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After a breakup, what happens to a person?
Do they cry their eyes out? Do they fall into sadness, into quiet disappointment, or a kind of melancholy that never quite goes away? Do they stop believing in love altogether?
Astro had always wondered about questions like those. But unlike most people, he didn’t have the answers, not because he didn’t care, but because he wasn’t human.
Toons were only ever built with five basic emotions: anger, sadness, disgust, joy, and fear.
Simple feelings. Easily understood. Easy to programs into their colorful, animated lives.
But over time, he had come to realize something else. Those five weren’t enough.
Not really. Because what he was feeling now couldn’t be boiled down to just one of those emotions.
He wasn’t simply sad. He wasn’t just afraid. He was in pain. The kind of pain that came with loving someone, and then losing them.
Love, for Astro, had become something far more complicated than his creators ever intended.
It was unpredictable. It was frustrating. It was beautiful.
And it had flavor, strange as that might sound. Sometimes it was sweet, like biting into a ripe orange. Sometimes it was sour, like plums that hadn’t fully ripened.
But sometimes, it was bitter, like the herbal medicine Austin used to make him drink when he was sick. Unpleasant, yes. But comforting in it's own way. Familiar.
Still, there was one thing he knew for certain: whenever Sprout was around, love always tasted sweet.
Being with him felt like sunlight on skin, warm, effortless, safe.
Astro had loved him completely. Fearlessly. With everything he had to give. Until it hurts.
Then came the words. Quiet. Gentle. Hesitant.
“I don’t think we’re right for each other.”
Seven simple words. So vague, so soft. And yet, to Astro, they crashed into him like a meteor falling from the sky.
There was nothing dramatic about the moment. No shouting. No tears.
Just those words? Unfinished, unanchored, and yet somehow enough to tears open a space inside him he didn’t know existed.
He didn’t fight back. Didn’t argue. Didn’t ask why. He just stood there, letting the sentence settle into him like ash.
He wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to feel something specific. But he did. Something sharp, dull, and aching, all at once.
And still, he understood. Because he had grown enough to realize a difficult truth: time doesn’t stop for anyone.
The world keeps spinning. The stars keep drifting. People keep changing.
Every years, everything shifts, just a little. And sometimes, without a reason, hearts shift too.
Paths diverge. Lives unravel in ways no one plans for. And sometimes… people forget. People leave.
Astro thought that was cruel, the way this universe worked. The way he kept trying to forget, to let go, only to find Sprout again in all the little things.
In the songs they used to hum together. In the empty corners of rooms they once filled with laughter.
In the quiet moments before sleep, when they used to share a cup of tea and believe, even if only for a moment, that nothing could ever break.
The memories were everywhere. Like scattered stardust. And they followed him.
Perhaps what hurts most wasn’t the loss itself. It was the fact that he still carried every memories like constellations inside him… while Sprout had already moved on.
He had once believed that loving someone with all your heart would be enough.
That if you loved sincerely, honestly, without holding anything back, it would be unbreakable.
That it could fix what was broken.
That it would save something so precious.
But he was wrong. Not all love stories come with magic. Not all of them end with forever.
Some of them just end. Quietly. Without warning. Without reason.
Just silence, and the echo of a name that no longer answers back.
To love someone is to accept walking beside them for a while. Even when you already sense, deep down, that someday, you’ll have to let go.
Because love, at it's core, is a quiet tragedy.
It isn’t just about the smiles, or the warmth, or the moments of happiness that sparkle like stars in memory.
It’s also about the silence that follows.
The absence.
The ache.
It’s the storm that brews inside your chest, a war between longing and heartbreak.
Memories rising like a tide, fierce and unforgiving… only to be pulled down again by the weight of pain, of knowing that what was once mutual is now one-sided.
Astro understood that now.
He had never thought he would, not as a Toon, not as someone who wasn’t even built to feel this much, but he did.
He felt it all, vividly and unmistakably.
He was alone in the room, surrounded by messes he hadn’t bothered to clean up.
Empty boxes, forgotten papers, a blanket still draped over the back of a chair, untouched for days.
Nothing was in it's place anymore, not in the room, not in his heart.
In one hand, he held a half-full glass of red wine.
