Why Must My Heart Ache?

Prolouge

    The change in me shocked my friends. They were used to me being depressed, quiet, and reserved. Before, I had pretty much been a recluse. Unfortunately, I think that they didn't like the new me. Well, too bad for them. I missed being like this, and now I had found my outlet. And besides, I would move to another school district that summer anyway.

     It was early in February that my change occured. I had started listening to K-pop and watching K-dramas. All but one of my friends thought that this was crazy. Leah loved SHINee, and I was into Super Junior. She envied that I had been a K-addict for a shorter time than she had, and already my mom and I had tickets to the SM-Town concert that summer in Anaheim. I was ordered to take a lot of pictures.

    However, that wouldn't happen. SM didn't allow cameras in the concert, and our section was one of the few under tight security. Shortly after the concert is when my chest began to feel heavy again, for the first time in a little over three months. After awhile, I finally figured out what it was. I felt lovesick. I had become a fangirl, and my heart burst with happiness and the kind of love that only a fangirl can possess, and it was breaking my heart.

    My favorite group and my bias would rarely make appearances in the USA. I knew this. I also knew that the ELFs in Seoul would have always have a better chance at meeting them. I wasn't a sasaeng fan, and I wasn't as obsessed as some ELFs. I didn't stalk twitter everyday or write perverted fanfics. I was disgusted with the obsessive shipping my fellow ELFs constantly poured out into the Internet. I was never angry when I found out that one of the oppas was dating, in fact, I was happy for them. I didn't like how Forever 13's shut out Henry and Zhou Mi. I was also a fan that didn't blindly follow everything SuJu ever put out just because it was from them.

    In fact, all I ever wanted was to listen to their music for encouragement and someday let them know how they affected my life. But then Cho Kyuhyun somehow managed to weasel his way into my heart without ever meeting me. After all my hard work, trying to learn Korean and wanting to move there and have a career, simply because I had come to love the culture, he had made my heart ache.

    After awhile, I got over the pang in my heart when I heard his voice or saw his smile, but then it would come back. Over time, this pattern repeated. He came and went, came and went. He would be replaced temporarily by other idols, like Kim Hyun Joong and Jung Yong Hwa, but he always reclaimed the number one place in my heart.

    It was when I was in a phase of his absence in my heart that I finally made it and moved to South Korea with a job as an ESL teacher, and my life changed again.