Noeul checks her phone, knowing that there were no particular messages for her. Perhaps she did that to make her appointment less nerve-wracking. A month had stretched, and her follow-up appointment was due. She didn’t hate Dr. Stevens, but seeing him didn’t make her happy.

She watches people as if that could make the clock ticking feel less daunting. She sees an old woman who is completely at ease, but beside her, is a younger woman—Noeul guesses that it may be her child. The younger woman’s eyes are dark and sullen as if she can feel the reminder of time right behind her.

She sees a little boy who is throwing a fit. The father looks exhausted, but he tries his best to assuage the kid. As she continues to watch, someone says, “that would definitely be my last straw.”

She abruptly turns her head to the voice. There’s a boy around her age in a wheelchair, who offers her a sarcastic smile. “I’m sorry?”

The boy shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just talking to myself.”

She eventually zones out again as the silence persists. Until he breaks it.

“So, like, if you don’t mind me asking—what are you here for?”

She’s aware that it’s not bright to talk to strangers, but at the moment, he seemed harmless enough. Noeul answers reluctantly, “Parkinson’s.”

The boy’s eyes widen. “Hey, we’re sort of like twinsies.”

She tilts her head, not sure what he means.

“Muscular dystrophy,” he elaborates.

She opens and closes it abruptly.

He smiles, waving dismissively. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. I make death jokes all the time. My dad’s the only one bothered by it.”

She smiles softly at this before admitting, “I haven’t told anyone.”

“Why is that?” He questions.

She shrugs. “I don’t want them to pity me.”

The boy snorts. “That is—if any of them are smart enough to know what Parkinson’s is.”

She feels strangely comforted by the thought. “You’re right, actually. My class is stupid.”

“What class are you?”

“2021.”

His smile grows. “Cool, I’m in the same class.”

Before she’s able to say anything else, a nurse calls out, “Luhan!”

The boy jerks in surprise. “Oh, that’s me…” He turns to her, smiling apologetically. “It was nice meeting you…”

“Noeul,” she answers for him, returning a smile. “Bye, Luhan.”

His grin is wide as he waves, wheeling off toward the nurse.

###

“Have you ever regretted being born?” Baekhyun asks one day as Noeul busies herself with checking in books.

Her eyes slowly meander until they reach his general direction. “I think we all have a purpose,” she responds.

He takes a deep breath. “Really?”

She nods, going back to the stack of books.

“What do you think your purpose is?”

“I don’t know—maybe a thorn in my father’s bum?” She mutters blandly.

He chuckles, and she finds herself pausing from her task momentarily to catch his laugh. She watches him as inconspicuously as she can. He was standing on the other side of her, organizing the bulletin board with upcoming events. She often has incessant thoughts about him.

They seemed to appear out of thin air sometimes. One time, when she was eating cereal, she thought about a conversation they had. He told her that he didn’t like to eat cereal because it was easy to binge. She wondered most days if he was able to eat three meals.

But she didn’t want to feel bad for him. How could she if she didn’t like the thought of other people thinking about her? It wasn’t like she could tell her internal monologue to shut up. Her ADHD never made things simple.

“What?” He asks suddenly.

She blinks, unaware that she dissociated, another pesky symptom of her ADHD. “Huh?”

“I can feel you drilling a hole into my back,” he says.

“I was thinking about you,” she admits.

He pauses, turning to frown at her. “What?”

“I was think—“

He stops her. “No, I heard you the first time. What about?”

She smiles vaguely. “This and that.”

“Define this and that.”

“I like your moles.”

He throws her an odd look. “My moles?”

She nods, taking a couple of steps near him. She softly pokes them with her index finger, pretending to count them. “There’s one here…and here…here…and—“

He catches her hand. “Cut it out.”

“Why?”

She notices a slight tint of pink on his cheeks, but she genuinely did like the moles on his cheeks. They looked like constellations—like the ones that she saw when she was seven.

Her mother had taken her to a private island, a gift from her father for their anniversary. Her father wasn’t there though, but then again, when was he ever?

She remembered the silence. Her mother’s soft breathing while asleep. The gentle cries of the sea.

