The sound of cheering rings loud in the backyard and I find myself being one of the people cheering Fleance on as he chugs some more alcohol along with the crowd. When he completes the challenge, we all holler and clap until the sound of chanting suddenly grows muffled.
My head starts spinning and I find it hard to keep my balance. I quickly turn to Fleance and tell him that I might need some fresh air. With a look of concern, he nods and after eliciting another cheer from the crowd gathering around us, he guides me to a room that is impeccably clean and organised.
The room is adorned with a large flatscreen television, a collection of expensive alcoholic beverages like whiskey and brandy, and some fragile and delicate items scattered around the place. I can tell that these are the things that Fleance would get in trouble with his friend for breaking.
As we enter the room, he points to a sliding door on the other side and tells me that the balcony is where I can get some fresh air. He asks me if I want him to get me some water. I decline, giggling uncontrollably before shaking my head perplexed.
Wait, why am I giggling?
To prove that I already have a drink, I wave the almost empty water bottle in his face like a pendulum. He looks at me in shock and takes the bottle out of my hand. I continue to rock back and forth on my heels, taking in the luxurious interior design of the room. Everything is so beautiful and extravagant.
Why do so many people live in such lavish places?
"Where did you get this from, Seong Jin? Please tell me you didn't take this from the fridge," Fleance exclaims, horrified, pulling me out of my train of thoughts frantically. "Did you drink this entire bottle?"
I nod vigorously, smiling in pride, but then I realise that it's actually a lie, so a sad frown curls my lips down, from the disappointment of not being able to impress him with my amazing water drinking skills.
"Well, not really. Dominic drank some of it, but I did drink the majority of it so that is still good, right? I can still get a prize for that, right or like a participation medal?"
"Flarg," he mutters audibly, rubbing his face frustratingly.
"Flarg." I giggle again and then try to compose myself when I realise the sound leaving my lips is not my usual chuckle.
"What?"
"You said flarg."
"No, I said fuck."
"I prefer flarg."
"Uh… okay. Think, Fleance, think.
"Flarg," I laugh loudly to myself, even tearing up.
"Seong Jin, how's about you go to the balcony and get some fresh air. I'll be right back, okay?" he rushes out.
"Is this about the flarg? I'll stop saying flarg then."
I furrow my brows in confusion at the panic running in his eyes.
Without even answering my question, Fleance flees the room, closing the door behind him. A moment of suspicion and curiosity crosses my mind before I shrug his weird behaviour off and head over to the sliding door, pushing it open. I cautiously tiptoe onto the balcony because I don't want to wake up the little leprechaun who's sleeping soundly in the corner.
Once the cold, night air hits my face, I immediately bathe in this moment. My hands grasp the banister.
As I look down, my eyes are greeted by the lush green grass and the shimmering swimming pool. The pool area is dotted with a few people dressed in their swimming trunks and bikini tops, leisurely sipping on their favourite alcoholic beverages.
Suddenly, some loud chanting and yelling breaks out, piquing my curiosity. I lean over the banister to catch a glimpse of what's going on, but my sudden movement almost causes me to lose my balance. So, I decide to step back and take in the view of the illuminated cityscape spread out before me.
Tonight might be a moonless night, but it's still nonetheless a beautiful night. The stars light up the dark sky and I blink up at the different constellations staining the black blanket.
"Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I'd like to jump a car. Up and wavy shine away."
That doesn't sound right.
"With some diamonds, I will slay. Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you… um… star?"
"I don't think that's how it goes," an amused voice says.
At the sudden intrusion which shatters through my private singing, I jump up in terror, my heart racing wildly in my chest.
I tightly grip the banister, desperately trying to maintain my balance and avoid the possibility of falling over it. The mere thought of it sends shivers down my spine, as I realise that a fall from this height could be fatal. It would not only be a personal tragedy but also cause immense sorrow to my loved ones, as well as millions of people on Earth. As I try to calm myself down, I strain to identify the source of the sound.
Is it the leprechaun, whose mischievous antics have caused me so much trouble in the past? Oh, how many adventures we have had in the past, the leprechaun and I.
I glance over at him, only to find that he is no longer sleeping on the table. My heart skips a beat as I wonder where he could have gone. Could he be hiding somewhere, planning yet another prank on me? The uncertainty is nerve-wracking, and I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I contemplate the possibilities.
"Also, you can't rhyme star with star. That's not how nurseries work."
Catching onto the fact that the voice is coming from behind me, I spin around quickly and blink rapidly to clear the unexpected blur which invades my vision which makes it severely difficult to decipher what the dark figure is. After one more tightly pinched blink, I flutter my eyelids up, my droopy gaze meeting the sight of a seemingly older, yet mischievous looking boy.
