Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. ― Lawrence M. Krauss

The black leather shoes hit against the floor quickly, and soon, Kibum saw from afar the large red and white building whose blue plate on its side indicated "5S", right in front of huge campus library of exposed bricks.

He paused for a moment, rolling up the sleeves of the thin denim jacket to his elbows, arranging the rebel strands of blond hair - already with its dark roots showing - , and adjusting the black handle of the gray backpack full of buttons over his right shoulder; he sighed deeply, catching his breath and starting to hurry again, even though he wasn't late. Now this was his first day of classes at his new college. It was understandable that his anxiety was overflowing. In addition, “cautios” was his middle name, and, for him, getting to his first day of classes early meant choosing the place that he thought was best for him, choosing which people would have the honor of his presence and who could potentially also become friends. He wanted a place not too far from the teacher, but also not in the front row. And ventilated, preferably. Sweating with concealer on his face - even if it was little, just to cover up the pimples that persisted in appearing - was not in his plans.

Students came and went by him. It is more than obvious that the vast majority of early students on the first day of classes was freshmen; lonely, shy-faced and exuding a certain frightened atmosphere for that being a whole new territory. Few of them he imagined were veterans, for the loud laughter and interactions that betrayed an already close relationship between those college students.

As he approached his building, he looked up at the security railing of the respective open corridors on the sides of the two floors. The ground floor had a large open winter garden right in the center; the interior walls were white except for the corner where the auditorium was on his right, where the walls were in black wood. Walking up the stairs to his left, three students passed laughing by him. Climbing the white granite steps as he slid his fingers down the cold metal railing to the first floor, Kibum wondered which would be the other two people laughing next to him if he were to form a trio of friends too.

When he looked up, as soon as he reached the first floor, the rooms were divided to the right and left. “Room 203” was just what it said on his timetable. He tested his luck on the left first. He concluded that he chose the wrong side when the first number he found was "206". He sighed, then turned to the other side.

"201"

"202"

“203”

As expected, a few pairs of eyes ahead of him looked in his direction as he walked through the door. Even though a little uncomfortable, he packed again his backpack strap on his shoulder and looked down at the ground, walking up to a vacant place in the first row, leaning against the wall. He set his backpack on the floor beside the blue chair and sat with his elbows flexed on the table; his chin on his palm, looking subtly with the corner of his eye to the students who were already there and analyzing, little by little, those who arrived.

Really, college is a box of surprises. Of the students who were present, one of them lived up to the stereotype of the degree: glasses with a thick and pretty black frame with extremely thick lenses, hair a little longer than the usual, slightly messy, with the bangs falling in front of his eyes, and a Long-sleeved blouse buttoned up to the neck. Another one seemed to have passed the entrance exam with pure luck, for he was completely absent from any profile of an exact science course: long hair tied to a slightly messy ponytail, shirt with some anime printed on it, covered by a red and black long-sleeved plaid blouse, skinny jeans with several rips along the leg and black boots, blowing gum balls as he fiddled with his cell phone. But on this one, Kibum chose not to judge so much. He himself was not much different there.

Now... There was a specific student in that room who made Kibum frown. That one definitely mistook the classroom.

He was sitting in the last row, in the last place in the corner of the room, next to the windows, as if he wanted isolate himself from everybody, and, well ... Apparently, he was succeeding.

There wasn't a shred of color in that person. Black army boots, black jeans with rips in the knee, black sweatshirt with hands stuffed in the front pockets, and to make matters worse, the hood hiding the entire face. Kibum saw his 2007’s days back with strength, when he was around his seventeen years and fashion emo was the heat of the moment, with bands like Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne. But apparently someone decided to stop in time.

