stardust | park seonghwa ✓

29

THE day is Friday and not too long ago I just finished a pretty long session in the painting studio. Honestly, I didn't expect Yeosang to even come at this hour since he'd usually sneak into my apartment (when he comes over on a Friday night) later in the night.

"Hyeshin, open up!" I hear his voice from outside as he bangs on the door.

"Wait!"

"Hurry up! I gotta tell you something!"

"Okay, okay!"

I look through the peephole and see that Yeosang is jittery on his feet, eyes sparkling.

He bursts into the hallway as soon as my door opens. It looks like he ran here, judging by the way he's panting and the way a random strand of hair stuck out from his head. Which is considerably weirdmas Yeosang will never run unless there's chicken in the kitchen. I'm sure he wouldn't even run if the house caught on fire because he's that lazy. ("We are told to conserve energy, Shin," he told me one time, "it's what I'm basically doing.")

So whatever got him to run, at a time so early in the evening too (it was five and Yeosang never arrived before eleven if he decided to stop by), was either something bad (something like his goldfish Alfred died) or something extremely good (in example Yeosang getting accepted at a famous cooking school despite his shitty cooking skills).

"What is it?" I find myself asking as he dives on to the couch, landing face first against the plush surface.

He turns around and props himself on his shoulders.

"I felt it again," he announces. Yeosang sports his grin, the one where his eyes crinkled and where his cheeks puff up.

It's one of his rarer smiles, the one you'd find when you willingly buy him a box of chicken or when you've been boasting that you've been practising Mario Kart and he beat you instead.

"Huh?"

"My mark!" Yeosang giggles excitedly, "I felt it again! They wrote 'don't be sad'!"

"Oh?"

Not going to lie, a small part of me is bubbling up in green jealousy. My star mate has never done that. Then again, I'm not sure if our star can even do that as Yeosang said, it's different for every pair though it doesn't cut the fact that I just somehow wish my star mate would do something similar.

Another part of me is happy for him. Kind of. I'm not sure. I should be happy, right?

Okay, maybe the small part of jealousy isn't as big as me being happy but I'm still... glad. He mentions that it's been a long time since he felt anything and he was starting to worry so much he thought about tracing words on the mark himself. So it must've been comforting to him to know that his star mate is still there.

"Did you write anything back?" I ask.

"I tried," he admits, "but my message was probably too faint to notice. I already pressed against my mark as hard as I could but sometimes it just doesn't reach them, I guess."

"How did you know it's too faint?"

"They didn't write anything back," Yeosang shrugs, "but it's okay. At least I know they're alive and they've not completely forgotten about me."

"Forgotten about you?"

"Yeah, 'cause, you know, there's still a possibility of them having a boyfriend or a girlfriend currently," he tells me, "or maybe they're busy? They must be a relatively busy person if we bumped into each other at the rush hour."

I nod.

"Now that you mentioned rush hour, do you ever wonder how old your star mate is?" I chortle a laugh, "for all you know it could be a middle aged man on his way off from work... or a freshly graduated high schooler with like her diploma... or maybe even a pageant queen?"