Life, according to Kim Hyesun, was never easy.

She didn’t start out as a pessimist, and still didn’t consider herself one, as she preferred the term realist. Maybe it would be best to say that she had begun life as an optimist.

A blind, naïve, optimist.

She was this way until her mid-teenage years. Always looking at the world with innocence and a childlike wonder, she was often the light in others’ lives, like the star in the darkest of nights.

As she’d come to learn, though, every star must burn out. Some go about this quietly, others in a luminous and violent explosion of matter called a supernova.

Supernovas are the death of the biggest, brightest stars.