stardust | park seonghwa - Chapter 23: Chapter 23

CLASS wasn't supposed to start today. Six days into the new year and I'm already back in the painting studio. Sitting by my easel, eyes on the professor and scribbling letters into my notebook. Our professor says she will be going on maternity leave, since her baby is due in a few months and that she needs to give us our last assignment for the semester.
"I'm sorry for pulling you out from your houses so early into the year," she apologises, pulling out a wheelie board and a stool from the side. A guy helps her on to her seat and she smiles at him gratefully.
"Anyways, final assignment for the semester," she begins to say, clapping her hands together. "As we all know, before the summer break we have our annual showcase where every department will show off their work over the past year."
"Instead of showcasing your entire year portfolio, I wanted to do something different this year," she continues and begins to scribble some things on the board.
There are several hums in the room, some students whispering to one another. The girl next to me, Yerim, leans close to me and whispers from the corner of her lips — "if we're not showcasing our portfolio then how are we supposed to do the showcase?"
"She's gonna make us do group projects, my Mingi senses are tingling," the guy who sits behind us chips in.
Yerim and I look behind us to see Mingi eye rolling at the professor. Yerim shoots him a disguted look.
"Bet you're looking forward to it," she throws a rubber at his head, sarcasm in her voice, "instead of doing the work you're gonna text your boyfriend all day."
Mingi blinks, "come on, don't be like that — I swear, Hyeshin not you too."
"What? We all know that's true."
Yerim huffs, rolls her eyes and focuses back on the board. "Mingi senses," she snorts.
"— and that is the reason why, for this year's showcase, I would like you to make a mini-gallery," the professor finishes whatever she was saying earlier.
I hear Mingi groan behind me, he whispers something along the lines of this being worse than he thought.
"You can make a collection, a minimum of four pieces — you can make it however big you want it to be," she continues, listing the details on the board. Scratches of pencil against paper echoes around the room, I copy what people are doing. "But they must correlate with each other, hence, a collection, a series — a mini gallery."
"Are you guys with me so far?"
After the chorus of 'yes miss'-es, the professor continues. She picks up her water bottle from the ground, drinks from it and scans the room.
She waves her drink bottle, my lips tugging up amusingly when she eyes Mingi specifically. "Now, this is an individual task as I want to see you actually working... do you hear me, Mingi?"
I swear I can almost feel him freeze up behind me. Yerim and I glance at each other, she presses her lips so tight to keep herself from laughing.
Mingi laughs sheepishly, "yes, ma'am."
"Good," the professor laughs along with the rest of the class.
"You can choose any theme you want, but as always, I want them to have meaning... I want them to feel like there's a personal connection between you as the painter, the art, and the people looking at your art," I note that down in my book.
The professor goes on to explain that this will count for a whole lot of our final grade, which is important for extra credits to the few of the final year students in this class — and important for our semester grades as well. As she will go on a maternity leave, she'll have one of her assistants supervise us if we ever need any help. Therefore, she'll only grade us based on the ending product.
Once she finishes explaining the assignment, we are told to start planning. I pick up my notebook and my pencils to find myself a spot on a table. Yerim sits next to me and on the spot across from us sits Mingi.
Of course, Mingi is busy complaning, his hand aimlessly drawing circles in his sketchbook. Yerim, like the artsy genius she is, is already drawing a rough sketch in her own book and occasionally spitting random insults at Mingi because he's just talking too much (that only made Mingi talk more).
As for me, I have a rough idea of what I'm going to do already. It's something that has been stuck in my mind a lot for the past couple of months but the reason why I'm not jotting down anything yet is because... there's something holding me back. I just don't know what.
So I spend the rest of class in a 'who can draw the most perfect circle' competition with Mingi, a mini pencil sword fight with Yerim and a small round of gossip (source from Mingi dearest).
It's almost mid-day by the time I walk out of the painting studio. A soft rumble from my stomach is felt and I frown as I realise that I had little breakfast this morning due to rushing out of the apartment to get to campus on time. Mingi had invited me to join him and his boyfriend to brunch but I obviously rejected it. Who wants to third-wheel in this world? Exactly, no one.
