The first time I saw her, she was the most beautiful person I had ever laid eyes on.

      She still is.

      My eyes wander around the extravagant celebration the company was throwing. The plain staff lounge is now buried under a gazillion black, grey and white party balloons covering the floor and hanging down the high ceiling – all inflated to perfection. A massive table stretches by the length of the wall right across the entrance, bursting with feasts from different cuisines, and an enormous black laminated banner dangling perfectly above it, reading ‘Welcome to YG Entertainment’.

      Somewhere between the equally anxious and exhilarated crowd, more than a familiar side profile catches me off guard. She is in all white, her lightly curled brown locks that barely sprung up to her shoulders is a great contrast to the long sleek hair she had back in college.

      She couldn’t be another illusion – they always featured the classic look she had always pulled.

      I blink for a prolonged period. When I open them once more, my vision dissolves slowly from the darkness, pixel like shapes giving way to the view of her ducking her head, laughing at something a wavy, black-haired man had said. Her face brightens like it had always done, the back of her hand warily covering and her eyes glinting like all the stars in the heavens above had fallen into them.

      Was it really her?

      It looked too real to be true. I shake my head willing her realistic illusion to disappear.

      But no matter what my efforts are, when I look again, she is still there. Laughing, smiling and subtly fidgeting in her seat. Being normal. I wouldn’t have known she was in a coma for nearly four months. Did her memories come back? Her family never let me around for long to know the answer to that. I understand their distaste towards me. I did ruin their daughter anyways.

      Still, I will myself to move forward, approach her and hug her and kiss her like I’ve always fantasized this scenario night after night. It’s supposed to be raining and I’m supposed to appear in front of her. Then she remembers me and launches into my embrace, crying and laughing, mumbling how much she had missed me. I kiss her lips and thread my fingers through her dark, damp, soft locks and wipe her tears and never let her go again.

      Never let her go again.

      But this was just a wistful imagination. In reality, my legs stop functioning, the blood is being pumped fiercely in my veins, and my palms are so sweaty. I notice my hands are in fists. Instead of having her in my arms, my whole being opts to shake like a ghost had just appeared before me.

      And she might as well have been one. For no matter how long I had been separated from her, and how long I’d wished for this moment to happen, it still feels too soon. Too damn soon.

      “Jiyong, you okay?” Yongbae, a solo artist at the company and also my high school best friend, nudges my side – his bulky arm jerking my small figure to the side harshly. I don’t bat an eye.

      “She’s here”, I utter without much thought.

      “Ji-“

      “I’m serious,” I look at him. His face showing his great distaste for the situation – It echoes in his deep voice as he responds.

      He sighs and whispers, it was soft but firm. Just like how he always is. “Not again, I thought we talked about this, Ji.” I notice I’m still rooted by the entrance when Yongbae positions himself behind me and push me further into the party, towards the on-looking newbies.

      Their eyes baring into our every move like a bunch of hyenas. Idolization, envy and a mixture of both radiating off their auras.

      I hate it.

      So I ignore it.

      “I’m not imagining things, Bae,” I turn my head and crank my neck, hoping to find her through his over grown Mohawk – the only reason I can’t see past him, regardless of his obvious fall through in height. The spot she was at earlier is now empty. My heart drops. “Where is she? She was right there, I swear!”

      He pushes me harder when I stop moving, his agitation becoming more evident when I try fighting against him. I’m evidently not winning. “She is not here, you idiot. Get your head in the game. We have a speech to give and Hyun Suk hyung won’t like it if you choose this moment in particular to obsess over your ex-girlfriend.”

      My eyes become hazy, not accepting the idea that she was an illusion. How can I imagine her with a different look? My mind can’t give her a makeover out of the blue. “I’m not imaging things, I know I saw her”, I say breathlessly.

      He ignores me.

      We settle down on our white satin-covered chairs with the other producers, I’ve barely been acquainted with – our friends were seated on the table behind us. I roll my eyes, hoping our table mates would not notice, but not actually caring at the same time. Thank you Hyun Suk hyung, but I do not need other friends.

      I can’t help but look over the room once more, my eyes frantically looking for a trace of her presence. Was I just imagining her? But she was so vivid. She was so her. A small, bulky hand invades my line of vision, and I know who it is. I hold back the urge to punch him.

