fly me to the moon | mark lee

ONE.

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fly me to the moon

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MARK LEE WAS a strange thing. He was her friend, of course, and a student at Hankook, but that was just about the most ordinary aspect of him one could find. Mark Lee was cut like one of them, a face like one of them, yet he could brandish his identification at anyone fussy enough to ask to confirm that he was indeed - human.

Before Hajun, Haru was still very much taken by this odd, raven-haired boy with the eyes like stars and awkward smile. His smile was a fraction less awkward now, but Mark Lee was still every bit as odd and starry-eyed as far as anyone could see.

If too beautiful to be human and not be Fae was a tangible thing, that was him, but his hands were warm. His fingertips very un-pointy. And he could very well lie like the best of them (Haru knew, because he had unabashedly stolen the watermelon she had brought to school and fibbed through his teeth about it).

But at the robust age of eighteen, she couldn't help but wonder if there had been a mistake at his birth, after all. Even in her lacklustre room, poring studiously over textbooks and homework, the lines of his face managed to look long and sharp and aristocratic.

His eyes shifted to her, nervously. "What?"

Uh- "Nothing," she said quickly, smoothing her hand over the page she'd stopped at for the past ten minutes.

"I can't focus if you keep staring at me."

"I wasn't-" okay, she was, "staring at you." And for good measure, "There's nothing to see, anyway."

His mouth crooked. "That sounds exactly like what someone who was staring would say."

She glared. Not because there was anything to be particularly angry about, but because he was right. Like always. "You just have something on your face."

"Where?" Haru leaned forward, till she could make out every hazel and buttery gold fleck in his irises, round and owlish in the lamplight, and every luxurious tilt of his lashes. His breath audibly hitched- and she swallowed, before reaching to flick her finger squarely into his forehead.

He sprung away. "Ow!"

"I didn't finish," she said triumphantly, crossing her arms. Albeit mildly breathlessly. "Distraction. The book's in front of you, Mr Lee."

"You're annoying."

But he pinched his mouth together and tucked his face away in his palm, expression unreadable. She mirrored it - now that the hilarity of what she had done had faded, they were both seized with an undeniable awkwardness.

The silence wore thin, till it could stretch no longer and Mark was the first to break it. "Haru." His pen tapped obsessively in the background. "Haru Haru Haru."

She squinted at him. "What?"

"It's the 4th of September tomorrow."

"Yeah?" Her hand trembled. "What about it?"

Tap tap tap. "I thought that maybe- we could go buy flowers. Go visit."

She couldn't breathe.

September 4th.

Her eyes sought the sole picture she had propped on her desk - a young boy of barely thirteen, cheek pressed to her own.

When she glanced at Mark again, he wasn't looking at her. His pen tip glided across the page in a boyish, untidy scrawl. He was trying. Trying to inject normality. As if they hadn't had this same conversation for the past four years, and she hadn't brought out the waterworks each time.

She could try. For him.

"Sure," she blurted out, before she could lose her nerve. One, two- her eyes were dry.

He flashed her a grin. And it was then Haru thought, maybe, maybe, she was already beginning to heal.