Despite my groggy state, his lopsided grin manages to bring a touch of curiosity to my eyes while simultaneously I lean into the banister distrustfully, fearing what he could do to me.
Seemingly not noticing my offish behaviour, he slowly takes a few steps towards me and stands beside me, thankfully keeping an admirable space between us.
I cautiously stare up at his side profile as his dark locks flutter in the wind. His blue cup hovers over the banister and I catch the colourless liquid which fills it to the brim, concluding that it's probably alcohol. I distinctly remember Dominic telling me to stray away from open containers and not to accept any sort of beverage from anyone I don't know.
"Beautiful night, right?" he whispers softly, letting the wind carry his soft words over to me. It's immediately evident that he's comfortable in his own skin.
"If you disregard the loud thumping and the puking noises coming from that bush over there then yeah. Sure. Beautiful night."
He chuckles softly and then turns to glance at me from beneath his unnaturally long lashes, the remnant of humour still kissing his lips. "I was actually talking about the stars."
"Oh..."
"Yeah." Again, laughter pours out of him as my cheeks turn into a crimson colour. Pointing up at the sky, he adds passionately, "See, if you look right over there you'll see Ursa Major."
"The Great Bear," I murmur after him in agreement and when I steal a quick glance at him, I notice his surprise at my familiarity with the topic so I add, "Which is a weird name to give it because that constellation looks nothing like a bear. It's just a square and a line. If anything, it should be called the square-headed snake."
"What?" he exclaims incredulously and throws his head back with a guffaw of laughter.
"Yeah."
"You are definitely not looking at the entire constellation."
Then he proceeds to show me the other stars which form Ursa Major and at the end of his lesson, I no longer think that the constellation should be called the square-headed snake.
"I always think of the constellations as a giant game of connect-the-dot. In those group of stars lies a celestial tapestry and it's painted across the night sky, telling stories as old as time or ancient maps that guided sailors across uncharted waters. It's all about using your imagination and seeing the bigger picture behind all the dots and lines."
"You sound like a fake deep," I blurt out unwittingly, unable to keep that comment to myself.
He snorts in amusement and neither agrees nor disagrees and he fortunately doesn't seem offended by my words which causes the tension in my shoulders to evaporate into the night.
As we stand there on the balcony, side by side, I find myself staring up at him with interest and trying to place him. Who is he? A casual atmosphere lingers in the air and with how much silence we can endure it's almost as if we've known each other for a long time despite meeting mere moments ago. His laidback tone of voice only adds to the allure.
"If you don't mind me asking," he breaks the silence along with my gaze on him, "what are you doing in this room?"
"Is this your room?" A mixture of curiosity and fascination wells up within me.
"I wish. My mum is not rich enough to afford a place like this."
"Oh, well I was just waiting for Fleance. He said that he was coming back."
"Are you friends with Fleance?" He looks me up and down and seems kind of confused which I wonder if I should take offense to. "Do you know anything about his supposed girlfriend? He keeps telling me he has one but I do not believe him one bit."
I look over at him and feel his curious gaze burning through me. "Uh… is that a trick question?"
"Um… do you want it to be a trick question?"
"No?"
A smile spreads across his face, making him look even more handsome than he already is. I cannot help feeling a little bit envious of his naturally white, straight teeth. It's not fair.
I wonder if he had to wear any braces to get them to look like that. Yang Jin and I were born with crooked teeth and had to get braces on for about three to four years and as racist and stereotypical as this may sound, I blame it on my genes. Going through some of the albums, I noticed that Amma also used to wear braces for her crooked teeth and Halmeoni too.
I think the only person who had beautiful, straight teeth was my great-grandma. It had to be great-grandpa's fault then or maybe it dates a few generations back. What if back then my great, great, greatest grandmother or -father was involved with a person of the other race and that's how crooked teeth became a part of our gene pool?
Is that racist of me?
"No," he answers, pulling me out of my train of thought. "It isn't."
"Wait, did I say that out loud?" I muse, confused that he answered my question.
"Did you say what out loud?"
"The racist comment."
"Huh?" he muses, his eyebrows furrowing as amusement plays around in his beautiful heterochromatic eyes. He looks awfully familiar. Have we met before? "No, I was just answering your previous question, about it being a trick question. It isn't."
"Oh, yeah. No, I knew that."
I nod curtly, puckering my lips in confusion when I see a witch on a broom, flying by while cackling maliciously.
She makes an effort to wink at me as she scratches the giant mole on her chin, disappearing into the night sky. I scrunch my face in both bemusement and disgust, wondering if what I just saw was real or a figment of my imagination. My focus then shifts back to the boy in front of me who is now giving me a weird look as his eyes flicker back and forth between me and the spot the witch previously occupied. Unfortunately for him, she is now long gone.