Noeul wandered onto the balcony. She hadn’t been tired. In fact, she was wired from the candy that their chef gave her.

As she skipped out onto the wooden planks, she remembered her next breath that caught in . There were billions of stars. She couldn’t see the end, and the vast sky gave her an inkling of hope.

The enormous sky and countless stars made her sadness dwindle away ever so slowly.

“They’re beautiful,” she murmurs, tilting her head to meet his eyes.

He bites his bottom lip in a troubled manner. “They’re just…moles.”

But they weren’t just moles to her. To her, they were the stars. “Remember when we were in elementary school?”

He nods.

“I saw those kids call you a dirt worm.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, those stupid kids.”

She chuckles. “You beat the crap out of them.”

He scratches his chin. “You’re right—I did. But I didn’t get in trouble.”

“I lied to Mrs. Appleton,” she breathes out, stifling her laugh. “I told her that they were fighting amongst themselves. And she believed me because there wasn’t a scratch on you.”

His eyes form crescents. She sighs. He really is the sky. “Yeah?”

She shrugs. “I guess some things don’t change.”

“You never changed,” he agrees.

There was always one thing she couldn’t figure out since she was little. He was an enigma. To be completely honest, it wasn’t recent that she’d begun noticing him.

There was always a different air around him. It was in the way he walked. In the way he spoke. And it was in the way he smiled.

She wondered a lot why he smiled like her. The one that reached his eyes, yes, but it was convincing. Never quite right. Inside, his eyes were dull.

She liked to watch him, often wondering what his life was like, and creating stories as surrogates for that desire. She soon figured it out.

His expressions weren’t completely dishonest. The first time that he showed real signs of excitement, she got butterflies. It stunned her, and she couldn’t quite put a finger on her reaction. Maybe it was because he looked so pure. For once, he looked like a normal kid.

But then, he wasn’t. Sometimes, he was lost in a world that was too grown for him. She knew what that felt like. To be overwhelmed by adult matters.

“You felt far away,” she tells him.

He tries to register her random thought. “Far away?”

“I felt like I was trying to catch up with you. All the time—when we were kids. I got a hunch that your life at home was more than what meets the eye. Doesn’t that scare you?”

It feels like he’s staring into her soul, but she doesn’t feel the need to look away. “Why would I be scared?”

“That I don’t mind my business,” she answers with reluctance.

Maybe she was guilty. She had flaws. She was nosy. She liked to meddle. Was she so different from Bianca? That thought disgusted her.

He reaches out, his fingers lightly grazing her cheek. “What is it about you?”

“Do I disgust you?” She asks, waiting to be proven right.

“It’s the little things,” he says vaguely, not quite answering her question. “You take me by surprise, and that terrifies me.”

###

Among many other strange things, Noeul likes the rain. But now, she couldn’t decide if this was bad or good timing.

There’s an eviction notice posted on her door. Noeul hasn’t occupied the apartment for very long. Maybe two or three weeks at most. She isn’t sure why she’s being kicked out.

She tears the note off, pushing herself through the cramped space. Noeul didn’t want to spend much of her father’s money. After she sold their family home, Noeul froze all of the funds.

She didn’t know when she would use the lump sum, but each time she thought about using the money, it only made her feel like discarded trash. So, with a couple of hundred bucks in her bank account, she was back to square one.

Noeul’s eyes observe the paper boxes strewn randomly in her room. She didn’t unpack them. Maybe in some twisted way, Noeul didn’t want to settle in this puny space.

It wasn’t the size that bothered her. It was her aimless life she was looking at.

She lays in the middle of the room, and her eyes focus on the popcorn ceiling. It makes her snort out loud. Once, she had a smooth ceiling with lights that cost more than the apartment she was renting.

When Noeul opens her eyes, it’s Saturday. Her back is stiff from falling asleep on the floor. Stretching out her sleepy limbs, she sighs.

Where was she going to go?

Noeul doesn’t receive her security deposit. According to her neighbors, the landlord was caught for years of tax evasion. The bank was taking his building, and all the tenants had a week to move out.

But Noeul doesn’t wait. It takes two hours to move all of her things onto the bottom steps of the apartment building. That was two hours less than moving in. Bianca wouldn’t stop chattering away and breaking things.

