PROLOGUE

She was four when she first met the boy she was going to call her best friend. 

It was his first day at daycare and he was grinning brightly like the prospect of his parents leaving him behind in the care of strange new people was reason enough to be excited. She scowled because he’s crazy. He’s supposed to throw a fit, cry big fat tears and beg for his mom to come take him with her because that’s what all kids do. She cried when she first got into daycare. She had thought her parents had gotten tired of her and abandoned her to that weird place filled with mats and books and toys—but in her defense, so did the other kids. So he shouldn’t be flashing that ugly gap-toothed smile and grinning like he wasn’t embarrassed that he was missing two of his upper front teeth. 

That being said, she didn’t like him. No, not at all. Not even a smidge.

And she hated him by the minute because—goodness!—he was loud and obnoxious and pulled all the other children to his side like he was the sparkling sun and everybody else were sunflowers that thirsted for his light—also because since he came, Ms. Lee had been hovering around him making sure he fit in.

She didn’t like that too. It was like she had been shoved to the side and the new kid is the new favorite. She was Ms. Lee’s favorite charge. No one else could be. The older woman even christened her with a cute nickname (“You’re a little bundle of joy, aren’t you? Would it be alright to call you ‘Joy’, sweetie?”) when she first came in that all the other kids soon called her by, and even told her that if she’ll have a daughter she wanted her daughter to be just like her (“because you’re a bundle full of joy that spreads happiness with your cute little smiles”), but ever since Yook Sungjae came, their caretaker’s been busy hovering around him.

She vowed to stay clear of Yook Sungjae since.

Sooyoung isolated herself to ignore him during their time out of the classroom, keeping herself company with a bunch of crayons that Ms. Lee lent, and colored on a clean piece of bond paper to what she would later call ‘her greatest masterpiece yet.’ They were all out at the park that afternoon and she was sitting on one of the park’s erected picnic tables that littered the sides of the playground. All the other kids were running around and getting themselves dirty but she opted out because she was wearing her favorite white dress and didn’t want even a smidge of dirt on it (she had covered her dirty seat with the towel her mom had packed for her to be sure). Ms. Lee had sat with her so she wasn’t alone—until duty called and she had to go because one of the kids fell off the swings (hint: it was Yook Sungjae), and when Sooyoung picked up her brown crayon and added on a pair of devil horns and sharp teeth on the sun found above a colorful sketch of ugly sunflowers, the world knows it was all for the love of art and nothing else.  

.oOo.

But then her crayon fell and he stepped on it and she cried so bad that Ms. Lee had to come over and scold him. The grim satisfaction of seeing him so guilty may have eased her bad thoughts of him (and yes, maybe she was shedding crocodile tears).

So when he apologized and kept her company for the rest of the day (and okay, maybe she was mean to him at every couple intervals) she realized that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so bad after all.

And when their parents came to pick them up and he came back to give her a cup of ice-cream that his mother bought, complete with a plastic spoon, they had been best friends ever since.

.oOo.

It was nearly the end of her daycare days when she started seeing them—a tiny flicker of red that dangled from people’s pinky fingers. It was pretty, but faint, and they floated everywhere. They all come from someone’s pinky finger though and she remembered vaguely wondering what they meant. She had tried to reach out and touch it, but she blinked and then it was all gone.

She thought she was just imagining things up but she also thought it was cool, so when Ms. Lee gave her clean sheets of paper and a new set of crayons to fiddle with, she immediately drew what she saw that morning; brilliant red dangling everywhere, crisscrossing, neat but chaotic, all linked up to someone’s pinky finger. It was beautiful.

Apparently, Ms. Lee thought so too, “that’s wonderful, Joy-ah! Who told you about that?” She had asked as she gingerly took the paper and held it up against the window. Sooyoung let her because, well, she was Ms. Lee, and she really liked Ms. Lee. She wanted to be like Ms. Lee when she grew up—all kind and pretty, with eyes that looked like the color of her favorite caramel treat and skin that looked like the milk her mom makes her drink every night before she went to sleep.

“I saw it this morning.” She quipped innocently and she saw Ms. Lee stare at her with an unfathomable expression. “But when I blinked, it was gone.”

Ms. Lee crouched in front of her, gently placing the paper back on the desk. Her drawing stood out like a sore thumb because the tables were painted with th