Jung Soojung, with her unlimited wonder for knowledge and her love that runs deep for the stars, is a living dream for Kim Mingyu, something he has told himself in that eventful night of her proclaiming her return for him, something he can't never be for he was born as a dreamer, endlessly wanting dreams turned into reality.

For Seulgi, she is her saviour from the darkness of her past, someone who dared to look into her eyes and wondered if Kang Seulgi was still there, her best friend who came back from the death.

In Wonwoo's eyes, she is the apple of Seulgi's eyes, the object of her platonic affection, an anti-romantic relationship between the two that is going strong despite all odds. 

Seungwan sees her as the turning point of their world, where the clocks started ticking when she came back to reunite them all. Or that is what Seungwan thinks this time, that she came back for them.

Based on Seokmin's observation, Soojung is a mere learner who is misunderstood for her beauty that shadows her true intentions, wanting to have the world inside of her mind.

For her parents, she is a miracle sent out of the heaven, for she is the result of seven years of marriage and hopeful parents who kept trying to have their first child. She was born very small, fragile and premature when she was barely five months old and her mother slipped in the bathroom, forcing her to be delivered way sooner than she was supposed to.

But all that matters, in the end, is how she, Soojung, thinks of herself, how she sees herself in the mirror and ponders, "Who am I? What am I actually, besides a human being whose presence and existence is linked to others?"        

All she sees in her full-body mirror this morning, the sun shooting through her opened window  and bathing her body in a warm morning light, smaller sunrays raising up to her face setting her in an ethereal light, is her tired eyes, the corners of her nose are deeply dented as she traces her index finger through the both of it. Her face seems ghostly pale, lacking the touch of  sunlight after how many days the blinds were shut.

Her gaze scans through the room circling around her. It's a mess of countless notebooks and notes, reminders on her alarm clock, her study table, on the walls of her bathroom, on her closet. She still has that blue fluorescent lava lamp by her bedside. Her walls seem strangely more artistic and neatly arranged than the corners and sides of her room, with pictures of stars she came across behind her bed, and so, so many pictures of her friends with post-its glued to it in front of her. Instead of frames, she has them all clipped to this string she managed to tie back then, from the right to the left side of her room, tied into one nail in each side that are hammered by her father years ago.

"This is the day Seulgi won for first place in fifth grade!"

"Wonwoo ranked first all over our school, wow!"

"I don't know why, Mingyu took this picture and it was blurry but he told me to print it because it's art and he's a genius. He obviously didn't know what he was talking about. I printed it still in the end, he rarely tells me to keep anything."

"Seungwan will forever be with Seokmin. I can never picture her going around with anyone but him."

"Look at that smile! Either it's the quality of Seokmin's father camera or he looks like the sun here!"

"This is us; the cosmic children. I'm leaving tomorrow and I'm leaving all of them here. I'm so scared. If only I am not this way, I can stay with them all. I'm going to miss them so much and I miss them already while writing this. Would they answer my letters back? I hope they would, it would be so lonely without them. I wonder if Mingyu has fallen asleep now, I suddenly feel so alone." She sweeps her fingers across the post-it glued to the glossy photography of the six of them. Seeing her scrawny-made letters in an attempt to squeeze all of her feelings out into such a small rectangular paper makes a small smile of nostalgia rises to her lips. "Such a frail, little girl I was, feeling so attached to others," a somber feeling sinks in her, seeing the smudged ink. She was weeping that time, she recalls. "They did it for your own good, Soojung. It was all for you.".                            

She's more than content that none of them has mentioned this change in her, the wavering candle of her existence amidst their brightly lit ones. However, she saw it in Seungwan's eyes, her light brown orbs gliding from her skeletal wrists to her lanky, gangling legs, knocking bones against joints as she draws her steps each time she walks with her head to the front. Her wrists look so fragile as if it might snap into two. For Soojung's hair, her mother let her dye it because it was a natural colour and the damage won't harm her severely. She's got her own share of damage flawlessly done, so the more won't be the merrier for her.  

She feels that she is such a contrast of Seulgi with her hair in flames of pallid golden shade and her toned arms and legs. Whatever things that happened to her, it had forged her to become a weapon herself to whatever that can harm her, no matter how horrifying the experience she had gone through..

