He reminded me of the stars.

He stood far behind the dominating sun which he aspired to resemble. He stood in the shadow of the shimmering white moon, his enemy. He appeared to be small and insignificant, but each small dot on the night sky compiled pieces of his broken personality, scattered all over the place.

At times he would flicker in red, violent and explosive – with every red star, a little part of him died. Sometimes he shimmered in blue, light and innocent – a new beginning, a sacred side to him. If you were lucky enough to know him better, you could draw the prettiest constellations – see the best side of him, the one you could spend forever tracing back.

Around him, the world seemed dark, but he was the one illuminating it. Rarely would you catch sight of a shooting star, a fleeting moment of something you'd recognize as love, but you'd know they exist, somewhere.

Perhaps the delicate manner in which he carried himself was the one trait that piqued my interest. The strands of golden hair framed his face, curling inwards just below the chin. In the mornings, when it would be dishevelled by the thousand turns and shifts in his sleep, he would thread a steady hand through it, in an attempt to tame the volume. His back straightened and arms extended towards the ceiling, he stretched with his eyes closed. A small yawn would push itself past his dry lips, which he always licked afterwards.

Perhaps the confident manner in which he acted was the one trait that caught my eye. The way his handwriting was neater than anyone else's, causing people to assume it is printed rather than written. How he wore the rosary around his neck with pride at all times. When he spoke about his thoughts and desires, when he had a distinctive idea of his opinions and needs, when he knew respect and superiority and the appropriate time to recognize each – I admired him.

Perhaps the raw humanity in his personality was the one trait that made me curious about that guy. At night, when he remembered events so traumatizing that he would become nothing more than a child, he cried out to the loved ones he'd lost. However, he would be silent, at all times. Silence so thick it could choke me, yet so thin that I heard the uneasy heave of his small chest and swallowed sobs. Others in this orphanage had forgotten how to feel, had forgotten how to be more than just a machine for Whammy. Even I found it difficult to grasp the idea of raw emotions, but living with Mello was a constant reminder of our natural traits.

Either way I got lost in him. Not only that, but the admiration slowly transformed into something with depth, something I could not exactly identify – until the moment he kissed me.

Becoming Mello's companion – his partner in crime – taught me everything about him I would have to know, but nothing I wanted to know. It answered the "What?" but never the "Why?" and at some point along the way I had devoted my life to the answer to "Why?" instead of "What?"

I found it years later. Sometime between the accident and our first kiss, I discovered the truth. He didn't tell me, he didn't write it down, he didn't put it behind metaphors – I just knew.

"I love you too."

He was taken aback, eyes wide as his lips parted slightly. "What?"

I shook my head, smiling. "Why."