Jade woke up and stared at her ceiling. She sat up and looked around confused. “No… What is this…?” She quickly got out of bed and ran to the living room. Keji was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of cereal. The clock on the wall told her that it was 1 in the afternoon. “No!” she yelled as she went back to her room and crawled back under her blankets.

                Keji came in and looked at her confused. “What’s wrong? Did you and Eli miss times again?” Jade looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I need to go back to sleep. There was nothing. I went to sleep and suddenly woke up. No dream, no set, no nothing. Just morning.” He put the spoon back into his cereal and set it down on the table. “I’m sure that must be a mistake. Just lay down and take a nap. Maybe he will be there now. I will keep anyone from waking you up.”

                She nodded and held back her tears as he left the room, closing the door behind him. She curled up and faced the wall, trying to fall back asleep. Eventually she fell asleep again and once again there was nothing.

                She woke up again and wrapped up in her blanket and went to the living room and just rolled over the back of the couch and plopped on her face on the cushions. Keji came out of the bathroom and stared at her, worried. He quickly ran over to her and attempted to find her face under the blanket. “Jade, are you alright?” He found her face and her eyes were red even though no tears were coming out. “Eli is gone… What happened?”

                Keji panicked and flailed around, running to the kitchen and grabbing a red bull. He quickly brought it back to her. She saw the can and tears started to run down her face. “What do I do…?” Keji couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or the can.

                The younger boy thought for a moment and suddenly looked excited. “I know!! UKISS is doing a Jeju fan tour soon right? Maybe Eli just didn’t sleep last night? Since he didn’t fall asleep, it was like trying to make a video call when the other side is offline. So you just saw nothing.” She sat up and grabbed the red bull. “You think so?” Keji nodded. “I definitely think so. So just wait till it’s time to go to sleep again. Hopefully he will be there tonight.”

                She nodded and wiped her tears off. Keji smiled and put her red bull can on her eyelids. “Elle and Lizzie should be home any time now. Your eyes are puffy.” She smiled awkwardly. “I will go take a shower.”

                The entire time in the shower she just sat on the bottom of the tub and let the water run over her. She kept thinking of multiple reasons as to why her dreams stopped. She really hoped for Keji’s reason to be true. She came up with hundreds of different possibilities, most of them bad. The water went cold and knocked some sense into her. She quickly washed her hair and got out.

                By the time she made it out of the bathroom, everyone was home already. She smiled awkwardly at the girls and ran off to her room to get dressed. She stared at Eli on her poster on the wall and sighed as she got dressed.

                She sulked her way back out to the living room and noticed Keji was in his room so she went in there. She laid on the floor in his room and stared at him. “I think Eli left because Cyrus kissed me. I cheated and now I have to pay for it.” Keji laughed. “How would Eli know that he kissed you if you didn’t tell him? If he is the real Eli, there is no way for him to know.” Jade nodded and sat up, staring at the floor. “That’s right. If he was the real Eli, he wouldn’t know…”

                She sat there silently as he worked on arranging more of his belongings with kpop on shuffle. He would sing and dance along with some of them, trying to cheer Jade up. She just continued to stare at the floor, thinking way too much.

                Suddenly she laid back down on the floor and sighed. “Keji…” He sat down next to her and stared at her. “huh?” She turned her head to look at him. “I’m stupid. If my dream disappeared just because of Cyrus kissing me that means that I never knew the real Eli… It was all a lie…”

                She smiled at him. It was the saddest smile he had ever seen. He wouldn’t even classify it as a smile. It was an upside down frown. He could see her heart crushing in her eyes.

                She stood up and stretched. “It’s midnight. I’m going to sleep.” Keji was shocked. It was still like 5 hours too early for her to go to sleep to see Eli.

                Jade went to her room and immediately closed the door behind her and locked it so that none of her friends could follow her.

                Lizzie and Elle stared at Keji confused as he was trying to get into Jade’s room. Elle looked worried “What’s going on?” Keji paused for a moment. “Oh, she is sick and won’t let me make sure she is alright.” Lizzie nodded. “Yeah, when she gets sick she will just shut herself away and let it pass on its own. She doesn’t want to get anyone else sick.” He sighed. He really wished that he could tell them the real reason. He ran to his room and called Shelby, explaining everything.

                Jade turned out her light and just stared at her UKISS poster, trying not to cry. She curled up around her pillow. “Jade… Compose yourself…” she whispered out loud to herself. “It was just a dream, it wasn’t real. Seriously though, how could it have been real? There’s no way. You are just stupid at thinking the best thing that ever happened to you was real. You are a big girl now.” Tears started rolling down her face. “There never was an Eli. He still is on the other side of the planet and knows nothing of you. It’s just like it was before. There is nothing wrong with that.”

                She ended up silently crying herself to sleep while whispering at herself that there is no reason to cry. There was still only black in her sleep.