It was when he was laying upside down on his futon with music sheets scattered all over his room and his guitar sitting dejectedly on his chest that his mother called him down for dinner; but he didn’t want food. Something in the back of his mind wanted him to get up, leave, and never return until the void was filled.

                “Where is this void?” his grandmother had asked once.

                He pointed to his heart.

                “Love can cure that,” she answered before hugging him tightly with shriveled, albeit strong, arms. She died the next day.

                He refused to come out of his room after that. Always sitting on the balcony with his wooden guitar, playing the random melodies he’d conjured up in his head, he never left his room; and his mother always brought his food up to his room because he wouldn’t come down stairs. This went on for months, more than either he or his mother could count. But he could still feel the void in his heart, and it grew deeper and deeper each day. And here, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to fill the void just by staying home. He laid his guitar in its case, and zipped it closed.

                His mother was surprised when he finally came out of his room on a drizzling Friday evening.

                “Where are you going?” she asked.

                “Out with some friends,” he answered plainly, grabbing an umbrella. “I’ll be back around seven.”

                He didn’t come home until one in the morning reeking of alcohol and smoke, trudging his feet as if he’d had the life out of him. But his mother didn’t say anything, because she believed that he son was a good kid and knew what he was doing with his life.

                Weeks passed that grew into months with him leaving the house and not returning for hours on end, and when he did return he smelled like , but his mother never said anything to him even though his smiles were becoming more and more rare, and the sparkle in his eyes that once gave her the assurance that he was happy had eventually disappeared. She knew, he was becoming restless in this place, the place he’d been all his life. He needed to explore and spread out to learn more about his life. So it didn’t even come as a surprise when he shouldered his guitar case and told his mother, “I’m leaving…”

                She just nodded and kissed the top of his head. “What will you do?” she asked.

                “Play guitar for people,” he answered as if it were the solution to life.

                She only smiled, carefully studying those deep brown eyes for the last time. “Be safe; and be careful.”

                He was glad she wasn’t clingy like many mothers would be if their sixteen year old son dropped out of high school and left home to pursue a music career with nothing but an acoustic guitar on his back. She waved him off, and he began his journey to fill the void. He didn’t even know what the void was. He just knew his heart felt empty.

                His first job was at a small café.

                “You sing?” the owner asked.

                He nodded.

                “You play?”

                He nodded again.

                The owner let him play every Tuesday and Friday. He was paid in croissants, coffee, and whatever tips the café customers decided to drop in his guitar case. It wasn’t a bad start, but he didn’t feel that this is where he could fill the void. He could fill his stomach, but he couldn’t heal the void yet. He quit his job in fifty-six days.

                “Really? You’re going to quit?” one of the café workers he’d become somewhat friends with asked as he dried a cup with a tattered towel.

                He nodded. “There’s nothing for me here.”

                “And what would that nothing be?”

                He shrugged. “My heart… It’s just… empty…”

                The worker smiled. “That, my friend, you can heal with love.”

                He scoffed. That’s what his grandmother had said too. “What do you mean?” he asked.

                The worker chuckled. “How should I know?” he answered. “Ask a fortune teller.”

                And so he did, but he also did more than ask for a simple telling. He asked for a job as well. She was young—well… Younger than he expected.

                “How old are you?” she asked.

                “Sixteen,” he answered smoothly.

                “You’re handsome.”

                He smiled.

                “You want a job here? Why? You are a musician, no?”

                He only smiled and said, “I need to learn about my life. I heard that you can tell the story of lives, from beginning to end, so I’m here to learn of that talent.”

                She grinned with straight teeth. “It’s a difficult talent, but I’m sure you’ll learn quickly. You may work here.”

                He spent the next twenty-six days cleaning the entire store; when another fourteen days passed, he was promoted to handling the customers, writing down appointments and showing guests into the room where the Story Teller—as he called her—would tell the customers what was to become of their futures.

                After his fifth month of working for the Story Teller, he realized that he had not filled the void. Picking up his guitar again, he wondered what he could do that might lead him into a better life; and in three simple chords, he noticed that music had always been part of his life, not magic. He quit his job with the Story Teller, but before he left, she told him, “Remember, love can cure many things, especially heartache.” He scoffed. This was the third time he’d heard such a thing.