He hadn’t meant to drink tonight, but the bottle had been sitting there on the counter for days, as if waiting for him.
He took a slow sip.
It was bitter, sharp, dry, almost acidic on the tongue.
And yet… it didn’t numb anything.
It didn’t quiet the ache.
If anything, it only made it clearer.
Because no matter how much he tried to drown it out, with distractions, with silence, with alcohol, the truth always returned:
He still loved Sprout.
Loved him in ways he couldn’t even explain.
Still thought of him during the quiet hours of the night, when the world slowed down and the weight of memory pressed heavier against his chest.
Still caught himself hoping foolishly, painfully that Sprout might look only his way again.
That the Toon who once held his hand like it meant something would, even for a second, remember the way it felt.
That look in Sprout's eyes, the one that used to soften whenever he saw Astro, that flicker of affection, of belonging, it was gone.
Replaced by something distant.
Polite.
Detached.
And Astro?
He was still here. Still waiting. Still loving someone who had already moved on.
The glass emptied in his hand, and he hadn’t even noticed.
It felt symbolic, in a way, how quickly it drained. Just like their love.
So deep, so intense, so overwhelming at the beginning. And yet, gone in an instant.
No warning. No slow unraveling.
Just a sharp line between "before" and "after".
They had come together like fire, fast, consuming, all heat and light.
And they had parted just as quickly.
No explosion. No drama.
Just silence.
Just the quiet sound of a heart breaking.
Astro tilted the glass, watching the last drop roll along the curve before it vanished.
He wondered, not for the first time, if Sprout missed him at all.
If he ever thought back to those nights they stayed up too late, talking about things that didn’t matter, and everything that did.
If he remembered the laughter. The soft glances. The way Astro used to say his name like it was sacred.
Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.
But the not-knowing…
That was it's own kind of sorrow.
And Astro sat there, in the middle of a room that no longer felt like home, holding a glass that no longer held anything, carrying a love that no longer had a place to go.
It had been eight months since they had gone their separate ways.
Eight whole months, and yet Astro’s heart remained quietly tethered to him, like a thread pulled taut through time.
He still thought of him. Not every second of every day, but often enough that it still ached. The kind of ache that didn’t cry out, but lingered.
A gentle, constant reminder that some loves never really go away, they just settle deeper into the bones, becoming part of who you are.
Sprout. His light. His angel. The one who had brought joy into his world without even trying.
With just his voice, his laughter, the way he moved through life like it was music and he was always just half a step ahead of the beat.
Astro had loved him the way you love something you never thought you’d deserve, completely, quietly, and with an almost childlike wonder.
But then Sprout left, and everything changed. He didn’t leave in anger. There were no slammed doors, no final fight.
Just a quiet goodbye, and a space that kept growing larger between them. He took the happiness with him. The warmth. The colors.
And in their place, Astro was left behind silence, and a thousand unanswered questions. Since then, Astro had lived with that emptiness.
Some days it was smaller. Other days, it filled the whole room.
❛⧼𓆩⋆✮⋆𓆪⧽❜
The months hadn’t touched Sprout in the way Astro expected. He was still the same. Still vibrant. Still full of life. Still as beautiful.
Still moving like nothing in the world could weigh him down.
But something had. Something unspoken. Something in the way he didn’t quite look at Astro, at least not the way he used to.
Not the way that used to make Astro feel seen, known, chosen. The warmth was gone from his gaze.
Not in a cruel way, but in the way someone stops looking at you like you belong to their world.
Astro couldn’t understand it. How could someone stay exactly the same on the outside and yet feel so impossibly distant?
How could the person who once held your heart like it was something precious now stand before you like a stranger you used to know?
He wanted to ask him. So many things. Why? When did your heart change? What did I do? Or didn’t do? But he didn’t.
Because the truth was already there, in the way Sprout smiled politely and shifted his weight as if ready to move on.
In the way the conversation never quite touched anything real. In the way it all felt so temporary.
And now, standing there in front of the boy he had once called his everything, Astro realized something that broke him all over again:
Sprout hadn’t changed. But his heart had. And that was enough to change everything.
"If we were in another world… in another dimension… would you give me, give us a chance?”
