Lazing around for virtually every waking moment soon grew tiring in itself and Jongin was beginning to run out of television channels to mindlessly surf on end. His mind would wander as he watched, and the artist could feel his body becoming more agitated and restless as the days flew by in a blur. He was craving something more stimulating, but he had promised to swear off his art for the time being, so that wasn’t an option, even though it was the most logical one to turn to.

Although Seoul Fashion Week was over, that didn’t mean Sehun was completely free to hang out with his best friend whenever he liked or whenever Jongin wanted him to. As one of the most sought after models in the industry, the handsome man’s schedule was usually packed with various meetings and photo shoots. Sehun had complained for hours over the phone one time, calling Donghae “a slave driver” and “the devil incarnate” among other unsavory descriptors. So calling up his best friend was out of the question.

Jongdae was typically never home and when he was, the elder Kim brother was usually holed up in his bedroom, doing who knows what. Jongin certainly didn’t know. Although he had promised Yixing he would make amends with his older brother, it was easier said than done. The artist thought mildly to himself that it was quite ironic how their roles had reversed: Jongdae was the one constantly working—or so his older brother claimed, but the artist couldn’t be completely sure that was case—while Jongin was the one wasting time and being a lazy bum. If it weren’t for Yixing constantly reprimanding them for their childish fights, Jongdae probably would’ve crowed about the situation with that stupid smug smile he always wore whenever he managed to one-up his little brother.

Jongin scowled when the image popped into his head, but he managed to quickly force out these unpleasant thoughts of his older brother.

As for Yixing, the manager was off running errand after errand, which sometimes confused Jongin. Surely there weren’t that many things that needed to be done every day, especially since the artist wasn’t accepting commissions from sponsors or attending any art shows. There was nothing for Yixing to actually manage at the moment—at least nothing related to Jongin’s career—but he somehow found various things that needed to be done for the house’s upkeep.

The artist wondered how his friend did it. Yixing’s level of productivity every single day was unmatched by no other and that was magnified by a hundred-fold with Jongin steadily turning into a couch potato. And frankly speaking, the artist was becoming bored of being lazy. At this rate, his brain would rot from disuse and he couldn’t let that happen.

So when the manager came home that day, arms laden with groceries and a stack of mail in hand, Jongin was building a shoe rack by the front door. Yixing had recently bought a new one, since the previous rack was too small to fit all three men’s shoe collections, but had yet to assemble it. The manager was surprised to see his friend diligently fitting white rods together into a large three-layered rack. The shoes were sorted into three neat piles in the front hallway, which Yixing carefully walked around on his way to the kitchen. “You know you have an appointment with Dr. Do tomorrow, right?”

Jongin hummed in affirmation, his gaze firmly fixed on the rack he was building.

“You also have a letter from him,” Yixing added, deftly sorting through the mail stack after setting down the groceries on the kitchen floor. “I’ll leave it on the dining table. Open it when you’re done with the rack.”

The artist hummed again, barely registering his manager’s words.

“Do you need any help? It won’t take me long to put this stuff away.”

“No thanks. I got it.”

Yixing softly smiled to himself as he watched Jongin attentively build the shoe rack before turning away to store the groceries in their respective compartments. It was nice to see the artist creating again, in some capacity.

--

After another fifteen minutes of assembling the pieces together, Jongin finally finished building the shoe rack and he surveyed the completed product with a small smile on his face. His fingers ached from the manual labor and his knees were sore from kneeling on the hard wooden floor for so long, but there was a feeling of…accomplishment that he hadn’t felt in months. This white shoe rack wasn’t art, at least not in a literal sense, but it was more than what it had been several hours ago, when it was just dozens of pieces packaged in a box.

However, as the artist continued staring at the shoe rack, Jongin wondered why his hands could successfully create something so technical but would fail when it came to his supposed strength: unbridled creativity. Was it that he had instructions on how to assemble the rack? Was it that there was a linear path to how the pieces were put together? Was it that order was more reliable, more desirable than chaos?

It didn’t make sense.

No one called a carpenter or a construction worker an artist. They built things by the book. If anything, architects were the ones to design and create something for these industrial builders to follow. They spent hours agonizing over balancing aesthetics with functionality and plotting these details into elaborate blueprints. If it weren’t for their brilliant minds, there would be nothing for the technical workers to build into existence in the first place.

But did that mean he had been reduced to someone who was only able to follow? Someone incapable of leading his own artistic vision into a corporeal form?

Realizing that he was about to plunge into a dangerous rabbit hole, the artist lightly slapped his cheeks to shake himself from his thoughts and averted his gaze from the piece of furniture.

