Narrator’s POV 

            10 years ago, on the day of the accident.           

 Kyungsoo saw them put her on a stretcher, her body limp and unconscious. He tried to push past the hospital staff, wanting to reach her. But they wouldn’t let him. He watched in vain as the doors of the ambulance closed, blocking him from getting to her. Even so, he still ran behind the car for a good 10 minutes, before he had to stop, because the ambulance had long since disappeared out of view. He hung his head down in defeat, because he had failed to be there for her. He had failed to stay by her side.

However, through all of the chaos, Kyungsoo had failed to notice one thing, and that was his missing shadow.  5 minutes ago, when Kyungsoo had tried to force his way through the hospital staff to sit with Krystal in the ambulance, Kyungsoo’s shadow hadn’t been able to help the urge rising in him to stay with Krystal, and so he had detached himself from Kyungsoo and went onto the ambulance anyways. He felt selfish because he knew that Kyungsoo was feeling the exact same urge. However Kyungsoo couldn’t do anything about it, but his shadow could. And so he had followed her all the way to the hospital. He had watched as Kyungsoo came and cried beside Krystal’s hospital bed, mumbling apologies in between the sobs. But when Kyungsoo left (more like he was dragged away by his parents), his shadow just couldn’t find the will to follow him once again. He promised himself he would find Kyungsoo afterwards and return to being his shadow. But not right now, not when Krystal was like this.

When the heart monitor started beeping again as Krystal’s heartbeat restarted, only Kyungsoo’s shadow was there to hear it. He felt his emotions going in a hundred directions and all he wanted to do was to run out and grab a doctor that happened to be lingering in the hallway, and drag the doctor back to the room, but he couldn’t. He could only sit there and wait. It wasn’t until half an hour later that the hospital staff discovered the heart monitor. Krystal’s weeping parents were the first to be informed and they rushed into the room, relief and joy replacing their grief. Tears still ran down their faces, but this time there were smiles in between their tears, with the hope that Krystal was going to be all right.

But amidst all the joy, there was a bitterness that entered Krystal’s parents that day, a bitterness toward Kyungsoo for almost killing their daughter. And that is why they didn’t tell him that Krystal was alive, and that they had already planned on moving back to America the very next week.

And that is also why Kyungsoo’s shadow wasn’t able to get back to Kyungsoo, because the very next day when Kyungsoo rushed out the house to check on Krystal in the hospital, his parents had called him back, and told him that she was dead. They didn’t know she was alive either, and as a family, they had all broken down and wept. And the week after, a barely recovered Krystal with a fuzzy memory was already on a plane, flying all the way to a continent halfway across the world.

Krystal was never able to fully recover her memory. She could only recall bits and pieces, like a smiling girl whose name started with L, and a blurry image of a boy with big eyes and a heart shaped smile.

She had only moved to Korea for about 2 years, so most of her English was still intact, but even though she was back in California, she always had a warm feeling when she thought about Korea. She dreamed of going there to one of their top performance schools, so she could do the things she loved to do, to sing and to dance, to perform.

She remembered the first time she had told her parents about her dream. It was the day in 3^rd grade when she had received an assignment to write about her ambition. There was a twinkle in her eyes as she talked about it, imagining herself on stage. All there was to say was that there was a lot of yelling from her parents that day and a beautiful hope that was fractured, but not quite crushed yet.

The next day at school, the teacher had asked Krystal to share her ambition in front of the class. As Krystal stood to face her classmates, her legs trembled a little, afraid that they were just going to laugh at her too, to say that her dream was impossible.

After class, a girl with a ponytail wearing a baggy shirt and sports shorts approached her. “You’re the girl who wanted to be a K-pop star, right?” the girl had asked.

“Yes, and what’s that have to do with you?” Krystal had snapped, thinking that the girl was just going to laugh at her.

The girl with the ponytail looked taken aback for a second, but she recovered quickly. “I just wanted to say that that’s the exact same thing I want to be when I grow up too.” And as the girl talked about it, there was the same twinkle in her eyes that Krystal had when she talked about her dream.

“I’m Amber, by the way,” the girl said after she had finished explaining. She held out her hand for Krystal to shake and Krystal took it.

“Krystal.  Sorry I snapped at you earlier,” Krystal looked down apologetically.

Amber just laughed, shrugging it off. “Nah, it’s okay. We’re friends now, right?”

Krystal smiled. “Yes, friends.”

And friends they were, since that day. Inseparable ones too. In the middle of high school, there was an audition for SM Entertainment, and Krystal had submitted a form secretly without the knowledge of her parents. Amber and her had both went to the audition, and to their extreme excitement and joy, they had both passed the first round. To pass the second round, it had been required of them to fly to Korea to audition at the SM headquarters. After a lot of arguing with her parents, Krystal had finally packed her bags, headed to the airport and boarded the plane to Korea.

And that is why she is in Seoul right now. The audition date hasn’t arrived yet, but both she and Amber spend hours practicing their dancing and singing skills. And for Amber, rapping too. They try to stay as focused as possible on their goals and so far, they’re doing a pretty good job.

But there is one thing that distracts Krystal, and that is her shadow. Every so often, she sees it in a position that doesn’t match hers, but it only takes a blink of the eye for it to return back to normal. Krystal chalks it all up to hallucinations, but there is something in the back of her brain that tells her that it might not be just her imagination.

Another thing that distracts her are the dreams she has every night. In every dream, one person is always present. Whenever she wakes up, she forgets what he looks like. But there is one thing about him that sticks in her mind, and that is his voice. It gives her a feeling of nostalgia, although she doesn’t exactly know why.

Even though she can’t remember his face, she can remember everything else that happens in the dreams. Although Krystal herself doesn’t know it, her dreams aren’t fictional at all. They are real memories from her shadow’s point of view, replaying in her head. She dreams about everything her shadow has been through, from the day that her shadow first changed back to her original form, until the confession on the music box.

Tonight, she dreams about a wishing fountain, an orange sunset, and a wishing star. Unbeknownst to her, she smiles in her sleep before her alarm clock sets off, disrupting the peacefulness of the still air. She sits up groggily, bringing a hand up to her face to shield her eyes from the bright sunlight streaming through the window, trying her very best to grasp on to the dream, to keep it with her for a little longer.

For the first time, she wakes up while still remembering one thing about the boy’s features. His heart shaped smile. 

Hello my readers! I'm back! I'm so, so sorry it took ages for me to update. School started and I was really busy. But I will definitely finish writing this fanfic, so don't worry. If you liked it, please comment, upvote and subscribe if you haven't already! Thank you so much for waiting!