It was an ordinary morning like any others. Eight-year-old Kihyun quickly had his jam and bread with a glass of milk. His brother had always been faster than him and Kihyun had to run after him and his friends on the way to school. They didn’t pay much attention to him as they thought of him as a little kid, but Kihyun followed them anyways. He hated walking to school alone.

Little Kihyun bumped onto his mom on the way out. “Kihyun ah~ we need to go somewhere before school.”

Kihyun titled his head unsure of where they need to go. One thing that he was certain of was that his brother and his friends were long gone.

His mother led them to the house across the street. Kihyun knew the old couple living there. His mom told him to always greet them politely and once when Kihyun came home from school early and found that his mom was out, the old couple let him into their house and grandma made him a nice snack. They took care of him until his mom was back.

The couple came out. However, Kihyun also noticed a small girl hiding behind them. She was wearing his school’s uniform and had her hair in two braided pigtails. Even the Eight-year-old Kihyun found her cute. She was the granddaughter of the couple and was going to live with them from now on. Grandpa gave Kihyun a lollipop and when he was busy opening it, grandpa put the hand of the little girl in his.

“Can you take care of our Sera, young man?” Grandpa asked and Kihyun nodded unknowingly. Grandpa was rather tall, a bit intimidating and had a serious voice. Kihyun liked him but was also afraid of him.

Moments later, Kihyun and Sera were walking toward their elementary school hand in hand. It was silence between them as they were both busy eating their lollipops. However, Kihyun didn’t let go of the hand of the shy girl who kept her head low.

It was already lunchtime. Kihyun packed his books neatly in his backpack before pulling out his iron man lunch box. Then he heard noises from the back of the classroom where Sera sat. Other kids were bullying her and Kihyun wondered how they all knew that Sera’s parents got divorced and her father had left her with his parents to go to Japan for work while her mother had remarried.

Maybe it was because of the lollipop Kihyun ate in the morning, he felt responsible toward her. He walked and stood between Sera and their classmates.

“Stop making fun of her, she is my friend.” He said, sternly as an eight-year-old can be. The others didn’t want to get in Kihyun’s bad side. They knew his older brother was the popular boy in the school and he would scold them.

Kihyun watched them scattered with a satisfied face. Then he glanced at Sera who held her head low just like morning.

“Did you bring your lunchbox?” He asked and she nodded while pulling out her Wonder Woman lunchbox. Kihyun smiled. He just knew they were going to get along well.

With Kihyun always being there for her, Sera started to break the walls she made for herself and showed everyone how much a bright and lively child she was. Kihyun and Sera were inseparable since then. Every day they walked to school together. Sera was the top student so she helped Kihyun with homework, after school they played together or with other kids in the playground and then maybe they had sleepovers at each other’s places, watching Harry Potter, their favorite. They bickered at each other and sometimes elders thought that they were fighting but it was just them, naughty best friends.

It was a happy childhood until grandma got sick and then passed away. Sera’s father came from Japan and took her with himself. Twelve-year-old Sera couldn’t stop her tears as her father was waiting for her to get into the cab to the airport. Kihyun hugged her and assured that he would write her letters and everything would be fine. But when she was gone, he cried in his room.

Fifteen-year-old Kihyun was a bit rebel. After his older brother, who loved music, he started singing without paying much attention to studying or his future. One morning, he got out of the house, headphones on his ears, hands in pockets, whistling to the music. A tap on his back and he turned around. His jaw was dropped down.

It was Sera. He wasn’t that much surprised seeing her there in school’s uniform when she had to be attending school in Japan. He was surprised seeing how she turned to a pretty girl. He’d never thought of his old best friend as a girl but now that her body went through puberty he couldn’t ignore the fact anymore.

Sera stretched her hand to give him a lollipop like the one that was in the corner of . “Grandpa told me to give you this.”

She chuckled and Kihyun could swear that his heart skipped a beat. He’d just fallen in love with his best friend.

“Aren’t you going to take it.” She said impatiently.

“Uh…” Kihyun took it, he was totally acting like a slow-witted person.

She gave him a weird look. “Why are you looking at me like that? Didn’t you miss me?”

“Uh…?”

She attacked him and head locked him. “You’ve got another best friend while I was gone, right?!”

For the sake of his increasing heartbeat, he had to make her let go of him so he started tickling her and she ran away laughing. Seeing her happy face, Kihyun put aside his previous thoughts and ran after her. He knew from Sera’s letters that she had a hard time in Japan. Her father was always away at work while she couldn’t speak Japanese well and she couldn’t make any friends. Grandpa insisted till her father let her come back.