Genre: Fluff, Music, Slice of Life

Summary: Chaeyeon loves to write music, she thinks she was born with it. To prove it, she shows part of her "poems" on a web page- they are actually songs - but the pressure, the lack of motivation, discipline are just horrible. The result of that is a disastrous attempt to move forward that does not soothe her sorrows. 

Then, she met Eunbi, who is a fan of her job, becoming part of her life.  

Word Count: 10115

Hashtag: #KwonChaeng_LostStars

Lost Star(t)s

“…It's hunting season and the lambs are on the run…”

Looking around the room for the nth time in the morning, Chaeyeon can say that everyone is nervous as much as her (at least she can control herself and stops repeating was she was studying for almost a year, not like the girl behind her). Instead of keeping her mind on the room, her friend is surrounding her dream university by itself, not waiting for her owner to end (well, started and ended) the exam.

Kind of selfish?

Someone else could say yes but not Chaeyeon, she is grateful that due to that she is not a bunch of nerves or talking by herself out loud. A complete freak in the context that she is the only one in that room who seems serene.

Oh, boy if they can see through her mind they will see that she is so nervous that a part of her body is worry if her mind starts to tremble at any moment.

Probably it has to be with her shyness, but-

Chaeyeon sighs deeply, trying not to focus on the weird scent near to her spot. The exam to enter that university is right there, in front of her eyes, seeming untouchable on the internet but now is right there. Chaeyeon nibbled her lower lip before took the pencil (they are very considered on giving you a pencil, an eraser, and sharpener) and shows the first part that is the more important part in the entire exam.

Name: Lee Chaeyeon

ID: 2118574 (She had to see it several times before put it because the last thing someone wants is that your reward is for someone else).

And then, the rest was a journey, there were things she studied by herself (most of them) and things that she doesn’t, but in the end, she believes that she does her best, that she makes it.

For the first ten seconds, Chaeyeon had to slap her hand against the desk because it seems that something stopped it for a brief second but feel it as an hour. It doesn’t hurt it but for some reason, while she was walking within the rest of the postulants there was an ardor in her hand.

Walking out the main entrance of the university, surrounded by the rest of the youth (well, she is pretty sure that they all are not young but her eyes don’t lie mostly). Focusing both eyes on three people that they have to be there.  

Right-Left-Center and-

They are there, right there, trying to not getting attention from anyone but for the woman with pretty long black hair, Chaeyeon doesn’t doubt that the curious eyes are on them.

“Honey!”

The strong arms from her father were the first thing Chaeyeon faces. She hugs him back, a smile under the bridge of her nose.

Embraces by the two people more and they are already looking for the car to back to their house.

“¿Cómo te ha ido, Chae?” 

Unlike the rest of the people she knows, her stepmother has a particular way to say her name. She doesn’t have an accent, in spite that Korean is her fourth language, but Chaeyeon had always believed that she does it on purpose.

“Very well I think” Chaeyeon sighs, looking at her baby sister running holding herself with the hand of her dad. “But I don’t know, I was doubting too much”

The woman, that is smaller by a few inches, tangled their arms with the confident smile she always has on her face. Still looking young through years and years they were knowing each other.

“¿Eso crees, cariño?”

Chaeyeon sighs, doing a noise sound because of the tongue, but she already has the attention from her stepmother on her so it’s not a big deal.

“…and if I don’t pass the exam?”

A short question that has the power to cause insomnia in many people, Chaeyeon is the witness of it.

Their hands were intertwined and they are close to the parking lot where her father and sister are waiting for her, but still, it seems slow. All seems going too slow to her.

“Entonces solo te queda volver a intentarlo, ¿no crees?” Chaeyeon always questioned herself how that woman has the right words for everything, for whatever that happens in her mind, and her eyes always give the same message, “No hay primera sin segunda y segunda sin tercera, solo miralo como una ayuda más, honey”  

Chaeyeon knows that that woman is not a psychologist but her words are the right to make her smile, she nods, trusting in the words she didn’t found for herself.

Just before entering the car, something catches Chaeyeon’s attention, the delicate but strong hand from her stepmother. 

“Lo hiciste bien, cariño” She whispers close to her ear before enters into the car.

Her gaze turns blurry for a second and the small hand from her three years old sister was comfortable, the butterfly kisses too, her mind flying around the people in the car, talking and talking but the only thing that made her stay with them is her sister’s hand.

Chaeyeon knows that thinking in something else sounds better now. Her ears still open for whatever could happen between their chat.

“What are you two talking ‘bout?”

Thank God for her father never really understand the Spanish, Chaeyeon took a long breath, her forehead glued to the window.  

“Nothing really” The woman answers with a soft movement of shoulders, “Just asking about her exam”

Lying to her father is nothing that they really enjoy but Chaeyeon thanks in a low voice.

