(xxiii. when they leave)

| We are all just stars after all, bounded to those who create and destroy us, all at once |

When he opens his eyes, Kim Mingyu has thought that at this point, he has everything that he ever wanted. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and stretching his body, he faces himself in the full-body mirror, facing himself looking so different from the him years ago. He's heard mothers called him charming, he's heard girls calling him hot and handsome, he's heard his guy friends calling him athletic and the ace of his year in the basketball team. He lets himself be submerged by his deep and endless thoughts of how everything just happened by the laws of nature and he has let himself got swept along the tide. High school becomes similar just like how middle school was. Mingyu doesn't need to move his hand to let everything go his way. It is as if everything is meant to go his way.

After taking a shower and settling into his uniform, he walks over to check his phone. His phone shows the time 6.30 AM in the morning and pop-ups of his group chat showing a huge amount of conversations he hasn't followed up and many chats hitting him up from people whose name feel distant in his memories. As he scrolls through it, he realizes that he is unconsciously looking for a name that always tastes sweet at the edge of his tongue. No new message from her.

He taps on their previous chat logs. It has been a few days ago, merely him asking Soojung of the Math homework he had been struggling with. He knew he could just ask Junghan since similar to her, he is quite the brainy type. But his actions last week had startled him, the fact that he had approached Soo Jung with no sense of awkwardness at all.

When she was flustered, it was the first time for Mingyu to see that kind of expression on her face.

Soojung has been composed and still in her brilliance and playfulness. He stares at Junghan with different eyes ever since that happened. 

Then, he recalls the event that shook the whole school when Soojung stood up to Baekhyun. It was one of the things he feared that Soojung would do. It is so like her to stand up for those in need of it. He remembers approaching her in the second break to talk about it, to coax her out of it. Mingyu believed he could do it, because he had done a lot of persuasion to a lot of people.

When she looked at him with disappointed eyes, he could only ignore the sound of his heart cracking.

"Are you saying that I should just stand by while someone got humiliated by that?"

He remembers trying to hold her shoulders to keep her down, but to no avail he cancelled out the option because Mingyu felt like he was going to get burnt by her. "You'll also become his target, Soojung. Why are you being so illogical?"

"I don't care. I won't ever just stand by witnessing something like that," he remembers how her face got so cold when he mentioned the topic, how firm and resolute she was in her stature. "Will you, if I was in Jongin's positon?"

He remembers freezing up by her questions, imagining all the connections and networks he had established crumbling away with Baekhyun's influence in holding the position of the school's bully and a strong henchmen of the head of his school so-called band of gangsters that are rooted deep from year to year. 

"I-"

"No need to say it. I understand how we stand at two different points now." Soojung solemnly assured with a reserved smile, her fingers folded behind her. "All the reason why you shouldn't mind how I live my life." He remembers how the only thing that moved at that moment was the rush of students coming here and then on the hallways, her soft-looking wavy, brown hair and the long hem of her skirt. Her eyes remain locked with his firmly. 

He also remembers Soojung turning away on her heels, only to be stopped by his words that slipped out of desperation. "I just don't want you to get into trouble." Only for that moment, until Soojung continues to draw her steps to her friends who had waited by the side of their class' entrance, Ten and Seungwan with the addition of Jinri that has attached herself by the hip to Soojung. 

Mingyu remembers a lot of things, but this has become one of the moments that he remembers so vividly with no embellishments. After that, Soojung treats him as if none of that has happened. Soojung doesn't stop from playing heroes and pushing Baekhyun to an edge. 

"I should stop feeling like this," because Mingyu hasn't been quite himself ever since Soojung is around, and his friends had noticed how his eyes go softer when they pass by her, their conversations paused and his focus broken. Nayeon had stomped at his feet a few times because of this, and Nayoung could only laugh seeing him, reading him like a book he always loathes her for doing so. Vernon and Jisoo would join the laugh, and Seungcheol was often left staring at them like he was in a deep thought.

Pushing his hands to his face, he breathes deeply, not knowing what to do with himself, not knowing what to do with these feelings that feel so wrong to be felt. Because stepping into Soojung's world seems like a sacrifice. He doesn't have a lot of faith in his current friends, after all, not knowing what is it that drew them to him.

Mingyu doesn't have a lot of grasp in himself, his identity without his achievements, his popular friends and his dashing appearance. 

"Nayeon, why do you like me?"

