“JINNIE~”

That was what I heard immediately after the doorbell had rung. Sometimes I questioned Wooyoung’s sanity...well no, that would be an understatement since I always questioned his sanity. Then again, I was the one that agreed to have him live with me, so perhaps I should be questioning my own sanity as well. Ah the unanswered questions of life.

“Hi, Wooyong-oppa...” I heard Jin’s less than enthusiastic tone say in an almost grumbling fashion. Walking down the small hallway, I looked towards the front door of the apartment, seeing my roommate finally putting back Jin’s smaller form back down to the ground, where it had been previously.

“I missed you~”

“We saw each other yesterday, and the day before that, and every single other day before that since freshmen year.”

“Aw, my Jinnie’s not happy to see me?”

“Good morning Jin,” I finally interjected, giving her a small wave and re-crossing my arms.

Now Jin, Jung Sung-Jin being her full name, I couldn’t even remember how the two of us had become so close, but right at that moment, it was nice knowing that I still had someone left that I enjoyed talking to that had more than enough sanity to confide in. It was also nice knowing that she felt even the slightest bit of pity for me, knowing that I had to deal with this big kid named Wooyoung every single day, and as she looked my way with rather sympathetic eyes, I knew she was thinking that just now.

“Morning, oppa,” she smiled as well, waving a large yellow envelope in her hands and directing it towards me.

“Hey, why does Khun-hyung get a nice ‘morning-oppa’ while I get a ‘Hi, Wooyoung-oppa’ in that ‘Ugh, what’s this person doing here wasting my life’ voice? Is this favouritism, Jinnie?” Wooyoung tried pouting in means of persuading Jin, but I already knew her well enough to know that she would never succumb to his...whatever it was about him. Childishness. Yes, she would never succumb to his overly childish nature.

I took a closer look at both of them and smiled. Honestly, even though I found myself questioning how I become friends with the both of them in the first place (more so towards Wooyoung than the shorter woman in front of him), I couldn’t help also finding myself not being able to think about how life would be without the both of them. I met Wooyoung back in high school, but we never really ‘hit off’ as friends (or anything remotely close to it) until two years ago as freshmen in college, and that was probably only because I was the only one willing enough to tolerate his...well, him in general. The two of us met Jin when we had finally begun tackling those math units we needed, and thankfully, Jin was there to help us along. I still didn’t understand why she loved her math and chem to such extents, but I never complained, especially because she was always willing to help me anyway. Not to mention, it was probably one of the few things that was unique about her.

We all balanced each other out, as Jin would say, making both ends of an equation, products and reactants, equal too each other.

“Did you try cooking breakfast again?”

“What?! Of course not! Why would you even say that?”

“Oppa?” she directed the question to me.

“Yep.”

“HYUNG~”

“Jang Wooyoung. Back to your room,” Jin commanded the older man.

“Yah! Respect your elders, young lady!”

“Well you certainly don’t act like you’re older.”

With that, Wooyoung had mimicked his previous actions, head bowed, sulking silently as he proceeded into the direction of his bedroom. I finally pulled myself away from the frame of the doorway I had been leaning on, walking towards Jin and taking the yellow envelope from her hands.

“These are from Yoo-Jin, I’m assuming.”

“Well of course. You did request them.”

I opened the envelope as I made my way over to the couch, taking out the four photos I had requested from our photography obsessed friend. They were simple, though it angered me that there were many other things that I didn’t exactly take a liking to in each photo, but this was coming to me free of charge anyway, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain...too much.

“Honestly, Oppa, I don’t see why you don’t just ask-”

“It’s complicated.”

“No, you’re just making it complicated.”

I sighed, but I couldn’t help but be even more discouraged knowing that Jin was correct in her statements. I took another look at the photos, examining them in more detail.

“So I’m assuming you can finally get started on that art project you’ve been putting off until now since you have these photos now, right?”

“Well it depends. I haven’t even decided what medium to use.”

“Paint.”

“You know I don’t like wet media. Plus, I don’t know what dimensions for a canvas, nor do I know how I want to transpose these multiple images and combine them into a single entity.”

“Well just photoshop them together first, and then you can work from that,” she patted my shoulder, standing up from her seat beside me, “Anyway, I have to get going. Chem is starting soon. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

“Alright.”

As soon as she left, I stood up, taking the four enlarges pictures with me and making my way to my room, stopping along the way to see if Wooyoung had any more plans to cause chaos, but quickly disregarding that idea when I saw him on his desktop, headphones on with some music editing program open. I guess he was working on another production or something, or probably just playing around, and I was more inclined to think the latter.

A few minutes later after I had already scanned the photos onto my desktop, I had photoshop open to a blank untitled document with a transparent background, still not knowing exactly what to do with what I had been given. Needless to say, these pictures weren’t exactly what I had been looking for. I needed my subject isolated, but she was seemingly always surrounded by the same seven people, and that was a hassle at times.

Renn...that was really the only way I could refer to her for I didn’t even know her real name.

To me, she was my perfect subject, my focal point of interest in which I wanted to base my next art project on, but I, being the lame person I was, couldn’t figure out a suitable way to request for her to pose for me, so I took the alternative route. I asked Yoo-Jin to secretly take pictures of her, and here they were, though of course, in secret would mean she would be taking said photos when Renn was out on a regular basis, and that would mean she would be with her little group. The presence of the others bothered me in these photos, especially how Junsu, I believe that was his name, had held her hand protectively as he seemingly placed her in between him and Junho, at least that was I could make out from the positions in the photo. And in another one, there was Jay... I immediately threw that photo out because the focus was more on that damn bastard looking ever so longingly at Renn rather than Renn herself.

So I took the other three images together, having them overlap one another on the blank document in a triangular fashion, took my eraser tool, set the brush to some air brush, and erased the definitive borders of each photo so they would all seemingly blend into one another. Of course, it would have been much better if I had her by herself, but for now, I would make do with what I had. So I printed off the document with the small edits I had made and just let it sit on top of the printer.

It was still about 4 hours til I would meet up with Jin later on, and for some unknown reason, I was in a particularly good mood this morning, so I did something slightly out of the ordinary.

“Yah, Wooyoung!”

“Yeah, hyung?!” he called back from across the hall.

“Want to help me make breakfast?”