The notion of a mama bird pushing her babies out of her nest when she deemed them "ready" always troubled me. When could you be considered ready to leave your nest and face the harsh challenges of the world on your own? I never did draw a conclusion, simply that at age nine, I was not ready to lose the two most important people of my life.

It was a dark night and the weather wasn't good. I pressed my small hand to the car window watching the hues of red and orange mixed with the rain as it danced down the window. My game of "racing" the droplets was interrupted long ago by the worsening downpour that left only streaks of water instead of the dancing beads I'd found delight in. The next thing I knew, the world was upside down. The red and orange had come to a halting crash as the tires screeched on the pavement.

In a twist of fate, I escaped relatively unscathed while my parents did not share my luck and met the fiery inferno that led to their unmistakable end. In those last moments, a voice much like that of my father’s sounded in my head. Hyun Ae-ah, when you’re scared look to the stars and that’s where you’ll find us. I stood unblinking in disbelief of the events that had occurred within the relatively short time span.

I wanted to scream and yell that I didn’t want to look for them, I wanted them here beside me. A few witnesses had called the police and a kind elderly couple pulled me away from the flames, enveloping me in a warm blanket and calming me with soft tones.

The police, an ambulance and the fire department showed up a while later. I couldn’t place how much later though, the entire night was a blur to me the same way my tears blurred with the rain. If I weren’t so traumatized, I would have gazed in awe at the shining trucks that had come to rescue me. I remember a police officer approached me and inquired upon my relatives and my name but when I opened my mouth to speak I was met with silence. Panic soon overtook my emotions as I tried desperately to talk only to find that I couldn’t. The officer seemed perplexed at my sudden disability and referred me to the ambulance. I wandered over to the white glistening truck where paramedics tended to my cuts and bruises. While they were able to tend to my superficial wounds, they couldn’t see my emotional scars.

Sometime throughout the course of the night, I fell asleep, the incident turning into a nightmare and when I woke up to the rays of light filtering through the hospital window, I realized it was a nightmare I couldn’t escape from. I heard one nurse ask another, “Why can’t she speak? We checked her larynx and her CTs, everything seems to be in order.”

The other nurse lowered his voice before replying, “Something just isn’t right with her, it’s probably a transfer issue where her mental stress is reflected in her physical ability. She just needs time, the only thing that can heal her now is herself.” I focused into the first part of his sentence. Was there something wrong with me? I looked away from the door to stare out the window.

Despite my inability to talk, the police officer had pieced together enough information from the license plate and from whatever documents survived to find the closest living relative, my aunt from Seoul. For some reason my mother rarely spoke of her and I had not once gone to visit her and so I had no idea what to expect when she walked through the door to the hospital room. She took me to the home I had shared with my parents and helped me pack my belongings.

And so, in the year I turned nine, I said goodbye to my beloved countryside and hello to the cold streets of Seoul.

My aunt was a small frail woman in her mid-thirties and she wasn’t prepared to raise a child. She lived in a two bedroom apartment. She was intensely overworked and she had an aura of weariness about her that aged her past her thirties. My uncle on the other hand was a shy, quiet man. He worked an office job and while he did not say much, he had a kind smile.

“Hyun Ae-ah, why don’t you get out and play while auntie sets up your room?” My aunt said to me. I nodded meekly in response and wandered about the apartment building. The atmosphere in the apartment was stifling. I climbed down the stairs, exploring floor by floor. It amazed me how each landing only differed from the last by the number painted on the wall beside the door. I peered through the glass to look at the fourth floor. Like the last, it had cream coloured walls and an ugly green carpet.

On the fourth floor, two below ours, that’s where I first saw him. Starboy. He had a mop of messy brown hair atop his head and mud caked shoes that were well-worn, probably through many exciting adventures. He was skinny, borderline scrawny and he had a warm sparkling laugh. Above all, he had a pair of eyes that twinkled like the stars in the sky. The stars is where my parents said they would be.

He spotted me standing awkwardly between the stairwell and the hallway. His face lit up in a small smile as he walked towards me. Of course, I did the only sensible thing a nine year old would do; I covered my eyes and jumped behind the glass door that separated the fourth floor from the stairwell. I felt his hand encircle my wrist as he pried me from my poorly chosen hiding spot.

“你想跟我玩儿吗?” He asked me in a foreign language as I looked at him blankly. After a bout of confused silence, he ran away into one of the many rooms in the hall. I stood there for a few minutes feeling rebuffed. I sighed and turned away thinking to myself that he didn’t want to be friend with the weird silent girl. I was stopped, however, when I heard the pitter patter of footsteps on carpet and I turned around to see Starboy running towards me with a pen in his mouth, a pad of paper and a phrasebook.

Hi, my name is Luhan, would you like to play with me? He scrawled out in messy Hangul and I smiled as I reached for his pen.

I would like to play with you. My name is Hyun Ae. :) I wrote back. He flipped through his phrasebook muttering to himself in his other language before his features lit up in a smile as he comprehended the words I had written. He produced a small black tube from behind his back.

“望远镜.” He said and then translated flipped through his phrasebook, translating it into Hangul for me. Telescope. I lit up at the word and the idea of looking up into the vast expanses of the galaxy. He took my hand and half pulled half dragged me to the roof of the building where he propped up his telescope to look at the stars.

“看!” He said to me and the gestured with his hands to express that he wanted me to look. He pushed my face, not so gently, towards the small eyepiece. I gazed through the small piece of glass and my breath was taken away by the brilliant shining stars in the sky, I looked at all of the different worlds and sighed.

Ursa Major. I wrote on the notepad and pushed it towards Starboy. I knew all the constellations. My father used to spend so many nights stargazing with me whenever we went on our camping trips.

Where? He wrote back, looking puzzled. I smiled and drew the shape on the paper then pointed at the sky. He peered up curiously, his face lighting up when he found the constellation.

That was my first encounter with Starboy and I was sure it wouldn’t be my last.

So? Initial thoughts? How are you liking this story so far?