He recalled those days when they were still together, when Soojung was not anywhere inside his mind but Nayeon was enough to fill the gap. They were sitting side by side in the park's bench near their middle school. Her hand was holding his. She had always been the one a little more into him.

"What's with the sudden question?" She was her vanilla ice cream on such a hot summer.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Just wondering."

"Well, you're handsome and pretty cool. You have a lot of good qualities that I really like."

He grinned, young and easily impressed by praises. That was one of her qualities that he loved and hated, her blunt and somehow empty remarks she loved to spread out. 

After that, Mingyu kissed her for the first time, for awhile, leaving the vanilla melting to her fingers, like the fear he has always felt of being too forward with girls. He only could feel the softness of her lips and the heat of the sun burning his neck.

A split of that memory becomes a reminder of his shaky foundations of who he really is. It is such a lovely day outside, the sun already filtering through the gaps of his curtain and he is being so morbid in the morning.

He brushes the heavy thoughts aside and walk over to the window, opening it wide where across him exists the girl whom he had always thought lived inside a universe different from his and occasionally, she would invite him to take a look and show him something contratry what he had always seen. Here it is, Kim Mingyu being nostalgic of a past that is long gone.

Now, she becomes a world who is completely distant to him. 

Pushing the blinds away, his eyes are quick to land across his window. A sight where Soojung's cheek is kissed by Ten with his arms around her shoulders, then skipping away from her room. 

Mingyu walks away from the light and grabs his bag on the floor, preparing to head out, with a thought blooms in his head that the kiss she gave him was merely an impulse coming from a dreaming and reckless child Soojung was, loose on her feet. 

For Seungwan, people come and go like storms, giving and taking recklessly things she might have found important. 

"So kind of you to help around." A voice snaps her mind awake as she is rearranging the books in the library, a help she has offered on the resident Mrs.Kwon as a librarian for being part of the book club. She has noticed how she has been short on hands with such a big amount of books.

Her focus shifts to meet wide, cat-like eyes who smiles until reaching his eyes. The sweet-looking boy before her resembles the fairy tale princes that sweep princessess off their legs like they are as light as a feather. Yet, Seungwan has known and observed him for a while to know that is a contrary to his true nature.

It annoys her that there are always signs of Seungcheol around her. Even in Jisoo, currently standing before her, with sweet pretense and reasonings checked before walking up to her. He was the mischievious one in Seungcheol's band of friends that surrounded them whenever she sat with his group, approaching people with hidden reasons just to fulfill his own amusement.

"Hi, Jisoo," she gives him a brief smile, before returning to arrange the poetry section of the books. "Looking for a book?" It is not everyday for him to just walked up to her like this.

Nodding his head in agreement, he leans to the bookshelves lightly, "Biology encyclopedia it is. Can you help me?"

"I'm still arranging the shelves here," she trails while her eyes kept switching to put the books back in the case. She wishes Jisoo would get the sign already and move along. She has always felt unsettled around him.

"Okay, I'll wait," it is the last thing she wants to hear to come out of his mouth.

Seungwan holds herself back from sighing. "I'm still far from being finished."

Putting his hand on his chin, he looks like he begins counting all the options. "Then, I'll help."

Seungwan looks at her watch. It's 15 minutes before the second break is finished. Might as well help him now so he'll leave soon.

"Forget it, come with me," another chuckle slipped out of him and Seungwan just feels black with all the irritation lumping inside her.

She walks around the book cases to the B section, with his footsteps echoing behind her. The quietness of the library has always brought her a different sense of ease. This helps her to calm her nerves. Today, that silence only tenses her up even more.

"Here it is, you can look through here," Because Seungwan is actually interested in the Gibran's poetry book for that moment, preferring to be faced with romantic proses that kills her mood rather than be in his company. "Now, my job is done."

'She's already walked away, brushing off all the mockery Jisoo likes to poke her now and then. "Still uncomfortable with me, aren't you? Cute."

Seungwan has known that Jisoo is one of those strange, villanous type people whom she can't read, whose actions are not predictable and whose track of thoughts undetected. Like all the stories she still read until midnight, Seungwan knows that all she has to do is to stand up for herself and challenge him into a fight of words that might never end, as to why he keeps prodding into her business more persistently that he always does nowadays to Seulgi.

Seungwan has always thought a lot before doing anything and this has become the situation where instant decisions are made to walk away. Walking away from things she know will keep happening. Until they stop and leave, knowing fully-aware despite her ignorance, their presence have left enough mark to make her remember.