I had met her at a party in California, somewhere tucked in the long strip of beautiful Santa Monica beach with cans of beer and packages of food to be eaten by fires packed in coolers and camper vans parked in the sand. Tents were splayed out underneath the stars and the flames of the bonfires up to the sky. We danced lazily to loud music blaring from the stereos some of the guys had brought and drank warm beers as we laughed and talked together about whatever randomly crossed our minds.

Stories of home and parties just like this one and the night after weaved their way into my ears. The mention of family made me choke a little harder on my cup of spiked coke than it should have, made my fingers sweaty and my heart to break with every vision of my family bursting into mind at the word. It was my second year of college in the United States and I was already accustomed to the taste of an In-N-Out burger crammed with salty fries and thick shakes and steaks. Authentic Korean food was extremely hard to find here, it seemed everyone had put their own little twists on the traditional ways, like the lines of recipes had been slurred or the ingredients mixed. The only way I’d eat my home country’s food would be if I made it myself. If I drove to a supermarket and bought the ingredients and looked up instructions on Google and cooked it myself.

In no time at all, I had lost my childish accent and was now extremely fluent in English. People I had just met swore to me that I sounded like I was from California instead of a tiny little country thousands of miles across the sea. I had grown to like the fluidness of life here - people did things simply on a whim. They were really free, in a sense.

If you’re wondering how I’d gotten to be invited to this party of college students on a beach in the golden state, I had decided to stop moping around my dorm doing nothing all day and tag along with them at the start of summer break. I was smiling politely every now and then, and taking tiny sips from my cup, swaying slightly to the music as I stood in a ring of people I had never met before until five minutes ago. I was trying my best to look as carefree and happy as everyone else did, after all, it was the start of forever in paradise, but in truth, the ache of my heart had developed into a an awful throbbing feeling.

I was missing Korea, my family, my everything. It kept on coming back to my like little electric shocks to my spine, jolting my brain. My last birthday spent with my family. Shock. My father attempting to hush my mother's choked tears late at night. Shock. My brother offering to load my suitcase into the trunk of his car as he drove us to the airpot. Shock. The wave of goodbye out the window as my brother drove away with tears threatening to spill in his strong eyes. Shock. The silent airplane ride with my parents as they stared sadly out the windows into the rising clouds. Shock.

“Hey.” Someone snapped my attention from zoning out on the sand below my feet by tapping my on the shoulder. Victoria, one of the friends I had come with, peered out from beneath platinum blond hair, worry evident on her facial features. “Are you feeling alright?” I must’ve looked pale and sick as death because she gently took the cup from between my fingers and smiled, the motherly instincts coming out again in one of my closest friends. “Maybe you’re a lightweight, better go sit down somewhere quiet to cool off.” I didn’t protest, the lump that had formed in the middle of my throat probably wouldn’t have allowed a sound come out of my mouth. She pointed me to the tent she’d set up for me, far enough away from the ruckus of the party to be out of the way but still in the loop of things, “In there’d be good.”

I manage a wane smile while I stumble quietly over to the secluded place. As she’s being dragged back to dancing with some guy, she turns and waves goodbye to me, she shouts, “Come back when you feel up to it!” Without anyone but her knowing, I ducked into my tent a second later and sat down heavily on my bed, feeling it sag as much as my heart with my weight. Being alone, I could finally voice the sob I’d been holding back within my throat.

Luna laughing and crying on my shoulder when we read my acceptance letter to UCLA in my old bedroom. Shock. Taeyeon and Tiffany taking me out to lunch after the good news at a cafe downtown. Shock. Amber arriving late to my goodbye party with an apologetic grin and a small gift wrapped present that I wore around my neck at all times. Shock.

Outside, I could hear the catchy music and the sound of sand swishing over bare feet in the background while waves of tears poured down my cheeks. Doubt crashed upon me in troves of sorrow, beating against my already sinking heart and drowning it to oblivion. And then, voices. I forced myself to hold back sobbing again, for fear of being heard. I stared at the ground, holding back from letting my tears fall. A boy and a girl. I heard them come so close, I could hear exactly what was being said even over the laughter and the drunken giddiness and the haze of the night. I could hear the choppy steps of the guy as he pleaded drunkenly to her and the faint whisper of her feet through the grains of sand. And then her voice cut through everything, the guy’s unexplainable blubbering, the drop of the bass beats, the dancing, the drinking, the partiers, like a gentle knife tearing through butter. It made me sit up in surprise, the tears drying up on my cheeks and my sorrow melting into the sand. “Stop it Siwon, I already said we’re through.” It was a girl’s voice, just outside the untied flaps of my tent, and it shocked me out of my grief like a lightning bolt.