A piece of star

dangling from your eyes;;

A breath of wind

and our sighs.

But the call Myungsoo waits impatiently for doesn’t come.

Instead, he gets a text message. That’s not bad either. He replies back but he pauses before he hits the send button – does it sound stalker-ish? Too eager? Uninterested? Rude? He changes the message here, tucks in an emoticon there. A second after he finally sends it, he realizes it could have used some improvement. But what’s gone is gone, it isn’t around any longer. The three minutes it takes for the reply to come are the hardest three minutes of his life – where he frets continuously and has a small nervous breakdown. He doesn’t understand it…this compulsive nature isn’t something he has shown before. These small things never mattered to him before and he realizes that in just 12 hours, he has undergone a change. Never say never. Change – frightening, intimidating and formidable. But he doesn’t want to change this change. At last he gets the reply he has been hoping for. He breathes – in and out, in and out. He repeats the drill before heading out of his house. He has chosen to wear a yellow shirt, so that he could wound the yellow scarf around his neck. It fits snugly and he smells like lemongrass.

Sungjong waits for Myungsoo patiently; he has always been patient.

In fact, Sungjong is so patient, that he’s almost unresponsive.

What irks him now is not the wait, but the anticipation, the trepidation. Why should he feel like this – he’s not a flirt, a bit lonely perhaps but not someone desperate enough to have anything the world has to offer. He scolds himself, and then shakes it off. He tips his coffee mug to the right, and then tips it to the left. He brushes his right sneakers against the leg of the table, and then brushes it against his left sneakers. He waits, but his state of mind is anything but calm. He starts to play with his hair.

When Myungsoo sees the boy arranging his bangs through the café window, he pauses and reckons how to respond properly.