"What are you gonna do when you grow up?" Sooyoung gushes on a focused Ten hunched on his seat, after 5 minutes of pacing around the floor of their apartment's roof. The stars become their own roof, unlike the others below them.

He turns to the source of her voice, Sooyoung laying down on the dusty floor. "Get up, Sooyoung. It's dusty there and you'll catch a cold!"

 

She shoots a charming and childish smile, cheek pressed down, face turned to him. "You won't join me here."

 

"I'm writing. Can't you see?"

 

"Another story?"

 

"Yeah. Just one more story and I"ll stop."

 

"You won't. You like writing."

 

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Somehow, he manages to stop his writing and join her on the ground, staring up at the limitless sky that is beyond him.

 

A relieved breath billows out of him despite a spark of shudder that rises at the sight of such a sky, so black lacking of lights. "You're right."

 

"I think I'm gonna write when I grow up."

 

Sooyoung traces the stars that are nowhere to be found. "What are you going to write?"

 

"I don't know. About myself, I guess. Most writers start out writing from themselves."

 

"Why don't you write about me?!" Sooyoung kids, pointing at herself proudly and shaking his arm like the ten year old she is. "Come on, I play a part in inspiring you!"

 

He turns his back to her. "If you think distracting me counts, then no."

 

She purses her lips, seemingly trying to think of something incredible and magnificent to blow him away. She tries to do that constantly, because it is never easy to impress Ten when everything bores him to death.

 

"Write about us."

 

He turns to her. "Huh? What do you mean by that?"

 

"Yes, that's right," she mumbles to herself with no hesitance. "Write about us, Ten."

 

"About us? What's inside it?"

 

"Our stories, of course! Our beginnings, all the minutes we spent-"

 

Ten puts a hand over , motioning her to calm down. "All stories have endings, Sooyoung."

 

A whistful smile blooms out of her. Her face becomes the moon that doesn't look over them. "Then let it be a happy one, Ten. Let's be friends for the rest of our life."

 

And if possible, more than that, an unheard voice echoes into the stars, wishing for it to come true.

 

"Okay. I'll write about us."

 

 

 

 

Tonight, Sooyoung feels the loneliest with the weight of the world in , a cave is forming inside of her and tears are streaming down her face. She cries and weeps until her ears feel deaf and blocked, like the world zips out of them and all she can do is lay defeated in the ground, Sooyoung in her underwear whenever she feels suffocated by the pressures coming from the people around her. It's eleven pm right now, and time stops whenever she loses her grip like this. 

 

You're useless. What can you do other than being a nuisance?

 

You're ugly, don't you know that? Don't you know how pathetic you look, clinging onto him like a parasite?

 

I wonder why people even want to be friends with you.

 

 

Her cries threaten to rip out from her chest but she bottles it down with her hand, trembling and quaking uncontrollably. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's gonna be okay. 

 

Sooyoung is sixteen, terribly and heartbreakingly in love with Ten beneath her veins, with every atoms and iron inside of her. Her desire no longer can be contained inside of her palm, for sure.

 

Sometimes, she shows it. Sometimes, she covers it up like a sweet lie. But it's not like Ten can tell the difference. She has always been affectionate since they were small and he finds a sense of fondness and warmth in her that he doesn't have.

 

Sometimes, she wonders if Ten has the heart to love. There are expressions Ten own which make him seems like the most distant person in her life, as if he is not her friend at all. He sets this distance like his heart is not for anyone to reach. Sometimes, it feels as if Sooyoung grasps into the silhouette of an idea of Ten that doesn't exist.

 

They have their own set of friends despite being so close. Girls and boys brighter than her with the positivity and hope she is scraping to attain in the remainings she had lost. 

 

Whenever she is too broken to meet Ten, she just sits inside of her room, blankly staring into the void. Because nobody will be able to understand what she goes through.

 

Especially Ten. She doesn't want him to stare at her with judging eyes, for being so weak and beatable by the world.

 

 

 

 

Rain commences their parade of morose across the sky and Sooyoung finds it all too calming and hurtful to walk home without having the rain wash it away. Her mother will scold her at home, but she can't care less about that. This is the only moment she wants to belong to herself. 

 

Droplets of water keep splattering the ground but somehow they no longer hit her in such an atrocious and heartless way. She notices a pair of shoes appearing beside her, struggling to keep up with her. But he doesn't complain. He just stays silent.

 

"I just feel like walking in the rain," but her voice betrays her.

"I know."

She looks up to him, whose eyes stare straight ahead. 

"Do you like the rain that much?"

She doesn't turn to the rain. God knows where her hooded eyes are resting at. "Yes, very much."

He nods. He looks like he's about to say something, but chooses to stop. Probably how he loathes the rain because everything is so wet and the air sticks like glue to his skin. She can see words floating above his head, transparent and dim.

 

"Every parades of rain always end with rainbows" he trails, but leaves his words hanging in the jittery air.

 

She walks ahead of him into the rain, tears threatening to fall and heart clenching, wanting to disappear. "Rainbows no longer appear, Ten. Dark clouds are enough to cover them up."

 

 

 

Despite his name, Ten is far from the number that defines a maximum score, a form of perfection. Self-absorbed he can be at times, and most of the time nonchalant to the people changing around him. Including Sooyoung, who spin and spin until a hurricane she becomes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One day, Ten comes across the fleeting flap of a butterfly's wings above his head. He tries to catch it with both hands, half-way smashing it dead. Fifteen minutes and the results are none. He learns that not everything in this world is attainable, no matter how sure you are in getting it.

 

 

 

 

When Ten sees a pair of legs dangling from skyscrapers, he knows what he will witness.

 

"You won't be able to fly," he speaks into the thin air. He pretends the other nods back at him, as if agreeing to his meddling statement, because that pair of legs shrink into the distance.

He turns back and feels a sudden rush of chill on his skin when shrill-like scream bores to his eardrums. He realizes that saving anyone is never easy.

 

 

 

He isn't sure what feels like even when he has seen a few scenes in movies his friends made him watch on boys' night. What he grasps from the word itself is skin, skin and skin. Violent and hurtful perhaps are relatable to the word. And red marks, bruises and painful reminders that lust isn't soft and tender.

 

 

 

 

When things happened between him and Sooyoung, it is the point where he begins to understand what desire is. 

 

The love is bursting at the edge of his tongue and Sooyoung just breaks everytime he chants it all like a mantra that shall keep her going.

 

Her hair has never felt so soft on his fingertips and his lips never felt this harsh on her neck. Until then, Ten didn't know that something so tender can cause such a scar.

 

The night goes on and Ten wants to feel forever and have his own time to never stop.

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere, afar from this time, Ten will find himself typing away tales he promised to his old best friend, stories with dust and skin and love marks. And tears, regrets and a mouthful of unsaid words. Perhaps, she will remember him. Perhaps, she wouldn't. It's been long since they were no longer friends, just mere ghosts to each other's lives.

 

Dim eyes and unmoving heart, Ten falls back and replay his memories all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 (This is such a bleak ending omg the author's block is real)