15.00

Always on the same time.

Always on the same place.

Always with the same activity.

She sat on the bench. An HB pencil clutched between her small fingers, her right hand settled lifelessly on a blank sketchbook which was on her lap. The smooth, slightly textured A3 paper was unscratched, just like yesterday’s, a day before yesterday, and another day before yesterday. The same blank paper.

A pack of drawing tools set at her left, various grading scale of pencils could be seen along with worn out kneadable erasers. The furthest 8B pencil rolled as the wind blew slightly strong than before, touched another pencil and ruined the composition of the pencils placement.

Not only the the pencils was ruined, the side hair of the sitting girl also was, strain of hairs covered her blank face which just like her sketchbook. But she let it be, let the wind blew her hair as it seemed wasn’t going to stop soon. The tip of her paper was also slightly flipped by the breeze, caused a voice that joined the leaves rustling sounds.

Her shadow was getting longer as the time ticked by. She glanced at her watch, sighed as she knew it was 1 hour before submission. It would be enough for her to complete the assignment if there was an inspiration, but, there wasn’t. She didn’t dare to call herself an artist yet, but sure, she needed something to move her fingers against the paper.  She already waited for 1 hours, sat and stared around her surroundings. No, my fault. It wasn’t 1 hours, but 48 hours, not literally. She did go home, but always came back on the same spot when it showed 15.00, looked for something that might struck her creativity.

It paid off , something did.

Or I’d rather say,

someone.

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She didn’t dare to blink, she just stared, and observed. Afraid that her object would move when she closed her eyes in a matter of second. She took her time to study her contour, her face contour. Her hands scribbled, finally started to sketch the outlines.

The first was her forehead which covered by her side swept bang style.

Slowly moved down to the radix of her nose, continued to her dorsum, tip, and finished her nose when she sketched the columella.

Her tip of pencil was now on the lips, paused a second when her model formed a pout. She smiled to herself, and began to sketch again, trying to pour the short moment of the pouting lips she captured. After a few , she immediately grabbed her eraser as she couldn’t get the image that she wanted.

She quickly returned her focus on the model, squinted her eyes to get a clearer image, wanted to know whether the lips were parted or not, but failed because of the distance. Mentally told herself to bring a binocular next time. She decided to get the bigger picture first, and finished her outlines in 30 mins.

She switched to her 2B pencil, and started to give stronger lines, mostly on the eyes. And used the same pencil to give shades on some parts. She switched to a higher scale pencil to give darker shades, then her fingers reached her pocket to fished a tissue out, and rubbed it against the shading, created a smooth , blurry shadings.

She grabbed her 2B again, and added the hair strands. Her hands had no troubles in following the curves. Sometimes, she did miss some details and erased them.

She tried to catch her surroundings feelings and added them to her drawings, the sun light that reflected on her model’s eyes, lighten her face with princeton orange shade. The brown colour highlighted some parts of her hair. It might be sounded so cliché. But, her surroundings made her had the spotlight, blinding her drawer’s eyes with the perfection. Everything around her was blurred, the artist didn’t know that eyes could work like camera lenses, blurred the not so important details, made the main object stood out. A simple effect, but brought a huge difference. She sank in her own imaginations.

“Taeyeon!” A voice shouted, and made the artist floated back to the surface of reality. She glanced at her model to make sure she was still there, then snapped her head to see who was the caller.

“Hey, Soo ” She said and closed her sketchbook, which she didn’t know why the reason behind her action.

“The professor was looking for you, it’s already 17.00 you know”

She took another glance to her wrist, time flew so fast when you enjoyed it.

“Do you have something there? It has been two days you didn’t submit anything”

Another unreasonable action she did, she shook her head and smiled at the latter.

“ Lucky you because the professor is a fan of your arts. I bet my head will be chopped if I didn’t bring anything for the past two days” Sooyoung performed a small act that imitated the old professor when he was angry. And Taeyeon just chukled at the silly face she made.

“ It’s just you who already passed the limit,Sooyoung. Remember how many times you didn’t submit the artworks? Oops, or should I say, how many times you DID submit the artwork? “ Sooyoung rolled her eyes.

“Yeah,, yeahh.. I know.. I know.. Now, let’s go to the nearest café. You’ll pay ”

“What?! Because of? Don’t punish me for teasing your laziness”

“No, it because you’re short. So, you have to pay”

“It totally doesn’t make any sense”

“It doesn’t have to be. Come on, let’s go”

Taeyeon made a face at her jangshin friend’s stubbornness. She packed her belongings, but her eyes fell on the recent spot that they had left a few minutes ago. She was gone. The perfection was gone. A small disappointment crept into her although she already knew that she would be gone, because 5 P.M. is the latest schedule in the campus. Her face fell unintendedly by the owner, and continued to pack her drawing tools.

“Aisshhh.. Fine! I’ll pay “ Sooyoung mistook the expression.

Taeyeon smiled at her friend, “ That’s better” and quickly returned her face into a cheerful one. She grabbed all her stuff and she glanced once again to the same place before walked away from the campus yard. No words came from her, but her eyes spoke, “ Hope to see you again “

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She was abo