"How are you feeling?" Deen asks the moment Tungsten entered her apartment. "Nervous." He answers.
It's the d-day that they set for Tungsten's performance. They planned it to perform at the center of their school lawn which is expected to be kinda full of students and they already told Jrey about the plan since she'd be the one to bring Astra while the other two will prepare. Tungsten's guy friends will help too, their work would be the ones to give Astra flowers and some typical romantic stuff that Thyron suggested. Deen doesn't have a keyboard so Zirrius let them borrow his, he apologized for not being able to watch since they have an interview and a photo shoot for the day and Tungsten promised him to send a video of the performance. "I have a celebrity's number in my phone." He excitedly whispers to Deen when Zirrius leaves for a while to answer a call.
"You better not sweat bullets or that would be disgusting." Deen warned when Tungsten picks the keyboard and they're already stepping out of the apartment. "I wouldn't be able to control that." He says as he continuously breathes deeply to calm his heart. "I know that but please don't fuck this up cause I'm going to deny of ever knowing you if your voice ever cracks up in the middle." Tungsten laughs at this. "I'm going to wear a shirt with your face on it saying that we both know each other." He counters. "Now that's two times embarrassing."
There are only few students at the lawn when they reached the place. Tungsten's friends are already at the area when they arrived, some of them are scattering rose petals at the ground while Thyron instructs the others about what they're going to do. "Are you sure we're not going to be in trouble with this mess?" Deen asks Thyron when they reached where he is standing. Thyron smiles at this, "Of course we won't, as long as we clean up then we'll be good." He says winking then returns to instructing everyone.
There's a stand for the keyboard and a chair for Deen near the speakers and a mic ready to be just turned on. She went to connect the keyboard at the speaker and tried a few keys to make sure that the volume is right, she also moves the stand away from the speaker since she's not yet ready to go deaf.
"Man, I still can't believe how you got to borrow these stuffs from the music club." She hears Tungsten say when he and Thyron are on their way to her. "I have my ways." Thyron answers with a playfulness in his voice. Deen looks up to them and gave Thyron a dirty look when their eye met and he laughs at her when Deen gives him a sour look after winking. "I sometimes wanna remove that eyes of yours everytime you wink." She says. "I hear that a lot from you." He says as he went to put his arm at Deen's shoulder, she shoves him. "Don't touch me when I know where that hands were just a few hours ago." She glares. Thyron laughs again at this before shouting at the guys to be ready because Jrey texted him that they're already on their way.
"Remember to breathe when you see Astra, Tungsten. Don't embarrass us and good luck." She tells her friend who seems to be going to faint any moment now. "I'll be okay. Gotta make the vocal teacher proud." He answers as the two of them smile to each other for a good luck.
People start to make a way for Astra when she and Jrey are at the school lawn. There are a lot of people today and Jrey won't tell her what's going on. There seems to be an event but as far as she knows, today's a regular day so no event or anything but the petals at the ground says otherwise and some people holds flowers, some of them she recognize.
Her heart starts to beat faster when the sound of the keyboard started playing and the people holding roses falls in a line and gives her the flower. They smile at her and when she tries to look at Jrey to ask what's happening, she doesn't find her. She finds herself in the middle of a circle, instead and few of the people are taking a video. Ryu is there too with a big smile on his face as he holds a camera, obviously recording everything, their eyes meet and he gestures her to get the flowers that is being handed to her so she does and notices the small paper attached to the stems and tries to read every cheesy line that is obviously handwritten by Tungsten.
Her hands started shaking when she's holding six roses and her eyes are suddenly brimming with tears when the seventh rose says "I'm sorry." Followed by, "Forgive me." She wanted to run but her feet are planted to the ground and she couldn't move, a sob escaped her mouth when the tenth rose says, "I can't imagine a life without you." Then the last rose reads, "I love you. Only you."
The music started to change and when she looks up, Tungsten stands in front of her a few meters away holding a microphone. He gave her a smile before raising the mic to his mouth and started to sing.
"We cry, we fight, yeah. But I know it's worth the pain."
The people started to move, circling both of them as Tungsten slowly walks to her with a teddy bear in his hand that is handed to him by Jrey.