With the rack properly standing next to the west wall of the front hall, Jongin turned around to face the piles of shoes he had sorted earlier. Deciding he’d start at the bottom, the artist began placing Jongdae’s shoes on the lowest section of the rack. Most of his older brother’s shoes were basketball shoes, which Jongin looked at with distaste, especially knowing that Jongdae didn’t even play the sport. He simply bought them for the sake of owning these limited edition brands and having bragging rights. Jongdae also owned a few pairs of dress shoes for business functions, but Jongin had yet to see them in use.

Yixing’s shoes were much easier to organize, since the manager’s collection was much smaller. He mostly owned dress shoes, having to attend formal meetings and events for a living, with the odd assortment of tennis shoes and flip flops mixed in. Yixing wasn’t a sporty guy, but he liked the comfort of tennis shoes and preferred wearing them to dress shoes when he could. And when it was summertime, Yixing almost exclusively wore flip flops when he wasn’t working.

And finally, on the top shelf were Jongin’s shoes. He only wore dress shoes, all of them made of black leather. There was simply no need for any other kind of shoe and the artist liked the sleek feeling of wearing dress shoes. They matched his long coats and his dark pants, which made up the majority of his wardrobe. Simple yet sophisticated.

As Jongin picked up his Oxfords, he once again noticed how dull and ugly they were. The artist had been meaning to get them shined, but the errand kept slipping from his mind, especially with how rarely he went out nowadays. They looked scuffed and worn down, even though Jongin hadn’t even owned them for a year yet. Luckily, with some professional buffing, they would look as good as new.

If he remembered correctly, there was a shoe-shiner who worked in the main terminal of the subway station. When he was a university student, Jongin had often stopped by to get his shoes shined. The old man was a master at his craft and knew which shoe brands were trending at the moment, never failing to tip off the artist on what to buy each season. Although it had been three years, Jongin decided to pay the man a visit and he hoped the shoe-shiner would still be at his usual spot.

As he slipped on the Oxfords, the artist called out, “I’m getting my shoes shined.”

“Why?” Yixing called back, his voice slightly muffled since his head was currently in the freezer. He was trying to decide between pork and beef to make for dinner that night.

“They’re dirty and ugly. I can’t stand wearing them like this any longer.”

“Need me to drive you?” the manager offered as he shut the freezer door and stuck his head out of the kitchen to look at Jongin, who had come into the dining room.

The artist shook his head while grabbing his house keys from the dining table. “Nah, I’m going to the subway station. That’s where I usually get them shined.”

“Are you sure? Because I don't need to make dinner yet and—”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Jongin insisted, his tone getting slightly testy. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you if I need you.”

Yixing knew to back off then, and he nodded weakly while the artist strode out of the dining room and through the front door without a backwards glance.

--

When he arrived at the main subway terminal, Jongin eagerly searched for the shoe-shiner’s work station. It was hard to miss, since the station was made up of several large, wooden throne-like chairs that were on a raised platform about two feet off the ground. Golden swirls decorated the edges and arms of the chairs, and the platform itself was polished to perfection. There was also a red velvet rope barrier—not unlike the ones that were used at movie theaters—that surrounded the wooden platform when it was after-hours; it was currently off to the side in a zigzag pattern, since the shoe-shining station was open.

But the artist’s eyes widened when he didn’t recognize the man who was diligently shining a businessman’s shoes at the moment.

The shoe-shiner he knew was an older man with thin, graying hair and deep-set wrinkles near his dark, twinkling eyes.

The shoe-shiner he was looking at was a younger, middle-aged man with short black hair that was combed towards the right and a sharp jaw line that was further accentuated by his thin cheeks.

Of course it wasn’t strange for the establishment to have changed hands within the past three years while Jongin had been living in Paris, but it did sting a bit to realize that this constant was no longer fixed. Even the smallest things that were good in his life had to vanish without warning, just like his muse had.

As he stood there, like a deer in headlights, the businessman stepped off of the platform with his newly polished shoes. The shoe-shiner wiped his hands with a clean cloth before turning his head to look for new customers. His gaze immediately alighted on Jongin and he grinned widely while asking, “You in need of some shoe-shining?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” the artist responded, still caught off-guard by this new shoe-shiner. But he still walked forward, climbed onto the platform, and sat down in the middle chair.

The shoe-shiner shifted his metal stool to the front of Jongin’s feet and began inspecting the dusty, dull dress shoes. “Oh man, these have definitely seen better days,” he commented, dragging his right pointer finger against the side of the left shoe. “But I’ll fix these into tip-top shape in a jiffy, so don’t worry about a thing, sir.”

“Thank you,” Jongin quietly answered. It was silent as the shoe-shiner started using a large, bristly horsehair brush to clean away the accumulated dirt and dust. After a few minutes, Jongin finally found the words to ask, “You’re new, right? I’ve never seen you here before.”

“Well, it’s been about a year, so I’m not sure if that counts as new or not, but I suppose it can,” the shoe-shiner answered good-naturedly.