Astro didn’t say the words aloud. He only thought them, quietly, bitterly, like a wish whispered into the void.
You’re still here. Still in my heart. Still walking past me every day in Gardenview like nothing ever changed. And yet, you feel so far away.
He saw Sprout often. Too often. Enough for the familiarity to ache.
The way he walked. The way he laughed with someone else. The way he looked at the world as if it had never broken him.
But the distance was there, invisible but endless. Astro could see him, hear him, even smile politely at him when they passed.
But he could no longer reach him.
He couldn’t touch him.
He couldn't call his name the same way.
And worst of all, he no longer had the right to call him his.
That was the cruelest part of it all.
Because sometimes, the people you love the most don’t disappear.
They stay. Just far enough to remind you of everything you’ve lost.
And because of this pain, this relentless ache that had taken root so deeply inside him, Astro found himself returning to the same question.
Over and over again, one that never seemed to leave him no matter how many nights passed:
Had Sprout ever truly loved him?
Or had all those days, all those small moments and quiet intimacies, been nothing more than play?
A game? Something fleeting that only ever felt real to him?
The thought tormented him. It wasn’t just about wanting an answer, it was about needing one.
Because the not-knowing was worse than anything Sprout could have said. If Sprout had looked him in the eyes and said, “I never loved you,” maybe Astro could have accepted it.
Maybe he could have built walls high enough to contain the longing that still clawed at him every day.
If Sprout had admitted it was nothing, that he had pitied Astro or even looked down on him for loving so much, then at least the pain would have direction, sharp, clean, final.
But Sprout didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He left silence. Silence, and fragments.
Glances that lingered too long, small gestures of kindness that came when Astro least expected them.
Times when Sprout avoided him completely, like Astro was nothing more than a shadow in the corner… and times when he reached out, unprompted, offering help, a word, a touch.
Those moments ruined him. Because they gave him hope. Tiny flickers of hope, fragile and poisonous.
The kind that dug deep and convinced him, against all reason, that maybe something still remained. That maybe Sprout hadn’t truly let go.
Astro hated it. He hated the push and pull. The way he felt trapped in a cycle he couldn’t escape.
The way every glimpse of Sprout reopened wounds he thought had begun to close.
The way his heart would leap every times their eyes met, only to crash when Sprout looked away a second later.
He hated how he still remembered everything: the warmth of Sprout’s hand, the sound of his laugh, the way he used to say Astro’s name softly.
Those memories were sweet, and that was the worst part, because sweetness made the ache sharper. It made forgetting impossible.
Day after day, Astro carried this silent war inside him. He wanted to scream. To demand answers. To beg. To curse.
To do anything that would break this endless limbo of not knowing where they stood, or if Sprout had ever truly stood with him at all.
But he didn’t. He stayed quiet. He endured.
And in that silence, hope twisted into despair, slow, suffocating, and impossible to shake.
It was killing him slowly, not in a way anyone could see at first glance, but quietly, piece by piece, from the inside out.
There were no scars, no wounds to point at. Just a hollow ache in his chest that deepened a little more each day.
To everyone else, Astro was still the same, gentle, soft-spoken, endlessly kind. The Toons admired him for it.
They called him patient, level-headed, someone who could be counted on when everything else fell apart.
But they didn’t see him when the doors closed.
Behind closed doors, there was no patience. No carefully measured calm. Only silence, heavy, suffocating silence.
And a man sitting hunched over on the floor, staring at his own hands as if they were foreign to him.
The person he loved most no longer cared. And somehow, that simple fact had hollowed him out more thoroughly than any wound ever could.
Dandy had tried. Over and over again. So had the others. They took turns knocking on his door, dragging him out into the halls, coaxing him toward the dining room.
“Come on, you need to eat something.”
“Just one bite. For me.”
“You can’t keep skipping meals like this.”
But nothing worked. Astro always gave the same tired smile, the same quiet “I’m fine.”
Then he’d slip away the first chance he got and retreat back into his room, into the quiet that felt both safe and unbearable.
Food made it worse. Every bite, every smell, every plate, all of it reminded him of Sprout.
He remembered the way Sprout used to hum under his breath while cooking, a soft, tuneless melody that always made the kitchen feel warm.