Its cliché, everything's cringe-y and maybe goose bumps worthy but she's always been the romantic type of a person so she loves the attention, momentarily forgetting the fact the she broke up with the guy that is walking towards her.
"With your mind, am I crazy? Is impossible to change. Cause I tried to find something better, but I won't. When you kiss my cheek it sends me to another place."
Tungsten now stands in front of her and for a while, it feels like there's only the two of them with the butterflies in their stomachs and wait, is that a snow falling in the middle of spring? She wanted to look away from Tungsten to find where the snow is from but she couldn't. There's always something in the man's eyes that lures her and she couldn't look away, the two of them keeps their eye contact throughout the song, not minding the quiet shrieks from the distance and an ugly cry that is suspiciously Thyron's and Jrey's.
When the song ended, another song is played that she recognizes as the truth untold and a few sobs from the audience is being shushed.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hide anything from you. I swear I'll explain everything if you let me." Tungsten says still holding the microphone. The people agree with him. "Please?" he adds.
Astra thought about this a lot of times. Especially when you have a friend like Jrey who constantly bugs her with the what if's, the voice of reason as she called herself when Astra tried to shut her up.
She wants to hear his explanation, that maybe she got everything wrong and she made a rush decision being driven by her fear of being left by the man she loves, and that she is wrong to not to listen to Deen. There's also the silent voice in her head that says that it doesn't matter if Tungsten doesn't love her anymore, she wants him back and it doesn't matter if Jia is in the picture, as long as she have him, and that scares her. She's scared with the fact that she has fallen deeply in love that she started to lose the respect for herself.
The few weeks that they were apart helped her a bit with her way of thought. Jrey heard her worries and told her that maybe the break up wasn't that bad if it gave her a time to think about their relationship, Ryu was there too, telling her to have a time for herself and not think about Tungsten or Jia, and Deen might have been absent but she called her and told her to take a break from everything and go back to the reason why she loved Tungsten and it's okay to be selfless or selfish as long as she knows where the line ends.
She listened to her friends at that time, took a break from everything and thought of the things that made her love Tungsten, she also tried to go to the places she loves with Ryu and played the day away until she finally decided to talk to Tungsten and this surprise happens.
She's quite shock by the fact that her man can actually sing and there's no more off tune and a loud laugh from her friends or a flying object to hit Tungsten.
"Where'd the snow come from?" she asks instead of answering Tungsten. A few grunts is heard at the background but she didn't paid any attention to them because her nerves are starting to tickle her mind making it a mess right now.
Tungsten chuckles at her answer. "Apparently, Thyron has a lot of connection to make it happen."
"Better thank me later!" they hear Thyron whisper shouts.
"So, can we please talk about what happened? I want to fix everything." he asks again, he smiles nervously and is obviously stopping himself from playing with the hem of his shirt. Astra smiles at him with a nod while saying, "Okay, I'll give you a chance to fix this."
Everyone claps at them as Tungsten picks her up and twirls them around while laughing. Someone shouted a "kiss!" but Tungsten only shook his head and shouted back a "Later when you guys aren't around!" forgetting that he's still holding the mic so his voice is quite louder than necessarily and that he is clearly heard by everyone so they laughs at him.
Astra might love romantic stuffs, including this so called PDA but Tungsten's a private person and is actually shy doing all this couple-y things in public except for the hand holding so Astra only smiles and hugs Tungsten as she buries her face in his chest to hide her red face. Jrey and Ryu ran towards them and envelop the two in a tight hug that ends when Tungsten complains that he can't breathe.
When the crowd dissipates and Tungsten's friends started to clean the area, Deen shows up with a pat at Tungsten's shoulder and a rose for Astra that has a note that reads, "You two are idiots." Astra laughs at this and tried to pinch her but she quickly moves away and went behind Ryu.
"You guys sure did took your time. I almost stood up and hit you with the keyboard." She jokes as she moves the keyboard in her back. "You wouldn't dare." Tungsten playfully glares at her. "Nah, I would hate to waste the effort we spent to perfect your voice." She said while shrugging. Astra giggles at this.
"You sure did a great job a while ago." She said as she faces Tungsten who gave her a shy smile.
"Right? I bet your vocal teacher is very proud of what you have become." Jrey commented. Astra asks about this teacher and Jrey answers, "This two are very secretive about it."
