The sky is crying tonight. Because of its tears, he is unable to go outside and fathom the stars. He loves the night, not for the darkness it shares, but for the light that exudes from the millions of crystals decorating the heavens like spilled glitter on pavement. It's the only time he allows natural light to touch his skin, and even then his being slightly burns while he rests beneath it.

He watches the tears fall from beyond his window and presses his fingers to the misted glass. The cold he feels is not much different to the cold already clutching to his fingertips. If he had not previously experienced the warmth that once branched from his heart, he would not have known the difference; but he did, and that is why, when he pulls his hand away from the window and sees no imprint of the heat from his palm, his eyes start to mimic the sky.

In the early morning when the sky has run out of tears, Himchan steps into the elevator from the twelfth floor of the penthouse and walks to the coffee shop across the block. Because it’s Thursday, he orders green tea, and because it’s Thursday, he sits at the table near the window. He doesn't sip his tea yet. Instead, he lights a cigarette and taps the excess into the drink.

"Excuse me," a woman from the table beside him says. "Could you take that elsewhere?"

With a smile, he tastes the cigarette and blows her a smoke.

"Don't you know that's bad for you?" She coughs and waves the acrid smell away.

"What does it matter?" He replies. "I'm dead anyway." He trades his cigarette for tea and drinks half of the cup without waiting for it to cool. He observes the expected - the woman will complain to an employee, the employee will explain that they cannot force him to leave, and the woman will find a place for breakfast elsewhere. He is familiar with the procedure - after all, he is the owner of this cafe, and he only smokes on Thursdays.

Just as Mizu Tae from the weather channel predicted, it doesn't rain on Friday night. The introverted boy who only sleeps at day makes sure to wear his overused aviators before he leaves the penthouse. He enters the neglected district where outcasts similar to himself go to dance, smoke, or drink away their woes. Above him, neon signs hanging on rusted hinges tint his hair in a sickening green color. He smiles up at the cheeriest things in this place and jogs down his usual route, which is his nightly exercise. His feet splash through the puddles made by the uneven roads until his senses catch something amiss in his traditional routine. He stops, turns down a street, and finds the silhouettes of a woman and man talking to another. He knows he shouldn't listen, but because of his talent, he can hear even from where he stands.

"I needed to give this back," she says, "and then I'm on my way."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"Not anymore. You're drunk. You should go home."

"Come on. The night is young, Nana. You've got some growing up to do."

"Go home," she says. "I'm not doing this anymore.

"Anymore?" He scoffs. "You aren't any -"

"She said go home."

The drunken man jerks at the interruption. A boy with sunglasses authoritatively stands before him. His thoughts too diffused by alcohol and fury, the man instinctively swings a punch at the stranger's face and consequently destroys the glasses. Shaken, the victim staggers back.

"Ha!" The drunkard laughs. "You little a -"

He has no time to finish his sentence for an unwarranted fist comes to stop his mouth. Coupled with his deteriorating conscience, he is cast into faintness by the punch. In both fear and gratitude, the girl starts to thank the stranger, but when she sees his eyes, her fear overrides. She has never seen eyes like his before. Imperfect, like the uncomfortable roads. Sharp, like the sting in his voice. Dismal, like the face of the clouds during last night's rain.

"Go home," he says as the hunger hits him. He flinches when the bitter sensation s for his attention in the turmoil of his mind. "Don't come back here."

Without further insistence, she heeds his warning and runs away. As he watches her leave, the hunger slowly dwindles into a scratch beneath his conscience. He gathers the remains of his sunglasses and resumes his jog. Unfortunately, it starts to rain. He questions how he could have believed Mizu from the weather channel, but when he checks the time and finds that it's midnight, he forgives him. It's now Saturday, and Mizu Tae never said anything about it not raining on Saturday.

Although he'll be drenched, he lessens his pace and casually walks home.

"Did you hear about the body found downtown?"

"The one on the news? Yeah. It's crazy."

"Do you think he died because of over intoxication?"

"I don't think so. They said something about his death was odd. I think tha -"

"Didn't I tell you not to talk about those things?" Himchan interrupts his employees. "People die all the time. What makes this any different?"

The employees glance at each other. In a burst of courage, one replies, "It was too close to be different. It was fifteen minutes from here. If it was -" he stops speaking. His boss's gaze is too stern for him to disobey. Turning meek, he decides to continue the topic with his coworker in a more muted tone.

Himchan sighs and mixes his coffee with the plastic stirrer. He likes the location of his cafe, but he doesn't like that it's so reachable by that place. That place doesn't belong in this world. That place isn't a subject worth discussing by his employees.

Had he known what was there, he never would have leased this building for his cafe two years ago. He was like the rest of the world back then - unassuming, naive, ambitious. But due to that disgusting 'hickey', he hasn't felt nor acted the same. He doesn't begrudge the past - rather, he's quite thankful to that insolent beast for giving him an infinite length of opportunities - but he would have preferred that he had been given a premonition before he became a being who existed because he could.

No matter now, however. He has the assurance of his life ahead of him. There are so many things to do and see. As the only child of a father with an opulent enterprise, Himchan has all the resources to pursue his dreams. The only catch to this continuity is that, while the world will progress, he will not. It's a setback, but it's one with which he can cope. He is, after all, infinite.

"Tell me," he says to the coworkers. "What's your type?"

"My type?" One asks. His coworker joshes him in the shoulder and shakes his head.

"You're talking about girls, right?" This one ventures.

Himchan laughs. "Of course."

"I like the cute type."

