Ten thinks that first love scars the most, and he knows he must sound so small thinking of this, but being ripped apart is incomparable to this feeling. First love never succeeds and he accepts it just fine.

Now, he is doomed for his third love and he can care less about the heartbreak he is going to face. This all will be bliss that never lasts. Love exists with the promise of getting shattered. He doesn't mind getting crushed inside Sooyoung's hand, for he knows it will only hurt her. She loves him the same, and sometimes (most of the times), more intensely.

Ten and Sooyoung are the pair of hopeless romantics who stumble in the dark everytime they arrive home late, liking the sense of loss from time and just live in the moment where time is infinite.

When he wakes up to the sight of weeping Sooyoung, the stars are lost and somewhere dawning under her burning throat.

"It burns," Sooyoung chants endlessly, but it's not for her burning throat. Her eyes burn when she cries.

Ten will bring icepacks and press ice creams to her eyes. She says in that mischievious and joking tone that it's because she gazes at him too much. Ten loves how Joy used the word "gaze", not stare. It sounds more intimate and deep, and he likes the idea of Sooyoung unraveling him in ways he could never do. He knows Sooyoung works too much in the computer.

"I don't believe you," Ten smiles in that childish and sweet way of his and Sooyoung bites back a smile that is going to kill her for good tonight. Ten smiling his way out of everything is nothing new. This is one of the few reasons of her constant heart ache.

They stare into each other's eyes for how long of a time that pass through their brushing limbs and warm hands interlaced, both of their eyes reflect the stars that are lost and found no longer in her tears but in Sooyoung's skin, Ten's eyelashes and the moon dipped into the ghost of a smile that stays behind their lips. This is one of the moments they share to be the most memorable.

She presses her palm to his cheek. "Don't smile," she says, because she knows that's what he's going to do. And Sooyoung will lose sleep that way.

His face turns calm, the edge of his lips rise by a little, casting a calmer and cooler side of his that rises in night time. "Why were you crying?"

Her heart is obviously not made of stone while with Ten. It's made of cotton. It shrivels and sinks, and Sooyoung just doesn't want to cry in front of him. Her mother always said that tears don't suit her. Girls of her lineage should be stronger even in front of her loved ones. "I wasn't crying."

Pursing his lips, he searches in her eyes for any sign of lies. He only sees that she is just not ready. "Why are you sad then?"

"I suddenly remembered my friends," her fingers are gently tapping on his temple, and his fingers are somewhere tracing the veins on her arm, hardly recognized in the dark, only with specks of light coming from the city lights outside and the sense of familiarity which sinked its teeth to his skin.

"You know, friends you can't forget. The ones you love but never do the same to you. My memories of them are still so clear," she sighs, trying to focus into Ten's eyes instead. She has to keep going, she needs to tell this to at least someone who understands. "The traces of their laugh, the crazy things they pulled me into, the rhythm of our matching steps-"

"I wish I should have held into them more. I should've clutched into them more desperately."

He hums a dissaproving tone. "You would've hurt yourself that way."

"I used to bruise myself whenever people leave my life. My mom brought me into a psychiatrist because of that," her gaze doesn't falter and she waits for him to turn away. "The pain in the skin is temporary, anyway. Unlike those in the heart."

He presses his lips to her veins, the place where it used to be teared open and death is welcomed. She shivers into his cold lips. "I wonder if I come across their thoughts, sometimes. I hope they do. Yeah, it's strange how much I love them and I never stop feeling this ache, knowing they don't feel the same to me."

Ten just wants to kiss the pain away. It hurts him how she is telling him of her past scars, all happening at the time they were not "us". "Isn't it strange, how we gravitate to those who hurt us the most?"

"Yeah, I can feel that."

"It's not meant for you," she pinches his cheek in an adoring way and their night ends with Ten rolling to her side and capturing her with arms locked tightly around her waist, falling asleep with giggles and hair brushing her neck, after a few minutes of wrestling each other for the slip of the tongue she let herself to do. Her eyes stare at the ceiling, fingers quietly and gently playing with his hair.

"Sooyoung," a mumble unconsciously slips out of his lips, half-parting and eyes barely opened. He's dreaming.

She hums a reply, looking down at him even though their eyes do not meet.

"Don't ever let me go."

She is not making the same mistake like herself in the past. "Only in your worst nightmares. Not in reality."

Ten is not dreaming, half-awake and heart growing a pair of wings. Perhaps six, like the seraphims. This time, he can dream again. Ten can dream again without having to be scared of nightmares. By the end of the sleep, it is the reality he'll come back to. A reality where she is there hold out her hand to look for him in the dark, a girl who sets herself on fire just to light the world.