He remembered the way Sprout would push a plate toward him with a little grin and say, “Taste it, tell me if it’s too salty,” even though it never was.
He remembered sitting across from him, laughing over meals that were simple but perfect, not because of the food itself, but because of who made it.
Now, sitting alone, even the thought of food left a bitter taste in his mouth. Eating felt wrong. Pointless. Tasteless. So he didn’t.
Vee was the one who finally snapped. She slammed her hands down on the table one evening, startling everyone in the room. Her voice cut sharp, frustration bleeding into every word.
“That’s it! I swear, I’m going to find Sprout and make him explain himself. Whatever this is? Whatever he’s doing to you? It’s not fair!”
But even as she said it, everyone knew she didn’t mean it. Her anger wasn’t really aimed at Sprout. It was at the helplessness of it all.
At watching Astro wastes away in silence, at seeing the light in his eyes flicker out a little more every day, and not knowing how to stop it.
Because the truth was, Sprout hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t lied. He hadn’t betrayed anyone.
He had simply… stopped loving him.
And somehow, that was the cruelest wound of all.
❛⧼𓆩⋆✮⋆𓆪⧽❜
"You love him that much?”
Dandy had asked the question before, so many times it had lost meaning, yet he still asked, as if hoping one day Astro’s answer might change.
“I do,” Astro rasped, his voice raw, exhausted. “I love him so much it hurts.”
His eyes weren’t on Dandy. They were fixed on the small glass jar perched on the shelf beside the bed, the jar filled with paper stars Sprout had folded for him long ago.
It was dusty now, edges of the folded stars softening with time, but Astro looked at it like it was sacred. Like it held every memories he refused to let go of.
Dandy followed his gaze and sighed. He wanted to shake him, to tell him to stop torturing himself, but he couldn’t.
Not when he saw the way Astro’s hands trembled just looking at it.
“Why?” Dandy asked quietly. “What is it about him that makes you love him so much?”
Astro blinked, dazed, then gave a small laugh, brittle.
“Everything,” He murmured. “There’s too much to name.”
Then he smiledx a small, crooked smile, the kind that looked more like pain than joy. Maybe he really was losing his mind.
Maybe he really was crazy for Sprout, crazy in a way that was both numbing and agonizing, sweet and unbearable all at once.
“I’d trade my life,” he said hollowly. “Just for one more hug. One last time.”
Dandy said nothing. He only stood there for a long moment, watching his friend quietly unravel, then rose to his feet.
He placed a hand gently on Astro’s shoulder, a silent gesture of comfort, though it felt far too small to mean anything, and made his way toward the door.
The room outside was dim, lit only by the soft flicker of hallway lights. Dandy pulled the door open, stepped out, and froze.
Someone was there.
A silhouette, still and quiet, pressed against the wall beside the doorframe.
Sprout.
Dandy’s breath caught. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to that single figure, head bowed, fists loosely clenched, shoulders rigid with tension.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t look up. He didn’t even flinch at the sound of the door opening.
The silence between them was heavy, like the moment before a storm breaks. Dandy didn’t need to ask how long Sprout had been standing there.
He already knew.
He must have heard everything.
All those sleepless nights Astro had spent calling his name. Every desperate confessions. Every quiet sobs into the dark.
Sprout had heard it all.
And yet… he didn’t move.
When Sprout finally spoke, his voice was faint, trembling, almost lost.
“I…don’t have anything left to say..."
Dandy froze in place. And before he could muster a response, Sprout turned. Step by step, slowly, silently, he began to walk away.
“Wait!”
Dandy’s voice cut through the hallway.
“At least talk to me!”
Sprout stopped, lips pressed into a tight line, but before he could walk away, Dandy reached out and grabbed his arm.
Without giving him the chance to resist, Dandy pulled him back into his own room, shut the door behind them, and gestured sharply toward a chair.
“Sit.”
Sprout hesitated, but sat anyway. The silence that followed was tense, suffocating.
Finally, Dandy turned to face him fully, eyes narrowed.
“What the hell happened? Why’d you leave Astro like that? The two of you were… happy! Weren’t you!?”
The questions came in a rush, sharp and unrelenting, like stones thrown one after another.
