☆ Sixth Star

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Woohyun didn't break his promise with me when he appeared in front of my house, a thin scarf around his neck, holding his grandfather's rusty telescope in his hands. He had that cheesy grin plastered on his lips, the one he always showed me when we were talking about stars. And he looked peaceful and content. White fog was gathering under his nose whenever he exhaled, and it was getting colder, but he didn’t seem to care too much. He was never sensitive to cold weather. But I was, which was why I had quickly grabbed my jacket before meeting him at the playground in my neighbourhood. 

We lived close to each other, but our houses weren’t located in the same neighbourhood. The playground, though, was in between the areas we both were living respectively, so it became our usual meeting place. We would meet here whenever we felt like talking and looking at the sky. It was practical because it wasn’t too far away from both of our places, and that playground had our middle school memories buried underneath its soil.

Woohyun looked at me with a satisfied smile, and handed me the telescope. I looked back at him, confused, and he just nodded, so I accepted his offer, and took the telescope from his hands. Guiding it to my eye, I took a deep breath, then dared to look through the lens. My throat suddenly tightened, my heart beat rising.

“It’s… Whoa…” I gulped down, unable to process what I was really seeing through the telescope. Because of its long existence, being handed down from the grandfather to the grandson, I had initially thought that the refractor might not be able to fully bend the light and bring it into focus, but I was wrong. Despite the rustiness of the telescope, I was able to see small, maybe a bit blurry, clusters of stars.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" asked Woohyun contently. I set the telescope down to look at him. He had his hands put into the pockets of his jeans, his head lifted up to observe the scenery above us with the eye. "I wanted to look at Polaris, the brightest star, you know. Just to find out whether it was overrated, but I forgot to look up for its location."

I chuckled a little, and handed him the telescope. He gratefully took it, saying something along the lines of “Thank you, milady,” and placed the eye piece to his eye. There was still a smile on his lips, stretching out into a grin, and I was glad that the stars had such an effect on him. I was glad that the starry sky was able to make him feel complete, the same way it made me feel complete.

I looked at him for a while longer, and suddenly remembered Eunji’s text message. A few hours ago, she had sent me a text to ask whether I would like to meet everyone tomorrow at Myungsoo’s place to study for the entrance exams. Both of them had made it their goal to strengthen the class unity, and it was convenient and seemed logical to join them, but if Eunji was one of the organisers of that gathering, it would mean that a certain someone was going to come as well, and I wasn’t so sure about Woohyun’s stance regarding this. So I asked him.

He on the other hand seemed surprised, as if he couldn’t understand why I was asking him such a question. He said, “Of course, I’ll go. I need intelligent people to study with.”

"Bomi will be there, too,” I said, waiting for his reaction.

But he just nodded, seemingly unfazed by my statement. ”I know.”

☆

I joined the gathering at around 1pm, and found Myungsoo, Eunji and Chorong already standing there around the huge table in the living room, setting snacks, bottles of soft drinks and plastic cups onto it. They greeted me happily and I decided to help them. Myungsoo approached me after a while and asked where Woohyun was, but I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t know and we hadn’t told each other when we would go to the study session. People always assumed we would know about each other so well, but that wasn’t really the case.

Sunggyu arrived half an hour later with Bomi and some other classmates, and they seemed to have coincidentally met each other on their way to Myungsoo’s mansion-like home. By that time, we had already finished preparing the drinks and the finger food, and when I grabbed a bottle of soda to pour myself something to drink, Sunggyu nudged me and placed his plastic cup next to mine. He had a charming smile on his lips.

At 2:30pm, someone rang the bell, and Myungsoo went to open the door, thereby revealing Woohyun and Sungyeol. When they joined us in the living room, they immediately told everyone about the man in the bus who drooled onto his shirt. I was watching my stargazing partner the whole time, waiting for some reaction when he would spot Bomi sitting at the huge table, but he didn’t seem concerned nor bothered by her presence. He acted like he usually would.

Our class - or those who actually came - was divided into two groups: the individual studying group and the one that preferred tutors. I joined the latter in which Myungsoo taught us about math, but I soon grew bored and frustrated because I just couldn’t keep up with the programme. Somehow, I found Sunggyu  solitarily sitting on the couch, and decided to ask him. He was so nice to accept me as his study friend. We both would read a passage in our Biology text book, then take notes ourselves before comparing them. I noticed then that I could study with Sunggyu so well because we both preferred time alone to gather our knowledge and strength in order to memorise a certain subject. We were somehow similar, in a way. And I found that we really got along.

Woohyun approached us at some point, and said, ”Myungsoo suggested us to take a break.”

I nodded, and Sunggyu asked, “Are we playing a game or something?” He was referring to the classmates moving the coffee table in front of us away. The rest had already gathered in the middle of the living rom and someone was holding an empty bottle in their hand, which was when I realised what we were going to do.

The last time I had played Spin The Bottle was in my third year in middle school at a classmate's birthday party. Woohyun and I were both invited, and everyone was thinking of what to play and everyone just randomly suggested games, and then we somehow ended up taking Woohyun’s suggestion, which was Spin The Bottle.

You basically play it like this: one random player spins an empty bottle to start the game. When it stops and points at someone, this person (Player A) has to twist the bottle again. Then when it doesn’t move anymore, the person (Player B) sitting in the direction of where the bottleneck is showing has to kiss Player A. But because we were middle schoolers back then, we didn’t really play the game with all that intimate stuff. We played its soft version, as Woohyun had phrased it, which replaces the kissing with Truth or Dare.

