Once upon a time… ✦ ✧ ⋆
In a small bedroom in Seoul, a cassette player played every night. It was my mother’s way of teaching me English — and her way of hoping I would branch out further than she had, free from the chains that kept her from dreaming bigger.
Out of that little machine came Jesse Bernstein, reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and every night it swept me into a completely magical world, full of new languages, places I had never been, and characters far beyond my imagination.
By morning I would wake and breathe that same magic into my Barbie dolls, my mother’s lipstick, the scraps of toilet paper lying about my room. It took the shape of brave heroes, of a magic wand that opened portals to new dimensions, of falling snowflakes that never melted. The blankets came to life as a fortress guarding my magical kingdom — and inside it, I invited my parents to be the audience at my first-ever stage.
I wasn’t just playing. I was building entire universes.
I never really stopped. Every place I have lived, every experience, every person I have met has shaped some part of my voice — and every language I carry has taught me a new way to listen.