Sprout sat still, hands curling tightly in his lap. It took him a long moment before he spoke, voice low, almost fragile.
“I wasn’t good enough for him.”
Dandy scoffed, disbelief coloring his tone. “He feels the same way about you-"
Sprout cut him off, shaking his head. “No. Everything about him is perfect. Inside and out. He’s… too good.”
“He thinks the same about you!” Dandy shot back, frustration bleeding into every words.
“You heard him just now! You know he still loves you! You still love him too, don’t you? So why- why are you doing this?”
Sprout’s eyes flickered, a brief flash of something raw, something pained, before he finally said it. The words landed like a stone.
“Because I don’t love him anymore.”
The room went still. Dandy’s breath hitched. He searched Sprout’s face, waiting for some sign of a lie, a crack, a tremor, anything.
But Sprout’s gaze stayed fixed on the floor, jaw tight, his shoulders tensed, fingers twisting in his lap as if trying to hold himself together.
For a long while, he said nothing.
The silence stretched between them, heavy enough to crush the air from the room.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, hoarse, as though the words themselves were cutting his throat on the way out.
“I used to think love would be enough,” He said. “That if I just stayed, if I kept telling myself I loved him, everything else would fall into place. But… something changed. Slowly. Quietly. And I hated myself for noticing it.”
He lifted his eyes, not to Dandy, but to some distant point in the room, like he couldn’t bear to look at anyone directly.
“Every time he smiled at me, I felt it, this ache. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared so much it hurt. He’s… perfect, Dandy..
...Everything about him. He never gives less than everything he has. He’s patient, kind, gentle in ways I’ll never be. And the more I saw that, the more I realized I was falling behind.”
Sprout’s hands trembled slightly as he exhaled.
“Do you know what it’s like to stand next to someone like that? Someone who loves you with everything they are, and to feel your own heart slipping away?”
His voice cracked on the last words.
“I started pretending. Smiling when I didn’t feel it. Saying ‘I love you’ when it didn’t echo in my chest the way it used to..
..I thought I was buying time, for him, for me, but all I was doing was lying. And every days, the guilt got heavier. Every days, I felt like a worse person.”
He turned his head sharply, biting down on the inside of his cheek.
“I wanted to stay. God, I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t keep hurting him like that. He deserves someone who loves him the way he loves me. Not… this. Not me.”
There was a rawness to his tone, a mix of shame, exhaustion, and something unspoken, something Dandy couldn’t name.
“Leaving was the only thing I could do for him,” Sprout whispered. “The only kindness I had left to give. I have no rights to see him anymore."
Sprout then take his leave, as the door clicked shut behind him, and the silence that followed felt heavier than anything Dandy had heard in their words.
He stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty space Sprout had occupied just seconds ago, trying to make sense of what he’d just heard, and failing.
For the first time in a long while, Dandy found himself truly unsettled. He wasn’t part of their story. Not really.
He’d always been on the outside, watching from the periphery, a friend, a witness, never the one caught in the middle of it all.
And yet somehow, seeing them unravel like this left an ache in his chest he couldn’t shake.
Love wasn’t simple. He’d always known that, in the vague, abstract way people know storms are dangerous without ever being struck by lightning.
But now? Seeing Astro break, seeing Sprout crumble under the weight of his own heart? It was different.
Love came fast, sudden, blinding, like the flare of a star.
And just as quickly, it left.
Leaving wreckage in it's wake.
Leaving two Toons stranded on opposite sides of the same memory.
Dandy exhaled, slow and unsteady. For all their devotion, for all the quiet tenderness that had once tied Astro and Sprout together.
This was where it had ended, not in screaming, not in betrayal, but in silence. In the soft, merciless realization that sometimes, even love isn’t enough.
And as he stood there, a reluctant witness to someone else’s heartbreak, Dandy couldn’t help but wonder if any love, no matter how bright, could ever truly last.
Maybe in another life, they would find each other again.
Maybe in another life, their paths would cross at the right time, under gentler stars.
They would meet, they would fall, and they would begin anew, free of all the wounds, the weight, the quiet regrets of this life.
And on that day, perhaps, they would promise forever.
Not as a desperate plea, not as a fragile hope doomed to fade, but as something certain. Unshaken. Eternal.