewell."

She buttoned up her coat and walked out the door. The world tore away and she awakened in a different world and a different time, where things were just a little bit different.

Her regret melted away when she watched them in show. She was an indistinguishable face in the crowd and yet he knew and felt that she, his loved ones and the world, cheered him on. His light continued to shine brightly and the world rejoiced for the Star who Stayed.