My phone rings as I press ground level on the elevator. I fish it from my bag pocket and see the called ID.
"Hi Woo," I say into the phone, watching the screen above the buttons switch from four, to three, to two, to one, to ground level.
"I'm bored," Wooyoung deadpans, "I have no one to pay me attention."
"Poor Wooyoung," I laugh, sighing when the elevator doors open and I step out of the metal box.
I hear him let out an exaggerated cry. "I know," he sniffles. "Seonghwa hyung and Sani are out to their grandma's house for some wedding planning of their uncle's or something, which means they wont be back until tomorrow or like, late today..."
"Yeah I know, San told me."
"And, and, and Yeosang, your friend whom I met at the party... he's busy too," I can almost see his pout in my head, "and my friend Yeonjun says he's got a date, I can't hang out with the guys in my history class because they're lame and they think I'm lame so there's that mutual feeling... which leads to you, my dear friend."
"Please give me attention."
"Yeah, yeah whatever, I'm at the campus right now, where do you want to hang out?"
"Wait really?! Can we go window-shopping?"
I chuckle, "of course! It's been a while since I window-shopped... yeah, let's do that!"
"Sweet! I'll be there in five."
"Five? But isn't your dorm like, ten minutes away?"
Wooyoung snickers cheekily. "Well.. I was already on my way when I called you," he begins, "even if you said now, I was planning to drag you anyways. I knew you'd agree!"
The silver haired boy yelps, jumping into the air in a fit of giggles after I pinch his ear.
"You can't say no to me anyways, Shin-ah, you know that," he grins, rubbing his now reddening ear.
"But still, you're so annoying," I huff.
Wooyoung's laugh sounds like a chorus of 'hehehehe's, eyes glimmering with cheekiness. He's still so much like a little kid, especially in his bright yellow hoodie that looks insanely big on him.  It's a surprise that the sleeves don't even go past his wrist, yet the rest of the clothes makes it look like he was drowning.
We walk side by side to the nearest bus stop to get to the closest shopping avenue. Wooyoung keeps on stretching the sleeve of his hoodie and spins them around, whacking my face every now and then, almost causing a ruckus inside the bus.
The shopping district is the definition of lively commotion. And Wooyoung matches the energy the place seems to ooze. His thick rimmed (un-prescribed) pair of glasses bounces on the bridge of his nose every time we pass a food stall, excitement in his steps when the man behind the stall hands him an egg toast.
"You good?"
"Yeah, can you just..." Wooyoung balances a stick of corn dog in my direction, which I take to help him balance three (3) more foods in his hands. "Thanks."
"Eh, how much longer are you going to spend time feasting?" I ask him.
"Honestly, I don't know," he shrugs, nipping at the fairy floss almost the size of his head, "you want some?"
I blink at the range of foods in his arms. The egg toast on one hand and it takes up almost his whole hand to grasp. On the other, he holds a half empty cup of blueberry-banana smoothie and a stick of fairy floss. It makes me bite my lip questioningly, not to mention the corn dog in my hand.
"Or the toast or even the corn dog I don't mind," Wooyoung continues, laughing sheepishly as he disposes of the stick of the fairy floss in a rubbish bin.
The silver haired sips on his smoothie, eyeing me through the side of his eyes.
"Come on, or I'll shove it down your throat," he says, "don't even bother reasoning with an 'I'm full', we both know that's not true."
I shoot him a quick grin, taking a bite of the corn dog.
"See, wasn't that hard!"
I roll my eyes. "Yeah but it's yours," I say in between munches.
"But do you feel bad though?"
"No."
"Exactly."
I jab Wooyoung's ribs with my elbows and he laughs.
As we look through the windows of a fancy clothing store, Wooyoung waves his toast at me, gulping down the last bite he took.
"Okay, listen here," he says.
"What?"
"The purpose of my existence in your life is to help you find your starmate, right?" Wooyoung continues, not even sparing a glance at he too, marvels at an expensive looking red dress on display.