                The next place he worked at was in a rundown music shop in a very bad neighborhood. Many things can be found in unexpected places—a teacher of his had once said that. So maybe he could find the antidote to the hole, the emptiness in his heart.

                “All you have to do is sell, man,” the owner had told him after hiring him. “You get Saturdays and Sundays off.”

                The store didn’t need to be looked after very much. People came in, looked around, and then left. The highlight of his day would be reorganizing CDs on shelves. He loved the feel of the plastic covers and how it felt so real in his hands. He loved looking at the colorful covers and reading the ridiculous names people gave their bands.

                His Saturdays and Sundays were spent inside the store anyways, dusting shelves or playing around with the CDs. Though mostly he took his guitar and played it. The hours were whisked away as he pulled at steel strings that eventually bit harshly at his fingers, warning him that he was playing for too long. And even then, he ignored the pain in his fingertips because no matter how raw and sensitive his fingers became from plucking at guitar strings, he had to keep playing. It was his life. If he stopped playing, even for a moment, he’d lose the concentration he’d been holding in order to find the answer to filling the void in his heart.

                One Saturday after his third month of working at the music store rolled around and the owner decided to take him to some party in his friend’s basement. He was hesitant, because he believed that playing his guitar would lead him to more answers, but nevertheless, he was dragged out of his cave. It was neither a good time nor a bad time. He played beer ping pong, drunkenly sang a bit, smoked some weed, and felt up a couple girls, maybe even some guys, but who cared, because after tonight, he’d be gone, because he realized he wasn’t able to fill the void in this dump.

                He went home after quitting his job at the music store. It had been a year and four months since he’d first departed.

                “Have you filled the void?” his mother asked right off the bat.

                He shook his head. “I don’t know how to,” he said. Gazing into his mother’s caring eyes, he pleaded, “Help me.”

                 This time she shook her head. “I can’t help you, honey.”

                “How do I fill the void?” he asked helplessly.

                “Use your talents,” she answered with a smile, before hearing the ding of the oven and scuttling away to retrieve her hot brownies.

                That night, he ate nothing but sweets while playing his guitar on his balcony, singing random lyrics that sounded as if they fit together to the round moon above his head. When all was silent and only the wind could hear his voice, he asked himself, “What are my talents?”

                He left again the next day. This time he vowed he wouldn’t return home until he filled the void.

                He was in the center of Seoul when he decided he wanted lemon candies. He had no idea why. The urge to plop something sour in his mouth made him walk into a candy store and buy four bags full. He sat on a picnic table with his guitar on his lap. Because he had no more music sheets, all written upon or crumpled up, he wrote new lyrics and notes on his hand with an old pen he’d found in the grass.

                It was when he spotted a couple dancing in the clearing nearby him. They laughed and stumbled around each other, and he could only smile. For the first time in his life, he forgot about the void. He just felt happy and bubbly, ready to laugh at anything. His hands dropped to his sides as he watched them, but they, too, ceased their merriment and glared at him.

                “Keep playing, please,” they said.

                And he complied, playing all sorts of melodies for the pair. Around five in the afternoon the couple finally announced they were going home. And when they left, he felt the void return. The joy and happiness seeped away from his being, and he frowned. What could he do to make that happiness stay with him forever? And that’s when he realized, the void in his heart was lovesickness.

                His next job was as a street performer. With his guitar and a random chair—sometimes just sitting on the ground—he played random melodies he’d created in the dead of night under a tree he’d fallen asleep under. The children loved it, so he always received small pocket change, and one time a flower from a little girl. The adults, on the other hand, only spared him side glances and looks of disapproval.

                With every person who passed him, he expected that he’d find his lover among the crowd. That was his plan. He believed that he could mend the void in his heart by falling in love. It wasn’t until the fourth month on the streets that a girl walked up to him and asked, “What’s your name?”

                He grinned. “Why?” he asked.

                She swayed side to side. “Because I like you.”

                Standing up, he gazed at her face, pretty and innocent. She was also foreign, with large eyes and blonde hair. He blinked once and said, “My name is Myungsoo. Nice to meet you.”

                “Can I call you L?” she asked.

                He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

                “L… for lonely, because you’re always out here alone,” she answered.

