𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗽𝗶𝘁𝘆 || 𝒌𝒑𝒐𝒑 𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒊𝒔𝒕 ᴮᵒᵒᵏ ¹ [MAJOR REVISIONS👷]

-interlude⋆.𐙚 ̊

[ December 31, 2023 – Seoul, South Korea ] 

The world was loud that night.

Fireworks tore the sky open in streaks of red and gold, the city below alive with cheers that rang like a promise of something better. The cold air clung to her skin, sharp and metallic, carrying the faint scent of smoke from the first explosions. Cameras flashed, screens lit up with countdowns, and somewhere in the heart of it all, Leialoha Aurora Kala Park—eighteen now, though she felt centuries older—stood still.

To millions, she was untouchable. Asia's Shooting Star. Nation's Sweetheart. A name whispered in arenas and sung in stadiums. Her face had been on billboards since before she could spell her own. Awards glittered on her shelves, heavy as medals of war. And yet, as the seconds bled toward midnight, Kala could feel the weight of the last decade pressing against her chest like a secret she hadn't meant to keep.

Ten years. Ten years since everything began.

She thought of it like a fault line running through her life—2013, the year the ground shifted. Back then, she was eight: a little girl in pigtails, a voice barely above a whisper, standing on a stage that felt far too big. The world would only ever see the spotlight, but Kala knew the darkness it took to reach it. The bruises no camera caught. The nights when applause could not drown out the quiet ache of betrayal.

The clock above the Han River struck eleven fifty-nine.

She exhaled, a thin cloud of breath curling into the frigid air before vanishing.

There had been joy, of course. There had been music, movement, the rush of flight when her skates cut across ice, when her body became poetry midair. There had been love in unexpected places, friendships that felt like family, and family that sometimes hurt more than strangers. There had been triumph—dizzying, impossible triumph. But behind it all were the stories no headline ever told.

The abuse.

The silence.

The battles fought in empty courtrooms where justice never arrived.

A decade of glitter and grief, of becoming something larger than life while fighting to stay alive.

Kala tilted her head back, watching the next firework crack the dark wide open. Sparks rained down like fleeting stars. She wondered if the crowd below had any idea who she really was—not the poster, not the prodigy, but the girl who began all this with a single step onto a stage in 2013.

This wasn't an ending. Not yet.

It was a beginning disguised as a finale.

The year would turn, as it always did. But before the world could look forward, Kala's story would demand a look back. To the quiet start. To the small hands that reached for the light without knowing how hot it could burn.

Midnight struck.

And somewhere between the crackle of fireworks and the drifting smoke, the past began to speak.

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