Summer has the tendency to make Kyungsoo feel like a brute who's nothing but impulsive and lustful. Warm wind which greets him every noon, till afternoon, lingering by during evening—it carries the scent of mandarin oranges which are decorated cutely on the offering table to Grandma. Sometimes, Kyungsoo will enjoy incense mingled with the citrus fruit because the maid lights incense every Wednesday and Friday afternoon. She assembles, in a neat pyramid manner, apples for Monday, Saturday, and tangerines on Friday; in pairs, mangoes on Tuesday, papayas on Thursday, Sunday; and alone in glory—pineapple on Wednesday. The room is an open room which leads to three either ways: a short hallway towards the miniature garden, or a small room for artistic purposes, or a narrow staircase which ascends to a balcony that is joined with Kyungsoo's room on the second floor.

Kyungsoo can often be found in the little garden his grandpa made for his beloved.

If not found in his grandmother's garden, he's found lounging in the small room painting with black ink meant for calligraphy. He paints a lot of flowers, like red camellias, spider lilies, and freckled carnations. His paintings never sell, they're never for sale—but they're often gifts. Because Kyungsoo has a habit of giving both first-time and regular visitors a painting to take home for no particular reason. They take the paintings though, as a gesture of respect for his family name.

Kyungsoo laughs when they thank him in an excessively formal manner. It's his father who they really want to up to.

Kyungsoo's more of a pretty accessory that looks nice next to the family name.

Jongin agrees while painting the image of a woman's body. He comes to play sometimes, Jongin does, bringing tangerines and cherries as a snack.

"These don't go together," Kyungsoo frowns, while peeling the circle shaped tender. He squeezes a meaty piece slightly too hard. Fruit juice drips from Kyungsoo's palm, and onto his back hand. A drop lands on the violet silk kimono; Jongin leans over and the spillage from Kyungsoo's hand.

He smiles, "you're a messy eater."

Sweat drops from Kyungsoo's jaw to his neck.

Kyungsoo spends the night drinking away his thoughts while being accompanied by the moon.

Summer makes Kyungsoo meet a girl almost eight years younger than himself. Her hair is black like the ink he uses unjustly. Cheeks blushing like a manicured rose bush which bloom various, amazing shades of pink. She's adorable and he's been told to marry her by next spring. Her favourite kimono is made from the finest silk—peach blossoms decorate the kimono like a frantic spring gale.

Kyungsoo's heart sort of plunges down into a field without flowers. It's bare, brown, and dandelions don't even grow there. His heart lies in the middle, and it doesn't seem like it's pumping romance anytime soon. So Kyungsoo forces it to. And the dirt transforms into a field of sharp rocks.

He blames the change on his father and summer.

Under the cypress tree in the miniature garden, Jongin can be found talking to Kyungsoo. Jongin combing Kyungsoo's hair with his hands, while repeating: "your hair's soft. I love it." They take naps under the tree—it's possible because its bottom leaves have been shaved off. Kyungsoo reads poetry. Remembering that he needs to capture his fiancée's heart. His father tells him he needs to at least pretend to be chivalrous, that his true nature can wait until after the marriage has been complete. Otherwise, he should learn to act his part in high society. And like an awful appreciation for pretentious noble hobbies, he regularly smokes tobacco in a long pipe; its stem embellished with golden ornaments, the mouthpiece made of jade. The aristocratic such as his father like to see smoking, because smoking's become a sign of affluence.

His alleged favourite pastime: to smoke with his right hand and paint with his left (of course, he practices ever so secretly from his servants to prevent gossip and boorish lectures from his father). The results are usually horrible; the pond seemingly a depiction of the gates of hell and the fish appear to be deformed hornets. Put simply, artwork without value. These paintings in particular are never sent away as gifts. They're locked up in his room.

Kyungsoo hums.

Jongin knows.

Summer's still overbearingly hot. The heat makes everything pass by like a blur.

It's instant. The flashes of passion and crippling desire.

But they've always been friends.

Nothing's ever changed.

Nothing should change.

She likes his voice. In her silk white kimono with charming patterns in variations of navy and indigo, they walk through the main garden. She giggles while covering . Her lashes are longer than Jongin's. She enjoys Kyungsoo's company. Kyungsoo's gradually beginning to feel apathetic, but he's good at faking things.

His life is a play that sustains itself on a dead heart.

She tells him that she's in the middle of dying her teeth black. Kyungsoo bites his disdain, a saccharine smile is his next move as he tells her, while twisting a lock of her black hair: "my sunshine, my moonlight." He notes that her blushing ears are nowhere as endearing as Jongin's when he accidentally brushed his upper thigh over the other's lips.

The daring slip of cotton white kimono.

Jongin makes himself at home in Kyungsoo's home. He doesn't bring in fruit today.

He's holding a bouquet of pink morning glory. Handing it over, Jongin kisses Kyungsoo on the cheek, "congratulations."

Kyungsoo laughs, he holds the flowers in his hands, "too bad," he says, "I liked red camellias better."

Jongin mindlessly spills the black ink with his leg, "come to think of it, I've never been in your room."

"But that's where my heart is," Kyungsoo smiles and it's all wrong.

Summer's ruthless. Yet it still smells like incense and tangerines.

How fond.

a/n: in brutal honesty i don't read exo fics (which I should fix I think) so with regards to jongin and kai's personalities; if i butchered their typical fan-fiction characteristics i'm sorry. it's got something to do with my fixated imagination based on their looks, where kai would be whipped in a relationship and kyungsoo would ride kai's like a dominant bottom. of course the blushing (?) would be jongin (literally i'm starting to open my eyes to these moe-moe- things and i think it's so precious and everything that's good in the world) because somehow he seems like pure as compared to kyungsoo who's really a wolf in sheep's clothing.