- Taeyeon's POV -

"Ahhhh!" I screamed and sat up straight. I started panting heavily, grabbing my blanket close to my heart.

"Miss? Are you okay Miss Taeyeon?" I heard urgent knocks on my door as Housekeeper Park's voice sounded from the other side of the door.

"Y-yes! I'm okay... Come in."

I gave a weak smile as her familiar face came into view. Sighing, she cup my face with her hands and looked straight into my eyes. Within seconds, I was pulled into an embrace and she patted my back, just like she did every time I woke up with a nightmare.

It's been 2 years since she's gone. 2 whole damned years. Yet, there wasn't a single week where I had managed to go by without dreaming of her at least once. The nightmare never changes. It was always me crying, and her telling me that it wasn't my fault, that she would never want to see me reproaching myself. And that she loves me.

When everything was still going good in my life, I had felt like I had the best things anyone could possibly imagined. My family was rich. I wasn't sure if rich alone was enough to describe the wealth they had. My older brother, me, and my younger sister lived in a life of luxury. We went to the best schools, no matter in what field we were interested in. Jiwoong oppa and I had attended Berklee College of Music together, him majoring in music education while me, in performance. Hayeon wasn't that much of a music person but she was our family's pride, holding a PhD in business economics from Harvard Business School. Oppa and I would often tease our dad that he was favouring Hayeon way too much just because Hayeon was the most likely one out of the 3 of us to take over his business, but we knew it wasn't true. We had a pair of really kind parents, who practiced no favouritism. Even though they, or you can say we, were really rich, they were never anywhere near being snobbish.

At the young age of 16, I had already appeared on American newspapers as part of the "amazing Korean siblings" together with oppa. Sometimes the attention I would get at school bothered me. I honestly just wanted to be a normal girl. I never appreciated the pretentious "friends" who stuck around me the whole day just so they could gain attention from their they-are-so-cute-I-am-gonna-die boys. Not liking it didn't mean that I was a mean person though. I still treated them as normal friends, but I never confided in them. Not even once. Boys would ask for my number but I would always reject them, nicely. I never held back from smiling though, other than the times when I was really feeling very rotten.

Even though people surrounded me the whole time, be it my pretentious "friends", guys who wanted to court me, reporters, teachers and whatnot, I had always felt lonely, as if there was no one else I could ever open up to. Of course, I loved my family, but sometimes, there are just some things that are meant to be said to special people. I just never found any. Well, that was before I met her.

The other popular people never interests me, but she was an exception. All the other popular kids usually gathered together most of the time, and they were always loud, not like they needed the loudness to attract the attention anyway. But they were still loud. She was different. Even the way she was popular was different. The other students would always go on and on about how Tiffany was so hot, how Sunny was so funny, how Ailee was so diva-ish and blah blah. She however, was known for being cold, for being indifferent. She never bothered joining the other popular kids. She was always alone, and she shone. And unfortunately, because she wasn't the "regular" kind of a popular kid, she had haters as much as she had people who liked her. People would either love her to death, or hate her to the core.

The first time I met her, I already had some sort of an opinion about her. And that opinion about her initially, to be honest, wasn't that much of a good one. I hated people who were snobbish because of their wealth, and she looked like she perfectly fitted the match. Even though I was the kind kid around, I never bothered to smile when we walked past each other, not like she gave a damn though. At least, that was what I thought, until the day, that very day my life changed.

"Uh... Taeyeon?"

"Hey. What's up?"

"Hmm, how should I put this. Alright. Let's do this in a more formal way. Hi Taeyeon, can I make you my friend?"

"Woah. Uh...y-yeah. Sure."

"Cool. My name is Jessica. Nice to meet you."

© Sky Blue Tales ✍