The story I'm about to tell you is a story about love and dreams, love born from dreams, and a love dreamed into reality. A love in dreams is beautiful, it is an eternal summer, it is colorful and it is colorless, it's just what you need. Reality, however, is the singular, intricate design of a snowflake that melts on your tongue, it's the rush of blood to one's cheeks as you run and laugh and play and hold a hand that fits into yours like so many others before but also unlike any other; fingers intertwining, hearts coming together, so many emotions blossoming in your chest that you'd love to catalog them like a scientist in a lab coat, each tag bearing a single name. If you have not experienced it, don't worry. There is time. There is always a time. You see,

there was once a boy whose love was solace in a ballerina, her pose frozen mid-dance in a snow globe. He never shook the globe, no; if he shook it to make the snow fall from its resting place at the bottom, the ballerina would shake as well and she deserved better, she deserved more for the comfort she brought him, for the rest and the warmth on cold nights.

Let us start from the beginning. Even if there isn't much to tell. It starts as most stories start, it starts with family. There was a boy and his mother until there wasn't anymore. They lived together and they lived peacefully until the flames took her and his home and his peace. Or was it a fire? Or illness? Maybe an accident? There are so many ways life can take us by surprise, take everything from us and throw us onto different paths. There was once a boy who only had his mother, a father long lost to war, and he was happy, he was an average little boy until she was gone and the only thing he had left from her was a snow globe with a ballerina.

The boy and his ballerina arrived at a different home, at crossroads. The lights would out be out at eight and you were to rise at six. There were other boys who didn't look at him and didn't speak to him, and a new mother with twisted lips and elaborate hair and a voice that reached him from everywhere, from anywhere, yelling his name and throwing accusations, of the money they had to spend on him, of the roof they kept over his head, of gratefulness and duty. The boy listened, for he was taught respect, and so he kept his head low. And at night, he would hide himself under his blankets and he would light up his snow globe, watching as the ballerina danced her perpetual dance in the sparkly snow. He would fall asleep with the ballerina close to his face, she was all he could see, a memory and a memento and a music box that played in his mind.

"Wang So," she called him. "Wake up, they're coming!"

The boy would open his eyes in his dreams and there she would be, beautiful pink dress and a tiara atop her head, holding out her hand, calling him, smiling at him. They ran through a golden road and rainbow arches, they ran through forests and waved at the bunnies and owls and frogs and mice. His ballerina was a princess and a savior and grace itself, she dodged their enemies' advances with long leaps and twirls, she pushed him forward, she pulled him along, she hushed him behind a tree with a finger placed on her lips but she was giggling so it was helpless and soon they were found and running again. He wanted to save her, to hold a sword and kill their opponents but it was so much more fun to run, to see different places, to hear her voice call him, So, So-yah, like no one had done ever since his mother left. His ballerina moved with music and laughed in notes, she was beautiful and she was his friend and she lived in his dreams. He liked his dreams better than waking up, than eating his meals, than going to school. He lived in his dreams and he slept through reality. He couldn't wait until the clock ticked all the way to eight o'clock. Wang So lost his childhood to tragedy and yet he couldn't grow up outside his dreams. He was a boy, he was infinite and ageless. He held his ballerina close to his eyes, and she was all he could see.

And so he lived until they broke his heart again. It pains me to tell you that there is more to Wang So's story than just becoming an adventurer in his dreams. For he lived with people who didn't like him at all, and they soon discovered his little snow globe. It was their roof and they had as much as a right to his things as he did, that's what they told him when they took her, when they shook the globe, when they aaah'd and ooh'd at the falling glitter. Their hands, however, weren't as careful as So's, they had no esteem for her as he did, no love, and so they shook her and they shook her and they passed her from hand to hand until she fell and shattered on the floor. His brothers went silent and the music died in him. He picked her up, carefully, flicking the broken glass off her. He hurt his hands but he didn't mind, he didn't even see. The boy held the ballerina close to his chest, no more glass to fill his vision, to lose himself into, to erase all and every surrounding. After he listened to his new mother's lectures, he climbed the steps to his room, heavy foot after heavy foot, and collapsed on his bed as if it was his own world that had been broken apart, as if it had been himself. There was no more memory, no more memento, just an old ballerina who would gather dust as the seasons passed.

Wang So walked to his balcony in daydream, in mourning, his feet freezing on the tiles. So many days had passed, so much time, but still he felt like the same boy who received the snow globe from his mother's hands. "I know you like it better when it snows," she said then, "so now you can have snow every day of the year, love." Now there was no more snow, it was broken, everything had been broken. Now, there was nothing.

Now, you see, sometimes there are miracles. When you wish quietly in your heart, when your feelings are true, sometimes miracles happen. They don't happen exactly the way we want, or maybe they're not even what we want, but they happen to give us a chance, to give us a choice. They offer new crossroads, new paths, that's what they are. Miracles are wishes and wishes are hope. And so, on that day, on that winter day when Wang So lost the snow in his heart, the skies offered him snow. He looked up and felt the cold on the tip of his nose, making him go cross-eyed for a second. He spoke into the air, into the night, "Mother?", and the snowflakes continued to fall in response, in merciful slowness, in the turns of his ballerina's dance. He held the unprotected ballerina up to the falling snow, it was the only thing he could do, it was the only thing he could give her; she who had only ever had made-up snow could experience the real thing. He was awake, painfully awake, not a minute spent in dreams. And so the boy lost the last bit of his childhood that day.