Limping her way, she returns to her mirror, with the intention of having her hair combed after getting it dried. Reaching out for the comb by her table, she feels her ears ringing and she maintains her posture, and take a seat on her bed. She's just got herself out of her bedridden pace and she is still adapting to live her normal life again. Her mother has demanded her to lay on her bed for the remaining two weeks. 

When any of her friends intended to visit her in her room, she managed to slip reasons (pathetic reasons) of her unable to meet them. She doesn't want them to see her feelings bare and stamped with all its distinct emotions all around her room. It's like being seen under her skin, and she doesn't like that even though she isn't familiar with that sensation of being stripped to .

"Is this why you forbid me from coming into your room?" Her hand stops pushing the comb through her dried and tangled tresses, eyes ready to throw Ten off her room. 

"Ten, get out," she states firmly and sternly, eyes hardening as he draws closer to the pictures. His hair now is neatly cut, no longer unruly and disheveled hairstyle of his that resembles the 90s band members, his hair seems soft as he brushes it to the side with his ring finger, unlike his previous hair which was weirdly jutting in all the wrong directions. "Is this your form of a revenge, because I made you cut your hair?"

"If the shoes fit, better wear it well like a damn Cinderella, Krystal," Ten utters with sarcasm dripping from his lips, English and sounding a lot more offensive than he intends to be, voice full of jests and jokes but no hint of humor is evident in his face. She loathes her English name and he always mentions it whenever he feels agitated. "I can't believe you talked your way to Aunty together my hair cut. I can't believe you did that."

She sighs, putting her comb and eyes avoiding his raged ones, regret seeping into her skin. "You look better this way, Ten. People looked at you with strange eyes. How are you able to fall asleep with that kind of hair anyway?" She really does think he looks way better this way, people can see his face vividly without his hair covering him and see that bright eyes of his that resembles her. It irritated her a lot, the way people would whisper after her eyes take a glimpse of him and even though Ten doesn't care, she is bothered for his sake. 

Turning her body, she comes into a sight of him plopping his body to the ground and messes with his hair, him already clothed in his uniform; a dark blue blazer, almost black and same like hers, with the school's badge on the left side ed, revealing a black tie looped around the white-collar of his freshly ironed and new white uniform.

Amateur and careless twists and coils are done to form his badly misformed tie around his collar to be very detailed, as if he gave up halfway to form a perfect loop.

"Stop complaining and come here, your tie is a mess," he gets up with a growl, hair falling above his eyes (no longer on his eyes) and her drowsy eyes follow him until he falls to her bed, eyes angrily thrown away from her. She can feel his irritation as he breathes heavily in front of her. Getting over his anger is still difficult after he got a new haircut three days ago.

She scoots closer and undo his tie. "You should be grateful that I am willing to do this for you," despite the casuality of her voice, her words intend to have deeper meanings more than one. Not like he'll realise it, Ten's mind works ten times faster than her and he doesn't really listen to things that people said to him.

When he reads something, he quickly scans over it, reading over the words but never understanding it. That's Ten for Soojung.

She listens to his breath, falling a bit more steady whilst taking glimpses of his eyes peering down at her fingers slowly and smoothly pulling out one end of the other until the tie has been perfectly looped and formed on the center of his collar. 

"There you go," she pats his shoulder, a sign for him to leave. She turns to her brush again and stand up, limping her way to the mirror with the skin-coloured bandage still wrapped around her leg. 

"I don't want to see you slipping in to my room again," she resumes into brushing and combing her hair again, taking a full look on herself in the mirror, her fitted blazer and top alike to Ten's and her skirt falling to the top of her knees,

She brushes away the fact how worn out she looks, how these days she has spent her time in her bed, wide awake until the stars fell asleep by her sight. 

"You know, everyone has been asking about you, why you never let them come into your room-" his voice echoes again, signing his delayed departure. He doesn't seem to be leaving any sooner unless she responds to him. And Soojung has never been the type to ignore or to turn her ears deaf.

"Is it because all of this?" Ten motions and waves his hand to every part of her room. "Answer me," he insists, when he catches her eyes and she diverts her eyes away instead.

