She’d always gone after the posh boys. The articulate ones with their blue button down shirts and shaved heads and brown sensible shoes; crisp and clean like the money they pretended to have.

He’d always had a thing for models. The confident ones with legs for days and tanned skin and almond eyes, could capture the attention of an entire room just by walking in, well aware of their effect on people.

Her relationships were like stars, glowing intense and bright and imploding just as spectacularly.

She was all vivid color and dazzling light and refused to dim herself down to let these boys seem shinier when compared to her.

(One time, when she dyed her hair red for fun, her boyfriend had asked why she’d done it.

“Like to keep things interesting, I supposed,” she replied with a shrug, taking another sip from her milkshake.

“Seems like you just want attention,” he answered.

The supernova destruction of that break-up two weeks later was impressive.)

His relationships pattered out like the end of the rainstorm. A slow decaying trickle until eventually the dripping stops and by the time he noticed, it was too late.

He was a calm and quiet, consistent and hushed; not the moody intenseness they had expected of him, not a bad boy asking to be changed, just simply a shy one who didn’t know any better.

(“I never know what you’re thinking.” “I don’t know what you want.” “Why can’t you just talk to me?”

All questions they asked him that he didn’t even think he knew the answer to.)

He’s completely unmemorable the first time she meets him.

Of course she knows who he is (really, who doesn’t), but she’s so much more distracted by the cute guy one next to him that his weak handshake and quiet “hello” barely registers, swallowed up by the chaos surrounding them. She ends up talking to and flirting with his friend for a few minutes, equal in the amount of light they both seemed to produce, so that later when he comes up and asks for her number, she sort of expects he’s just doing it for his friend that looks like sunshine.

She completely enamours him the first time he meets her.

He knows who she is, yet never really gave her a second thought, but in person she radiates brightness he’s only seen in the night sky. She’s laughing and joking with a lack of self-awareness he can’t help be jealous of. He can’t keep his eyes off of her, all her loud voices and wild gestures, making sure to constantly keep her in his peripheral just in case he discovers she’s something he just dreamed up. He doesn’t usually get nervous around girls, at least not anymore, but he doesn’t think he breathes until her number is firmly saved in his phone and tucked safely away into his pocket, feeling like he captured stardust.

She gets a text from him a few days later, her pink phone case vibrating wildly on the table. It’s her day off and she tries to push down her disappointment when she sees who sent the message. But she’s young and not looking for anything serious and she can’t see the harm in some simple flirting.

It continues on like that for a few weeks, occasional texts, always initiated by him. It becomes something she almost looks forward to, the one constant in a life that is filled with different people and places everyday. Normally she’d have already told the girls, have them dissecting each message for subtext, but for some reason she keeps this to herself. She has a feeling his friends know nothing either, and she likes the idea that this is a secret between them, something only they share. Even though she doesn’t expect this to lead to anything, she’s heard the rumors about him, she likes this sense of solidarity they’ve created. Just them.

He usually shares everything with his friends, from couches to clothes, and yet for some reason he can’t bring himself to tell them about this. He’s spent almost his entire life splitting things with people, whether it’s childhood toys or hotel bedrooms, that to have something that’s just his, something that doesn’t belong to anyone else, well, he treasures it.

She stares at the phone in uncertainty when she gets a text from him asking if they can hang out when he gets back to Seoul. She knows boys like him, knows what they’re after, and she’s not really interested in being the background to his star. But he’s funny, even through text, and she can’t help but wonder if she’d regret it if she never gave it shot.

(“I think I might be going on a date with Kim Jaejoong,” she finally reveals to Bom the next night, as they’re getting ready to go out.

“He’s fit as ,” Bom states as she applies her mascara.

“He’s not really my type, though…” she trails off, still unsure.

“He’s everyone’s type, Dee,” Bom argues as she sticks the wand back in the bottle. “You should give him a chance.”)

She’s never been one to not give something a chance.

Even though he’s kilometers away when he gets her response, alone in an empty hotel room, he can’t help but bite back his grin, embarrassed by how happy he is. He’s spent too much time in rooms with neutral colors, beige curtains and off white wallpaper that he’s grateful for the specks of color she brings into his life. She’s the light at the end of a tunnel.

(“Think I’m going to take out Sandara when we get back to Seoul,” he announces to Changmin on the phone later that day.

He hears an audible snort from the other end of the line, “Can’t believe she agreed to go out with an idiot like you.”)

She’s sitting in the theater, trying to come up with the nicest way to let him down at the end of the night. She couldn’t be more disinterested in this movie and can’t wonder why he thought this would even be a good idea in the first place. She’s deciding whether or not it would be rude to check her phone when she feels his hand grab hers, interlocking their fingers. She looks down at their hands, her red nails stark against his skin, and then up at his face.

(“I’m really glad you said yes,” he whispers intently.

There’s something so earnest about the way he says it, how his eyes get so big and how he gently squeezes her hand at the end that makes something in her stomach flutter. She starts reconsidering everything she’d been planning for the last 45 minutes.

She doe