☆ Eighth Star

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Sungjong and I had exchanged numbers after that one meeting at the cafe, but I hadn’t thought he would actually contact me, let alone invite me to karaoke, so I was really surprised when he sent me a text message during the weekend. I didn’t really like singing, nor meeting strangers at a place surely served with alcoholic beverages, but I found myself agreeing to his invitation. I wondered why. But for Sungjong I always made exceptions.

Sitting there, surrounded by people I didn’t know and had never seen before, in this dark room, that smelled like smoke and beer, I realised I really wasn’t made for group meetings. As long as I knew the people, and was close with them, I would be fine. I could always enjoy myself in the presence of my classmates, when we were all gathering at Myungsoo’s place, or maybe Eunji’s, because I had known them for almost three years now. And it would be even easier if Woohyun were there because he always had a knack for things like making sure every single person was included and not left out.

I sat there, and briefly glanced over Sungjong who was holding a bottle of beer in his hands. He was wearing eyeliner, and it made his eyes appear even bigger for some reason. His straight hair was combed back, revealing his forehead, and I could see the many years of living as a growing teenager wearing him out. He used to look innocent and almost angelic. But the Sungjong I saw in front of me now seemed more tired and less curious about the world, as if he had lost all sparks of life in him.

Back then, I would never have believed he would later be hanging out with these people. When he was just nine, he told me that he would never even think of touching alcohol because his older brother once came home drunk, and his mother broke down at the sight. He said to me that he would never want to break her heart because he loved her. But the Sungjong in front of me now was somehow different. The Sungjong in front of me didn’t seem to care about what his mother would say about this.

A few girls sitting at the other end of the couch looked at me, and stuck their heads together, whispering something. It was too loud, and the person singing at the moment was screaming into the microphone, so I wasn’t able to catch on to what they were saying about me. Their gazes, though, told me it wasn’t something positive. One of them pointed at my legs, and the others snickered. In one way or another, I figured they were talking about how I was wearing jeans instead of short skirts, like they were, and how I was hiding my figure because I didn’t have a nice body to begin with. Something like that.

Sungjong was offered a cigarette from a guy sitting next to me, and he accepted it  without any hesitation. The same guy held his pack in front of me, but I shook my head, and he just shrugged. I wondered whether we would get suspended from school when our teachers found out that we were mixing with drunk people and students our age who were smoking against the law. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to face my parents.

The guy who had been singing the whole time paused his song, and asked through the mic whether they should order some more drinks. The audience roared in response, telling him to go ahead and call the waiter over. I pulled my phone out, wondering when I could leave this place, and looked for the time. It was 10:58pm. Glancing at Sungjong, who was happily chatting, maybe even flirting, with the girl next to him, I put my phone back, realising he wasn’t going to leave anytime soon and I wouldn’t go without him. From my periphery, I noticed someone staring at me, and when I looked into that direction, the guy stood up and approached me.

Squeezing himself into the seat between Sungjong and me, he said, smiling, “Hi.”

I kind of didn’t feel like talking to him, or being involved in something, because my surrounding was absurd, and I completely didn’t fit into the scene. The guy seemed to belong to the decent type, and he gave off a friendly vibe, but I just wasn’t in the mood to befriend with the people here. I felt like I had entered a world unfamiliar to me, had slipped into the wrong drama, and when he asked for my name, I just shook my head, staring at the half-empty glasses on the table in front of me. The doors opened then, and a waiter entered with a tray full of funny-coloured drinks. I tried to block away the guy’s attempt to inch closer, wanted to gain Sungjong’s attention by pulling on his jacket, but I was too far away from him and the guy was too big. When he almost placed his hand on my thighs, I decided it was too much, and I would leave. I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked towards the door. And in that moment I met eyes with the waiter, and I felt the greatest urge to break glasses. 

☆

Woohyun and I were standing in the hallway, outside the karaoke room I was coming out from, and we both seemed to be sharing the same emotions. He looked angry, and he had his lips pressed into a firm line. I found it ridiculous that he saw himself in the position to be mad at me, but he didn’t seem to notice that. I looked back with the same amount of fury, and waited for him to speak up.

"What the hell are you thinking?" he asked, eyes glaring at me.

I scoffed, unable to process his reason for using such a hostile tone. ”Shouldn’t I ask you, Woohyun?”