Another hour passes as Noeul hangs by the bottom of the steps, getting stares from passerby's. She ignores them, drowning out the seriousness of her situation with a book.

She’s only a quarter of the way through when several droplets hit her face.

One droplet becomes two. Two become ten. The rain comes without invitation. Noeul shuts her book, not sure if she’s happy with her life. Glancing at the boxes, slowly getting soaked by the heavy rain, she decides to dig through them. After picking out several things that she deemed important, she shoved most of her clothes and favorite books into her suitcase. Grabbing her school bag, she finally gets up from the steps, hopping down unceremoniously.

Noeul turns ever so slightly, catching sight of the boxes caving in from the rain. Bidding goodbye to her old life, she begins to walk.

There’s no destination, but it doesn’t matter. She chases the taste of freedom—never once sparing another glance at the paper boxes.

Noeul’s feet stop in front of a diner. Farmhouse Diner. It’s a quaint little place in its own area. The diner isn’t attached to anything and, there’s a parking lot with faded paint.

She pushes open the door, feeling the rush of warm air surround her. Noeul shivers a little as she tugs her luggage inside. She ignores the stares around her. She might as well identify as a crazy person. If Noeul’s mother was here, she would claim that her daughter has completely lost her mind.

And maybe that was a bad thing. After all, Noeul had nowhere to go. She had no one to return to. Just an aimless, desolate journey. Noeul should’ve been more scared, but honestly, could her life get any worse?

“Hey, sweetie—woah, are you okay?” An older lady questions, her eyes scanning the younger girl’s appearance.

“I’m okay,” Noeul answers, shivering like a dog in the heat.

The older lady is unconvinced, but she leads Noeul to a table in the back. “B! I’m dropping a young lady in your area.”

There’s an answer from somewhere in the back, but Noeul is too tired to listen. She loses herself from the view outside the window. The sky is dreary, but there’s something romantic about this.

“What the hell—“

A familiar voice pulls her back, and Noeul finds herself staring right up at Baekhyun. “Oh, hi.” Her tone is curt and casual for what she looks like. Her mascara is probably streaking halfway down her face. Noeul doesn’t find it in herself to care. She wants to continue basking in this temporary feeling of her newfound freedom.

“Hi?” Baekhyun repeats, his tone rising to signify disbelief.

The older lady from earlier comes back, dropping her a couple of small towels. “These were the only clean ones I could find, sweetie.” Then, she turns to Baekhyun, squinting her eyes. “Take care of her, B.”

Noeul smiles sweetly. “Thank you, and since he’s treating me like a queen, I might just take him home with me.”

The lady guffaws before walking off.

Baekhyun rolls his eyes. “Are you stalking me?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

He sighs. “What can I get you?”

Noeul crosses her arms. “Is this the best customer service around?”

“Whatever.”

Noeul tells him her order, watching him tread back to the kitchen with a smile. Instead of eating when her food arrives, she reads. And before she notices, it’s dark outside.

There’s a small clack on the tile as something falls. Noeul looks up to see Baekhyun frown at her. There’s a fallen mop beside him.

“We’re closing. Go home, doll,” he grunts.

Noeul wonders where she’ll sleep tonight.

Baekhyun clears his throat, fixing a stern look at her. “Did you hear me?”

Instead of answering his questions like always, she pats the spot in front of her. “Come eat.”

“No, I have to close this place,” he protests.

She waits. The silence is deafening. They must be the only two here. Baekhyun finally admits defeat and plops into the seat across from her.

The food vanishes, and Noeul feels a tender smile stretch on her lips. He must’ve been hungry.

“Now, leave,” he demands, standing up to get back to his job.

Noeul gets up, and he walks her out. She hears a click as he locks the place behind her. Noeul decides that the light from the neon sign is enough to read from. So, she sits herself down and continues to read.

Somewhere in the middle, she must’ve fallen asleep because she feels a slight jerk when she falls forward. Someone catches her before she face-plants into the ground. Groaning softly, she rubs her eyes. Baekhyun is holding both of her shoulders, his eyebrows meeting in the middle.

“Hi,” she whispers.

