Birds were singing. It was a strange kind of melody. Not really something that a few birds could sing since it was complicated, too complicated. Still, I liked the sound. It was clear and happy and it made me relaxed.

My fingers rubbed the ground, it wasn’t wood, like it was supposed to be, the ground wasn’t smooth nor solid. It felt dirty and it rolled away when I touched it. I groaned and opened my eyes. I was not about to lay on a dirty floor, which this grit-path obviously was.

But how I wished that I had kept my eyes closed. This wasn’t the place where I had closed my eyes, this wasn’t Donghae’s attic… I recognized the place though, no it wasn’t Donghae’s attic, it was Donghae’s painting. With my own eyes I saw the house, I saw the crops but I also felt the wind, smelled the flowers and everything seemed so real if it wasn’t for that little layer over everything. There was a texture over everything, an canvas texture which hurt my eyes.

As I sat up, I heard a small little voice calling out for me: “Hyukjae…?” I turned around and saw Tiffany lying not too far away from me. I quickly scrambled up and ran towards her. I helped her sit upright and wiped some dirt of her face. She smiled softly and asked me with a sore voice: “Where are the others?”

I looked around. I saw an old well with crumbling stones on the edge, a little house that seemed to be in a better state than the well but still not very good and a few still growing crops but up-close they weren’t as healthy as they seemed when I first looked at the painting. The thing however that painfully stood out was that Jessica, Kyuhyun and Ryeowook weren’t here.

“I don’t know,” I answered her honestly, “but we’ll find them, I promise.” I helped Tiffany stand up and she looked around while I studied her face. It seemed sad and confused but also a little excitement was noticeable in her dark eyes.

“We’re in Donghae’s painting aren’t we?” She suddenly asked me and I unconsciously froze. I turned away from her face and looked at the unhealthy crops on the ground, the upper leaves had some healthy looking shade of green but underneath it, the leaves’ color was some rotten kind of purple which was a bit hidden from sight.

“Even if I don’t want to believe my eyes… Yes, I believe we are.” I answered her and I saw her nodding from the corner of my eye. Neither of us felt the need to comment about the strange texture that seemed to be everywhere. If that hadn’t been there, I never would’ve believed that we were in a painting, so in a certain way it made everything real but it also made everything fake.

I sighed, a bit lost in my own thoughts when Tiffany asked: “What do we do now?” Her voice was trembling, and sounded a bit sore. Worried, I laid my hand over her front head. Hmm, it wasn’t particularly warm or anything but she still needed some fresh water.

“First, we’ll need to get some water from the well for your throat and then I guess we need to find the others and…maybe Donghae.” Yes, one of my suspicions was that the freak was trapped in his own painting. How, I didn’t know but I still needed to find out if he was here or not.

Tiffany nodded and took a deep breath as if she needed some courage to move on. I took her hand reassuringly though I wasn’t so reassured myself. To be frank, I was a bit afraid because I wasn’t the strongest around. Okay, now I wasn’t completely honest. I’m not strong at all. My arms are so thin that a man could wrap his hand around it without any problems and if you’ve tried that with your own arm then you’ll know how thin mine is. To make a long story short, I don’t have any muscles. I couldn’t protect Tiffany, I wasn’t strong enough for that. Jeez, I wasn’t even strong enough to make Jessica stop hitting me, let alone a big man. Still, I liked to think I could; it helped me sleep at night.

Luckily Tiffany seemed happy with my hand and together we walked to the old well. I carefully leaned over the edge of the well, while holding Tiffany’s hand, and looked inside it. There was some clear water down there, though it was out of our reach. I sighed and leaned back. Tiffany stared at me with an expectant gaze. I sighed and shook my head: “There is water but we’ll never get to it with just our hands.” I explained and her face fell. She was obviously craving for some water but I couldn’t give her any.

“Maybe we should try to find some rope and a bucket.” She suggested and looked at the rod above the well were a rope could be placed. I looked at it as well and nodded. I wasn’t sure if you could die from thirst in a painting but I sure wasn’t going to try it, so I looked around at the scenery if there was something that I could use as a bucket or as a rope.

“Maybe we could look in the little house?” I looked at it, considering my own proposition, Tiffany slapped my arm hard, the same kind as hard as Jessica would do. I guess that she missed her friend too. Well, I didn’t mind it in particular, I would just protest if she would do things that Kyuhyun would do to. I didn’t need two Kyuhyuns, one was already too much.

“It’s a sin to break into a house, Hyukjae.” She lectured me and I sighed in relieve, knowing that Tiffany wasn’t copying every trait from our other friends, ‘cause Kyuhyun would’ve immediately agreed to that idea. Ryeowook probably wouldn’t agree to it, though but he would’ve considered it because he liked to try new things.   

