The first question to ask is, “Why?” When this question is answered with a sunshine smile, a light chuckle, and a single shrug of shoulders, the next question to ponder is, “How?” Since the first question wasn’t even given the light of day, however, no one will expect the next question to be answered, either.

No one expected a straight answer to come out of Cha HakYeon, anyway. He was known as an airhead who couldn’t hold a serious conversation to save his life. But, really, why would a Mono choose studio art as his favorite pastime? And how did he manage working with all of those colors?

Mono. Can be used interchangeably as a noun or adjective. One who has yet to be matched with his or her soul mate. Named as such because they still see the world in monochrome. Black, white, and the gray in between, that is. Not to be confused with the kissing disease, mono.

HakYeon was a Mono. He had just turned 24, had his fair share of casual relationships, but he was still a Mono. So when he wasn’t working at his part-time job, he spent his lazy days frequenting the studio on the fifth floor atop the building on the corner down the street. And the middle-age man who managed the loft – to make sure no hoodlums went traversing up there with their cans of acid paint to defile the works previous students had left behind – knew well that HakYeon was a Mono. From the first of the paintbrush, the old man sighed in resignation and moved on to oversee the other quiet students.

The sunshine-smiling airhead didn’t care. It was what he liked to do; it was relaxing and mind-numbing, and it didn’t cost too much money, either.

“Here, HakYeon-ah. Look.”

HakYeon squinted at the phone screen pushed in his direction. “That… Those two don’t even go together, I think.”

“Right?!” SeJung exclaimed. “So you can tell! It’s totally off!”

If HakYeon was anyone else, he probably would have been offended. But he is HakYeon, so he laughed in relief. “I wasn’t sure of myself, really. Trying to tell colors on a phone is hard.”

He may have been a Mono, but he’d dabbled in art for long enough that he could “feel” the differences in colors (even though the idea of “color” was still beyond him). He just knew “this” paint was definitely different from “that” paint, so he’d use the former because it gave off a stronger feeling. While the old man used to pass his canvas by without a second glance, more recently, he would stand back and watch as all of the haphazard stripes muddled together to a vibrant composition. Of course, HakYeon’s sense wasn’t perfect, but maybe it was interesting, at least.

Yoon SeJung, however, had met her match a few years ago, so she had ecstatically bounced out of the status of Mono to Poly, as in polychrome as in she is now able to see the world in much more than 64K. Yet with that being the case, she refused to adhere to the rules of the color wheel and dipped her brush in whatever cup happened to be closest. HakYeon found no fault in her pictures; the streaks of light and dark still made an astounding piece of work.

As for how the two became such good friends… well, two chatterboxes will never run out of things to talk about.

“So he told her to wear that. I’m like, no! People are gonna like, stare you down everywhere you go!”

“Especially downtown? Oh, sorrow.”

“No sympathy. No feelings. No sense. It’s a terrible thing, really…”

SeJung trailed off, pointedly looking away without finishing her sentence. The studio had closed for the day, and the two friends were strolling along the sidewalk at ease. HakYeon took his friend’s silence in stride; he knew she never meant to be insensitive toward Monos, exactly, but after bursting into the world as a Poly, she seemed to have forgotten everything about the empty black and white.

HakYeon wasn’t exactly super-sensitive about it, either. He knew, hopefully in time, he would find his match, some magical thing would happen, and he would see the world how SeJung saw it. He knew it would happen eventually, so he wasn’t impatient.

A phone tittered. “Ah,” SeJung started. “Hold on.”

She scooted to the side as she brought her phone up, leaning into one store’s shadow. HakYeon shifted so he could slouch his weight on to one foot. He could barely hear the voice on the other side.

“Oh, dongsaeng. What’s that? Oh, okay. Did you already call Dad? Well, duh. Duhhhhhhh. No, I’m having dinner with oppa. Eat to your heart’s content. What? Whaaaat?” HakYeon ducked his head from how obnoxiously loud his friend was starting to sound. “I’ll be there tomorrow! Geez, whatever. Okay byeeeeee!” She clicked the call to an end with a sneer.

“Dongsaeng?” HakYeon inquired lightly.

SeJung pushed off the building to continue their stroll. “Yeah, my little brother got reassigned. Have I told you? He’s in S.W.A.T. But yeah, he got reassigned back up here in Seoul, and he just got into town.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. And dangerous?”

“Yeah, sometimes the stuff he gets into is scary, but he’s good at his job, so I don’t worry too much.” They arrived at an intersection. “Well, I’m turning here. Dinner with SangBo. See you tomorrow, HakYeon-ah!”

HakYeon lifted his hand. “Sure, noona. Have fun!”

She trotted carelessly into the intersection, already immersed with texting away on her phone. Fortunately, she avoided the bitter fate of becoming road kill. HakYeon turned the opposite direction to pay a visit to his favorite coffee shop.

As he passed over the threshold, his other senses were assaulted with the somewhat musty atmosphere he was well attuned to. It was there that he spent most of his other free time, mainly because the novelty of such normalcy stirred his artistic juices. He figured he’d probably draw or paint something else when he got home later.

“Ah, sorry,” a stranger’s voice mumbled.

A shoulder bumped his shoulder as he tried to wiggle his way through the mess of idly standing customers. The coffee in HakYeon’s hand spun in the cup; thank patent pending for coffee lids.

“Ah, no, it’s fine.” HakYeon barely glanced over his shoulder at whoever had bumped him, but no one was paying attention, all statues thirstily watching and waiting for the baristas to hurry up with their own liquefied addiction.

He shrugged and tried to muscle his way to the door – a joke, because HakYeon is almost a beanpole – but he spun around again, the coffee in hand sloshing about.

What…

There was something, something in that line of people. He scanned all of the backs of their heads, trying to see it again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. They shifted on their feet, sometimes one or another heading up to the counter to claim their order.

It was gone. HakYeon shook his head, trying to dispel whatever had possessed him for that brief moment, and turned again to leave.