๋࣭ ⭑⚝EDITED⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
Right as Mike was about to slip away, a gentle hand touched his arm.
And a voice—soft, careful, and full of kindness—asked, "Are you okay?"
Mike immediately yelped in surprise at the sudden contact leading to him falling down on his bum. He looked up and stared at the person who startled him—Y/n. He couldn't help but cry even more in embarrassment as he tried, oh so desperately to wipe the tears away.
He didn't even know why. Why was he even crying? Why was he acting so childish?
Maybe it was the way she looked like something out of a story book or maybe it was the pressure of wanting to be seen—really seen—by someone so beautiful and innocent as she. Y/n blinked in surprise at the sniffling boy in front of her, then knelt down at the same level as Mike, gentle hands wiping his tears with a handkerchief embroidered with little stars.
"Why are you crying?" she asked softly, as she offered him a simple smile.
Mike could only shake his head, red-faced. Refusing to answer whether out of embarrassment or ego, they both didn't know. But one thing was for sure—
from that moment, he was hers.
☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆
Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days, days turned into weeks. Y/n, curious and kind-hearted, took Mike under her wing as if she was his mama bird and she was the baby bird with an ease that made the adults smile. They studied music and dancing together, raced through empty tents, and practiced their routines in tandem—Mike on the trapeze, she with her violin and flute. They were an odd pair, a clumsy yet charismatic jester-acrobat and a sophisticated music artist yet they were inseparable. Childhood sweethearts born not out of promises, but quiet companionship and shared wonders and dreams underneath the starry night sky.
As they grew, so did their talents. Mike became one of the circus's finest acrobats, known for breathtaking midair flips and a daring smile that won over every audience. Y/n, now the circus's lead musician, brought magic to every performance with her compositions—whimsical, fun, and full of color.
But even as his skills sharpened and her melodies soothed through the sky, Mike's heart remained caught in that single moment from their childhood—the moment she knelt to wipe away his tears. His love for her had grown like a tree, firm-rooted, untouched by time, unbent by distance, unshaken even by the strongest storms.
Alas he thought, quietly, that she could never feel the same. So he promised himself to stay by her side, forever even if she only treats him as a childhood friend.
What he didn't know was that Y/n had watched him too, all those years. She saw the boy who had cried the first time they met grow into a man who never let a fall keep him down. The boy who was there through the toughest of times with her, the first ever boy to steal her breathe away.
Y/n noticed the unspoken longing in his silence and his lingering glances. She felt the way he lingered just a moment too long when he passed backstage to watch you perform, and caught the way his gaze followed her not like a friend—but like someone who had always adored her from the shadows.
TBC