“Good morning, class” The teacher suddenly came through the door, carrying a bag with the strap across his chest and several books on his arm, scaring some distracted students. Not as old as Kibum had expected. He'd say, at most, he was in his late forties, his hair still very black, though just a few, no beard, and thin “I apologize for the wait” He said placing all the items on the spacious table in the corner of the room right in front of Kibum “It's the first day of classes and the Visual Audio department is still a mess” He sighed, clapping his hands and finally directing his eyes at the students “Well, I'm Professor Kwon Alexander, but you can call me by Alex” He gave a subtle smile “And I'll give you Basic Physics I and II this semester and the next. I have a degree in Architecture, but my Masters and Doctorate degrees are in Basic Physics. I hope we can get along this year” He smiled “Now, please, I wish everyone would talk a little bit about themselves so I can get to know you. About ...” He gestured with his hands “The reason in choosing this degree ... What you expect in here ... This kind of things” He nodded to the student in the front row, right next to the door “Can you start?”

Kibum sighed heavily, battling an eye roll as the first student talked about himself. Apparently, this kind of thing does not change even in college. Sooner than he would have liked, it was Kibum's turn.

“My name is Kim Kibum. I always liked exact sciences, but I have a hobby with fashion ...” He bit the corner of his lips while thinking “I chose Physics because it was a degree that I thought would please me and because it is what I like”

The teacher nodded in approval briefly and immediately turned his attention to the next student.

Short. Succinct. Bluntly.

It's hard to say what to expect from a degree that you don't really know for sure.

He put his face over his hand again and began to watch the rest of the class. He found out that the nerd project was named Lee Jinki and that the cute little guy was named Lee Taemin. The two completely opposite. He smirked, wondering how funny it would be if they both ended up together by the end of graduation. After all, college is the exact place where this kind of thing happens, isn't it?

Punks and vegans.

Hippies and metalheads.

Human and exact sciences.

There is everything.

Finally, it was the turn of the antisocial Goth to speak, and that annoying and uncomfortable thing would, finally, be over.

Kibum saw the boy look up slightly as the silence of the class made him realize it was his turn. The boy glanced quickly across the room, which now stared at him, expecting to know what someone wearing this kind of wardrobe was doing there.

He straightened in his chair and took a breath. Kibum immediately noticed the striking black eyeliner in his eyes and the unexpected piercing of the same color right in the center of his lower lip.

“My name is Kim Jonghyun and-“

“Uh , could ...” The teacher gestured with his hand over his head, referring to the hood that the student was still wearing “Could you take it off?”

The boy sighed heavily, not caring to hide his discomfort at the situation, but obeyed nonetheless. A collective murmur sounded when platinum strands showed up from beneath the hood.

“My name is Kim Jonghyun” The boy continued, ignoring the wide glances in his direction “And I chose Physics because it's the part of Science that I enjoy studying the most. I intend to do Master and Doctorate in Astronomy after I graduate”

Short and objective.

“Uh ... Very well then” The teacher nodded, not knowing exactly how to get rid of this strange situation. He went back to the table where he had left the books and held them up two by two with his hands "These are the books we're going to use this semester. You will not need to buy them. There are several copies in the library and you can study together. There are internet scans as well, some translated, some in original language, but if you have a better financial situation, it's good to have it around if you want” He opened the bag he had brought with him earlier and removed a laptop from there, plugging directly into the cable from the projector stuck to the ceiling “I will quickly pass the course plan slides to you and then you will be released”

Immediately, Kibum ped his backpack, removing his notebook and pencil case. He sought the pencil with the cute face of a teddy bear on the edge, and, promptly, noted details about delivery dates of essays and tests, but could not help but look over his shoulder and look for the unusual boy. Kim Jonghyun.

So the boy really did not mistake the classroom after all.

∞

Basic Physics Laboratory.

Differential and integral calculus.

Analytical Geometry.

Topics of Contemporary Physics ...

All classes the same rigmarole of presentation, and Kibum didn’t pay attention to even half of the names, after all, if what they say is really true of the degree, he won’t see, at least , half of that classroom next year.

"In a class of 40, usually only a third graduate, because of failures and dropouts" was what his physics teacher always said in his high school.

This way, he eventually waited for the first week to get acquainted with his colleagues, rather than getting it right off the bat, as he intended to do earlier. That was when, on his way to his classroom, in that same red-and-white building from his first day, he spotted a girl he had never seen running toward him. With a long and caramel color wavy hair, in a small sided ponytail; she tried to keep her pastel green backpack with ice cream prints over her shoulder, which fell all the time as he ran, but without ever dropping a neon pink folder in her arms - which , incidentally, contrasted through the crowd .