"You wouldn't believe us anyway if we tell you and our Deen here is the one who's very secretive about him." Tungsten teases with a wink that made the three more curious and when they were about to ask her, she glares at them.
"Stop what you guys are about to do or I'm going to hit you with this." She threatens as she points at the keyboard.
"No you wouldn't use that. That's his." Tungsten says again that earned him a kick at the shin.
"Hey Deen!" someone shouted behind the friends that made the two stop at their bickering. It was one of Tungsten's friends that is unknown to Deen but who clearly knows her. "I think this is yours, it has your name engraved." He says before handing her a familiar necklace and running away with flushed cheeks.
"Okay? What's wrong with him?" Ryu asks and Tungsten loudly whispers, "He has a crush on her." The four laughs at this and teases Deen but she's not paying attention at them, instead, her eyes are focused at the necklace in her palm.
A wave of fear flashes in her eyes as she hastily looks around the area, already expecting a familiar face but she saw nothing. Her friends notices her sudden change of mood so they started to ask her what's wrong but she can't hear them. Her ears are ringing and her eyesight's kinda blurry, a bile forms in her throat as she swallows and everything started spinning so she closes her eyes and held onto the person next to her. "Hey, what's wrong?" Ryu asks as he makes sure that Deen wouldn't fall and hit her head.
Everyone's panicking and one of them is about to call for emergency but Deen started talking. "I'm okay." She says, "I think I got overwhelmed at the crowd and my body reacted late." She lies, her friends doesn't believe her so she tries to stand straight and waves them off. "I'm going home for now and have a rest." She excuses. They offered to accompany her but she declined. The lovebirds still need to talk and the other two has a class, she don't want to bother them so she lies and smiles at them as she hold her breath until her friends can't see her anymore.
Her hands started to shake and she is hardly breathing when she entered her car. She made sure to put the keyboard safely at the back seat before starting the engine but she knows that it'll be dangerous to drive at her state at the moment so she stops the engine and removes the key from the ignition.
She leans at the steering wheel with her hands in between as she breathes deeply to calm herself but her whole body is shaking and there are tears that continuously fall from her eyes. Her eyesight might be blurry at the moment but when she leans back at the seat and she looks at the necklace, everything seems to be so clear that a memory started to play in her mind as she closes her eyes tightly and shakes her head to hopefully shake the memory away but she fails.
She hears a phantom laugh as she looks back at the necklace again. A smile is what she pictures first, "Why engrave your name if you're giving me this?" her cousin asks when she gave him that necklace five years ago. "Your flings are always jealous of me, so why not give the future ones an early heartbreak if they happen to see my name on it?" her cousin laughs at this and pinches her cheeks that she quickly smacks. "As much as I hate you driving them away, I also like how your bratty ass keeps them away from me." he says with the laugh that she hates. "I swear you only keep me to make those girls stay away from you." She grunted. "You only go for girls with attitude problems and I want to kick you everytime you use me as an excuse to break up with them." She said as she punches her cousin's shoulder.
"So why give me a necklace with your name on it then?" he asks with a raised eyebrow. "Life's quite boring. I must admit, I sometimes enjoy making those girls jealous except when they turn violent." She says as she lies at the grass with her arms as her pillow. "You have to promise me one thing though." She says after a minute of silence. Her cousin hums at this as he also lies at the grass beside her. "When you finally found someone that you really love, give her that necklace but make sure to add her name below my name. That's what the space is for." Her cousin snorts at this. "I doubt that but sure."
The two of them stays silent again but after a while, her cousin sat up and looks at her. "Why would I give her a necklace that you gave me? And why the hell would I want your name on a gift that I'll give her?" he asks that made Deen smile. "You gotta admit that I'm your favorite cousin and I'm pretty much sure that you'd want us to be the best of friends so you better do what I said or I'm gonna hate your future love." She threatens. "That's yucky but sure. I'll make sure that she'll carry this necklace everywhere for you to see."
Deen caresses the necklace when the memory stops and she finally managed to calm herself down. She wipes her tears and slowly turns the necklace to check for a name and a sob escapes her mouth when she saw her name and a new name below.
She laughs as she caresses the names. "Impossible to fall in love." She snorts. "What a bullshit."