Rating: PG
Word Count: 787
Genre: Slight angst
Summary: Seungri and his life and the empty spaces in between.
AN: For my journal readers only, not posting to the comms. For ymo1557's 30-day challenge!

JiYong leaves at 6 in the morning for schedule, but not before noticing the maknae sitting in the living room with a blank canvas in front of him and a paintbrush poised in his hand. JiYong considered asking what he was doing, but decided against it. He didn’t particularly feel like listening to one of SeungRi’s long-winded speeches about some obscure concept or subjective theory that SeungRi always felt like discussing, to be honest they always gave JiYong a major headache after each one. So he shrugs and jingles his keys in his pocket as he leaves the hostel.

Later, YoungBae and DaeSung shuffle sleepily by the living room into the kitchen, yawning into their hands and muttering about breakfast. They both notice SeungRi, but they, like JiYong, chose to ignore him as well. It was far too early in the morning for YoungBae to start nagging and DaeSung, well, it wasn’t very unordinary for him not to interact with SeungRi anyway. They both cooked breakfast and ate in companionable silence, saving a plate for SeungHyun if he ever woke up and a plate for SeungRi if he ever decided to stop painting or whatever it was he was doing. They left together afterwards, YoungBae heading to the gym and DaeSung to the studio, leaving the house quite empty save for SeungHyun and his obnoxious snoring and SeungRi with his blank canvas.

As it turns out, Seunghyun doesn’t bother waking until late afternoon, and even then he was too hung-over to care much about maknaes and their weird hobbies and such nonsense. SeungHyun takes to the shower after eating something unhealthy and there’s SeungRi, still in the living room with a paintbrush in hand, staring hard at the canvas in front of him.

When JiYong comes home that night, he’s surprised to see SeungRi still sitting there as if he hadn’t moved at all, which, of course, he hadn’t. This piques JiYong’s interest and he sidles up behind SeungRi excitedly. He’s let down somewhat when all he sees is a single black dot painted on the middle of the canvas.

“Yah, maknae,” JiYong begins confusedly, “What are you painting?”

SeungRi takes a while to answer, and when he does it only makes JiYong even more confused, “Me.”

“You?”

“Me. I’m painting me.”

“But it’s just a dot. And a bunch of empty space.”

“That’s me, hyung,” SeungRi explains slowly, pointing at the dot. “And that… that’s my life,” he says haltingly, his paintbrush gesturing vaguely at the blank space around the dot. Something in his voice makes JiYong stare hard at him.

“But there’s nothing there. No one there…”

“There’s no one there,” repeats SeungRi simply, turning back to stare hard at his painting, “There’s no one…”

“But why haven’t you painted, I don’t know, BIGBANG or something. Why haven’t you painted your friends… us?” JiYong asks exasperatedly. SeungRi looks up at JiYong with an odd look on his face.

“Because I don’t have friends… or you,” SeungRi states matter-of-factly. “There’s me,” he says, pointing at the black dot again, “And all around me there’s no one. I don’t have anyone, hyung.”

“But—”

“You never ask me to go out with you guys,” SeungRi continues, “You laugh together but never with me. You’re supposed to be my leader, yet you don’t even know me. You didn’t even want me in the beginning. I don’t even know if you want me now.”

JiYong feels angry for some reason, he feels angry at SeungRi because he’s wrong, what he’s saying isn’t true. Or perhaps JiYong feels angry because it is.

“Tch. Your own painting and you can’t even get it right!” JiYong leans over and plucks the paintbrush out of SeungRi’s hand, taking it upon himself correct it. He paints 4 lopsided stick men, drawing a crown on the biggest one for good measure. He hands the paintbrush back to SeungRi and leaves with his nose in the air. SeungRi looks at JiYong and then back at his painting. He dips the paintbrush into his palette.

---

Again, JiYong trudges to the front door at 6 am for yet another schedule. This time, however, he doesn’t see the maknae in the living room anymore. All he can see is SeungRi’s painting in the same spot it was yesterday. But JiYong had a hard time calling it SeungRi’s painting anymore because it certainly looked nothing like the black dot with a bunch of empty space around it anymore. Instead of the sad dot in the middle of the canvas and 4 even sadder looking stick figures around it, every inch of SeungRi’s painting was now painted with every colour of the rainbow and there was no empty space anymore.