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The first time Thomas met Micro, he was struck by how effortlessly alive he seemed beneath all the ordinariness of the moment.
Thomas remembers the moment vividly because of how painfully ordinary it was. The campus convenience store at 21:12, fluorescent lights buzzing softly overhead while he stood in front of the drink fridge pretending to decide between two bottles he didn’t even want.
He’d been there long enough for the cold from the refrigerator to start biting at his skin when Micro appeared beside him without Thomas even noticing at first, “You’ve been staring at that bottle for a really long time.”
Thomas startled so hard he nearly dropped it, and Micro laughed quietly under his breath, small and unexpected, like the sound had escaped him before he could stop it.
And God.
Thomas remembers thinking — almost instantly, I want to hear that again.
Funnily enough, that became the start of everything.
Thomas starts noticing him on ordinary days at first. Across crowded lecture halls, where Micro’s laughter somehow always reached him no matter how loud the room was, effortless enough to make every other sound briefly disappear around it. Outside campus buildings, weaving lazily through the streets on his bicycle with his headphones half-on and backpack hanging crookedly off one shoulder. Near the convenience store by the gates, crouched beside the stray cats around campus, feeding them scraps of food while talking to them under his breath as though they could genuinely understand him with sparkles in his eyes.
And every single time, Thomas finds himself drifting toward him automatically — going up to him effortlessly.
Like gravity. A pulling force that attracts objects toward each other.
Like Micro had unknowingly become the center point Thomas kept circling back to no matter how much he tried to pretend otherwise.
At some point, Thomas stopped questioning why his feet kept carrying him toward wherever Micro happened to be. He’d see him sitting alone beneath the trees near campus and suddenly find himself changing direction without thinking. He’d catch sight of that familiar bicycle parked outside a cafe and feel his chest lighten before he could stop it. Sometimes he would spot Micro from across the street and immediately start searching for an excuse to approach him, only to realize halfway through the conversation that he hadn’t needed an excuse at all.
Micro became frighteningly easy to seek out.
He remembers the first time Micro asked for his number. They were sitting beneath the scorching afternoon sun outside one of the campus buildings. Thomas had been complaining nonstop about the weather for nearly ten minutes while Micro sat beside him on the curb looking completely unbothered, one arm resting lazily over his bent knee while a stray cat circled his shoes.
“You complain a lot,” Micro said eventually, glancing sideways at him with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“It’s thirty-four degrees,” Thomas shot back immediately. “Human beings aren’t meant to survive this.”
Micro laughed softly under his breath — that same quiet laugh Thomas had already started unconsciously searching for in crowded rooms.
Thomas remembers staring at him for a moment too long after that.
The sunlight caught strangely against Micro’s face. Warm against his skin. Bright enough to make him squint slightly whenever he looked upward. There was sweat dampening the collar of his shirt from the heat, his white hair messy from the bike ride to campus, his posture loose and careless in a way Thomas had begun associating only with him.
It's painfully ordinary, but somehow Thomas knew this moment would stay with him for years.
Micro nudged his shoulder lightly after noticing Thomas staring. "Is there something on my face?”
Thomas blinked hard. “Nothing.”
“You’re being weird again, Thomas,” Micro grins.
“You’re feeding campus cats in thirty-degree weather.”
“They’d die without me.”
“They literally look fatter than both of us combined.”
Micro snorted quietly at that, shaking his head before reaching into his bag again for another packet of cat food.
Then, after a brief silence that settled comfortably between them, Micro spoke without looking at him. “Hey,” he said, almost too casually. “Can I get your number?”
Thomas swore his heart stumbled so hard it physically hurt — because Thomas realized, in this moment, that he wanted this to continue.
Whatever this was.
The conversations. The growing familiarity between them that felt both terrifying and inevitable.
Thomas tried to keep his voice normal when he answered. “Wow,” he said dryly, pulling out his phone to hide how suddenly nervous he felt. “Buying me dinner first would’ve been nice.”
Micro's grin widened. “It's not like I'm asking you out.”
“Sounds like it,” Thomas handed his phone over anyway.
Slowly, accidentally, they kept colliding with each other until it stopped feeling accidental at all.
Their relationship began long before either of them officially acknowledged it. It started with conversations that gradually got longer and longer, and text messages that became the first and last thing either of them checked every day. They even memorized each other's routines so naturally that they forgot there had once been a version of life where they didn’t know these things about each other.
Thomas learned that Micro drank coffee too late at night and then laid awake complaining he couldn’t sleep afterward. Micro learned that Thomas went quiet whenever he was upset because speaking about his feelings made them feel too real and too embarrassing. Thomas learned Micro hated asking people for help even when he obviously needed it. Micro learned Thomas apologized constantly for things that didn’t require apologies at all.