“Sir!!” She screamed as she approached, causing Kibum to slightly widen his eyes with a frown in amazement, but succeeded in getting him to stop walking and wait for her "Information..." She reached out, resting herher hands on his knees and gasping for breath "Classroom ... 203 ... Do you know ...?" She ran the back of her right hand over her forehead in a silly attempt to wipe away the beads of sweat that had formed.

Kibum raised an eyebrow.

“I do ...” He answered a little doubtfully, watching the girl from head to toe “Will you have classes there now?”

She smiled tiredly and just nodded several times, feeling breathless enough to express her answer.

“Uh ...” Kibum pursed his lips, looking away to the side and shifting the weight from one leg to another, thoughtfully “I 'm going there now ...” He pointed his thumb in a generic way, without knowing the motive of that action exactly.

“Oh! Oh, really?!” The girl gave a huge smile that made Kibum slightly disconcerted by the way he acted in front of a face that seemed so innocent “Good! We can go together then!!” She straightened herself, fixing the strap on her shoulder for the thousandth time and waiting for the boy in front of her to start walking.

“Yeah ...” Kibum smiled yellow, still embarrassed by the situation, but started walking for the girl to follow him. He wasn't used to that kind of sudden approach. Of course, he himself wasn’t exactly the definition in person of "recluse", but, in such a situation, he would certainly never rush to the classroom, for he would have previously checked the room and set his alarm clock so that he wouldn’t be late , and, if all went wrong, surely he would not call someone screaming suddenly in a crowded place.

“Oh ... Sorry to scare you like this ...” The girl murmured as soon as they reached the bottom of the building stairs, probably feeling the blonde's previous discomfort leading her “I'm a little uninhibited sometimes ...” She scratched the corner the back of her neck, offering a small, embarrassed but sincere smile.

Kibum couldn't contain the little breathy laugh that escaped his lips.

"It's okay" he grinned, shaking his head to the side "It was just a little shocking" He laughed "Usually people don't scream at me from afar"

“Sorry” She ended up laughing together, covering with her free hand “I missed the first week of class because I was still traveling, and that's what I got” She shrugged “I warned my mother that I had to go back because of college classes would began that week, but she insisted in that story that "they don’t pass anything in the first week of class" “ She commented making quotation mark with her fingers, getting one small laugh from the boy to her side “And I was caught in the crossfire, as you can see” She rolled her eyes.

“Hm!” Kibum raised both eyebrows with a smile in empathy “And I know this story! I did it once in high school and got screwed. In the second week of classes, I discovered that already had two papers and a seminar scheduled, and, of course, I was with no group. My luck is that the friends I had knew about my situation and stuck me in the middle, otherwise I was screwed right off the bat. By the way” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, just before the first floor door, and reached for the girl next to him “Kim Kibum”

She smiled, wrapping her free hand in the boy's in front of her, and making a friendly handshake.

“Jung Nicole”

This was his first friendship.

∞

Kibum understood why the graduating rate of that degree was so low the day he took his first test.

He already entered anxious in the classroom with the feeling of his heart stuck in his throat intensified by the high murmuring of students solving doubts at the last minute regarding the subject, and it just got worse when he sat and his friends around him made the fateful question with nervous smiles on their faces:

“What's up?! Nervous?!” Taemin stretched over his desk closer to his friend who now sit in front of him.

The next two friendships came courtesy of a group article requested by the professor of Contemporary Physics, just before the first semester was over. Interestingly, the nerd and the cool guy Kibum had noticed on his first day of class somehow approached each other. Kibum believes this is due to the fact that Taemin's t-shirts, the cool boy, are often printed with some anime and online games, and that probably Jinki, the nerd, should play and watch such things as much as the other. Kibum was soon entertained by talks about haircuts and dyes with Taemin, and theories about the expansion of the universe and distortion of spacetime with Jinki. But it was when the group of four friends decided to go to a pizzeria one Friday night, as early as mid-August, that the blond learned that Taemin wasn't as absent-minded as he looked , and that he could discuss String Theory as no one; and that Jinki was not as antisocial as he had previously thought.