“…searching for meaning…” 

If she is was doing? Just searching for a meaning for her life… it could be bad if it does?

Solving some of the endless chemistry exercises, Chaeyeon’s eyes turn blue for a second. Looking around in her own room, she has to do the exercises to present them this Friday, she is a little behind on homework after having spent studying for the university exam. That it was one day ago, Sunday 7, and still the possibilities keep open until Wednesday.

Ignoring the horrible chemistry that she is careless since she started that career, Chaeyeon standoff from her chair in front of the desk and took one of the black notebooks in one of her shelters, that one when seems alive when she opens it.

“Please... don't see…” Chaeyeon’s smile is turning real while she is singing it, the first verse of the song, “…just someone caught up in dreams and fantasies…please... see me…reaching out for someone I can't see”

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Chaeyeon keeps her eyes on the pad, listening to her own voice, listening to whatever comes from her mind, translate it into a story that almost anyone knows. Sometimes she was lying in bed, her eyes shut tight and her own story runs in her mind, her desire too, her dreams at the end of it, but still are the first she thinks about.

“…But are we all lost stars…” 

There could be a myth about too many people trying to become into something that seems impossible. There are a lot of true stories that Chaeyeon admires from afar. Her eyes still in the letters, a little messy, singing it as she was recording one Friday ago. 

“…trying to light up the dark?”

Searching a meaning is her desire, Chaeyeon knows well what she wants to do, and what she will do about it, and still, the meaning is not really there, because she feels she is too young to know it and probably when she will thirty she will ask the same question. And then, she could answer.

“…And God, tell us the reason youth is wasted on the young…” 

Studying until your arms were numb is the proof of success because is that what they are always saying… it has to be true, right?

“Sorry Chae—”

There was no need to same something else, Chaeyeon knew it, having the little hope of making her dream was destroyed by the inconsistent brain she has. It could be easy if she was as so damn smart as her male best friend, or the other one (both guys too much outsmart). Thing sings could get better.

Slowly closing the door from her bedroom, Chaeyeon closes everything except herself. Thanking the door it’s impossible to hear her sobs, crying with her arms holding her body, in an attempt to make her know that she is not alone.

But the reality is hard, is crushing every bone of her body.

Reasons and reasons to keep going are gone.

It was her last opportunity. Her father saying that what Chaeyeon already knows, and being the second time she was doing this it’s bleak.

There’s not light as she always thought it was, even the first time she was okay because she was trying just to know how everything works. A second time was impossible for her father to accept it but at least she gets what she is looking for.

And then she faces the reality she was avoiding for months: that her dream has to change. 

“…Woe is me…” 

Lack noises come from , dry. How much time she was sleeping?

“Why keep going?” Chaeyeon sighs and the last breathe was with open, “Maybe I have to give up? Who cares after all?”

They are nonsenses keep trying, she doesn’t know why she even trying to keep pushing herself to the border. Feeling her eyes filling by the burn tears of unhappiness, hopelessness.

“…Why?” Her voice cracked, tumbling by the lack of force on everything. Chaeyeon covers with both hands, bawling her eyes out, tears wetting her blanket, “I want to but if this means that I don’t work for this?”   

…If this is just a waste of time?

But she doesn’t dare to say it out loud, where she can hear it because that will not be her.

“I’m useless then” Chaeyeon nibbled a pillow to not let go every cry from the inner of her soul, she was trying so hard to do what she wanted, to do what she is destiny to do- “But now? I just give up?”

It could be easier to do, just give up and then nothing. Her life goes on because it’s that how it happens.

Listening to the door opening from her room, Chaeyeon hides her face in one of the pillows she has, part of the blanket too, trying to know who is interrupting her shelter, maybe if it’s her little sister she could only pretend not to be awake.

For a very long time.

Feeling the shadow in her bed, the soft pressure to not make her get off her face from the magic shop she only makes in some minutes. It doesn’t take long to know who it is.

“Let me flunk alone” Chaeyeon, who in normal days will laugh for the hand caressing in her head, pretends not to feel anything to not start to cry, “I’ll flunk since then”  

Still, caressing the brown strands make Chaeyeon cries for her incompetence to not face the problems which in this case is her stepmother.

“Nadie puede pronosticar nada, cariño” Her voice is always gentle, trying to put a light so high to make Chaeyeon easy to find. Slowly, the teenager (young? Whatever, she is 21 by the way) become into a kid of five years when her face was burying against her stepmother's chest. “Está bien si manchas mi camisa, no te preocupes por mi ahora.”

Calling her stepmother is only conventionalities, or that is what her real mother told her, but she never really call her in that way, because this woman was in almost every part of her life since she was a kiddo (younger as her sister) and she only shows love to her father, herself, and her baby sister. How she can be this mean to call her stepmother?

