The world passes by in a blur.

The colors blend into a mosaic out the window. There are so many people outside, but the inside of the café feels like an empty shell.

Or maybe it’s just Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo has his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. He’s in the middle of his daily routine – people-gazing. Quite an ironic hobby, when people are supposed to watch him.

Supposed to, but Kyungsoo can feel himself fading away. His shine is slowly waning.

People still stare. They are still pulled into his gravity, but his force is weaker. They don’t stop by him as often.

A flock of birds fly across the sky. The signs of winter are clear, in the gray skies, thin air and the dying leaves.

Kyungsoo’s starting to cool down in all the wrong ways.

He’s meant to burn, to emit heat and light yet now he barely makes sparks.

He doesn’t know how long he has. He stopped counting a long time ago because that’s what he came here for. To forget. He hasn’t kept track of the years he has wasted, nor the number of people he’s passed by.

He had many hopes when he fell.

He thought that this world would be different.

It is different, this world. But not in the way that Kyungsoo expected.

He’d left the loneliness of being the star at the centre of the universe, surrounded by vast planes of nothing, to find the notion of companionship on his own. A shooting star with dreams of his own, Kyungsoo hoped to burn for a purpose.

Some stars are made to be the center of a world.

Kyungsoo, he was just made.

To exist, he supposes.

 

A body enters the corner of Kyungsoo’s line of vision.

There is a huff and the leather covering the seat creaks as the body on it shifts restlessly. Kyungsoo resists rolling his eyes and without moving his arms, turns his head to face in front of him. And there sits Jongin, the twenty-year-old university student/part-time waiter at Les Gens. A man that was just a face to Kyungsoo until the frequent visits to the café pulled the younger into his orbit and, unknowingly, Kyungsoo was drawn into the boy’s black holes.

Today, the blackness of his eyes were just as deep. The skin around them is discoloured, darker than his cheeks.

“Hyung,” his voice sounds like it forced its way out of his throat. “You look sick.”

Kyungsoo could say the same to him, but they’ve never really talked about it. Kyungsoo knew from the beginning that talks of the probing joints, blood-shot eyes, and the chronic coughing were to be avoided.

He doesn’t point it out today either.

It isn’t his business to concern about others. He wouldn’t be able to help.

There is a mug on the edge of the table. One Kyungsoo didn’t order. But like his window-gazing routine, him and the young waiter have a routine, where on his breaks, Jongin sneaks out, for some reason, to sit with Kyungsoo and talk. He always brings something along with him, whether it be a drink or a pastry.

Kyungsoo pulls the cup to him and takes a sip. It’s just hot chocolate.

“You’re really pale,” Jongin is still slouching. Kyungsoo can feel his stare.

Kyungsoo the drink from his lips. “I’ve always been pale.”

“Fine. Paler.”

Kyungsoo shrugs. He knows that his cooling core is affecting his appearance. He doesn’t have enough time to be worrying about it.

Jongin crosses his arms and lays his head on the table. Kyungsoo finds himself sliding to the edge of his seat. He watches as Jongin buries his head inside his folded arms. He notices that the shine from Jongin’s hair is gone and wonders if he looks just as dull.

“The cold doesn’t sit well with me,” Kyungsoo shares. The hot drink does a good job of keeping his insides warm.

Jongin’s head peeks out, his fringes ruffling in the movement. “I don’t really mind the cold.” He rubs his cheek on his arm. “The world is so quiet.”

“You shouldn’t seek solitude. You’ll end up like me.”

Jongin reminds him of the sun. He’s brighter than all the star out there. In comparison, Kyungsoo is fit to be a comet, a floating piece of space junk leaving behind a trail of itself in order to be found. Kyungsoo is destined for loneliness. Even with his gravitational pull, he’s only ever been able to catch glances. It’s never been strong enough to be noticed.

Jongin is noticed, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it. Despite how he blinds his audience when they look too long and burns them when they get too close, they are still attracted.

Even Kyungsoo sometimes feels a of heat in his chest when those hooded eyes curve at something he says.

Jongin, Kyungsoo thinks, deserves his own solar system. And if Kyungsoo were a comet, he’d pass by just to get a glimpse of Jongin’s brilliance.

It’s all wishful thinking, though. They’re both in a state of being that constrains them.

Jongin is waiting for an answer.

“I’m dying.” The truth echoes inside Kyungsoo. The change in Jongin’s relaxed expression is more entertaining to him.

Jongin straightens, eyes frantic and lips parting to for a flow of questions that never make it out.

“You probably won’t be seeing me anymore, soon.”

