Life throws unexpected situations at you, sometimes good and sometimes bad. You never know what will happen day to day and how it will impact your life. When I moved to Seoul to go to college, I did not expect anything spectacular to happen to me. Actually, I was prepared for the worst. I expected to live in a cheap apartment, alone, living off the salary from whatever job I could find. What I got was much different, and so much better...

My mother passed away from stomach cancer when I was fifteen, and my father has been very distant since then. He and I rarely held conversations for more than two minutes, so moving to Seoul after I graduated was not a big deal. I had saved money for it by doing small jobs for neighbors and working as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.

My father tried convincing me that filmmaking was not a practical career choice for an nineteen year old kid, but I didn't listen to him and pursued my dream of becoming a director. I had stacks and stacks of DVDs and documentaries in my bedroom and loved re-watching them in my spare time. Needless to say, I was a typical, lonely high school senior with that one friend that wasn't really your friend, but you said they were so you wouldn't seem like a loner. I had never even been in a relationship before.

My apartment in Seoul was dirty and abandoned when I first bought it, but it was my first time living in a house alone and I was still excited about it. I cleaned it up, painted the walls, but didn't bother decorating. I had a bedroom, a couch, a small television, a kitchen, and a bathroom and that was it. But that was all I really needed. I was a nineteen year old guy living alone in a big city, why did I need anything else?

I went to class every morning at eight and when that ended at ten-thirty, I went straight to work at the bookstore, Pages. Not a very original name, but the owner, Minseok, was a good friend of mine and gave me a job right away.

Every day, I stopped at the coffee shop underneath my apartment for breakfast before class and ordered a bagel and a latte. My other friend, Jongin, worked there and helped me find my way around whenever I got lost. People making their morning commute flooded the sidewalks every day, and I was not used to it having grown up in a small, suburban neighborhood. At first, I was overwhelmed by the noise and crowded streets of Seoul. I got lost numerous times traveling between school, work, and my house, but after a while, I got used to city life.

I had the typical college life. But it was soon turned upside down all because of a homeless boy and a little girl.