Sometimes, Jessica wishes she hadn’t made that choice. To leave. To turn her back on her hopes and dreams. To abandon the girls. It was painful, obviously, but she had to do it.

She knew it was stupid to quit the entertainment industry and leave Korea entirely.

But what could she do? She’d fallen too in love with the wrong person. Love can do that too you sometimes. It has the power to heal but yet it blinds you and leaves scars in its wake. The latter happened for Jessica.

Love happened and made a fool out of her. Love happened, and she was left maimed, blinded, shattered – she was never the same after she warily limped her way out of its trail of destruction.

Everyone she knew shook their heads and tried to make her stay. A silly decision was what they would say. Even if she couldn’t stay in the group, she could’ve done a solo gig. Why the need to leave the country. At first people thought she was planning to kick start her career overseas, after all offers poured in from every corner of the globe when she announced her intentions to leave the group. But she left everyone baffled and confused when she denied those rumors. They didn’t understand.

What use is money, when all you want is just someone to hold?

She was so in love, her world started spinning, rotating and the butterflies in her tummy started to flutter.

However, sometimes the world starts spinning faster and faster, too rapidly. The lines started to blur and all you’re left with is a splitting headache.

How beautiful this world is, Jessica once thought, that one can fall in love with something as simple as a smile.  That smile now haunts in her dreams. Taunts her, teases her, tortures her. Their memories like acid; corrosive, and it flowed through her veins like a diseases. She loved her to the point of ruin; her love caused her lungs to fill with ash. It suffocated her.

Now the world felt cold and empty. Sunshine falls like a snowstorm; she felt like she had become skin-cutting winter, the cold memories trapped within, painfully reminding of how her heart crumbled as if an avalanche came down.

They were once happy, the two of them. Maybe too much, they couldn’t contain it, it overflowed and soon people started noticing that what these two girls had was not a mere platonic friendship. 

It placed a tremendous amount of pressure on the both of them; society wasn’t ready to accept their love. They hid and for a while that worked. But the stress started to take a toll on them – and their relationship. Love had become burdensome. The arguments and the fights had changed them, it tore them apart.

It affected the group, slowly but surely. She had to leave, they’re better off without her now.

Jessica looked at the stars, and thought of her. She remembers the time when they weren’t another continent away, when they were looking at the stars, together. When she looked at her, Jessica felt that she saw not only her physical appearance but even the tiniest nooks and crannies of her mind, her soul. Now it feels like she sees through her, as if she were transparent.

Nothing really lasts, coffee cools, cigarettes end and music stops. Even stars die and become dust, colors turn into grey and eventually, everything fades to black.

Everything is terrifyingly temporary.

Jessica carried out and followed all her usual routines in her mundane life. Mundane, but predictable. After giving up her entire youth for a life of uncertainty and chaos, a mundane routine is exactly what she needs.

Tonight was different. Tonight Jessica curls into a ball. The silence which usually comforts her now feels like a vacuum. The air from her lungs feels like it’s been knocked out of her. The hand that had been holding the phone drops onto the ground. She had read enough. Seen enough. The news article had been detailed, a bit too detailed and the pictures. She was radiating happiness and joy. Jessica felt her world caving in.

Her love had finally found another.