They built their relationship the way young people often do — too carelessly and too quickly, with an unshakable confidence that understanding someone was the same thing as knowing them completely.
And for a while, maybe it really was enough.
There was one night during their first winter together when Thomas missed the last bus home after staying too late at the library and the cold outside was so severe it settled deep into his bones within minutes. He texted Micro mostly out of habit, fingers numb against his phone screen.
stuck outside. help :(
He hadn’t expected a reply anytime soon.
Instead, his phone immediately buzzed, a chat bubble appearing below his.
(micro)scopic thing : location?
Twenty minutes later, Micro pulled up beside the bus stop in a car that sounded like it was moments away from complete mechanical failure.
Thomas stared through the passenger window in disbelief, smiling a little too hard under his classic, red scarf. “Whose car is this?”
“My friend’s!” Micro shouts from inside the car while waving at Thomas eagerly.
“I'm scared. Why does it sound like that.”
Micro grinned lazily and laughed. “Get in!"
Inside the car, the heater barely worked. The radio crackled every few seconds like it was trying to die — and halfway through the drive the engine made a horrible screeching sound that caused Thomas to genuinely believe they were about to freeze to death stranded on the side of the road together.
Micro laughed so hard he had to pull the car over.
Thomas still remembers sitting there, furious and freezing while watching Micro fold forward against the steering wheel — laughing breathlessly, eyes squeezed shut, streetlights catching against his face that highlighted his moles. The moles Thomas would stare at for a little too long than socially acceptable.
And despite himself, Thomas started laughing too.
That was the night he realized he was in trouble. Being around Micro made ordinary things feel survivable. That existing itself felt softer, nicer, around him somehow.
And their relationship was built from moments like that.
Falling asleep halfway through movies and waking up tangled awkwardly together on the couch. Micro showing up at Thomas’ apartment with coffee he claimed he’d “accidentally bought too much of” even though it was always exactly Thomas’ order. Thomas staying awake helping Micro edit videos while pretending to complain the entire time. Those tiny, forgettable things.
At their peak, they used to go stargazing outside the city because Micro found a hill nearly an hour away that almost nobody else knew about, reachable only by a terrible uneven road that made Thomas complain the entire drive while Micro laughed at him without apology. They’d bring old blankets, cheap convenience store snacks, drinks neither of them actually liked but continued buying out of tradition anyway. Hell, they even bought alcohol once.
The stars always looked larger there, Thomas thought.
Back then, lying shoulder to shoulder beneath the endless stretch of the night sky, the future felt strangely simple. Vast, uncertain in the abstract way all futures are uncertain, but still manageable. Like no matter what happens afterward, they would somehow remain in each other’s lives naturally.
Micro used to point confidently at constellations he barely knew the names of just to make Thomas listen.
“That one’s Orion.”
“That is NOT Orion." Thomas would nudge Micro playfully.
“How would you know that?”
“Because you pointed at Venus thirty seconds ago and called it a constellation.”
Micro would grin shamelessly. “Close enough.”
And Thomas would laugh so hard his chest hurt because back then everything felt permanent in the way youth often mistakes happiness for certainty.
Sometimes, Micro would search up facts about the stars on the internet to impress Thomas. And sometimes, Micro would search pick-up lines about stars — or constellations, or anything in that theme.
Thomas still remembers them. He especially remembers this ramble Micro did while lying his head on Thomas' lap:
Even the brightest stars in the Milky Way look dim compared to you, Thomas. I think that’s why I like being here with you so much. Because no matter how beautiful the sky is, I always end up looking at you instead. It’s stupid, probably. There’s an entire universe above us and somehow you still manage to distract me from it. Sometimes I wonder if you even realize what you do to people. What you do to me. And I know you think too much, and worry too much, and carry your heart around like it’s something embarrassing to have, but I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who feels things as honestly as you do. I don’t know. I just think if there’s anything in this world I’d want to keep looking at forever, it’d probably be you.
And it made Thomas hot. Too hot within the cool wind.
There was another night — late summer, maybe their second year together — where they stayed on the hill until sunrise because neither of them wanted to leave yet. Thomas had fallen half asleep against Micro’s shoulder while the sky slowly shifted from black to deep blue, the world suspended in that quiet fragile hour before morning fully arrives.
The sound of the grass rustled beneath them, the winds brushed against their faces, and the stars above them glittered like silent witnesses to everything they were becoming. It all felt like a dream that Thomas didn't want to wake up from.
Thomas remembers for a moment — how Micro looked absolutely stunning beneath the vast, night sky. He would reach out to brush his slightly overgrown pale hair, feeling the soft locks underneath his fingers.
