To catch a speckle of stardust // Minsung

A flappy Cat

Lee Minho, as the person that he knew himself to be, wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

He never considered himself special, or gifted or 'the chosen one' that everybody thrived to be, he simply lived his life following merrily his moral compass that navigated him perfectly, thank you very much. Life having given him the most boring of families and plain backstories, Minho held himself aware of not being the main character of anything at all, he just ...existed.

He consisted of a perfectly assembled image, polished by time and his uncanny personality; Brown hair, brown eyes, average height, a red hoodie and one of 'The Beach Boys' posters which wasn't even his, but thrifted from a frowzy little junk shop, situated on a nearby street.

He cherished his trinkets, collecting a funky array of vintage pop ups from anywhere his eye landed. After scraping up some mainstream and underground embellishments, Minho has managed to build himself a certain little corner of comfort tucked away in his room and that was just about enough for him to be happy. Well, sort of.

Thing is, after having moved towns and settling in a squeaky new apartment, not too far away from an eatery owned by his aunt and uncle - all for the sake of a bigger city, Minho has desperately tried to shake off any harmful stereotypes surrounding himself. Or more precisely, the lack of thereof.

Please now, do not get him misunderstood, Minho didn't want people to think badly of him, but after passing almost a month in his new college and still remaining the 'new kid' which as a matter of factly no one even knew the name of, Minho wanted to change things up a bit.

He aimlessly picked at some friend-groups, eavesdropped at random conversations or hung around professors or delinquents after class hours ended. But alas, his tries were once again fruitless as he always found himself sitting on a sun baked brick wall and reading a comic book or listening to music, his worn out playlist that consisted of only a few songs, three of them being by Harry Styles.

So what is there to say, when he cracked his eyes open at the obnoxiously loud honk of the alarm, he never would've suspected anything out of the ordinary to be happening that very rainy Tuesday. The grey bulky clouds rolled over the map of the sky with a snail's speed, droplets of water sliding down his window frame, shining the annoyingly bright light of morning into Minho's eye as he pulled apart the curtains to reveal the never-changing sight of his home street.

Minho sighed longingly looking at the flower beds that extended themselves amidst the scruffy bushes all the way up to the end of the street that glistened with the fresh shine of wet pavement, the tilted blue mailbox which didn't even serve any practical purpose and a homeless tabby cat rummaging the trash. Minho supposed he could get an early breakfast if he was fast enough and after snatching his usual clothes from the laundry chair, the boy was out the door and pacing towards his Na's little cafe.

Welcoming his arrival at the compact eatery, stood a cosily dressed woman in a brown apron, valsing around the stove where she fried something extremely appetising. The smell crawled instantly up Minho's nose, and before he knew it, his moody face and droopy eyes were gone, a wide grin tugging on the corners of his lips as he climbed onto one of the chairs with a brief 'morning Na'.

The woman, Mrs Park, hurriedly flopped a steaming egg roll onto Minho's plate, muttering something about him being late again as she pointed at the broken watch on her wrist, always ahead by as far as 10 minutes. She was always there in that early morning freshness, boggling at the weather as if she's never lived through more storms or hurricanes that Minho could possibly imagine.

"Have you heard the rain this morning? It's crazy!" Spoke up Mrs Park as she pointed at the runny windows.

"Those drops are bigger than prairie hailstones and coming down just as hard. I'll just turn the dishwasher off here so you can listen to it better. It's almost as if the drops are striking your eardrums, right? I actually like it, I find it soothing. Anyhow, it's just you, me and the dirty breakfast dishes. The kids are at school already, you should have seen them go all togged up in rain jackets and umbrellas." Said Mrs. Park as Minho stuffed his mouth with the steaming dish.