Not nearly the friendships he expected to make when he decided to study physics, but again, college is a box of surprises.

Kibum snapped his tongue in a breathy laugh in response.

“What do you think?!”

Taemin laughed to himself.

“I think I 'm almost having a heart attack!”

“My hands are shaking a lot too ...!” Jinki murmured from the left side of Kibum, with a shameful little smile on his face and hiding his hands between his thighs, in the naive hope that it would have any effect on his nervousness.

“Hmm ... ~!” Nicole mumbled tearfully with a pout on her lips while resting over her desk, by the right side of Kibum “I've accepted that I will flunk right on the first test”

Kibum swears he would have said any encouraging words to his friend if he had had time, but it was automatic for the silence that fell over the classroom as the teacher walked through the door. The blond felt the sudden need to know if he was the only one about to freak out there, so with his head low and subtly he looked around the other students in the classroom curiously. He was a little more relieved to see feet tapping incessantly on the floor and people biting hard the tip of the pen in a clear sign of anxiety. But his vision was disturbed when he stopped in the corner of the room, in the last row. The student who didn't match the profile of the degree was hidden inside the hood of his black sweatshirt, as usual, leaning over his desk and clearly entertained at some game on his cell phone, not giving a damn to what happened around him.

Kibum remembered the boy's words on the first day of class and wondered if they were sincere. For a moment he wondered if this was some technique to circumvent the anxiety of the first test, but then he began to be sure that he was there out of parental obligation, not willingly, as strange as that theory might seem.

Three agonizing hours later, after much theory and calculations, Kibum dismounted in his chair, arching his head back with his eyes closed and letting out a deep breath. He rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, already feeling a little headache appearing in the back of his eyes. Among his friends, he was the last to deliver the written paper. He packed his things, nodded to the teacher, wishing a good week, and finally left the classroom. From the outside, Jinki, Taemin and Nicole waited for him sitting on the floor and gossiping about something the blonde could barely understand.

“What's up?! How was it?!” Taemin asked excited when he saw his friend joining him.

Kibum rolled his eyes, tossing his backpack on the floor and practically doing the same to himself beside Nicole.

“Horrible. Somebody kill me, please” he said, tapping his head against the wall behind him.

“Oh ... It wasn't too bad” Jinki pondered, bending his knees and hugging them against his chest “It just had a ing lot of calculus. But nothing we hadn’t seen in class”

“You shut up” Nicole made sure to open her pencil case again, just to take an old eraser and throw it in Jinki’s direction “You shouldn’t even be here, you ing nerd” She finished the sentence laughing, along with the other three friends.

“Awwnnn , she's all mad” Jinki ruffled the girl's hair just to annoy her “I promise I'll help you study in the next exam”

“There are people who seem to have thrown in the towel right in the first test” Taemin commented, crossing his legs “You saw that guy delivering the test in less than an hour? Half the questions he guessed, I bet”

“Who? The one who's always in black?” Jinki asked, earning a nod from Taemin as answer.

"I don't even know what he's doing in this degree," Kibum commented, lowering his voice so that he wouldn't be heard talking badly about someone he didn't even know "I mean, man, just look at him and the way he behaves in the classroom. He must be taking this degree out of obligation, I’m sure”

"Yeah" Nicole agreed "Like parents forcing him to have at least one college degree and he chose physics because he liked it in high school, thinking this graduation was going to be easy. But, hey ...” The girl rubbed her face “Enough of this, for God's sake. I need to go out for a drink, or eat a very greasy hamburger to replace the guilt of the test with a nutritional bomb that will kill me in twenty years!”

“Hm ...” Jinki made a face “Twenty years are very close, I think. About forty, maybe”

“Oh, wow. I feel much better, thank you, Jinki” Nicole replied mocking, eliciting a laugh from everyone.

“Dispose” Jinki replied in the same tone, already getting up and lifting his backpack over his shoulder, being followed by the other three.

∞

Kibum never waited for what happened on the day the fateful tests were delivered.

They were all silent, eager to see their respectiv