After the living room was cleared in the middle, we all sat down in a circle, and I decided then to occupy the seat next to Sunggyu. The person holding the bottle twisted it around his fingers, and looked around. Sungyeol leaned forward, almost reaching over for this game’s prop, and asked, “How are we gonna play this? Like for real? With kissing and all?”

"Come on,” said Myungsoo, clearly not amused. “No indecent stuff in my house. My mom's just upstairs.”

"Since Mr. Obedient,” began Woohyun, “won't allow us to fully act as adults, let's just play the soft version." He looked at me, and raised his eyebrow for no reason, lifting one corner of his mouth into a smile.

The game started with the bottle pointing at Sungyeol for Player A. He, being the kind of guy he was, bravely chose Dare, and dramatically bowed to everyone when the applause for his fearless, and maybe reckless, idea of entertaining people resonated in the room. The random player, whose spin resulted in Sungyeol being chosen, could decide his Dare, and with a lot of consultation with the others he ended up saying, “Hug Player B affectionately.”

At first, Sungyeol seemed excited, seeing the chance of getting closer to girls right before his eyes, but the bottle stopped moving and pointed at Myungsoo instead, and it looked like all the colours on his face right then faded away in an instant.

Sungyeol, though, wasn’t the type to back away from his words, so he did what he had brought upon himself - or what the random player had helped to bring upon him - and hugged Myungsoo from the back. Both of them weren’t amused, but Sunggyu next to me burst out in laugher, and I found this really charming.

During the whole game, I noticed, I wasn’t once chosen as Player A nor Player B, and I was somehow really glad about this outcome. I just generally preferred watching the others, rather than joining the fun, and I enjoyed the laugher and the happiness on my classmates’ faces more than I took pleasure in laughing myself because I was involved in a joke.

Sungyeol - who had been chosen as Player A yet again in the previous round - became the random player for the current one and twisted the bottle in the middle. It ended up pointing at Woohyun, for the first time, and the latter seemed eager to join the game. He chose Truth.

“Okay,” said Sungyeol, rubbing his chin with his index finger and his thumb, “rank the girls in terms of appearance. From the most prettiest to the ugliest, uh, I mean, least prettiest.”

When I heard the Truth task, I immediately, and subconsciously, glanced at Bomi to see her reaction. Maybe I was curious or maybe I was just worried. Either ways, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking right now. I had this slight presumption that she was hoping Woohyun would say her name at the beginning of his task, and I sincerely would have been happy for her if that had been the case.

"Alright, alright. Let me just sort out my thoughts.” Woohyun pressed his lips together, his eyes narrowed and lifted up to the corner of the room. The tension was growing between the girls the longer he took to answer. Myungsoo caught my eyes for a short moment and he seemed to be thinking the same thing as me. That we shouldn’t play such a game.

"Don't let us wait,” claimed Sungyeol, laughing. “You’re making the girls nervous.”

Woohyun nodded, and rubbed his lips together, suppressing the grin on his face. He then said, ”The most prettiest girl in this room is,” and just stopped, chuckling at the expectation on everyone’s face. At that moment, I found him really cruel. I saw the unfairness in his eyes, something he wasn’t really aware of, and I was disappointed at him for taking it so easily when the girls were being so serious and hopeful. He looked at everyone, his eyes scanning their faces, then stared at me, and he cruelly said, “Anjell.”

Bomi stood up and walked away, Eunji following her. The others were quiet, and no one really wanted to know the rest of the ranking anymore. I felt like the tension in the room had grown since before, and I felt like it was all my fault.

"Tch, I thought you were going to say Bomi to win her back,” began Sungyeol, slightly cursing under his breath. "If I had known you would say Anjell, I wouldn't have asked..."

"Why would I want to win her back?” asked Woohyun.

Sunggyu shook his head, and said, “That was inconsiderate.”

"Why?" demanded my stargazing partner, an offended tone in his voice. "It's not like I have to choose her. She is not my girlfriend anymore. And besides I only chose Anjell because she is the prettiest in the room. Otherwise I would have chosen Soyou…”

I didn’t know what to do or what to think anymore because I wasn’t happy about Woohyun choosing me and saying my name, and I was irritated by this whole situation, and I just couldn’t believe that he had pulled a jerk stunt right in front of everyone, and how cruel he was to not stop and think about whether he would be hurting someone with his behaviour and words. I wanted to hate him for that, but it wasn’t his fault to begin with.

"At least, you are the prettiest girl in this room,” said Chorong next to me.

Myungsoo saw all the tension between us classmates, and told everyone to go back to studying. Only Woohyun and I stayed behind, and I knew he was looking at me, I was aware of that, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lift my eyes up to him. I just couldn’t, didn’t want to, because I was so angry at myself, and I just didn’t know what to do, what to think, what to feel, in that spacious, lonely living room.

☆

We might have seem like we were in a huge fight back then, Woohyun and me, because of the Bomi thing during the gathering, but that wasn’t the case. We were more complex than that. We fought and we hated each other sometimes, but then we would make up and the anger and frustration would subside. We accused each other of things, but we would forgive anyways. He would approach me the very next day and ask whether I was still angry at him for saying the truth, and I would tell him that a lie would have been better in our case, that he had always been good at lying after all, and he would almost get angry at me, almost hurt at my remark, but we were talking about Woohyun. We were talking about my stargazing partner, and he just couldn’t get angry at me for too long. He would just apologise, and I would tell him to apologise to Bomi instead, and he would do that for me. He would be capable of sorting things out with her because that was just the type of guy he was. And I would admire him for that. I really would, and I really did.

☆