"Hmm, I don't know anything about a girlfriend. If he has one, he hasn't told me anything about her. Then again, Fleance and I just started talking. We met through a school project a couple of days ago and afterwards, we figured out that we take the bus together so we've become like bus besties or something like that."
"Is it? Yeah, well, I don't think he will be coming back for a while."
"Why?"
"Some neek is trying to jump down into the pool from the roof and Fleance cannot afford another dent on his criminal record."
"Another dent?" I give him an enquiring look. "Fleance has a criminal record?"
"Believe it or not, we once robbed a bank and hot-wired a car and were on a high-speed chase with the cops. He got caught and I somehow managed to escape meaning I did not get caught. Shows how shit he is at being a criminal."
"Oh," the casual tone of my voice conceals the whirlwind of emotions which are surging within. Despite my surprise, I somehow managed to maintain a collected façade. "That s-sounds fun."
"You're too cute," he mutters under his breath with a bit of an amused chuckle. "I'm just kidding. We didn't rob a bank."
"Oh."
"He just used to nick shit from convenience stores for fun and one time he tried that with me while I was outside, refilling my mum's car, but he managed to get himself caught."
"Shit."
"Yeah, and the owner wasn't going to let him get away with a slap on the wrist so he called the feds on him and Fleance got a misdemeanour on his record." A reminiscent simper paints his lips and amusement glints in his eyes as he shakes his head. The smile then falls off. "Never again would I make the mistake of waiting for him outside a convenience store just in case he jeopardised my future at Oxford."
"Oxford? You're in the University of Oxford?"
He glances over at me from my question and then slowly bobs his head up and down.
"I actually applied to go there."
"Yeah?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Well, I hope you get accepted."
"Me too. I'd be devastated if I wasn't."
"Well, if you don't, I'll kidnap the dean's nephew and force them to accept you."
A laughter bursts out of me, echoing into the starry night. A contagious giggle that is hard for me to contain as if all the humour in the world has suddenly found its way into my soul just from his proclamation. After coming down from my laughing, we quickly exchange glances and I cannot help but notice the mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
"Are you a first-year student?" I ask him with an amused grin, tilting my head so I can catch his side profile.
"Yep." I admire his soft jaw which has a bit of stubble on it. "Majoring in Astronomy."
"Ah," I point at him in realisation with my upper teeth biting down onto my bottom lip to portray how I'm trying to hide my grin, "Ursa Major."
He throws his head back as another train of laughter escapes past his lips.
My eyes take in his face as the dim light kisses it gently and I revel in his state of uncontrollable mirth.
His dark hair seems to be fluttering around in slow motion and for a second he looks like a model for some cologne advertisement. I can't lie, he's very good-looking.
Recovering from his humour, a sense of calm settles over us and he nods slowly with a soft grin. Then he trails his gaze back out into the city, his cup swirling in his hand and creating a vortex with the liquid. The alcohol spills over the rim of the cup from how full it is, but he doesn't seem to care since that doesn't stop his actions.
"You want a drink?" he offers.
I shake my head, telling him that I'm good. From my response, I expect him to call me a wet blanket or pressure me into just taking a tiny sip, but he merely shrugs as if to silently say, "your loss". Besides, Dominic warned me not to take any drinks from strangers. We may have shared a few laughs, but that does not make him a friend yet. He's not foe either. He's more of an in-betweener.
With that being said, he tilts his cup over and the clear drink sloshes down to the ground with a loud splutter.
"Hey!" We both look over the banister from the angry shout and my eyes enlarge when I see that he spilled his drink on some guy. "What the fuck, man?"
"Ooh…" he drawls out awkwardly and then he grimaces apologetically. "My bad, mate."
Staring up at us blankly, clearly not accepting his thoughtless apology, the glowering and, dare I add, wet boy hardens his glare. With an amused smile, I wave down at him and the angry boy retaliates to that action by flipping us the bird harshly and storming away while grumbling more curses under his breath. After a few seconds of just pin drop silence, we both glance over at each other and spurts of contagious chuckles escape past our lips.
I notice my body starting to slowly relax under his presence, but I make it a mission to remain a bit cautious of him, keeping my eye on him through my peripheral vision.
Except when that vision gets blurry though, I blink a million times to clear his wavering form. Before I know what's happening, I stumble and he catches my wrist, keeping me on my feet. His other hand, which is holding his now empty cup, winds around my waist.
"Whoa, there. Are you okay?"
I blink at the black dots playing around the corners of my eyes.