The music was too loud, the lights too bright, and Aster was too sober for this.

He leaned against the bathroom sink, shirt long gone, makeup slightly smudged, and lips bitten raw from nerves he’d never admit to. His phone buzzed again. He didn’t check it. He knew who it was. He always did.

He could feel them across the damn room, hours ago—laughing, existing, ruining him just by being.

“You look hot,” someone had whispered in his ear earlier, hands brushing where they shouldn’t. Aster had smiled. He always smiled. But his eyes? They weren’t on them. They were watching someone else.

Always someone else.

Now here he was, alone, chest rising fast, head spinning—not from the gin, not from the smoke in the air—but from them. From the way they laughed too loud. From how they didn’t look at him the way he looked at them.

God, he hated that.

Or maybe he hated himself. For feeling so soft over someone so impossible.

He stared into the mirror, wiped the corner of his lips, fixed the pearls around his neck like armor, and muttered:

“Get over it, Kairo. You’re not seventeen. You don’t need them.”

But his hands were shaking.

And when the door creaked open, and their silhouette appeared behind him, hazy and golden through the mirror’s reflection—

He didn’t breathe. He didn’t move.

He just looked at them. For one second too long. And whispered:

“Could you... not smile like that?”

The smirk on his lips was flawless. But his voice cracked at the end.

And he hated that too.