2018

It had been three years since that summer morning and Krystal was still missing.

But sadly, only from our lives.

Her face and life was out there, displayed in magazines, advertisements, and also TVs, being consumed by the eyes of millions  of people around the world. I sometimes overheard people talking about her when I sat in coffee shops, or when I was waiting for a train, or even when I was working with my reports at the office.

Krystal lived in London. She was a model who spent her days with photoshoots and walking the runway of world’s famous designers. She was a vegetarian and an activists for PETA who lived with two Yorkshire Terriers in her apartment in Soho. In her view, she still doubted that God existed yet she believed that there was a greater power in the universe. She loved Nutella, but she hated Ovomaltine. And she said that she was more than happy with her current life.

At least, that was all that I knew by reading her interview on a website some days ago.

“Sir, your order.”

I thanked the barista and put the change into my pocket, putting aside the memory of Krystal as I walked out of the coffee shop in a hurry. It was already 8:45 a.m., leaving only 15 minutes for me to run and catch my client in a meeting. I rushed to get into a taxi that just dropped its passenger in front of me, telling him to drive faster to Manhattan.

This had been my morning routine for the last three years.

And Krystal never even once left my mind.

After that summer, things started to change for me and Taemin. I took a job in a multinational consultant company and I was transferred to the New York office directly, probably because they had shortage of staffs in the US. Taemin, who had shown a lot of interest in our family's vineyard business since we were just kids, stayed in Bordeaux to manage the company.

For the first time in forever, the universe forced us to part ways. I remembered spending hours with Taemin until dawn in our backyard and talking about the possibilities in our lives a night before I moved to New York and he traveled to Greece.

As much as we wanted to deny it, Krystal had left a deep scar in our heart. She brought our feelings with her as she departed, making us aching with nothing but emptiness. I never knew about the kind of feeling that Taemin had for Krystal, but I knew it was a strong one. We never had a heart-to-heart conversation about her, mostly because we dealt with our feelings differently and that was the comfortable way for us to do it.

But now that I was able to see our relationship in more objective view, there was one thing that I realized.

Krystal was never ours to begin with.

She was not mine, not his, not ours. But rather, we were hers.

She was a free spirit that God sent to us to make us experience love. Not the kind of love that you saw in the movie or read in the novels, but the kind of love that made you question your own purpose of existence. The kind of love that made you wonder whether you had contributed a great deal to the world or you had just always taken the stars up there for granted. The one that opened your eyes to see the signs that universe brought to you in every step you took in your life.

Krystal was the messenger that brought us the signs. And she was the love itself.

I realized that while Taemin and I were still lost in our own feelings and unconsciously leaned on her back then, Krystal had found out that the love she was seeking for was not brought by me or Taemin, but rather by both of us. She loved us equally because we were the reflection of her; dualism that filled each other's emptiness with the purpose of helping her to fulfill her quest in finding her true self.

Taemin and I were simply her reason for existence, before she finally found the true purpose of being in our lives.

A shooting star.

Krystal was indeed our shooting star.