"God, Anjell." He let out a frustrated groan, and ran his fingers through his hair.  Supporting his hands on his waist, he tilted his head to the side, and looked at me with angry eyes. ”Why are you here at this hour? Why are you hanging out with those people? Were you drinking?”

“I'm obviously not like you,” I said, offended. “I would never touch alcohol. What's with your attitude?”

I stared at the ugly stain on his black shirt, and wondered just how he could act like that towards me when it was him who had started avoiding me after that day in the game centre. It was Woohyun who would act so strange, so unusual, and it was him who would suddenly not talk to me in school. Sunggyu even asked me whether we both had a fight, but I told him that it wasn’t the case. Because only Woohyun was acting strange. And a fight suggests that both parties are aware of the tension and the reason why it exists in the first place. And I really, sincerely, didn’t know why Woohyun was acting like that.

The tension between us grew in intensity, and when I looked back up at him, I saw him shaking his head at me. His jaw was clenched, and he still had this disapproving look on his face. He said, ”You are annoying me so much."

And that really hit me. I slowly let my gaze fall to the ground, feeling a heavy weight in my chest, a heaviness that suddenly appeared and would refuse to leave. I understood that he was angry at me for his own reasons, I really did, but I found his remark unnecessary. I found that he was acting in the spur of the moment, and I knew he would sooner or later start to regret his words. I knew all of it, that he didn’t really mean to hurt me, but what was the use of knowing it when the damage was already done?

"I'm sorry,” he said, and I lifted my head. “I’m sorry, Anjell. I take it back.”

When I saw the pained look in his eyes, and the way he seemed to be repenting, I decided to forget about it, and instead asked him, "And what are you doing here?” He looked away. “Since when is a seventeen-year-old allowed to work at a karaoke?”

Woohyun touched the back of his neck awkwardly, avoiding my eyes. He knew I wouldn't like his answer in whatever way he was going to tell me, so he hesitated. I gave him a meaningful look, and then he finally spoke up.

“Well, I showed them my brother’s ID. And they hired me.”

“Just like that?” I asked, unable to believe the karaoke owner had not seen the difference between the Nam brothers. Everyone with one pair of healthy eyes would realise that they were not the same person.

“Just like that,” he repeated.

At some point, I realised, I was disappointed at Woohyun for committing something illegal, for taking a part-time job at a place full of drunkards and smokers, for thereby neglecting his studies even though he wasn’t the best at school to begin with. I couldn’t understand why he thought he needed to fill his pocket money at such an important time in our high school career, just before the entrance exams. But what I couldn’t comprehend even more was the fact that those people at the karaoke had hired him despite knowing that he was a minor. Something illegal was going on here, and the more I looked at the Woohyun in front of me, the more I realised that I actually knew nothing about my stargazing partner.

☆

At school, things were still not the same although Woohyun had promised me we would be going back to being casual friends. We had managed to talk properly at the karaoke, sorting out the anger and hate between us somehow, but at school it seemed like nothing had changed at all. I suppose, it was because I had asked him whether he would quit his job, and he had said to me that he liked that place, that he liked listening to strangers singing their hearts out, and that he wouldn’t give it up just because I disliked drunk people. I hadn’t told him that day, which might be the reason why he wouldn’t talk to nor look at me in school, since he didn’t know, but as long as he wouldn’t get caught by the teachers, I was fine with it. In the end, it was his life, and he could do whatever he wanted. He didn’t have to act according to my preferences. That would be too selfish of me.

When lunch break started, I decided to speak to him about my position regarding his part-time job. I wanted to make sure that he knew I was okay with everything although he had never needed my permission, to begin with. Still, I felt like I should make my point clear so that we could finally erase the tension between us, and return to being stargazing partners. Something I had been missing recently.

I stood up and turned my head to his seat in the middle of the classroom, expecting to find him talking to his peers, but he wasn’t there. I walked up to Sungyeol, and asked him about Woohyun’s whereabouts, and he told me that my stargazing partner might be outside, with friends from the neighbouring class. Trusting his words, I went out, and looked around the schoolyard, even asking a few people, everything to no avail, until I turned a corner of the school building and saw him sitting on a ping-pong table. I slowly approached him.

"What are you doing here?"

