Yunji .18.

Like a gentle, watchful cloud of golden warmth, her hand hovered over his when he stirred awake.

The first of his senses kindling to life like a slow burning ember was touch. He cracked open his eyes; the dark orbs taking in the sight of her deep brown hair that fell in sumptuous locks over the crumpled white linen. He breathed consciously; the stale smell of her perfume from last night invading his nostrils with a pleasing tenderness he longed for.

He raised her hand slowly and pressed her knuckles against his lips; the sweet scent of tuberose on her petal-frail fingers surfacing a handful of words in his mind.

She stirred beside him and he smiled as her fingers curled around his.

‘Yoongi…?’ she asked; her slender neck turning as more brown locks of hair framed her face in the dim morning light that escaped through the shuttered curtains of the bedroom.

‘What’s the time…?’

He kissed the back of her wrist lightly; his lips pressed against her skin as he mumbled, ‘it’s time for you to go back to sleep.’

She smiled; her dry, puffy morning lips spreading into full bloom like that of a winged jasmine, and Suga watched the expression unfold with incredible vividness. ‘Charmer.’

His smile widened at the comment; a soft chuckle sounding at the base of his throat at how cute the huskiness of her morning voice was. ‘Get more rest, Yunji.’

‘Are you going out again?’

Suga slid out of bed slowly; her hand slipping away from his as he did. ‘Yeah. I have a big show soon.’

She stared at him silently for a long moment; her eyes never leaving the back of his head as he slapped on a few neatly-folded articles of crisp clothing from within the armoire.

‘Are you going to be late?’

He considered her question for a moment, straightening out the fresh creases in the white t-shirt he slipped into head-first. ‘Maybe.’

He reached for the bedroom door, and feeling her eyes reach out to him with their piercing attentiveness, he turned. She sat up in bed. Her back curved in a distinguishable c-shape and her forearms outstretched ahead of her; her sharp elbows propped on her knees, and the softness of her moonflower face glowed with an adoration he never imagined was possible.

‘I love you,’ the words escaped his lips as naturally as a breath of air.

She smiled; the smile reaching her eyes that twinkled with morning warmth. ‘I love you. Do your best, Yoongi.’

Suga glanced at the clock; his eyes lingering on the thin silver hand that ticked away painfully slowly. He continuously peeked at his wristwatch, then his phone, then the computer screen, and inevitably, the large wall clock on the adjacent white wall of the studio.

I’m going to be late, he texted her; the back of his pencil drumming against the hard leather cover of his moleskin journal. Don’t wait up. Sorry.

‘You sure you don’t want to get going?’

Suga stared at his best friend whom leaned against the far end of the stretched work desk; a scattering of crumpled papers, a calendar infested with bright red circles, and pencil shavings littered the surface behind him. The combination being the product of Suga’s constant late nights in the studio, whom tended to his ravenous bouts of inspiration like a rabid, demanding pet.

Suga smiled; the expression more of a gesture than anything else. ‘I’ll probably be here a while. Only managed to push out four lines today, and that’s no good.’

Namjoon stared at him for a long moment with calculating eyes. ‘You sure? The last thing we need is sloppy, forced rhymes.’

The pale boy pushed his head back; his eyes directed at the ceiling as he felt the tendons in his neck stretch comfortably. ‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’

‘Hey, I’m just saying,’ the blonde scoffed; abandoning the freshly crumpled piece of paper he examined from the pile of his friend’s discarded sheets. ‘Be grateful I’m looking out for your lazy .’

‘Yeah, yeah…’

Suga watched as the blonde retrieved his belongings; the large canvas sailing under his arm with one fluid motion, and he sighed as the weight settled against his side. ‘Just… don’t be up too late.’

‘Yes, umma,’ he teased, throwing Namjoon a child-like grin as he stared back at him tiredly and reached for the door.

He was about to turn back to his work; perhaps sift through the literature he earlier picked up from the local library to tilt his thoughts into a tiny pit of creativity for inspiration; but the blonde stopped suddenly on grabbing hold of the steel door handle. He lingered for a moment, and Suga watched him carefully… his next words completely catching him off guard.

‘Don’t neglect Yunji.’

However he scoffed quietly. A small smile pulling at the sides of his lips at how ridiculous the thought seemed. As if I’d let that happen.

He stared at the empty bed.

It wasn’t an odd sight… or perhaps, it shouldn’t have been. Yet an odd feeling of disappointment swept over him for a moment, but just as quickly, the exhaustion settled in. Like an anesthetic directly to his conscience, his mind drifted into a whirlwind of prose, phrases, and meanings; the memorized lines suffocating whatever other troubles he had like a slowly constricting bind.

He approached the bed; his right hand almost naturally extending beneath the sheets for a warmth he momentarily recalled he had committed to memory. But feeling nothing but the cold crush of bedsheets that enclosed his fingers like a handful of desiccated nature, he fell asleep frowning.

‘Are you going to be late today too…?’

‘Yeah. Got a big, upcoming show to prepare for. Sorry, Yunji…’

‘It’s OK,’ he could almost picture her smiling thinly, ghostly. ‘Do your best.’

Suga couldn’t concentrate. The bouts of complete blankness he suffered from were now exceedingly common. Perhaps the most common it’s ever been throughout his stand-up profession, and he sighed deeply at the large black mass that stared back at him in his mind.

He was certain Yunji’s extended absence over the course of the last month had worsened his state of mind. But he pushed her to the back of his mind as he suddenly received a tantalizingly close reach for words that crossed his blank thoughts as fast as a shooting star. He dwelled on them for a moment, scribbled them down quickly, and like a broken machine, the blankness restarted.

Like a diminishing cloud of smoke, her hand lingered coldly over his.

A quiet stillness was all he could register; the cracking of his conscience and the crumbling of the person beside him so real he couldn’t stand the proximity a moment longer. He slipped out of bed without another glance at her sleeping form.

Prose, phrase, meaning. The pages of his anthology flipped back and forth like a wind-stricken novel within his mind; too fast for him to keep track of and yet he knew the contents like the back of his hand.

‘Yoongi…?’ she asked; her voice a disconnected mumble as he soundlessly slipped out of bed. ‘Are you going out again?’

He helped himself to the wardrobe; a prosaic morning ritual. Only this time, he carried out