“why are you still reading that? are you not done yet?” the voice comes from behind jongin.

sehun drags the steel chair beside jongin, making the sleepy-eyed boy wince. “lift, don’t drag. you’ll make my ears bleed.”

“what are you, my mother? who are you to tell me what to do?” sehun’s orange backpack thuds when he drops it to the table. jongin could only guess how many workbooks are stuffed into that thing. “i don’t care whether or not your ears bleed. i hope you just bleed to death. i hope everyone here bleeds to death, jesus, you’re just going to eat in this cafeteria. there really is no need to be so ing loud.”

putting his book down, kim jongin takes a deep breath. he studies sehun for a while. twin dents shadow the spaces between oh sehun’s eyebrows. sehun’s lips are tilted to the left. he has his defensive face on. “okay, what is it this time?”

sehun slouches. he eyeballs jongin’s orange juice tetra pack. “i failed the quiz in taxation.”

“relax, it’s not the end of the world,” jongin grabs his drink, placing it before sehun.

“but it feels like it is,”

all of a sudden, the usual buzz in the cafeteria became louder. there’s an excited stir in the air. jongin studies his surroundings. female students begin sitting a little straighter. some of his classmates started bringing out their smartphones to capture something behind jongin.

sehun murmurs, “it’s probably that quirky professor again.”

“who?”

jongin could see a girl from his previous class slyly retouching her makeup under her table. she had the same last name as him, it’s all he could remember.

“i believe it’s professor do. he teaches physics or some other hard subject for the science and mathematics majors.  i don’t know the specifics, just that he’s known for being young and some girls seem to dig that,”  

“why have i not heard of him before?”

“you’re not very observant, give it up.”

curiosity finally got the best of him. he stares and immediately regrets it.  

jongin catches the well-liked professor just as one of jongin’s professor was saying something that made professor do crack up, teeth showing and eyes curving into crescents. he could hear a girl from the next table literally squealing.

that professor do could cause a slight commotion just by standing in line at the cafeteria. milky white skin, rosy cheeks, jet-black hair,  that guy reminds jongin of snow white. jongin could actually visualize pheromones oozing out of the professor’s pores.

“it’s making me want to gag,” sehun mutters.

“yeah,” jongin replies, half-heartedly. “okay, let’s go back to taxation.”

///

it’s nothing. it really is nothing. this is curiosity, it’s all there is. there’s nothing special about that anyway. i just want to know what sort of things he would be lecturing about. yes, that’s right. this is nothing, kim jongin recites this like a mantra over and over.

four in the afternoon catches him walking towards the hall of their campus’ science wing. he really has no business here, but damn that sehun. if only he didn’t let it slip earlier that it’s okay to sit in one of his classes and observe as long as one keeps quiet.  

sehun didn’t provide any more details and jongin isn’t one to pry. i’m going to just stroll here and if i didn’t see him in any of the door openings, then i’m going home.

tempting fate with his tiny dares, kim jongin walks on.

he happens to find the professor on the first door he peered into.

jongin enters through the back door, discovers he isn’t the only one drawn to the mystery.

“when galaxies collide — a common event in the universe — a fresh burst of star formation typically takes place as gas clouds mash together. at this point, the galaxy has a blue hue, but the color does not mean it is cold: it is a result of the intense heat of newly formed blue–white stars. those stars do not last long, and after a few billion years the reddish hues of aging, smaller stars dominate an elliptical galaxy’s spectrum,” professor do paces throughout the lecture hall while speaking. jongin’s taken aback with the professor’s voice. he wonders what it would sound like when singing. the tones were so deep. “the hubble space telescope caught sight of a soft, diffuse-looking galaxy, perhaps the aftermath of a long-ago galactic collision when two spiral galaxies, each perhaps much like the Milky Way, swirled together for millions of years.”

behind the professor, an image of the outer space appeared, showing specks of white dust overpowered by bigger, brilliant white shapes. professor do doesn’t sound like someone who memorized the textbook and tried to recite it verbatim. he sounds like a young kid anxious to please, to let others know of something that seemed perfectly amazing to him.

jongin thinks the world needs more educators like him.

“in such mergers, the original galaxies are often stretched and pulled apart as they wrap around a common center of gravity. after a few back-and-forths, this starry tempest settles down into a new, round object. the now subdued celestial body is technically known as an elliptical galaxy,” the professor speaks, and jongin is thinking of the galaxies that must be slowly burning themselves to be bigger than anything he could imagine.

somewhere, out there, stars are colliding into each other. gas clouds are blowing up only to come together as something grander. that knowledge kept things in perspective for jongin, even if just for a short while.

“with all these collisions, and us knowing that this is happening somewhere, some time, some light years away from us, it kind of makes our problems pale in comparison, don’t you think?” the professor asks, as if reading jongin’s mind. a few heads nod in agreement. “remember that the next time you worry about your finances, budgeting your allowance, about your partner not replying to that text message you sent last night. we’re all part of something greater, and there are things around us that are hurting themselves to be together.”

jongin bites his lip to ponder his statement, looks into the professor’s face at the same time the professor turns to his direction.

professor do smiles.

///