the speed at which planets move # y.kh + i.ck [✓]

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Changkyun locked the door behind him, shoved the keys in his pocket and walked away. He was really tired, drained, gloomy, sad, half asleep, and also lonely. He really wanted to cry on a bench – ironic. He would have went straight to bed to cry himself to sleep, but he hated the idea of his sisters finding out he was crying, so he just decided to cry somewhere else, and maybe stargaze a little while he was at it. If he could see between the tears, that was.

He looked at his feet, dragging them while he walked. He even told Hyerin he was leaving, and that was weird.

It had been two weeks since the last time he went stargazing in the park, and even more time since he last saw Kihyun on the exact same day he met him. He didn't see him again the following times he went out, and never even peeked him in the school corridors.

The last weeks had been very stressing. He had so many tests concentrated in just a few days so he had to study a lot in very little, and clearly that didn't go well, as he failed three out of seven, while two weren't corrected yet. He even managed to make his math grades drop even further than they were before and that took a lot of work to do.

Failing math that bad made him feel very worthless. He tried the hardest for that one single subject, and yet he couldn't ever pass a test. He just didn't understand, no matter how hard he studied, and even if he learned formulas by memory he couldn't apply them to any problem. And to add, he left history and literature behind to work even harder on math, and so he also failed those. He would have cried right on the spot when the teacher handed him the test with his awful score if he wasn't too ashamed to even be there with that red mark on his paper. He wanted to dig a hole in the middle of the classroom and bury himself in it. Then he could cry in the safe, good old dirt.

He walked all the way to the park without looking up from the ground, concentrating on his shoes' tips as they were the most interesting thing in the world.

When he reached the park, he sat on his usual bench like he always did, but instead of laying down to watch the stars, he brought his knees up and rested his head on them, hugging his legs, and he stared into the eerie atmosphere of the park in the night, with the slides all dirty for all the kids walking on them instead of using them normally.

Then he buried his face in his knees and started crying. His tears were silent at first, just sliding down and being absorbed in the fabric of his jeans, but then his breathing got hollow and he started sobbing, with his shoulders signaling that he was crying even from a distance. He was straight up bawling his eyes out on his knees when he felt someone sitting beside him.

"Please go away," he said, without looking up.

"Well, would you look at how the tables have turned," Kihyun said.

Changkyun tried to ignore him. Did he really have to come that night? He looked ugly when he cried, and the whole situation was so embarrassing. Maybe he would go away if he just pretended he wasn't there.

"This is really ironic. Andromeda looks really good tonight, by the way. I looked it up online."

Changkyun smiled, but hid it safely in his knees. He really didn't want Kihyun to see his face all puffy. Of all days...

"You know I'm not going to leave any soon, right?"

Changkyun didn't answer.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Changkyun kept ignoring him. His breath got even again, and maybe he had also stopped crying, but the fabric was all wet so he couldn't tell.

Kihyun sighed. "You know why I was crying the night we met? I got really sad because my parents are getting a divorce and my dad is going to move, and not even in the city, but hours away, in his hometown. And to be fair, I don't want to move away, but there's a choice, it's there, and it haunts me. I have no intention to move away but I could, possibly, and I can't stop thinking about the possibility of it. I live alone, not with my parents anymore, so I don't even understand why it bothers me so much, but it does."