Chapter Text
˚ ✦ . . ˚ . . ✦ ˚ . ★⋆. ࿐࿔
. ˚ * ✦ . . ✦ ˚ ˚ .˚ ✦ . . ˚ . ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖✶ ✦
Donghyuck looked out the window watching the trails of city lights as he sat in his company’s car heading home from work; courtesy of not having a driver’s license. At 27 years old, his daily routine was a grueling cycle with one goal: to come back home. The exhausting shooting schedules and demanding choreographies drained him. He only ever loved music, but his agency made him do everything excluding that—starting from lying in interviews, doing aegyo, hosting unknown people and staff members at his personal space, staying in front of cameras 24/7, showcasing snippets of his daily life, participating in nonsensical challenges, and even kissing girls in K-dramas to boost the company’s profits.
"The fans love to see you act," they'd say.
Bullshit. The fans bully the hell out of the leading actresses every time there’s an episode of him kissing them.
His life was a mess basically. Much similar to how psychology major kids represent "Celebrity lives and drug cases" in their thesis projects.
“Terrifyingly Accurate,” he had praised his non-celebrity psychology major cousin when the kid held an unofficial interview with him for his upcoming thesis, during Christmas at grandma’s place. Donghyuck had no privacy, and no freedom to enjoy life. His day started at 6 am and ended at 12 pm, a process set to continue for 15 years due to the contract he signed at the ripe age of 20 when he first debuted. Eight years still remained.
His apartment was close to the company’s office. Donghyuck wasn’t interested in luxury, at least not yet, as he spent most of his time in his studio. So, he bought the cheapest apartment nearby, just to bare with the time he had left as an idol under his company. A good investment, he supposed. Although, he had considered the apartment being haunted a few years back for all the strange whimpers, he'd often hear coming from the other side of his room.
As the car dropped him off in front of the nondescript building, he tiredly climbed the stairs, too drained to spare a glance at his surroundings. He reached his apartment door, typed in the passcode, and opened it while mumbling, "This is total shit."
He took his first step inside and stumbled over something, falling to the floor with a loud thud. Looking down, he saw a small camera, thumb-sized.
"THIS. IS. TOTAL. SHIT!!!"
He slammed the door shut in a very aggressive manner, unaware of his petite neighbor living next door. Just then, Renjun opened his own apartment’s door. His neighbor, if in any other case, would have filed twenty complaints by now to the community head, considering his rude neighbor’s aggressive antics. But fortunately for Donghyuck, Renjun was a fan who was deadset at tolerating all of Donghyucks flaws that weren’t shown to the world.
Huang Renjun, a 28-year-old artist and a big fan of Haechan, aka Lee Donghyuck. No one really knew about Renjun's existence, and I’m not kidding, practically not a single soul knew him with a few ironic exceptions. He lived a simple life, selling his drawings and paintings, often without credits to get more-than-deserved amount of wages from higher-ups, only to buy more than just his daily meals.
He was heading out to get groceries when he heard Donghyuck hissing like an angry cat from a Ghibli movie, from inside his house. Shaking his head, he walked down the stairs. The building, having only three stories, didn't need an elevator. Renjun and Donghyuck's units were on the first floor which made the stairs even less of a bother in their already melancholic lives.
...
The grocery store wasn’t too far. Renjun passed his bicycle, decorated with flower baskets—too feminine, people said, but Renjun didn’t care. As an artist, he loved flowers and he wouldn’t dare picture his only form of vehicle not having any floral effects to it. He finished his grocery run in about 10 minutes and decided to visit a park. Unlike his busy neighbor, Renjun had all the time in the world, being the jobless bum he was. Hanging around in parks at 2 am might be risky, but Renjun liked risks. Renjun’s life was so boring he’d shamelessly admit that he liked risks and he wanted bad things to happen to him. Who knows if he could be on TV for it and Donghyuck would finally notice him. A quiet shameless fantasy for being Donghyuck’s neighbor but Renjun was that much pathetic and he took pride in it. Because yes. Periodt.
Renjun entered the park with a ghostly aura, enough to scare off bad people unintentionally. Something that lifeless people, like him, were known to have. According to the stereotypes, this group of people never touch grass. Well, they’re wrong, Renjun supposes, he didn’t even know much about grass. He sat on a bench, took a piece of bread from his grocery bag, and started munching on it. Resting the back of his head on the bench, he looked up at the starry sky. The quiet atmosphere was to his liking. The sky full of stars awakened the human inside him—the one that knew life, the one that breathed. There were certain elements of nature which triggered this reaction inside Renjun. The stars, the fireflies, the waterfalls, and Lee Donghyuck.