The years passed, as they ought to pass. His ballerina no longer visited his dreams, no longer sent him on adventures. For the boy, our young man, there was only the old memory of a father who died fighting, a mother who died of something else, and an everyday of routine and routine and routine for which he didn't have the heart. He just didn't have the heart.

She came when he least expected it, when his nights had long been overtaken by darkness.

The teacher said her name was Hae Soo. She was small, hair kept in a bun, eyes big and frightened as it took every face who studied her, who seized her, who threw her off balance. As she walked to her seat, so close to him yet still distant, he noticed she had a small limp, the subject of gossip and chatter and myths amongst his peers, whispered words behind her back, her neck glowing red in embarrassment and self-consciousness. All So could think about was a ballerina who once fell to the ground and lost her dome and was left unprotected to tread through this world. Hae Soo was a girl, however, a person, and of people, he knew very little. He wanted to know.

Hae Soo would listen to music whenever she could, her knees close to her chest, her mouth moving silently to the lyrics. He wanted to tell her that he found comfort in music too, that it calmed his heart, that it gave him dreams, daydreams, dreams while awake, the only kind he knew then. He wanted to approach her, wanted to know her, wanted to brush her bangs away from her face because his mother, a different Soo, said eyes were too beautiful to hide. For reasons he didn't yet know, he wanted her to stop crying when she thought no one could see.

And so he bought her tickets to a ballet. It was the only thing he could think about; his ballerina, his half-remembered night stories and the comfort they used to bring him. So he approached her at the school gates, stopping in front of her to get her attention, walking somewhere no one could see them. His hand was shaking when he held the ticket to her, and when she took it, he could have leaped with joy but her reaction was wrong, it was different from what he had conjectured. There was still one more obstacle to his happiness; there was still one more battle for our Wang So to fight, our clumsy, mended Wang So. He felt it when her tears started to fall, when she shoved the ticket back at his chest and ran away, without grace and without balance, without direction and without solace. His heart broke again that day. But I've heard — I believe — our hearts are our most resilient organ, it can be broken and stepped on, it can be set on fire and it can beat at a thousand miles per hour, it can die and it can live again; it can endure so much if only there is love at the end. Our hearts can live on if there is love. And for Wang So, that sad girl was his first love, and from the skies, from the dreams he could no longer remember, a voice told him not to give up.

The boy who once lost everything waited, and he thought, and he waited. Hae Soo had not spoken a word to anyone, especially not to him, taking detours when he approached, hiding her face when he looked at her, still so lost inside herself, carefully nestled in her seat by the window, in the dome she tried to maintain by herself. And one day, just an average day, when he knocked on her door — or rather, he tapped on her desk after everyone was gone, after there was only her, him, and the setting sun captured in the picture frame of that afternoon.

"I want to... show you something," he said, slowly, as if he tried words that had never before been spoken. Hae Soo lifted her head to him, her mouth a lonely line, her eyes blank. It was better than crying, he thought, it was better than running away. She hadn't replied, she had never talked to anyone, but no one had tried to offer any kind word, just rude questions about things that only satisfied their curiosity. So and Soo had something in common, they had a fissure, a crack from which light tried desperately to peek through. They had shared a fragile moment, a second of recognition, the ticket in his hand and the surprise in her eyes, and he held on to that thread, he held on so he wouldn't fall back into the person he was before she came along. Before, he could only think about himself; after she came, he could only think of her, of her tears, of her limp, of the songs she listened to and what dreams she might dream.

Hae Soo stood up, her chair scrapping against the floor, a ballerina's cacophony. She didn't walk away, she didn't push him back. She waited, like he had waited. Took her bag in her hand and waited, her eyes blinking lazily at him, tired. He took her hand; bold yet hopeful, his heart leaping at her, reaching for her, hoping she would accept him.

It was cold, the winter when Hae Soo came. It had been a cold fall, an even colder winter. They walked without sharing a word, their joined hands a lifeline for both of them, two souls that hang on, two hearts that longed to be mended, for good days to come back. They yearned. For something that had yet to be invented.

She should be okay here, So thought as they both entered the building. She didn't interject or complain or leave. He got her ready first, sitting her gently down, looking up at her for her consent before taking her shoes off, untangling her knots, carefully exposing her. He finally felt like the prince he wanted to be in his dreams, the one who couldn't rescue his mother, the one who was forsaken. The heart lives on. He chose her size perfectly, the crystal slippers, white and ready to take on new grounds. She watched him as he changed out of his own shoes and soon they were set — soon, they were on the ice.