“I think I could do this forever,” Thomas murmured sleepily.
Micro glanced down at him. “Stargazing?”
Thomas shook his head slightly against his shoulder.
“This,” he whispered.
“You.”
For a moment, Micro didn’t respond, and Thomas remembers opening his eyes slightly, suddenly embarrassed by the honesty of it, worried maybe he’d said too much. Too cheesy for his own good.
But Micro only leaned down and pressed a kiss against the top of his head so gently Thomas almost could’ve mistaken it for imagination.
For Thomas, it was one of the most loved he has ever felt in his entire life.
And this is the part
Where our whole lives collide
The stars themselves fell
Like we did that night
Thomas thinks now that maybe they were happiest whenever neither of them tried too hard to define the future — when their love was allowed to exist entirely in the present tense instead of being stretched toward permanence.
Because somewhere along the years, things changed too gradually to notice at first. Not in a bad way though, it just felt — quieter.
The conversations shortened, and the silence between them lengthened. They still loved each other deeply enough to stay, but eventually staying began to feel different.
Thomas started noticing how often they spoke about the future separately instead of together. Different cities. Different wants. Different ideas of stability and happiness, and what a life should actually look like.
Sometimes Micro would disappear into himself mid-conversation, eyes distant in a way Thomas recognized immediately but no longer knew how to reach through. Sometimes Thomas would ask questions neither of them knew how to answer anymore.
“Do you still see us the same way?” He asked once while they were sitting in front of each other, working on their separate tasks on their laptop.
“What does that even mean?” Micro asked back, not looking away from his work.
“I don’t know."
Neither did Micro.
And maybe that was the beginning of the end — two people slowly growing into different versions of themselves while still loving each other the same way.
Thomas thinks the cruelest part is that there was never a single moment where things broke.
Gradually, tiny distances gathered silently between them like snow.
And now it’s December 21st.
They’re back on the hill because neither of them knew where else to go, the cold wind moving softly through the grass around them. The old blanket still smells faintly like dust and winter air. Above them, the stars remain indifferent and endless, exactly the same as they’ve always been despite everything beneath them changing completely.
“You remember the first time we came here?” Micro asks quietly after a long silence.
Thomas huffs out a weak laugh. “You got us lost.”
“We found it eventually.”
“You made me push the car,” Thomas says, looking at the way Micro's now-long white hair sways in the wind.
Micro smiles faintly at that, and for a moment, it becomes dangerously easy to pretend nothing has changed because Thomas still knows the rhythm of his breathing, and Micro still reaches over absentmindedly to pull the blanket higher over Thomas’ shoulder when the wind grows colder.
Love survives in habits long after certainty dies.
“Do you think we knew?” Thomas asks suddenly.
Micro turns slightly. “Knew what?”
“That it would end someday.”
The question settles softly between them — not bitter, not angry, just unbearably honest.
Micro looks back toward the stars before answering.
“I think,” he says slowly, “we knew we needed each other — that it mattered.”
And Thomas feels tears sting unexpectedly behind his eyes because It did matter.
Every midnight drive.
Every conversation that lasted until sunrise with Micro.
Every ordinary moment that slowly became inseparable from the shape of his life.
None of it became less real simply because it didn’t last forever.
Beside him, Micro exhales softly into the freezing air, adjusting their matching red scarves. “We were young,” he says quietly. “We loved each other the best way we knew how.”
Thomas laughs weakly, voice already cracking apart around the edges. “That sounds like a goodbye, you know?”
There’s a long pause after that. Then Micro says, very gently. “Maybe it is.”
And somehow that hurts more than cruelty ever could, because the person breaking Thomas’ heart is still handling it carefully, still speaking to him with tenderness, still loving him enough to want the ending to remain soft instead of destructive.
The stars blur above him.
“I really thought you were it for me,” Thomas whispers.
Beside him, Micro closes his eyes briefly as if the confession physically wounded him.
When he answers, his voice sounds fragile in a way Thomas has almost never heard before.
“I think you were for me too,” he says softly.
“Just not forever.”
Micro adds for the last time, "Let's be mature about this, Thomas."
Thomas just stares at him after that, eyes burning painfully as the words settle somewhere deep inside his chest.
And the worst part is that Micro still looks beautiful to him. Beneath the pale winter starlight, with his windswept hair and tired eyes and that same unbearable softness Thomas fell in love with years ago, he still looks like somebody Thomas could spend the rest of his life loving.
Maybe that’s what finally breaks him. Not the ending itself — but the realization that his love remained all the way until the end of it.
She said to me, and I said to her.
To hold back each other's true fate
Is not of our nature
Let's be mature.