He wondered if Donghyuck would ever notice him. Maybe not. Maybe he didn’t want him to. He didn’t want him to notice anything at all if he couldn’t have him all to himself. He didn’t want to be just another fan. Despite knowing damn well that he isn't anyone unique, he felt a special connection with Donghyuck, different from his other fans. And he was delusional enough to dismiss the same kind of 'special connection' many other fans felt.
So he didn’t want to risk approaching his idol and facing the truth that the most sincere form of love Donghyuck could ever have for him, is no different from the love Donghyuck has for several other people in this world. Renjun was selfish—he didn't want to share, he wanted him all to himself. He wanted to surpass every other one of Lee Donghyuck's equally or even more devoted fans, even if unfairly. Because, he was only human to want to survive.
Renjun knew that an average-looking commoner like him didn't deserve Donghyuck. In fact, he wished for Donghyuck to claim a star like himself as his partner and live happily ever after. But Renjun also didn’t know how he’d survive if someone else were to win Donghyuck's heart. How he’ll deal with his unhealthy obsession for a star oh so far from his reach. How he would close the suffocating distance between them. The distance, the elevated height of social worth, between him and Donghyuck, which required the theoretical formulas of Einstein to calculate. Unreal in simpler terms, impossible in the simplest of terms.
Loving someone through a screen might actually kill him, ridiculous as it sounded to the majority of individuals in society. Renjun would prefer to avoid any connection with his significant one, rather than confront the painful reality that he will never truly have him for himself—a truth that would devastate him to death. But at the end of the day, his mornings dawned with Donghyuck's name and his nights whispered it softly as they fell. Renjun's emotional turmoil was a tempest, beautiful yet self-destructive.
Right then, A shooting star passed snapping Renjun out of his contemplations. He hadn't noticed that he had been gazing at the night sky in a single glance all this time.
"Mom! Look! A shooting star!"
"Oh no! Renjun! Quick, make a wish!"
"A wish?"
"Oh no, you missed it…."
"Why?"
"When you make a wish to a shooting star, it comes true."
"Really?!"
Bullshit.
Renjun accused, closing his eyes in hope of turning his gaze away from the sight of shooting stars. They unlocked certain memories inside his head, which he swore to conceal forever. But soon he cracked open his eyes after a few minutes, resisting the pull of sleep that threatened to envelop him. After all he wasn’t a homeless person to be sleeping on a park bench. Broke or not he still had a roof over his head to go back to.
More shooting stars passed indicating an event of Meteor shower. Renjun hated his inner child, he hated how hopeful it was for unreal things.
Yet, he gave in.
"I want my most beloved person to be my soulmate!"
A shooting star fell.
“Ahh… Did I just do the cringiest thing ever for a 27-year-old male?” Renjun laughed at his desperation, “Donghyuck would be so creeped out…”
While in the middle of processing his embarrassing act, he noticed a calico cat staring up at him right by the park bench. Renjun loved cats. And the cat looked hungry, so he decided to share his bread.
"Hey buddy, want this?"
The cat looked at the bread, then at Renjun. It stared at him for a few seconds before taking it and munching, satisfied. The sight brought forth a rare, beautiful smile to Renjun's face. Renjun barely ever smiled. Well, he did smile every now and then, but he’s unsure if he should term those facial expressions as something beautiful as ‘smile’. He would often awkwardly smile at clients to show formality, that’d creep them out enough to never approach him for commissions again.
“Kuchisake Onna. That’s what you look like,” his friend Jaemin once told him. “Don’t smile like that. In fact, don’t smile at all if you want commissions.”
But that wasn’t the case when he smiled at Donghyuck’s silly moments on reality shows. Or when he smiled at his artworks after completing them; giving a picture-form to the most radiant of his imaginations. Renjun’s smile is intoxicatingly beautiful; and the world was unaware of the gem that was yet to be discovered.
"You're cute."
“..........” Renjun’s smile disappeared.
…What?
˚ ✦ . . ˚ . . ✦ ˚ . ★⋆. ࿐࿔
. ˚ * ✦ . . ✦ ˚ ˚ .˚ ✦ . . ˚ . ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖✶ ✦