He doesn’t remember well how it started.

Probably he was still in bed, half-sleepy and half-awake, his right arm stretched out to find something he could use for drawing what he had in mind; his sight blurred and unfocused, he clearly remembers how it sharpened as soon as he found a paper and a pen (his bedside table was actually a mess, but he never failed to leave some stationery there).

He sketched some lines, a face he didn’t want to forget: beautiful but peculiar features, slightly parted lips, a straight petite nose, and furrowed, thick but droopy eyebrows; and then his gaze, piercing and deep and dark - two black holes that captured and engulfed his attention. His face was oval and his ears even; and his Adam’s apple prominent and masculine.

He paused and looked at what he had drawn.

What he remembers is the emotion he felt: like he was in love with someone he didn’t knew, a mysterious beauty he needed to trace, impress, maybe even carve on a canvas. He didn’t want to forget him.

He’s starting to confuse the day for the night - his sleep schedule is all messed up, and he actually never comes back home, but he just naps on the sagging couch of his studio, his mind always busy with him.

He has already decided the palette he’ll use, a mix of beige, , flesh, red, bordeaux, and burgundy - everything unfolds in mind, and everytime he closes his eyes, even for few instants, his presence becomes tangible and palpable and real. He almost can touch that face, the sharpness of his zigomes, and the smoothness of his lips (or are those a little parched?), and the consistency of his hair, some rebel locks adorning his forehead, the rest behind his ears; and the thickness of his neck and his shoulders. He feels the warmth of his skin under his touch.

So he grabs the brush and paints. To remember and then forget him. To exorcise him and erase his suffocating beauty from his mind.

He doesn’t want to admit how obsessed he is, but he can see the worry on his mother’s face when she visits him, bringing some food and clean clothes.

“I know you never stop working when you have a brilliant idea, but this time you’re not even going out for a walk, like you did the other times”, she whispers.

Seungyoon doesn’t want to sound angry, but his eagerness and his urgency are too much and he just blurts out: “It’s nothing of your concern, I’m perfectly fine”.

He feels guilty when she goes away, but mostly because he knows this is getting out of hand.

He applies a hand of color - a pastel yellow he can use for his skin tone - and, as he retouches the details of his face, the man takes life under his fingers. The brush rasps the canvas once, twice, infinite times, and as Seungyoon leans on, bended to get a closer look, the features of his face get more defined, precise and neat.

“I wish you were real”, he whispers lightly, as the brush outlines his lips and adds some more red to the ends of his mouth.

Seungyoon snaps out of his state of trance, realizing what he has said, and breathes heavily. He waits some minutes for the color to get dry and then he caresses the incomplete painting, sighing.

When he dozes off, he feels like someone is observing him. No, not someone, the painting is observing him, even if the eyes aren’t defined yet, just sketched and uneven, two lifeless and dark holes.

He must be getting crazy.

Even if he’s worried, he can’t leave that painting undone. He must finish what he started.
 

Seungyoon is getting slimmer as that man is getting more realistic. He just takes some bites of what his mother cooks, and as a sunflower he lives for the sunshine, trying to get the best natural light for his painting. He wants to confine his emotions in that artwork, his getting thicker and more intense as the time passes.

He almost faints for the fatigue, but he never stops to work.

When he finishes the painting, he actually squeals of happiness. He turn around and look at how shabby the studio has become, he breathes and sighs, guessing everything stinks in that room, even himself. He gives his back to the painting, feeling free from his trap, and finally laughs.

He’s deadly tired and just wants to sleep, so he crawls towards the couch and practically passes out on it.

He sleeps for days.

He alternates moments of darkness and light. He finds himself running without an apparent reason, but as he keeps going on he feels his limbs getting heavier and his heartbeat getting faster - and he somehow knows he’s not gonna stand a chance, he’s dying right there, probably for fear.

Another time he’s sitting and his view is blurred by something - tears? are those tears? - and as soon as he tries to dry his eyes with his hands, someone blocks his movements - who, though, Seungyoon asks himself, who is he; and as he thinks like this, he realizes it must be him, and he’s scared to death.

“I finished you, I completed your picture. Your story ended up already, I don’t have anything else to say about you, it’s over. I covered up the painting with a piece of cloth, you’re gone, you’ll always live in that painting - but that’s it, so let me be”.

“It’s you who can’t let me go”.

And it’s his own voice that is talking, though it’s him speaking.
 

“You had a fever… you stressed yourself too much, your body is weak. You should rest some days, but after that you must go out and take a walk under the sun. It’s very important that you do something like this, ok, Seungyoon?”, the family doctor speaks to him, but Seungyoon listens to him just partially.

“It’s up to you. You need the will to get better, ok?”

Seungyoon tries to talk and the doctor helps him drinking a sip of water. “T-the-”, he pauses, tired, “the picture… in my studio, bring it back to me”, he manages to say.

The doctor sighs and looks at his mother, but nods after few moments.

Now that the picture is hanged in his room, Seungyoon can finally rest.

He still feels like he’s observing him, though, and sometimes he tries to catch him red-handed; he pretends to look at one side of the room and suddenly turns his head to get him - but of course he’s still as stone, with the same intriguing, mysterious and somewhat ambiguous face Seungyoon painted, his alluring parted lips and those deep eyes with very long eyelashes looking ahead. Seungyoon can swear he can reads all his secrets with that gaze.

More than freaking out, he’s just happy.

The days passes and he’s still in bed; he starts talking to the picture, telling his story, how he grew up, what kind of kid he was, what he likes about being a painter and how he developed his own style.

“But your portrait, I had to do it properly, the old way, I wanted to paint you precisely, like you’re real, a guy you can meet when you walk down the street”.

His mother finally wins their never ending battle, mostly because Seungyoon still feels guilty.

He goes out. It’s almost autumn and a chilly wind is blowing, so Seungyoon zips up his coat and hugs himself for the cold. He walks slowly, looking around: the leaves on the branches are yellow and orange, and they look like they would crumble if the wind was a little bit stronger. Seungyoon usually likes autumn, but right now everything seems death in comparison with the colors of his painting.

As he keeps walking, he wishes he is at home instead, talking to his favorite interlocutor, telling him stories. He gets in a crowded area and slows down, appreciating the warmth of the people pressed around him. He goes on for a while, then he stops quite abruptly.

He thinks he recognizes that hairstyle - he shifts, tiptoeing, trying to see properly.

And there it is: burgundy hair, and thick droopy eyebrows, a straight pretty nose, with even nostrils, and volitive pink lips - and those eyes he can’t forget.

It’s him.

Walking in the daylight of an autumn morning.