While the Stars are our Home

the beginning

Things in the world were so uncertain, I was resistant to making deep connections with people who could die the next day.

There were a few people that ended up forcing me to become friends with them, one was my nurse friend, his name was Jungkook. Jungkook was always running around fixing people, even me when I got scraped up. That happened often, I am a very clumsy person I will admit.

The other was my best friend, Yeosang. He was a teacher as well but had been a high school teacher, not a preschool.

We were close in age, around 23 at the time, and were drawn to each other, I think due mostly to the fact we both had no other family still alive.

Anyway, around the beginning of 2025 the first few space "countries" were launched and tested.

And they were successful. The tone of everything changed, no everyone was gathering in places where these giant ships were being built, lining up to get off the volatile planet.

Arizona happened to be one of these places, and several giant spaceships began to be built in parts of the desert. The people started arriving so quickly, we almost ran out of space for them, many people sharing rooms or houses with strangers until the ships could take 5-10 thousand away.

The work went quickly, and the ships carried off a new group of people every 6months.

This was when I started to see him around more and more.

I had lost track of the pink-haired man but apparently, he had recovered extremely well and was one of the people in charge of making sure that the technology was correct on board the ships.

There were periods of time when he did not need to do anything and would work in one of the central soup kitchens.

It had been months, and his hair had begun to grow out, black at the roots as the pink faded and got trimmed off. The two-toned hair looked good on him and complimented his newly healing face. I never saw his arms, even during the summer when it was 130 degrees outside, I don't know if it was insecurity or just that he wore compression sleeves for the healing burns.

I never spoke to him during that time, I don't know exactly what kept me from doing it. Probably a mixture of nerves, anxiety about the future, and just the fact that his face looked the way it did.

Anyway, I think what you would call the main plot point here was the fact that we both ended up on the last ship out.

Luckily the government planned ahead and started setting up school systems on board the skips as there were still children needing education. They quickly found people who had any type of background in teaching and got them set up with classrooms and curricula that come from somewhere.

They had asked us who would wait and stay with the last group, and I had immediately volunteered to stay and wait for the last ship.

Yeosang had been irritated with me but volunteered as well, insisting that he wouldn't leave without me. That single act was what cemented us as best friends for life.

The day when I finally talked to him, I can remember it so clearly. They were debriefing us on one of our first teacher meetings, about 4 months before the last ship launched, and he came to talk to us about the technology for our classrooms.

I let Namjoon, the brains of the teaching group, and Taehyung, our resident fake extrovert do most of the talking. I stood with Yeosang, Wendy, and Amber as he explained the technology and let us ask questions if we needed.

His hair had grown fully out by then, it had been almost three years since we had hair dye lying around in excess. It was fully black now, long and curling around his ears perfectly.