My fingers trace over the intricate colours of his perfect face, with the perfect personality and perfect everything. He’s my guilty pleasure; nobody must know that I am in love with this boy. Is he even a boy – or just a figment of my imagination – a figment that only comes in my dreams? Yes he doesn’t even exist, so what am I thinking? Why am I in love with someone who came from my own imagination? What I’m tracing is a painting, my painting of what I remember of him in my dreams of the night previous. Every day, I add a new , a new streak of colour, adding to the perfection.

Today, I add another thin dark brown line – it’s his eyebrows, perfectly shaped, framing his beautiful eyes. I then turn to look around, in the dull room with minimal furniture. There’s a mini-fridge in the corner, but all I know is that I haven’t touched it in days – and that’s when I remember I hadn’t eaten in days. Next thing I know, I realise I hadn’t stepped out of my armchair in days. My thoughts had been dedicated to the painting in front of me and hadn’t ventured anywhere else. Even when I slept, I only thought of this boy. And the dreams of the boy had turned into an artwork – my attempts to photograph him on canvas.

The door opens; but I don’t remember there being a door to the room. Somewhere in my mind, I had told myself that leaving the room was out of the question; although I can’t recall ever telling myself so. There is another boy standing at the doorframe – not the perfect boy on the canvas, but another – handsome, but not even comparable to the one I loved.

“Jungkook,” he mutters, and then his heels spin as he walks away from the room. I stay in my chair, unreactive for a few moments then I look towards my love and suddenly, in the bottom right corner of the canvas, I can see the words, ‘Jeon Jungkook’. I don’t remember writing it.

I must talk to the intruder.

My attempt to get out of the chair fails as my legs collapse almost immediately from lack of movement from the last few weeks. Weeks? Wasn’t it days? I try to open my mouth to scream for the boy to come back to give me answers and to speak to me, but all my throat does is crumble and cackle a few times. Not a sound escapes my lips.

Surprisingly, the boy comes back.

He strides up to me and embraces me into a deep hug, startling me and instinctively, I kick and push him away roughly, my heart beating faster and faster. I try to scream, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t let me go, and persistently holds onto me, until I slap him. He stands up, bursting into tears, then firmly grabbing a bottle of paint and hurling it onto my painting, drowning the perfect face with a shower of red.

It takes me a while to process what just happened and unknowingly, I grab a knife in my back pocket throw it, cleanly cutting into the body of the boy. He dies instantly. I feel satisfaction for a few moments, then I wonder; why do I have a knife in my back pocket? – I don’t remember putting one in.

I’m not curious as to who the boy I just killed was – I end up mourning the ‘death’ of the painting of my lover. I don’t miss the nametag pinned on the boy’s pocket, however. ‘Park Jimin, secretary’, is the engraving. Suddenly, my palms turn sweaty and I feel myself become light headed.

“Park Ara, I understand, dear, that it’s hard to understand because you have a…special condition at the moment, but that man is your dead ex-husband and I am your brother, Park Jimin. Don’t be scared – I love you.”

The boy then bursts into tears as he snatches the dirty paintbrush from my hands and throws it at a wedding picture. Is it me and Jungkook?