He looked startled, almost scared for a moment, as he turned around to me, his eyes alert until he realised who was standing in front of him. I nonchalantly jumped onto the ping-pong table, and lifted my gaze to the school building in front of us. We were sitting in front of the windows to the hallway in the first floor. Some students were walking by, glancing at us for a millisecond, then resuming their little trip to what I supposed was the cafeteria.

He hadn’t said anything yet, so I jokingly asked, ”Are you stalking people?"

"Actually," he finally began, nervously shifting in his seat, touching the nape of his neck the way he always did when he didn’t know how to deliver an unwanted answer. "I'm playing Hide And Seek with the girls from class 4."

Something inside of me stirred. All this time, I had been worrying about our friendship, wondering what we had done wrong, figuring out solutions to ease the tension and solve the problems, but Woohyun, the complex person I could never understand even if someone gave me a manual, busied his mind with girls from class 4. With things he enjoyed, things that weren’t included in his worries. So maybe the problems between us didn’t exist in the first place. Maybe Woohyun and I were so different that issues that seem like a problem to me don’t seem like one to him. Maybe I was imagining things, making mountains out of a dust speck.

"Oh, cool. Then have fun." I smiled at him, a bit relieved to know that our friendship wasn’t running towards ruins, that I had been overestimating the effect of our conversation outside the karaoke room. I pushed myself off the table, glancing at him one last time. The collar of Woohyun’s uniform was ed. I couldn’t help but stare at it. 

"Wait, Anjell,” he said before I could leave. “I was going to talk to you anyways."

I blinked at him in confusion. "What about the girls from class 4?"

He waved his hand as to say that the matter wasn't important. "I think they will survive for 5 minutes."

Woohyun stepped down from the table and approached me, walking so close that I just to lift my arm and my hand would brush against his. I had already noticed it this morning, but his hair looked extremely good on him today. I wasn't sure what  exactly was different about it, but it looked good. 

"You know, at that day," he said slowly, pausing to see my reaction, "I talked to that Sungjong guy. And although he seems nice, he was drunk too, you know. And I was wondering what a difference it makes between him drinking and me drinking. Because you said you don't like drinking people, and it seemed like you were okay with him reaching for the alcohol. Butㅡ"

"Wait, you want to drink so badly?” I interrupted.

"No, Iㅡ"

"If you want to drink, then drink. I don't care anymore. Do whatever you want. It’s your life.”

He sighed, seemingly frustrated with me. "That's not what I’m trying to say. I just think it's unfair because you yelled at me for only drinking one can of beer, but it's okay when he gets all drunk."

"That's because he is an old friend."

"I'm an old friend too." 

That actually shut my mouth. Woohyun was right. We had been friends since middle school; he had been there when I was the loneliest. He approached me when I was building walls around myself, even stronger than those I usually had around me. But between Sungjong and I, there was something special that connected us. He had been there during my primary school years, and I was the happiest back then. 

So the question that bothered me now was: am I really acting unfair towards Woohyun?

"Like I said,” I spoke up, trying not to think too much about it, “if you want to drink, then drink. I'm not gonna stop you anymore."

"Wait, Anjell, this is not..." he trailed off, sighing. He seemed tired all of a sudden. "I don't think he is good influence."

I couldn’t believe he was telling me with whom to hang out and with whom not to hang out, so I angrily retorted, ”You said the same thing about Howon. Do you think you are any better?"

He was silent. His lips were slightly agape, his eyes rounded. The hair that had looked so good on him before lost its spark on me, and all I could see now was a Woohyun who was hateful and frustrating, someone whose presence angered me. I was aware that my words had the same effect on him like a needle bath. I knew that I shouldn’t have said something like this, shouldn’t have hurt him, should have taken it back, but I was so angry at him. For… everything. For talking bad about Sungjong. For making me so frustrated. For acting so strange without allowing me to comprehend his sudden change of behaviour. For making me bring up Howon. For Woohyun being Woohyun. I was angry, and I was going to regret my words, but I couldn’t say sorry. I couldn’t give in and apologise.

"I know that,” he said quietly, and I almost hadn’t heard him. He avoided my eyes, and put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. After a moment of silence, he lifted his gaze back up to me, and I waited for him to fake a smile, waited for him to pretend that he was alright, but his smile never came and the words I had hoped for never left his lips. "I need to find the girls now. See you later."

And after that conversation I knew he wasn't going to be my stargazing partner anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to pretend everything was alright. 

☆