July 24th

Chap.1

          My name is Chloe, and this is my story.

I have three sisters –2 of which are only half-sisters-, and my parents have been divorced since I was 2 so I was never close to my father, although we are both currently trying to change that. Not too long after her divorce, my mom found another partner, Chris – the father of one of my half-sisters-. Chris became my stepfather for a while before my mother realized they weren't meant for each other. Apart from that though, my life is rather ordinary. Or at least it used to be. Everything changed when I met my favorite K-pop group.

           It all happened in March 2023, in my first year of university. I had this crush on a girl that was fond of a K-pop group named "S-Love". It picked my interests, so I decided to listen to one of their songs. The first time I heard their song didn't particularly appeal to me, but as I was strong headed, I decided to listen to them one more time. That's when I started to really like S-Love. I started watching interviews and I even started to like one of their members called James a lot. I started liking them right before my finals (best time to do that, right?) and spent all my time listening to their songs and watching interviews. You have to understand that I'm not a particularly good student. I have good enough grades without having to study so I don't usually study for my exams, except for the subjects that I like - which is kind of stupid because the subjects I like most are the ones that I'm good at, so I don't need to study them, as opposed to the ones I don't like. Which makes it hard for me to pass my exams.

I still passed on my finals though. I don't really know how I did it, but I did.

           I started to notice the other members little by little. It was hard to tell them apart at first as they all looked the same to me. I wasn't really used to Asians type of faces you know? The second member I managed to recognize was Ha-Joon with his little round cheeks. I could relate to him a lot since he and I both had social anxiety. When I first learnt of Ha-Joon suffering from it, it made me cry so hard. I couldn't believe how brave he was, doing concerts when there's so many people looking at him? I could never do it. At least that's what I thought at the time. The last members I managed to make out were Ju-Won and Chae. Chae was a great leader and was always there for his friends. I looked up to him in many ways.

I still can't believe I met them.

           It was a hot day of July, especially for France. I had just finished work and decided that I wanted to go to the skating complex. - I had wanted to go for a long time but couldn't bring myself to go alone as I was afraid that I might have a social anxiety attack -. Today, I was finally going to go. I was going to face all my fears of going to a place alone and have fun. -I was still secretly hoping there wouldn't be a lot of people though-

          I arrived at the skating complex around 2PM, nervous and excited at the same time. I opened the door anxiously, but a feeling of glee quickly came to replace it as there were only a few people beside myself. I rented some skates and started putting them on. I had already skated a few times when I was younger, but I had forgotten pretty much everything by now. I tried to get up on my feet and, although my legs were shaking, I was still standing up somehow. I slowly made my way to the rink and tried to skate a little. -Well, I don't know if you could call it skating but more like a merely resemblance to what skating looks like-. I was really scared of hurting myself If I fell, which worsened my confidence, impacting my posture as well as my balance. I was barely starting to get used to the shaky legs of mine when I suddenly bumped into someone and made us fall. I started to panic – who wouldn't right? - and started to apologize while trying to get up. Having social anxiety, this is one of my worst nightmares. Especially since French people aren't usually very nice to strangers...