Crying in her arms is something that happens since always, even if the woman is smaller, doesn’t care when Chaeyeon is crying until feels dry and her mind is taking away every ill-intentioned thought.

However, her chest still feels heavy.

 “... Do you think I have to keep going?”

Voicing what she is thinking is weird, not forbidden but close to it, probably for the stupidity that her feeling is not going to take it seriously, it never happens with Marissa.

“I am, Chae”

Slowly, her chest feels light, like a feather but as damn heavy as the tears in every corner of her eye.

“¿Por qué?”

Even if Chaeyeon understands almost perfectly Spanish, she barely talks it, which doesn’t push her back to get some words.

“It’s the second time I do the same” Chaeyeon continues, her voice trying not to show everything she wants to throw out.

Her heart feeling too foolish to make the second question, probably getting whatever that could never be helpful (one of the reasons she stopped to say several things to her mother).  

“How can I know that I am good enough?”

her head, kissing the top of her hair, praying to be wrong because it’s what she wants: to be wrong.

“Only you can determinate it, not me or your father, just you, Chae” Chaeyeon can feel tears in the top of her head, “I know it’s hard but don’t give up and if do, I’ll hold you up”

Holding the tears, Chaeyeon shut .  

Unspoken her feelings become something normal, something natural, a thing that everyone does so speak about them seems almost a crime, it doesn’t but it feels that way. Chaeyeon likes to seem happy, confident, determined because there times where there is no space to think about how she is breaking down, everything she builds by herself (although her father and stepmother doing a small part of the job, and it was good anyway) starts to feel like a dream because when you wake up the reality crush you against the floor.

Could be her, just her, thinking about how everyone seems to prepare to not let you do anything you want. Following standards, people, stereotypes, that you don’t even care about. Chaeyeon knows she is not crazy, her stepmother confirms it. Because it’s the same where she was and where they are now.

Chaeyeon thinks they are similar, too much maybe, in their little details that become them in the people who are. Even their way to eat is pretty similar and it makes them closer, that’s why they are best friends. But there’s a big difference:

“I’m not that strong”

Her gaze is lost in the keyboard from her laptop, seeing what all that is has, every button as they never are there, an old friend that her mind and she share, and it always there for whatever comes to mind.

Pressing some keys and then it appears by itself, a little slow, and Chaeyeon has to blink several times to not cry, she never thinks that this is how it will end. Well, she is lying a little bit, that was is paying rent in her mind for a month probably. Lie, she is lying again, actually it the fear is always there but nothing too deep as the last month.

“Today is the day”

 It’s something that her stepmother, best friend, and closest confidant, always tell her, singing it as well as her. Because she is all that happy pill everyone wants to be and Chaeyeon is one too, but for a couple of hours she can be a person who doesn’t care about the future and just in the today. Because nothing sounds better than today.

Chaeyeon looks at her fingers, some dirty in the nails, her back of hand wet for use as a tissue, her palms feeling soft and there are calluses because of the daily two hours she uses to be a better guitarist. Humming she wipes some of the drops in her sweater, a little away by the sudden memory of a song.

Her mind is impertinent, and she loves it for it.

“…But don’t you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow…”

Looking at the screen again, for a brief moment, Chaeyeon doubts about everything.

In the first months, she believes that there is someone who needs it so much as her, at least it was her impression. Now there’s nothing.

All her work for almost three years there, in front of her eyes, about to disappear to other people (because she is not that stupid). Someone else will care? Her little sister loves to listen to her songs and in her own words: she’s her fan number 1. At least she is in her baby sister’s heart.

Disappearing all seems impossible to her two years ago but now is a reality, probably the saddest one she ever find. But she can do it, this could be a new ending and stop being bound to a page that does not help her self-esteem at all.

“…But don't you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow…” Chaeyeon mumbles to herself, her voice rusk by the uncountable sobs making her feel tired, so ing tired that she will need some rest after this. She knows that she doesn’t have to make take decisions with her broken heart but it only happens due of she was thinking for a long time, “…I saw a lion kiss a deer…” 

The last song she was composing for almost… six months? She is not pretty sure about the time but it was very long. And now seems nothing to anyone, her either.

Chaeyeon cries out loud, tears drop by her long eyes, with no reason to come back. Her hand going fast and then the page changes, warning her that her action had been successful.

Patting her shoulder and head every time she does something great, doing it by herself seems now more than enough.

Crawling to her bed, her eyes color blurry and a long sigh when the same place for what she was sleeping for almost a decade seems her shelter, the safest place on the earth and it’s all for her.

How much time she will sleep?