“Hyung,” there is a disruption in his usual static tone, “you can’t just go around saying that to me. With such an uncaring attitude, too.” Jongin sinks into his seat and his hands are in fists.

Kyungsoo’s fingers shake when trying to hold his cup, so he puts it down.

“Well, it’s out of my control. No need in crying.”

“Have you gone to the hospital yet?” Jongin stares out the window with his jaws set. And Kyungsoo almost feels something close to sadness when he lets himself imagine Jongin missing him after he has gone. He reminds himself that he shouldn’t leave any pieces of himself behind, shouldn’t want to.

“It’s not something your medical treatment can fix. I am meant to die.” Kyungsoo cups his drink. “We’re all meant to die.” He feels a lot colder now.

Jongin continues to watch the world outside. Kyungsoo watches him, always pulled towards his sun. When Jongin finally turns to face him, Kyungsoo isn’t fazed and meets his eyes. He needs to finish what he started.

And in a voice that sounds battered down from wear and shaky with emotions Jongin has always hides, he whispers, “Take me with you then.”

At this, Kyungsoo laughs and he chokes on the forced sound.

“It is my time to go. I have lived my lifespan.” His core was cooling, there really was nothing he could do. “You still have years on you, despite your attempts to kill yourself slowly.”

Jongin tries to protest, but Kyungsoo gets up from his seat.

“You still have years on you Jongin.” He doesn’t have the power to heal, to inspire, nor to intervene. He doesn’t know what it is that makes Jongin sad enough to seek solitude when it was the very thing Kyungsoo spent centuries trying to escape. He can’t ensure Jongin’s future and he can’t change who this man is. Kyungsoo isn’t meant to be Jongin’s saviour not is Jongin’s meant to be his.

Kyungsoo walks out of the booth and Jongin grabs him by his sleeve.

He looks like a star collapsing on itself, but Kyungsoo is too far away to help.

He doesn’t shake Jongin off but smiles at him. He lights his last sparks for Jongin to see, the only person he has ever held in his gravity.

Jongin lets him go. He nods and looks down at his hands.

I’m too weak to hold you within my grasp. Now that it has lost  its power, don’t stay in it unnecessarily, Kyungsoo hopes to say, but he thinks that they have a similar understanding. Their business has never been to question each other, but to accept that they both have their reasons.

Kyungsoo has to leave.

Jongin has to accept.

This is the end of one routine, for Jongin, and the end of all for Kyungsoo’s.

 

From the café, Kyungsoo has navigated his way to the very field where he landed. He hadn’t even made a dent when he fell.

He’s surrounded by kilometers of weeds, a mixture of yellows, whites and red. They tickle his knees as he walks through, trying to find the first land he touched on this world. He sees a patch of the field bare and slightly cracked from meters away. It pulls him and he lets himself be guided.

Standing on the barren earth, he feels remnants of his stardust. The portion of it that had embedded itself into the earth and avoided being blown away by the wind.

As his body responds to the familiarity, Kyungsoo’s mind wanders through his memories. He remembers the desolate universe, the tumultuous fall to a world full of life, his journey to find himself cursed with solitude, and finally, his meeting with a star in the form of an organism.

He should regret that he went through all that to end up alone, in the middle of a field that is almost dead. He should be angry that he couldn’t escape his destiny. He should have fought when he could, tried harder to defy the laws of the universe.

But now, in the end, Kyungsoo lets it all go. The universe allowed him to explore himself, to experience all that he was able to, to feel when he’s just a star.

Everyone has a purpose. They were made for something.

Kyungsoo was just made.

But he was made to be alone.

It wasn’t his place to ask for more. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change his being.

So he accepts.

Because when he dies, he will be in harmony with the universe. His energy will be absorbed into the components of the world.

In death, Kyungsoo thinks, is when he escapes his fate.

So when his form begins to disintegrate and revert back into stardust, he feels at peace.

As he disappears, he becomes the energy that fuels the world.

Instead of a big bang, Kyungsoo prefers this way as an end, serene and untraceable.

Kyungsoo wants to be found everywhere.

But he’s thankful for Jongin to have found him first.

And a second away from oblivion, Kyungsoo hopes some of him finds his way back to the lonely boy and mend him.

He smiles as his presence lights up the weed around him, granting them the beauty they’d never had. He captures the moment in his mind because everything deserves to be noticed. And once he has fully appreciated the phenomenon around him, he lets his eyes close and lets a smile paint his mouth.   

The last of him is freed and the field stands as empty as it had been ten minutes ago, with no trace of the star that passed through this world in a blur.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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