Hae Soo didn't know how to ice skate; he did. He still remembered his mother's lessons, her hands guiding him, her laughter chiming across the white park. The memory of her was in every gesture, in every step he took to teach Soo. She didn't have much confidence so she let him lead. The ice felt like home, his home, a home he could invite Soo to. It was something new, something paradoxically warm. They both fell down. Slipped, unpracticed glides on ancient, waiting ice. Rubbing his backside, So panicked, looked Soo over to check for any injuries, apologized, again and again and again.

Soo started to laugh. It bubbled out of her in waves, timid, then it grew, and it grew. They were both sprawled across the ice, blushing from feelings and the cold, all over each other in the uncertainty of youth. But their hearts beat together, raced together, in rapture, at the side of her that she entrusted him. They laughed together and they stood together and together they skated. Together, they danced. Soo didn't have to limp, she had support, she glided. She would fall not because she hurt, but because she was inexperienced. And he would smile because he didn't hurt anymore, because he had someone else. Finally. Last, but not least, so it goes. Outside, the first snow fell on the adolescence of their lives.

"I used to dance," she told him as they walked together, an umbrella over their heads, the evening covering them like a blanket.

"What happened?"

"I had an accident," she said, her breath catching before her in mist.

"I had an accident, too," he told her. She halted, looking up at him with snow caught at the ends of her hair, long and loose against her back.

"What did you lose?"

"Everything. My dreams."

She smiled.

"I lost mine too. I'm just... A part of something that I once was."

So tilted his head, confused, unprepared.

"But I see all of you."

Soo seemed to lose her strength for a moment, a second, where she reached for him for the first time, leaning on him for support, her knee bent, her hands on his forearms.

"Are you okay?"

What should he say, what should he do? So only understood of the injuries of the heart, he didn't know of helplessness, of someone's wound that he could not heal, of somebody's pain and how much it could pain him. He only knew loss. His mother looking outside the window, a father that would not come. He didn't want to lose again.

"I'm okay, it's just... cold. My knee hurts a bit."

He held her as she held onto him, the middle without a clear start, a movie with a muddled, forgettable beginning. The minutes fell and passed with every snowflake melting against their umbrella.

"You... what did you see in me?"

His young heart raced with a thousand reasons.

"I just wanted to meet you."

It was simple. It was truth. He nodded, more at himself than at her, and she smiled, the knowledge bringing them closer together, or maybe it was just the umbrella that wasn't big enough for the two of them.

"Would you..."

He swallowed and she tilted her head in curiosity, her hands slowly falling down his arms and lying so close to his hands. She was showing him so many sides of her, and he was falling for them all. He wanted to hold her hand.

"...show me the songs you like?"

Hae Soo's smile wasn't big and bright like it would be one day, but on that day, it was enough. Just enough to draw his attention to the mole on her cheek, just enough to lighten up her eyes, just enough to welcome him. On the next day, after everyone was gone, she shared one of her ear buds with him, and he discovered a little bit more about her. She read over his notebooks, his notes, his words, the adventures that lived in him, and she discovered a little bit more about him, too. They never wanted to go home and together, they learned to be with one another, to want each other's company. A little more. A little closer. They danced together on the ice, where Soo didn't limp, where So ran like he used to run, through golden roads, under rainbow arcs. And together they walked, hand in hand, and waved at cats and birds and children, and they learned to live again.

This is a story about lost dreams, about finding oneself, about thinking about someone else, about finding happiness in being someone's happiness. It's a story about learning to care, about learning to let go. We all find ourselves, in the end. We find ourselves in somebody else, sometimes. We dream. Inevitably, irrevocably, we dream.

The first snow always comes.

And our hearts can be mended.

"Seol, why are you still up?"

The young girl looked away from her audience of stuffed animals and at her mother who had opened her door.

"I was just reading, mom."

She put her closed book away and her mother walked over to tuck her under the covers, her animals falling on her like her faithful soldiers, her small protectors.

"Well, I suppose I can't scold you for that, but it's way past your bedtime."

"Mom?"

Her mother hummed in response, her smile big and bright.

"Can you tell me the story of how you and dad met again?"

Hae Soo chuckled.

"I thought you had outgrown that story."

Seol shook her head.

"Please tell me again."

"Okay." Hae Soo sat on the edge of her daughter's bed, her small feet lifting off the ground. "It was a very cold winter..."

Seol tried to listen closely to the story, even if her eyes slowly started to feel heavy, even if she couldn't stay awake for the end. She knew the end; she knew her mother liked to tell the story as much as she liked to listen, she knew her mother liked to fall asleep against her dad's shoulder while listening to beautiful violins, the Christmas lights shining on them like a million rainbows, like a miracle. Seol liked it even better when her father sang her to sleep after the story, but father was tired from writing and she understood. She was a big girl now and she knew when her parents were tired, and it was okay to rest, because they were going ice skating the next day and there was nothing that she loved more than to ice skate with her parents.

In her dreams, she fought evil mice and she protected her kingdom. She was a warrior and she was a princess, she was everything she wanted to be because her parents taught her she could be anything, everything, as long as she could dream about it.

On her bedside sit a present from her great-uncle Choi Ji Mong: a ballerina in her dome, her hand open, outstretched, pointing to a clock that signaled the ever-coming midnight.

And she dreamt.

And she dreamt.

Outside, the snow continued to fall.