Still I looked a bit annoyed at her and retorted: “I know that it’s not right but we need to do something and people often keep things that could be stolen in their house, so the most logical thing to do is to look there. Besides, we’re not breaking in, we’re borrowing some stuff.” I tried to explain to her and Tiffany seemed a bit torn, she wanted to find a bucket and a rope but wasn’t sure if breaking into a house was the right thing, and even when I was a bit annoyed I couldn’t really blame her.

In the end she complied and said: “Fine, but only if we can do it without breaking the door.”

“Okay,” I smiled a bit devilish at her and pulled her over the little path to the house. We stood still in front of the wooden door, a bit indecisive Tiffany touched it as if it would magically spring open or something.

And even though it didn’t magically sprung open, it did do something that both of us didn’t expect: it crumbled down. We saw the old wood just crumble down in little pieces, making a mess on the doorstep but also allowing us to look into the little house.

Tiffany retreated quickly and grabbed my arm again. She bit her lip as she stared down at the door: “I didn’t mean to do that!” She tried to defend herself and nodded while giving her a few little pats on her hand to show her that it was alright.

“I know that. Don’t worry, no one seems to be living here so no one will care…” But of course it didn’t calm her down. The opposite actually, she frantically began to pull my arm and her voice became an octave higher. “This house belongs to someone, Hyukjae, and I destroyed it! What would those people say, what would my parents say, what would the police say!” My goodie-two-shoes-friend was almost becoming hysterical by the thought of the broken door.

I sighed and crouched down by the pieces of the door. Little brown pieces lay there on a pile. I picked one of them up. Though it felt like wood, it wasn’t wood at all, the little pieces were so small and smooth that they made me think of pieces of glass but I was sure that it wasn’t glass either. Still, strangely enough I didn’t feel the need to clean them up, which was new to me because I often wanted to clean things up in other person’s houses. Kyuhyun was someone who often mad use of that little fact but I just couldn’t stop myself because it irritated me to no end.

“Somehow, I don’t think that this broken door is your fault, Fany. It probably was already so fragile that even the slightest wind could’ve broken it…” I told her as I stood upright again, still with a little piece of wood – or glass – in my hand.

“Even so, I was the one who touched it after which it broke!” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me for defending her. I just waved with my hand to show her that I didn’t care about this illogical conversation anymore and I walked over the doorstep into the little house.

“Hyukjae!” Tiffany screeched, “What in the world do you think you’re doing?!” She yelled from outside but I ignored her and looked around.

It clearly was an old house with even older furniture. There was an old table with three chairs, the fourth chair lay broken on the ground (one of the chair legs was broken). In the left corner stood a broken bed. The matrass was gone and part of the bottom was broken. And in the right corner, next to the window, was a little bureau. There were many little jars on it with various colors of what seemed to be paint in them.

“Hyukjae, we made an agreement! If we broke the door, we wouldn’t go into the house!” Tiffany yelled from the doorstep with her back towards me. Apparently she refused to even look inside the house. I ignored her again and walked to the little bureau that had caught my eye for some kind of strange reason.

“Fany,” I said as I could see the contents of  the little jars, “I think that this was the house of an artist whose gone now.”

I picked up the jar with a red color on it and laid the little piece of wood on the bureau. After that, I turned towards Tiffany who still stood with her back towards me. “How do you know?” It seemed demanding but I also heard a little hesitating in that sentence and that was when I knew that I had already won.

“The paint in this little jar is old, almost all the furniture is broken and there are so many spin rags here that it almost impossible to live here.” I looked to the ceiling where the biggest spin rag of all was. Many spiders had thought that it was a good idea to make a home there. It was almost completely white there and I couldn’t see any separate thread.

Tiffany hesitated but turned around in a slow pace and peeked inside the house. When she also saw the terrible state of the room, she stepped over the little pile of wood and walked inside. She walked towards me and took the little jar from my hands to examine it.

She put her little finger into the jar and pressed a bit on the hardened paint. After that she pulled her finger out and took a good look at her finger to see if there was any paint stuck on it. But her finger was completely clean and Tiffany sighed and put it down.

Then she slowly picked up the other colors, yellow and blue, but also the green, orange and all of the other colors. It took her several minutes in which I watched her. She began to speak after she had put down the brown color.

“It has been a long time since I’ve seen this kind of paint.” She told me and bit her lip. She still didn’t look at me but at the jars, it was like those were the only things that mattered to her now.

“Do you know with what kind of paint we work at school?” She asked me out of the blue and I blinked a few times because I wasn’t sure if I heard it right but when she repeated her question, I knew that I hadn’t misunderstood her.

This was the ultimate moment for me to show her that I wasn’t a complete idiot when it came to painting: “We p