Chapter 2 – A Life Without a Star

The world moved on.

News cycles churned. Articles were replaced with new headlines. The industry issued its tributes, colleagues posted heartfelt messages, and fans lit candles at makeshift memorials. But soon, time did what it always did—it dulled the edges of tragedy for those who had never truly lived it.

But Elena couldn’t move on.

For her, the days blurred into one long, suffocating moment, stretched thin between waking and sleep. Except, sleep never came easily anymore.

It had been weeks since Seon died, but the weight of it never left her chest. Each morning, she woke up to the same suffocating reality: he was gone. No amount of scrolling through old interviews or watching his dramas could change that. The past had become a graveyard of moments that would never lead to new ones.

She tried to go about her routine—wake up, eat, work—but it was all hollow now. Life had lost its meaning.

The office where she worked felt like a foreign place. The sound of co-workers chatting, the clicking of keyboards, the ringing of phones—it was all distant, as if she were watching it from behind glass. People still laughed, still made plans for the weekend, still gossiped about celebrities. One of them even mentioned Seon once, briefly, in passing.

“I still can’t believe what happened to him.”

“Yeah. So tragic. Anyway, did you see that new drama that just dropped?”

That was it. A few seconds of acknowledgment before they moved on, as if his existence could be neatly folded into a past tragedy and left there.

Elena wanted to scream.

Instead, she excused herself and locked herself in the office bathroom, gripping the sink until her knuckles turned white. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and exhausted, dark circles carving shadows beneath her eyes. She barely recognized herself anymore.

At home, it was worse.

Silence had never felt so deafening. Her apartment, once a place of comfort, had become a shrine to someone who would never know how much he meant to her. His photos, once sources of joy, now felt like a cruel reminder of what had been stolen from the world.

She kept replaying his old interviews, letting his voice fill the empty space, as if that would somehow make up for the gaping void inside her. But the more she listened, the worse it became.

“I hope my work brings you happiness.”

How could he have said that? How could he have smiled while carrying so much pain?

Why hadn’t anyone seen it?

Why hadn’t she?

The question haunted her, gnawed at her insides. She knew it was irrational. She had never known him personally. She had been nothing more than a distant admirer, just one of millions. But that didn’t stop the guilt. That didn’t stop the overwhelming feeling that she should have done something.

Late at night, when the loneliness became unbearable, she would find herself staring at the sky through her bedroom window. The stars were indifferent, scattered across the vast darkness, untouched by human sorrow. Somewhere out there, Seon no longer existed. The realization crushed her every time.

Elena had not always been like this. Once, she had believed in beginnings, in futures, in the small promises life sometimes made to people. But somewhere along the way, the promises to her had been broken.

She grew up in a house that was never really a home. Her parents had given her everything material—education, stability, a roof over her head—but they had demanded perfection in return. Love was a reward, not a given. A single mistake was met not with patience but with sharp words, with silence that froze her from the inside. Her childhood memories were littered with the sound of slammed doors and her mother’s relentless voice: “Why can’t you be better?”

By the time she was in her late teens, she had stopped trying to meet their expectations. When she left for college, it felt less like freedom and more like exile. She didn’t go home for the holidays; she didn’t pick up the phone when her parents called. In the quiet of her small rented room, loneliness became her shadow.

That was when she first saw him—Seon.

It was late at night, her textbooks spread around her like fallen walls, and her chest heavy with the familiar ache of not being good enough. She had clicked on a drama by chance, just needing noise to drown out the silence. And then he appeared on screen.

Seon was laughing in that scene—bright, carefree, as if the world couldn’t touch him. His voice carried warmth she had not felt in years. Something inside her cracked open. She didn’t even realize she was crying until her vision blurred and she could no longer follow the subtitles.

From that night onward, he became her anchor. His dramas, his interviews, his songs—they gave her the illusion of companionship. His words, though not meant for her alone, felt like lifelines cast across the abyss. Whenever he said, “I hope my work brings you strength,” she believed him. She believed he was speaking to her, and in those moments, it was enough.

In the years that followed, while her classmates moved on to relationships, careers, and marriages, Elena held onto Seon. Not because she didn’t try to build a life of her own—she did. She worked hard, got a stable job, tried to smile at office parties. But nothing filled the void like he did. No one made her feel seen the way his words did.

So when the news of his death arrived, it didn’t feel like she had lost a distant celebrity, but it felt like she lost her own best friend. It felt like the world had stolen the only person who had ever truly understood her.

And now—weeks later—as the darkness closed in around her, her body crumpling under exhaustion and grief, Elena thought of the first time she had seen his smile on that screen. The memory clung to her like a thread.

If only I could go back, she thought desperately, her last coherent plea before the world dissolved into black.
If only I could save him the way he once saved me.

⬇️

One night, she found herself scrolling through the last posts he had ever made.

There was nothing that hinted at what he had been feeling. No cryptic messages, no signs. Just promotions, a casual selfie, a clip from an interview. He had smiled in every single one of them.

But now, that smile felt like a lie.

Her vision blurred as she gripped her phone. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest.

“You were suffering, weren’t you?” she whispered into the void.

The words felt useless, spoken too late.

She curled into herself, pressing her forehead against her knees.

“If only I had been there… if only I could have saved you…”

The thought repeated in her mind, over and over, until she could barely breathe.

And then—

A sharp, overwhelming exhaustion crashed over her.

Her body felt impossibly heavy, her vision swimming. The world around her blurred, shadows shifting, the stars outside seeming to stretch and ripple.

She barely had time to process it before the darkness swallowed her whole.