      Instead, I turn part of my attention on his annoyingly concerned face under the equally annoying Mohawk he was smoothening. “What?”

      “Did you sleep well last night? You usually get those hallucinations when you’re tired”, he his hair again and sighs. I frown. Because (1) him fixing his hair every now and then is nerve wrecking and (2) his accusation of me imagining things gets on my nerves. “Did you take your pills?”

      I discreetly examine the room radius with the corner of my eye, and the black curly-haired man was chatting animatedly with another girl. He looks notably familiar, and I really couldn’t have cared less at the moment. Yongbae notices me, and I ignore his infuriating lifted eyebrow. “So?”

      “I don’t know, Bae”, I draw in a deep breath and roughly rub my face. “It felt so real this time. Too real.”

      Even after five years, I still can’t let her go. Though exasperating at times, Bae had been with me through it all, from the very beginning of our love affair in Arts School up until the last day – but not the incident. The incident that had crushed all the hope I’d had for us. Hope that we would not fall through even after I had ruined every golden moment we’d had together.

      I can still remember her face – broken, bloody, and lifeless.

      The welcoming ceremony started and I force those thoughts far away. The president of the company, Yang Hyun Suk, takes up the mini stage I hadn’t noticed at the front of the room with a mic stand right in the middle and starts his speech.

      “Our new addition to the family – our new artists, choreographers and producers. I would love to welcome every single one of you…” I tune him out and study the room even further. I rest my neck on the edge of my back rest and look up. I turn my head away almost immediately, the brightness of the bulbs remind me that this was indeed the same room I’ve been frequenting for the last five years.

      It was perfectly redecorated in such a short period, for I had been here this morning before heading to the recording studio. I can’t say I’m surprised though.

      Why? Well, it is no secret that Hyun Suk hyung enjoys all kinds of parties. And it is no lie that he throws the best ones as well either.

      “…To ease your start in your work and to help you cultivate the best of your talents and abilities, you will be divided into teams of five with our resident producers and artists who will guide you through the first two months…”

      Yada, Yada, Yada. Having heard this speech so many times before, I might even retell it instead right now. I close my eyes and face the ceiling, a slight hint of light invading the tranquillity of the dark. Though my mind still wanders to where it always does.

      Her.

      It is now June, which means her birthday is in a month. Barely. Twenty nine days to be exact. She will be turning twenty six this year, and I imagine how I would’ve surprised her with a birthday party. She loved chocolate, so definitely a black forest cake. A bouquet of pink lilies is a must – she always did think that roses were too overrated and white lilies were boring.

      I sigh.

      But she may not be the same anymore. It had been five years after all.

      I had tried letting her go when I started working at YG one year after graduation, also after her accident. Her family wouldn’t let me anywhere near her after all. The plan was hypothetically simple: Start over, meet new people, move on. But it was proven hard when I started seeing her face in every woman I dated, and expected her personality and behaviour in all of them.

      If what I had seen before was simply an illusion, then where is she at the moment? Is she healthy? Happy? Does she remember me? Did she find someone else? And if it wasn’t, why can’t I see her anymore? What was she doing here, out of all places? Would she remember me?

      My mind goes back to the only time I had met her after she had woken up. Her face was still bruised, her limbs broken in places it shouldn’t be, and her eyes looking at me questionably. It wasn’t a long visit, but it wasn’t the closure I had hoped for either. If I had behaved differently, would it all be alright now?

      The questions are endless.

Six Years Ago

Seoul University

Frowning, I crumble another music sheet and throw it in the bin from across the room. I watch it as it lands atop a growing pile of several discarded lyrics and melodies. It's nearly nine o’clock at night. The college campus is cloaked in the dark night’s sky with a silence that was so forgotten amongst the obnoxious loudness of the students in the day that it was nearly bizarre and eerie.

      Classes had ended nearly three hours ago, but the student facility rooms are open up until midnight. I had managed to get an empty workshop in the performing arts department building. It was where Bae was practising his vocal range with his classmates anyways, so I thought we would leave together to the recording studio in the music department across the Eastern g