"Not exactly," I turn to him with a slightly alarmed look, "well, that's how it began, anyway."
"We haven't talked about progress in a while, you know."
"I know," I tell him, taking another sneaky bite of the corn dog.
"You're lucky I have exclusive sources," Wooyoung declares. I can see him smirking on the reflection of the window before he pays his attention to me.
I raise my brow, "what do you mean?"
He slurps (almost annoyingly obnoxious) at that. "Come on, San told me something between you and Seonghwa hyung happened on New Years!"
I pretend to ignore him, squinting a little to see the price tag on the dresses.
"Or should I remind you," he tugs at my hand, forcing me to face him. But I don't budge, "because you guys did smoochie-smoochie and even at Park Seonghwa standards, it's a bit cheesy—"
"S-shut up." I feel heat creep up my neck and slowly takes over my cheeks.
"Wait, so it's true! I thought Sanie was making things up!" he nudges me teasingly, "one point of a starmate's characteristics — mutual affection!"
"You have a crush on him, don't you?" Wooyoung asks me, in a slightly serious (which he would call detective-y) voice.
"Well... I.. I-I wouldn't say crush exactly..."
Wooyoung slaps his forehead, "oh that's right! Starmates are technically already in love before they're even born!"
"Woo!"
"What!? That's true!" he exclaims, "you see, I asked my mum for research. She couldn't really give me definite scientifically-proven answers since there are little to none proper study on it but mums are always right, man."
"You do know that there are two types of starmates, right?"
Wooyoung scoffs, "'course I do. We all learnt this in kindergarten; the love one and the best friend one, right?"
"You don't even know which one I have."
"I don't know but I can tell," Wooyoung says smugly. "My seventh sense."
I twist my face mockingly.
SeVeNtH seNsE my toe.
We both move to another store, feeling a little bored of the collection of the upcoming spring line displayed by the windows. Now, we are walking yet again by the food stalls and I had to pull Wooyoung back from buying twisted potato sticks since the toast was gone.
"In all seriousness, though, Hyeshin, I really do want to help you but the thing is," Wooyoung says, seriously serious this time, "have you even asked him?"
"Asked him what?"
"The, you know... his mark?"
I think of the little episode in Seonghwa's car where I almost asked him and chickened out. Of course I'm not going to tell Wooyoung about that, it's been in my mind a lot. How I should bring the topic up, I don't know. I know I'd have to ask soon but what if I don't want to?
I sigh, "I'll ask him eventually."
Wooyoung gives me an unimpressed look. He then purses his lips and sips the rest of his smoothie.
"Well then, it's you and your mark so I'm going to trust you," Wooyoung is back to his teasing, cheerful self.
"Yeah, you should cause you know, not gonna line, I really do think he is."
Wooyoung nods in satisfaction.
"How about you then, you said you haven't got yours yet?" I ask him and watch the expression in his eyes shift a little.
I gasp, grinning wide. "Wooyoung!"
"Wooyoung, something happened right?!" I ask him, eyes wide. "Why didn't you tell me!"
The boy whines, pouting his lips like how he usually does in similar situations as this. He crosses his arms, refusing to meet my eyes when I try to make him look at me. I burst into a fit of giggles — something definitely happened.
"Shut up, Hyeshin," he cries.
"Ooh! You're saying a lot by saying that!"
"No I'm not!"
"Yes you are!"
"No I'm no—" Wooyoung is cut off by the ringing of his phone, to which he immediately picks up without even looking at the caller ID and brings the device to his ear.
As he takes the phone call, Wooyoung wiggles his bum teasingly, a triumphant grin on his face.
"Yeah, whatever San, I'm definitely having more fun than you," Wooyoung speaks to the person on the phone. San.
And Wooyoung waddles away from me, engrossed in his phone call that consists of him picking on San as the latter tells him he can't skip the wedding to go to their planned kart racing with their friends.
I stick out my bottom lip and follow him.
So, something happened to Wooyoung? Interesting.
I snicker, biting on the last of the corn dog before throwing it in the bin and continue to window shop. Well, try to continue to window shop.