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“I don’t think it will work that way, Gyu.”
Wonwoo doesn’t have much knowledge about the intricacy of astrophysics, but he’s been told that wishes are supposed to be done on shooting stars. It was something that Mingyu himself has taught him when they were nine, at the very same spot they’re currently sitting down on, under the same night sky Wonwoo has developed a fear of looking at as he grew older.
“It will if it isn’t a wish,” Mingyu replies with a shy smile on his lips, left hand still extended towards the sky. “I’m leaving an offer.”
“An offer?” Wonwoo moves his gaze from his best friend’s face to the latter’s outstretched hand, eyes trailing on the finger that still continues to trace invisible lines on the stars above. “What could the universe possibly need from you?”
Mingyu doesn’t look at him when he answers.
“Nothing, but I’ll leave it there, and what they choose to do with it is completely up to them. They can keep it, take care of it, or…”
It takes a few seconds for Wonwoo to finally recognize what Mingyu is writing.
“…or even break it.”
A heart.
Wonwoo feels his chest tightening at the realization, like it always does whenever Mingyu does something that’s so… him, and it’s just so Mingyu to offer his heart to the universe because his best friend has always had so much affection to share, so much love to give, that something inside Wonwoo dies a little when he thinks of how he can’t keep all of that affection to himself—that he can’t keep all of Mingyu to himself.
Mingyu finally looks at him, and that thing inside Wonwoo dies a little more when he realizes how Mingyu has his head turned at an angle where he can stare at Wonwoo and still have the stars reflected on his eyes at the same time.
(That thing inside Wonwoo dies a little more when he realizes how Mingyu does this for him all the time, and how he could’ve avoided all those heartbreaks all this time.)
“I wish you could see the sky,” His best friend tells him with a look on his face that has Wonwoo’s heart skipping a beat. “So you’d see the stars winking at you and you’ll finally believe me that they actually do twinkle.”
Wonwoo knows that they don’t; there’s even a scientific explanation that backs up the fact, yet somehow, Mingyu’s eyes prove him wrong, and he’s never felt so happy that he’s been wrong all along.
“They do.” The stars inside your eyes twinkle, is what Wonwoo doesn’t say, not when he’s only seeing it now, after so long, that the stars inside his best friend’s eyes twinkle for him . “I know that now.”
Wonwoo does the same. He stares back at his best friend, lets himself get lost in the void that has always, always , given him so much, lets his eyes convey the words he didn’t say, because he knows that his best friend understands.
Wonwoo feels an open palm being offered to him before he sees it, and this time, he knows he isn’t wrong; Mingyu will always, always , understand.
“They deserve an apology, don’t they?”
Instead of intertwining his fingers with Mingyu’s like what the latter initially wanted, Wonwoo taps on the center of his best friend’s palm instead.
“How about an offer?”
“An offer?”
Wonwoo doesn’t dare to look away from Mingyu’s eyes as he draws the same thing his best friend has written on the stars because they don’t seem so scary anymore.
“There. They can keep it, take care of it, or…”
And he hesitates to say the last line, because he knows that there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.
“…or even break it.”
He watches as Mingyu clenches his fist then holds it close to his chest, and he thinks that maybe, maybe the cosmos deserve an actual apology with the way his best friend’s eyes managed to outshine the brilliance of the constellations.
“The stars told me I can keep it safe for today.”
“Only for today?”
“And the next day, of course.”
“And the day after?”
Wonwoo doesn’t have much knowledge about the intricacy of astrophysics, but he knows now that while wishes are done on shooting stars, silent prayers can sometimes be told on the stars above.
“And the days after.”
(Because he knows now that they will be heard by the stars that have always, always , twinkled for him.)