Her eyes twitch. "This-this is like my diary, Ten. Every corner, crooks and nooks of this room is. I don't want anyone to see them, not you, not my parents, not even them."

He purses his lips, looking down to his lap. Then he angles his head up, meeting her eyes, fingers fiddling with the piercings on his right ear.

"Not even Seulgi? Not even Mingyu? You know, I saw you walking out of your window then talked to someone with silver hair. It was dark but I saw the two of you. That was him right? He lives right there beside us right?" His voice rises a note higher and more curious and it's all making her dizzy and lightheaded as more words flow out of his mouth. He is driving her to an edge and it smashes the panic bar of her heart, making her limp her way to the window and pull the blinds close to both sides, closing any entrance of sunlight and eyes into her room.

Her panicked eyes meet his across of her, Mingyu's, before everything is shut away to only the light of her room.

"Don't say a word, Ten. Mom will accuse me of being an indecent daughter. If you start assuming of any dirty thoughts, I will never forgive you," her words come out in hisses, low and almost muted hisses, enough for him to hear, her eyes seem desperate and frustrated at the same time. What a tough morning she has today, in her orientation day for school, even.

He stands up and crosses his arms over his chest, now the position is switched and it's him looking down to her. Her hands are restless as it fumbles with the hem of her blazer. 

"Then why are you getting so riled up like that?"

"Because my mom will really think like that. It's enough that Mom wants me to be everything that I don't want to be. It's enough," her fingers weave over the state of her hair that is already in its natural wave. She doesn't say that whatever things he say to her mother, she'll trust him  no matter what. She's afraid he'll use it against her someday. 

"I don't do that, Soojung. You may think what a rogue I am to be sent out to a place like this but I don't tell on people's secrets. There was never a need for me to tell her," the sign of worry in her eyes make him feel bad. He was just wondering if that guy was indeed Mingyu, even though he never imagines Soojung to be someone who is brave enough to walk up to a boy's room.

Making her feel so agitated and exasperated early in the morning was never his intention, despite how mad he felt when the barber snipped off his precious hair he grew for two years.

"Your secret's safe with me," it's meant for a song reference they both know and spoken in English, to assure her and lessen the tension and dark ambient between the two of them but she only nods tiredly.

"We're fair now, okay? You made me cut my precious hair and I saw something I shouldn't be seeing. Stop looking down the floor like that," he says casually, clapping both of his hands to snap her out. "Seriously, nobody knows. You're safe from Aunty."

"-I just approached him to ask how he was doing all of t-" she tries to explain herself, not wanting to be misunderstood but Ten cuts her in the middle, seemingly uninterested.

He insert his hands into both pockets of his black pants over his sneakers. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever it is, I don't know what you're talking about anymore. Breakfast is ready by the way, I came in to tell you that," he points his finger to her with a slight turn of his lips, then flows his fingertips along his jet black hair, tossing his head slightly backwards, making his Adam's apple visible to her vision, portruding out of his skin.                                         

"It's actually not that bad, this new hair. I was just messing around with you," he laughs as if he didn't just exploded in front of her like how Hitler exploded for the Jews. That's how infuriated he looked. 

"Get the hell out of my room," another complain slips out and he raises his hand in surrender. 

"Chill, lady," he keeps speaking in English, jumping from one languange to another even though it's blatant that she's not up for his games now, as she keeps replying him in her mother's languange.

"You're not telling that secret to anyone."

"What secret?" 

She smiles while shaking her head as he whistles a tune of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" chorus that her father has been playing to them around the house repetitively with his radio tape (even though it never tires her ears out), strutting out of her room after kickinig the door open lightly with hands on the back of his head. He leaves with the entrance opened widely, making that smile falls. What a storm her cousin is, causing so much ruckus then toning it down with a mere jest and a mere joke to tickle a giggle out of her lips.

He's slipping pockets and handfuls of joy into her lips, unintentionally or intentionally and in some ways, Ten can resemble the flickering thunder in the darkness to scare the lights out of you or to give a sense of direction. 

High school will start soon for them (which , at least for me in the past years, let's just see for them all). Let me know of your thoughts of this chapter guys ^^, do upvote this story if you like it ^^.