“Oh.” There was another pregnant pause before Jongin inquired, “What happened to the previous shoe-shiner?”

“My old man? He retired and let me take over the business,” the shoe-shiner replied, his smile widening with pride.

“Retired?” And then the artist remembered something as he suddenly said, “You must be Hyukjae then. He told me about you a few times when he used to shine my shoes.”

Hyukjae paused in cleaning the Oxfords to throw his head back and laugh loudly for several seconds. “Right you are,” he then answered when the laughter finally subsided. “You know my old man? That geezer really knows how to run his mouth.”

“I learned a lot from him,” Jongin said, thinking back to all of their past conversations. “He's an interesting guy with a lot of life experience and he was never afraid to impart advice that he felt I needed at the time.”

“That’s just the thing. He never learned how to shut up, but I suppose that’s part of his charm. At least, that’s what my mother says.” The shoe-shiner put down the horsehair brush, and then picked up a tin of black polish and a polishing brush. “She also says I take after him, but I’d like to think I know when to keep quiet instead of running my mouth at a mile-a-minute.”

The artist nodded and was about to say something else about Hyukjae’s father when his eye caught sight of a tall, lanky man who was standing in the center of the busy terminal. He was wearing a shiny black leather jacket and strumming an acoustic guitar. Jongin was surprised he wasn’t wielding a colorful electric guitar instead of the modest wooden guitar, since it would have matched his outfit more.

Hyukjae noticed where the artist’s gaze had traveled to and then he smiled as he said, “Ah, we get people busking in the terminal every week. A good number of them are quite talented and they make my working hours more enjoyable.” The shoe-shiner chuckled while he continued applying polish to Jongin’s dress shoes.

The artist didn’t respond at all, his focus completely on the guitarist who had begun singing as he played his instrument. He swayed slightly to the music, his eyes closed and his baritone voice ringing clear as he delivered his performance to anyone who would watch. Although Jongin didn’t recognize the song, he found himself relaxing in his seat as he allowed the rich melodies to carry him away from reality.

The tunes that the guitarist strummed for the next fifteen minutes were relatively calm, but there was also something sharp about them that Jongin could discern. They seemed to slice at the edges of his body, but in an extremely subtle way that he might’ve missed if he hadn’t been so concentrated on the music. And when the guitarist finished playing, Jongin almost wished he could ask the man to continue, just so he could try to figure out what the sharpness was and why it was there in the first place.

By this time, Hyukjae had also finished buffing the artist’s black leather shoes with a soft cloth. Jongin’s Oxfords now looked like they belonged on the window display of a high-end designer store. There was a beautiful sheen to the leather that almost seemed blinding if looked at for too long. The last time any of his shoes looked this good was when Hyukjae’s father had finished shining them for the last time for the artist more than three years ago. Truly like father, like son.

After expressing his gratitude and bidding Hyukjae goodbye, Jongin began walking away from the shoe-shining station with his hands in his pants pockets and his head bowed low. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of his fine-looking dress shoes. However, he wasn’t able to get very far through the terminal when a deep male voice suddenly addressed him.

“Hey, I noticed you watching me earlier.” It was the busking guitarist. He was grinning goofily from where he stood, several feet from the artist, and he excitedly waved for Jongin to come over when they locked eyes with each other.

A slight frown appeared on the artist’s otherwise stoic face, and he quickly glanced to his left and his right to see if the guitarist happened to be talking to someone else. But there was no one—everyone else was focused on their phones or walking purposefully to their train station, which he now wished he had done—and when Jongin’s gaze returned to the center of the terminal, the guitarist was waving his hand more vigorously.

Against his better judgment, the artist slowly walked over to the man wearing the black leather jacket. As he got closer, Jongin realized the guitarist was much taller than he looked when the artist had been getting his shoes shined. This stranger was almost half a head taller than Jongin, who was a tall man himself, and his bright aura seemed to overshadow the artist’s more dismal attitude.

“Did you like my playing?” the guitarist immediately asked once Jongin was about an arm’s length away, his large brown eyes sparkling with anticipation. “You basically watched my entire set and you didn’t seem bored while you were listening!”

Jongin, unsure of how to reply, just plastered on a tight-lipped smile and nodded extremely slowly.

Seemingly oblivious to the artist’s discomfort, the taller male plowed forward, saying, “Since you liked my set, d’you think you could spare some change? Help out a starving artist?” The guitarist then let out a bashful laugh as he gestured to his open guitar case, which had several bills and coins scattered inside. “I have to pay rent and buy food for the month, but being a no-name musician doesn’t really bring in the dough, y’know?”

