Sorry for any errors! I was too excited to proofread more than once. 

It’s 11PM, and Momo should be asleep. Instead, she finds herself lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, unable to fall into the warm embrace that sleep offers. The sounds of downtown Kyoto float up to her apartment, through thick concrete walls, and into Momo’s ears.

She’s sad - she thinks? Momo’s not entirely sure. Maybe empty would be a better word? However, her feelings of emptiness seem unfounded; she doesn’t know why she feels as if she has a gaping hole in her chest. However, if she’s sure of anything, it’s that she can’t sleep and that she’s bored out of her mind.

It’s restless nights like this when she misses Korea. Before she moved back to Japan, she would walk along the Han River when sleep failed to claim her.

Momo shuffles herself closer to her bedside drawer and reaches for her phone. She braces herself for the bright light from her screen that could potentially burn her retinas, but to no avail. She squints her eyes into crescents as she unlocks her phone and opens Instagram.

Right when the app opens, a little heart icon appears, and Momo smiles when she notices the number of likes her most recent post received - 3,247 likes. She inwardly pats herself on the back, as if digital approval from people she hardly knew was an outstanding achievement. To be fair though, the picture she had posted was very pretty.

Momo scrutinizes her post. It shows her and her friend, a Korean girl named Nayeon, sitting underneath a cherry blossom tree in bloom.

She had gone to an aesthetically pleasing cafe today with this ‘friend’ of hers. She and Nayeon were in somewhat of a friends with benefits relationship, and yet Momo felt as if it was more of a one-sided relationship if anything - not from Momo’s side of course. Of course, Momo knew it seemed cruel to be leading someone on, but she had made it clear to the older girl that their relationship would not be serious. And yet, Nayeon had chosen to fall for her. Momo scoffs at the thought.

‘People fall too easily,’ She inwardly muses. Love is fickle; it can be kind, but at times, it is nothing but a cruel truth. It’s almost sad how pessimistic Momo's outlook on life has become; her ideals have been distorted. It’s spring in Japan, and yet Momo hardly feels the feeling of renewal that the season was said to bring.

The old Momo was the biggest romantic in world, if not the world, the universe. She loved the idea of destiny, holding hands with the one true love of your life, spontaneous and heartfelt confessions of love, and everything in between. The old Momo would never enter a relationship with no intent of being with her forever - she would never have went on a date with someone just to get 3,247 likes on Instagram.

Momo is reminded of the dull ache she feels in her chest, and thinks that perhaps she left more than just fond memories in Korea. She laughs to herself in a way that isn’t funny to anyone but herself. She decides to scroll through her feed and see what her friends have been up to.

Her childhood friend, Mina, just posted a picture of herself studying in a library at Yale University in America. ‘What a nerd’, Momo comments jokingly.

Two of her good friends, Jihyo and Jackson, who she used to work with at a dance studio in Korea posted a post-dance class selfie. ‘My two favorite dorks’, Momo comments, a fond smile appearing on her face. She misses them.

Her best friend, Sana, is live-streaming from a new club in Itaewon. Momo rolls her eyes. Sana’s live-stream is interrupted by a reprimanding voice that is none other than Sana’s girlfriend Dahyun. Sana should not be live on Instagram - the Japanese beauty is clearly very drunk, and from the sounds coming from Momo’s phone and the blurry video playing on Momo’s screen, Momo guesses that Sana is currently trying to w