It’s a hustling Sunday evening. Yongguk faces the busy street from the window of his art gallery, hands crossed. He craves a smoke; but he holds himself.
It’s been happening for a while.
Beating himself up over everything.

They think that rich men have it easy. Yongguk bites his lip wondering the heck he is doing. Surrounded by twisted gallery artifacts, he feels plain empty.
He’s a mess.

You can’t sell art.
He’s Fifty thousand dollars in debt since the past two months and his skulls about to burst.

He doesn’t have a choice.

Sell everything and move out. It was his only chance. Three years before their importing business broke down, things had been better. It’s only been going downhill since.
is deep. He moved out to Seoul in the midst of a lawsuit his farther got caught in, and at the moment, all he has got to himself is parents desperately trying to hold onto their previous lifestyle, an empty arts gallery and a apartment he doesn’t have the heart to live in.

If that’s what he wants, he can just get away.
Pack up his and leave for good. Settle down in a town for failures and wallow in self-pity.

His lip bleeds.
Blood tastes like wasted youth.

-

Choi Junhong was a boy who managed their Christmas tree from their piggy bank.  He and Yongguk was never meant to work out. But smiles talked to hearts and not brains. Three months of bonding over Junhongs part-time job, cleaning windows of Yongguks art gallery; Yongguk had no idea what he was signing up for.

He guessed it was probably the kisses.

But it went too far.
Yongguk fell in love, from all his heart.

-

Incheon was quieter.

Yongguk and his art supplies kept themselves unwrapped but unused. Inspiration had run away from the artist. A dusty framed degree is stacked underneath his bed with the rest of his portraits and he loathes himself every time he catches a glimpse of what’s inside.

He had been paying his rent to the house from the money of selling his property in Seoul.
Drinking beer from his mini-fridge, he does nothing. Before he noticed, three months had flew by. He looks into the mirror and nearly trips.

With a thick black beard and uncut hair, his face doesn’t look it’s him anymore.
He curled and cried.

Sobbing as if he was ten; he dialed his mother after nearly four years of cutting ties with his family.

And she didn’t answer.

They had nothing to do with a gay son, until the end.

-

Approximately ten days later, Natasha called him.
Where are you, what are you doing?
Yongguk answers nonchalantly. To worry was in Natasha’s personality. She drives twelve hours to Incheon in her car with her baby in a car carrier to see how his brother is.
She isn’t a pillar to Yongguk; quite the opposite. She’s curt towards how Yongguk had chosen to live, but still, family means to her.

She says nothing; holding her three year old by both her hands. Yongguk shifts uncomfortably as she sits her baby down on the couch and leaves her handbag and starts picking up the wrappers of the Yongguk had been feeding himself off the floor.

“Noona, leave it.” He whines, but she only throws him a sharp glare over her shoulder.

So she cleans the house and cooks for Yongguk.

She gets her baby seated and feeds it, while Yongguk digs in.

Natasha sighs.

“I’m not going to ask you to kick re-start your life, Yongguk.” She finally speaks. The words nearly carve themselves in thin air. She had a way with words.

“But you have to start from somewhere.”

Yongguk doesn’t physically respond, but he knows that his sister is right.

“You think you can manage a job?”

Yongguk thickly gulps half-chewed rice down his throat. He had never done a job. From a time he had been around the art industry, all he handled were projects. They were come and go. But Jobs were monotonous and boring. Yongguk scoffs. Like himself; he told himself.

He nods. “Yeah.” He replies. Yongguk doesn’t see a point anymore.

-

Natasha introduced Yongguk to the tattoo parlor; the one who ran it had been a family friend since old times. It was a decent place, with architecturally spacious booths and classy lights. The workers wer