"Cute?" Himchan ponders. "That's unfortunate. I've already done that."

"What about ‘tsundere’? The other one tries. Himchan waits for him to continue. "Um, in Japanese manga, tsundere describes a person who is initially serious and cold."

"And you like that type?"

"Well," the employee stutters, "they're had to find."

Himchan stirs his drink one last time and watches as the black liquid distorts his reflection. He smiles just as the ripples settle. "Sounds fun."

Sehun doesn't remember the last time he indulged himself. He's avoided the cravings so many times that the taste has long been washed from his tongue, although the memory still remains that he had once surrendered to the vile creature within him. When he told that girl to leave the district, he had started to feel the sensational hints of lust well up in his fingers. He knows that avoiding his natural instincts is detrimental - he's experienced the results already, and the situation had not been clean - but he believes in his humanity. For now, he will avoid the hunger with his pills like he has done for the past two years.

He pops three pills in his mouth, taking one more than he should, and downs it with a gulp of wine. He closes is eyes as the drug embraces his body. He can almost picture the capsule breaking as its contents seep into him like water on cracked glass.

Then the pain comes. That unavoidable, indescribable, excruciatingly torturous pain that gives his mind illusions for sixty seconds. He slams his head on the counter and focuses on the black hands probing through his mind. Finally, the pills’ effects subside. Heaving slightly, he lifts his head and sees the bar tender gazing at him.

"How long?"

"Long enough."

"That won't work forever."

"Long enough," Sehun insists. "It'll work long enough." Until the day he tries again. And when that time comes, he'll make sure to succeed. That is the only answer to the question of his abortive life.

He knows that the pills weren't made to be abused, but he needs the practice and the discipline. He learned his lesson from last time.

He takes off his new sunglasses to rub his eyes. "Tender," he says, raising his glass, "fill this up."

The tender does as he says. When he gives Sehun the full glass and glimpses his ethereal eyes, which Sehun religiously hides, he comments, "you don't have to worry about that. We're all different here."

Sehun loses his appetite for the drink. Sliding his sunglasses back on, he taps the counter twice with his knuckles and leaves.

He walks home and navigates around the beam of the moon. Sometimes, his skin becomes sensitive as an after effect of the pills. He sticks to the darkest parts of the city and treads down forgotten alleys until he reaches his home city, where the lack of looming awnings and shady areas force him to briskly walk underneath the light of the moon. He feels dizzy, but he knows he can make it back to the penthouse before serious things consequence.

He turns a corner and bumps against someone. "Sorry," she says, but he doesn't hear her. He is so engrossed in returning home that when the woman shouts, claiming that they have met before, he doesn't listen.

Now safely back in his room, Sehun hangs his sunglasses against the wall and takes off his jacket. He opens one of the kitchen cupboards, but a tiny splinter roots itself into his index finger. He can smell the drop of blood and imagine what it would taste to have it on his tongue. He leans forward, eyes dim, teeth sliding out ... and stops. Using his nimble fingers, he pulls out the splinter. He runs his hands under tap water to dilute the blood, wraps the finger with a towel, and sits on the couch. Turning on the TV, he listens to meaningless news until he falls asleep.

Himchan knows he's charming. That's the reason why he's sitting with a table of five girls who won't stop laughing at his deceptive words. Each of them is attractive - sweet, y, demure - but although he's stayed in the club for three hours and talked to twelve other girls, he still can't find the woman that his employee so uniquely dubbed as 'tsundere'.

He thought every kind of girl could be found at the club. There was always one that suited his mood. Tonight, however, he's having a difficult time. It's like trying to swim in shallow waters - no matter how deep he tries to go, his chest always bumps against the floor.

"Do you come here often?" One girl asks.

"Hm?" Himchan says.

"We've bored him." Another girl pouts. "Lets go dance." The girls slide out of the booth and toward the dance floor, leaving him unattended. Himchan slams cash on the table, grabs his coat, and leaves.

He avoids the noisy streets and obnoxious lights by scaling the unlit paths. He has lost his playfully apathetic mood. All he wanted was fun, but fun eluded him.

What he didn't know was that in ten minutes, three blocks away from his penthouse in that section of eternal limbo between what Himchan described as the acceptable and the delusional, was the very girl he was searching for, the very girl who would give him, quite literally, the time of his life.

So when Himchan suddenly feels tipsy, he thinks nothing of it. Alcohol easily does that to him. He walks on, half asleep and resigned to reach home. The girl, who knows nothing but the essence of who he is, stops in front of him. He weakly rubs his eyes. Through his blurry vision he sees a woman dressed in black. Black wide brim hat, black chiffon blouse, black pleather pants and black oxfords. She reflects the gloom in his eyes the way a mirror would accurately reflect the charm in his smile. He gauges her from bottom to top, and she smirks as if she knows exactly what he wants.

And perhaps she did, because the very next words that leave her pleasantly plump mouth are, "A drunk Daver. That's common."

Himchan would like to think of himself as anything but common. Having missed the first remark, he answers to the second, "I'm on a journey."

"For what?"

"I'm looking for a woman."

"You've found one."

"No. I require a bit more intrigue."

Her wry tone captivates him, although he won't admit it.  There was never a woman that could resist him, yet she faced him with a guarded confidence that shook his dignity.

"I require a bit more intelligence," she says, "and unfortunately, you're a dimwit." She strides past him, her hat flapping and her clothes flowing and her heels tapping in the wind. Himchan watches her leave and memorizes the curve of her back and the rhythm in her steps. That woman, he decides, will become his mission.