Baekhyun snorts. “I thought I told you to go home.”

Noeul shakes her head. “I don’t have one.”

“What do you mean you don’t—“

“I mean I don’t have one.”

He looks at her incredulously. “Where will you sleep?”

Noeul shrugs. “The streets sound plausible.”

“Are you kidding? You’ll freeze to death. Where's the rest of your things?”

“I left them to a new owner,” she answers.

Baekhyun groans, “can we please be serious for once?”

Noeul yawns. “Do you want to know about how my father signed a check to get rid of me, or the fact that I got evicted?”

His eyes soften at her words. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She follows him closely. Somewhere in the middle, he’s the one dragging along her luggage and in his other hand, he’s pulling her along. Noeul wonders why he’s being so kind to her. She wasn’t his responsibility.

He doesn’t really question her further. Then, they reach a house. It’s dark, barely lit by the streetlamp across the street. “Oh,” she breathes.

He ducks as if he’s trying to hide his embarrassment. “To be fair, I didn’t judge you when you showed up sopping wet earlier.”

She doesn’t comment. She curiously peeks around. It’s small—less like a house and more like a shack. “We’re squatting,” she notes.

“I’m squatting,” he corrects, “you’re temporary.”

She chooses not to respond, letting him lead her in. The shack is small and cramped, but it’s a hell of a lot more comforting than her apartment.

She guesses that he’s been here a couple of weeks because he’s transformed the place into a somewhat livable situation. There are a couple of hefty bags in the back, but there are stacks of books lining the wall. It’s an orderly mess. Noeul loves it.

Noeul changes into some fresh clothes in her bag outside because it’s dark, and the two of them are practically surrounded by woods in the middle of nowhere. When she comes back in, he tosses her a blanket.

It’s also the only blanket. Noeul finds another solution, but that solution requires no personal space. She sidles beside him, wrapping the blanket around both of them. Baekhyun says thank you in his usual sarcasm.

“What are you doing?” She asks, glancing down at the makeshift table he’s made out of plastic bins.

“Homework,” he answers, scribbling his name on the worksheet.

Noeul wrinkles her face. “.”

Baekhyun’s lip twitches. “Dr. Kim won’t be happy.”

“Homework was the last thing on my mind today.”

“What was on your mind?”

“Nothing,” she answers.

“Right.”

Noeul chews on her lips all the while pushing herself closer to him—to steal his body heat. She wonders if she’ll smell like him in the morning. The smell of wood and greens.

“It’s a good thing when nothing is on my mind,” Noeul points out. “I have ADHD. My thoughts play out like a transcript. They never stop. And the worst part is that they overlap, and sometimes, I wonder if I’m really in control.”

The lamp hanging in the corner provides barely enough light to see him. She wonders how he hasn’t gone blind, trying to do homework in this lighting.

“What makes them go away?” Baekhyun asks. She feels his body relax against hers.

“Rain,” she whispers, “if you listen to each droplet, the thoughts slow down.”

“I might try that sometime.”

She lets her head fall into the crook of his shoulder. “What do you think about?”

“My mother, sometimes my sister.”

“What are they like?”

Baekhyun lets out a dry laugh. “One is dead, and the other one—I’m not sure if I’ll ever see her again.”

Noeul takes this in. It’s the first time he’s ever really revealed something about himself. She wants time to stop. “Is seeing her something you’re afraid of or you simply can’t?”

He’s quiet for a beat or two. “Am I a coward?”

“I think you’re more than that,” Noeul answers. “You’re a really nice boy, so I want to make sure that only really nice things happen to you.”

Baekhyun makes a sound as if he doesn’t really believe her.

“You’ll see her again—I promise.”

“Idiot,” he grumbles. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You don’t even—“

“I’ll be there. With you. We’ll see her together.”

Baekhyun stares at her. There’s something in his expression that says Noeul’s completely lost her mind, but there’s another part that projects gratefulness.

She watches the droplets hit the window. She listens to the howling of the wind. And despite the lack of heat, her chest radiates with warmth.

There are no thoughts.

No thoughts about her mother.

No thoughts about her future.

Just the rain and his soft breathing on her neck.