Every day I wake up at 6 a.m. early in the morning. Every day I pass the same trees, the same shops, the same line of gravel... and thoughtlessly drag my feet to the same spot where I wait for the bus. The day hasn?t started yet. Only a person or two passes by the road, busily looking down on their phones. I can barely count a few cars wheezing past – wheezing, but without a sound. True, it?s peaceful. But it?s, in a way, just as hollow. The city is barren, the streets as quiet as ever..The morning sun still asleep in the haze of dusk... or perhaps dawn. The days are getting colder now, and colder, to us, means shorter. The nights are growing longer, like a dark, dark, shadow that we?re all too oblivious to a shadow slowly feeding itself out of the unknown. The morning is not yet morning. The sun is yet to be awake. All I can see is darkness. Early morning consumed by what is left of yesterday night. No stars, no moon, no sun... but just the darkish, bluish haze of the morning.

I spend my whole day at school – the original 7 hour classes plus the remaining self study period. It takes a while for the school bus to drop me back at home. It?s almost 10 p.m. by then. And as I look up at the sky – not particularly hopeful, but just to check – the night is at its peak. It?s dark, but not really dark. The street lights and neon signs are there, just at the right place at the right time when they?re supposed to be.

Getting up so early and coming back so late is a peculiarity of my school. Still, it?s a common saying among us students that we all ?walk to school gazing at the stars and walk back home gazing at the stars,? It?s almost proverbial now, and it basically portrays the depressing reality that life is tough. We leave our homes early in the morning when it?s still dark, and we all just miss what?s been through the day. We never really get a chance to see what real light is like. So we all look up, in hope of getting a glimpse of what?s out there up in the sky – a little light? a part of a galaxy? And we?re supposed to see the stars, all so brilliant and so comforting.

The truth is, the night of Seoul may be full of energy, but everywhere I look, the only stars I can see are the colorful neon signs lined up in the streets, the endless red LED crosses set atop every church.. No stars, no nothing. That?s what we call reality. It was almost a year ago when I saw more than two stars together... Like 5 small stars in the countryside? That was most of it, and technically the end of my stargazing life. We never get to see any stars while walking to school or back home. All we have is smog and dust.

At the same time though, I know that, at some point, this is all going to come to an end. Things are going to change, and they are already changing. The way we students don?t get to see much light, having to study, and the way our night sky has turned grayer, not deeper.

For the first time in years, I?ve seen something quite beautiful – a beautiful thought suffusing across the city. And here we are, in a world, in a city once polluted, but now ready for change, The river is bubbling with excitement. Everywhere, there are more parks, more hills, and more mountains back in place. Cars are burning less fuel public transportation is thriving. A large portion of the population depend on the subway, and rely on natural gas buses to get to work. We?re starting to change, starting to recycle. We?re teaching our children about how to save the environment, and how we can make ourselves even more vulnerable by harming our surroundings. Things are, truly, different nowadays.

What we need in this new era is a city of collaboration. A collaboration between city and nature.

When city and nature meets – when humans learn how to fit in, and when our planet learns to forgive our mistakes.. For the first time as I was riding my bus back home, I noticed that something was different. The roads were no longer blobs of gray. The skies were no longer a fume of dust. When I looked up, I could see the pinkish fuzz of pastel covering the sky. The clouds, ineffable. The buildings – just a dark silhouette from the distance.. And.......see for yourself.