hyunjin was five years old the first time he saw a K-pop group on television—the way they moved in perfect sync, every smile and spin carrying an electric joy that made his heart surge.
He begged his mother for a pair of dance shoes; by six, he’d choreographed his own sway-and-slide routines across the living-room carpet.
Every evening, his father found him rehearsing under the solitary beam of the hallway light, his small frame pulsing with dreams bigger than the neon posters on his walls. “One day,” he whispered to himself, "i'll stand on that stage"
But as hyunjin grew, so did his parents’ worries. They loved his laughter, but they feared a dancer’s life—unstable, unforgiving, unlikely to bring the security they prized.
“We want you to be happy,” his mother would say, voice trembling; “but dancers don’t earn enough to live without worry.” His father, pausing over dinner, pressed a brochure for the national medical college into hyunjin’s hand.
“This is a noble path,” he told him. And so hyunjin tucked his dance shoes into the back of his closet, buried them under textbooks, and traded pirouettes for pathology slides.
Medical school consumed him. White coats replaced sweatbands; stethoscopes lay across anatomy atlases. Professors praised his focus; classmates admired his steady hand on the cadaver’s heart.
He graduated with honors, and the hospital greeted him with open arms. “Dr. hwang hyunjin,” the head of surgery announced, beaming, handing him his badge. Visitors and colleagues showered him with admiration.
Yet in the quiet moments—before dawn rounds, after the final pager beep—he felt the ache of the empty stage, heard the echo of applause that never came.
Late one night, after suturing a child’s fractured arm, hyunjin lingered in the hospital’s rooftop garden. The city lights danced below, taunting him with their own rhythm. He pressed a trembling finger into his chest, where the dream still throbbed, wild and alive.
He cursed himself for betraying that boy—the one who glowed under the hallway lamp, who believed that joy was enough to carry him forward. “What have I become?” he whispered to the moon.
Yet even as exhaustion threatened to swallow him, a spark remained. Not quite hope, but something gentler—a longing.
Perhaps one day he would find a way back to the music that once shaped his heart. For now, though, he buried his regret beneath the weight of his own ambition and the world’s applause. And every night, in the hush before sleep, he let himself mourn the boy who dared to dream with every step.