On the contrary, Jongin didn’t know what that was like, having grown up as a well-known prodigy from a well-off family. He and Jongdae had never worried about things like expenses, not when they were younger and certainly not when they were older with respectable incomes. Well, at least Jongin had a respectable income; the artist had no idea what kind of salary his older brother was living on as a personal secretary. Regardless, their parents made enough through investment banking, especially as overseas managers, to support themselves and their eldest son while their youngest was raking in sponsorships and awards like candy. And once Yixing had been officially hired, the manager took over the responsibility of overseeing Jongin’s finances from the prodigy’s parents.

So this guitarist’s plight was completely foreign to Jongin and it showed through his blank expression.

Not deterred by the lack of response, the taller male smiled kindly at the artist and added in a gentle voice, “I’d really appreciate every bit of help I can get. Even the smallest bit of change would be great. I want to be able to continue making music for the world to hear, but I can’t do that without a roof over my head and food in my stomach.”

And, crazy as it sounded in his head, Jongin could relate to this exuberant, smiley fellow who donned a black leather jacket like a superhero’s cape. The feeling of wanting to spread his art to the rest of the world wasn’t a foreign one and although their obstacles were very different, this was one that Jongin could help the guitarist overcome. At the very least, one of them would be a step closer to their dream.

Extracting his thin black wallet from his right pants pocket, the artist looked to see what he could offer. He didn’t often carry cash with him, preferring to use his credit cards and let Yixing deal with paying off the bill each month. It was less fuss that way and he would be building his credit at the same time. Luckily, nestled neatly in the currency compartment, two fifty thousand won bills sat. This was what Yixing deemed as “emergency money” on the off chance that Jongin couldn’t use his cards for whatever reason. One hundred thousand won was no small amount, but the artist had nothing else to give and he figured the money was better used towards the guitarist’s livelihood rather than uselessly sitting for an undetermined period of time in the black wallet.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he dropped the bills into the stranger’s open guitar case. The taller male’s eyes widened even more, which Jongin thought was a feat in itself, when he registered just how much the artist had given him. “Oh, wow, thank you so much!” the guitarist exclaimed as he eagerly reached forward to shake Jongin’s hand. “That’s so, so generous of you! Are you sure you want to give me this much?” After releasing the other male’s hand, he dipped down to scoop up some of the smaller bills and held them out to the artist. “I can give you change!”

“It’s fine,” Jongin replied, lightly pushing the guitarist’s hands back while shaking his head. “You need it more than I do.”

“Wow…” the taller male breathed out in amazement. “You’re great! One of the most generous people I’ve ever met!” His phone then beeped, signaling a new text message, from where it sat next to his guitar on the bench behind him. After quickly glancing at the notification, the stranger let out a yelp and began dumping the money from his hands into a plastic bag that he grabbed from a compartment in the guitar case. “I’ve gotta go,” he said as he packed up his guitar, “but it was really cool meeting you! See ya!”

And just like that, with his black guitar case slung around his right shoulder, the man disappeared into the crowd of people.

Jongin wasn’t sure what to make of this odd encounter, but decided it wasn’t worth thinking too much about. It wasn’t like he’d ever see the guitarist again.

Well, not like this, at least. Maybe the musician would manage to make it big in the future with his face plastered on billboards and advertisements everywhere.

If he did, Jongin only hoped his flame wouldn’t die out like the artist’s had.

♈♈♈

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON!! Agh, I hate that my wifi while I’m in China, because that means NO GIF SPAM THIS YEAR, which is an ABSOLUTE TRAVESTY. But I guess that also means I’m more productive, since I don’t have any distractions to prevent me from FINISHING ANOTHER CHAPTER FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY. I’m such a slow turtle, but at least I finished it on time. :’) Anyway, you are SO WONDERFUL, AMAZING, FUNNY, SELFLESS, LOYAL, SMART, SUPPORTIVE, DRIVEN, CARING, and I’m just SO SO SO blessed to have you as a friend for so many years. Legit don't know what I would've done without you, because who else would I scream about hot Korean boys with for hours on end??? Also, if EXO OT9 comeback doesn't happen this year, I will riot because this drought has been way too long!!! But yeah, you bring so much POSITIVITY, LAUGHTER, and LIGHT into other people's lives and the world is BLESSED to have you. EXO and Kyungsoo are very proud to have you as a stan!!! And because I'm a loser who makes dumb memes, I'll throw down my Kyungsoo SnapChat edits from two years ago (omg, lucky one/monster comeback was 2 YEARS AGO how is that possible?!?!?!?) because cringey humor is never out of style. :') And to make up for my old and outdated memes, my sister helped me make pretty moodboards of Egg!Soo and Pink!Jaehyun, SO FOCUS ON THOSE INSTEAD, HAHA. OK I HOPE YOU LOVE THE GIFTS AND I WILL SEE YOU SOON!!

(Please do not steal these moodboards!! They were made specifically as a gift. If you'd like to use them for whatever reason, please PM me to ask for permission. If I find them elsewhere on the Internet, I will lock this story, which I don't want to do. Thank you for understanding!!)