                The corners of his mouth lifted and his heart lightened a little bit. “Sure.”

                She giggled; and when she giggled, the void in Myungsoo’s heart disappeared.

                Myungsoo and the girl decided to date. It was during their second month of dating that Myungsoo realized he’d made a mistake. He wasn’t attracted to this girl. In fact, he wasn’t attracted to women in the least; he’d figured this out when she’d tried to seduce him into sleeping with her, but he wasn’t aroused at all, which led her to sulk for the rest of the night, not that he cared. And he also found out the girl he was currently dating was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

                “Myungsoo oppa, let’s go get a drink!” she said giddily, smoking what seemed like .

                Myungsoo hadn’t picked up a beer bottle since the party from when he worked at the music store, and he probably could’ve used one to loosen up the knots in the back of his mind. Nevertheless, he shook his head. “No,” he answered firmly, picking up his guitar.

                “You’re always playing that damned guitar!” she screamed, flinging her smoke somewhere in the room.

                The void in Myungsoo’s heart darkened. Some other feeling was coming over him. Anger, annoyance, this was new to him.

                “I like my guitar,” he said plainly, plucking at the strings. A chord of discordance emitted from his guitar and he cocked his head to the side. The correct feeling was not there. He was too flustered, annoyed by this that was supposedly his girlfriend when he knew that she slept around with other guys like a ; but he didn’t care, because he knew that she couldn’t fill the void.

                The girl took a pillow and threw it at him. “I ing hate you! You’re a heartless , Oppa! You don’t ing care about me!” she screamed.

                And less than surprisingly, Myungsoo felt himself nod his head in agreement. She kicked him and his guitar to the curb that night, and the next morning she was found by a random club, dead due to the excessive use of drugs.

                Continuing on with his quest of mending the void in his heart, Myungsoo resorted to street performing again. This time, it took six months for someone to come to him. It was a man dressed in a business suit, polished shoes reflecting sunlight into his eyes.

                “What’s your name, son?” he asked.

                “Kim Myungsoo, sir,” he answered, shielding his eyes from the brightness of the sun.

                “How old are you?”

                “My birthday is March 13, 1992, and we’re in the month of September, I’m seventeen, sir.”

                The man handed him a business card and a flyer. “I work for an entertainment company,” he said. “If you want, go audition, okay?”

                Myungsoo nodded as he took the papers from the stranger. It was ten days after he’d received the invitation to audition at this company that Myungsoo decided that the streets held nothing more to offer him in his mission. He headed to the doors of Woollim Entertainment and stood in line for an audition.

                There were many people there—young, short, boys, girls. Myungsoo sighed. It never occurred to him that he should just give up in his quest of love. He didn’t even know his ideal type! How was he supposed to pick his perfect lover if he didn’t even have a clue what kind of lover he wanted?

                Suddenly, a small frame bumped into him.

                “I’m so sorry!” a high pitched voice squealed. “I’m really sorry! Sorry… I wasn’t looking where I was going. I’m so sorry!”

                Myungsoo didn’t care that this person was saying sorry to him. He didn’t even remember that he’d bumped into him. He only noticed that the void in his heart was gone. Only from hearing this stranger’s voice, he felt light and happy, like he did that day in the park or when he first met that foreign girl, except this time, all the colors around him were brighter. It was like a new door in his life had opened and no matter what, he wasn’t able to go back. Cute was the first word that came into mind when he studied the person’s features. Feminine was the second.

                “Are you a boy?” Myungsoo asked before he could stop himself.

                The person stood up straight, hand on the hip and full lips pursed. “Yes,” he answered curtly.

                “I’m sorry,” Myungsoo said hastily. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

                The boy’s expression softened and he smiled. “I’m Sungjong,” he said with an extended hand.

                “I’m… Myungsoo,” he answered, shaking Sungjong’s hand with an obvious dazed expression. “Call me L.”

                “Why L?”

                “L for… Lovers… Because that’s what I hope we’ll become one day.”

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A/N: I have no idea what I just wrote~ >< But I worked for a whole two days on it! XD <3 Comments? ^^ Umm... There probably will be a sequel, so if you're curious, head on over to my profile and subscribe because I'm one helluva lazy person and will not inform you people~ XP