Chaeyeon puts the headphones in her ears and then, with her voice is filling her brain, new success singers are telling her that it’s all okay to feel this way, the world disappears.

It could change everything to the next day?

Chaeyeon never really believes it, but while she is talking with her co-classmates she found a girl she never saw in her life looking for someone until their gazes met halfway.

“…Are you Lee Chaeyeon?” Am I? Chaeyeon is dumb sometimes, she tilts her head to a side, “Oh… but I just wanna see by myself if you were okay”

That’s weird and has stopped her walk from talking with a stranger it’s more.

“I’m sorry but I don’t know you”

The woman in front of her seems exhausted, tired, her eyes becoming in the perfect reflection of what she is feeling and Chaeyeon can see it.

“I know” the unknown sighs, “but I know you”

Weird is being short of what she is seeing. Chaeyeon looks around and nobody is close to make her know that there is someone else willing to make her a joke. Looking back to the girl, she is not making fun of whoever, even looks genuinely worried. 

“How you know me?”

And that’s is half part of what Chaeyeon wanna know.

There’s the choice that she is a relative from her that her father never talks about, and still, she found so easily where she is studying since a year ago. Well, it’s not so hard to found at least.

“Oh uh,” the girl nods, seeking an answer in her pockets from her white coat, her blonde hair is a kind of pretty mess that caught her attention from the zombie's face. Interrupt by a phone in front of her eyes, Chaeyeon recognizes easily what she is showing, “I was following you since you recorded your second cover…” 

“…and how you just disappear I was worried that something happened to you”

Mind in blank is a seriously bad thing that someone has to learn how to control and Chaeyeon was sure she could do it, but her cheeks reacted first. A punch of blush because of the embarrassment, and how she was nibbling both lips because of a lack of words.

“Oh, t-thank you?” She gulped when the girl’s eyes narrowed to look at her, curiosity on them that makes Chaeyeon trying not to run away as fast as she can, “I’m sorry for not know what to say”

The girl, who is clearly elder than her, smiles sweetly, showing that she is understanding what she is thinking. Chaeyeon offers to walk to the bus stop, which is a little far from where Chaeyeon’s main classroom, which just seeing tickles her with the recent physics test they had to pass.

“You have to get many questions, probably” the girl who still didn’t present yourself talks, her eyes a little teared, “I’m Eunbi by the way”

“I’m Chaeyeon”

The girl giggles, nodding, and then Chaeyeon found stupidly that she says her name when it’s probably that the girl knows who she is.

Someway the laugh makes the mood light.

“…How did you found me?”

“By your Instagram account,” Oh, Chaeyeon found that it wasn’t a great idea to publish what she is actually studying and where, but the girl didn’t see too much focus on that, “if you feel awkward I can go away if you want”

Usually, Chaeyeon does, when it’s family gatherings where she talks to people she shares nothing in common with other than the obvious and where for some she only focuses on her sister. It’s nothing special in the unknown girl, more than genuine concern when she is talking about her, about someone she only watched on the internet.

If it doesn’t mean anything, then Chaeyeon doesn’t know what mean is.

“No,” Chaeyeon talks for the first time in a long time, she looks how the girl gulped by a second just to see her back, “A-actually I didn’t expect that someone would do that”

Looking at the phone in her hand for a brief moment, Eunbi tilts her head to the side.

“…do you mean to look for you?”

Chaeyeon nods, because feels numb, a little shy by the question.

“It wasn’t my idea actually” Eunbi smiles, showing some timidity with her eyes. “A friend told me that if I really worried about you, then I have to come to see if you’re okay”

The last time someone told her a thing close to that was from her best friend, a very long time ago since they barely talk to each other, but that warm her heart, little important that’s from a stranger.

Might has to be Eunbi’s fault to have kind of good of well-thought-out answers but they ended up sitting on a bench, with Chaeyeon’s late time to go home and a great excuse too and sharing more things that Chaeyeon ever did with some relatives in any chance.

“…why you like my songs?”

Peering the grass that was situated in front of them, nothing out of common but Chaeyeon likes to see it, it has something special. It really does.

“I like them because it has a great meaning,” Eunbi covers with one hand before keep going, her eyes have tears in the corner, “a-and I was following you since you made covers and I was happy that you are growing up fast and beautifully” 

It was a compliment that made Chaeyeon blush for a brief time, feeling proud of herself for it. The share of knowledge was part of an open-ended conversation they were having, Chaeyeon likes the mood of it, and the kindness from the other woman. 

“…As you delete all your songs I never had the chance to download one”

Exchange phone numbers have to be crazy, and pretty normal at this time, but Chaeyeon has the tiny impression that Eunbi is not going to do anything bad with her number.

“I can send you my songs—I mean if you want”

“Oh, that would be great!”

Then, Chaeyeon notice