Jang Wonyoung did not skip class, even when her heart was broken. She woke up at her regular scheduled time and dressed neatly in jeans and a sweater, and she looked okay, even though her eyes were still a little red and puffy. She felt like death, body heavy and uncooperative from lack of sleep and her chest aching and empty, but she tugged her sneakers on anyway and made herself take her usual seat near the front of the lecture hall. Note-taking came automatically to her, and she highlighted passages carefully in her textbook with straight pink lines.

She had thought speaking up and breaking things off with Yujin was supposed to make her feel better. Less unwanted, maybe, if she’d been the one to choose it for herself.

It didn’t.

♡

More than a full day had passed, and she hadn’t seen so much of Yujin across the quad. Wonyoung adjusted the tote bag on her shoulder and pretended to be okay. She didn’t think about the fact that this was the longest they had gone without speaking since they had known each other’s names. She tried not to. She really tried. But her brain didn’t listen to her, and it kept running out of habit to Yujin, Yujin, and Ahn Yujin, and her heart was stupid because it followed.

She hadn’t wanted to break up. She’d never, ever wanted that.

It hit her, then, in a fresh wave, right in the pit of her stomach, because that was exactly what she’d done– she’d broken up with Ahn Yujin. She had no right to even look for that stupid blue hair or to wonder how or what she was doing. She’d given up her chance to see that smile, she’d lost it to fear and jealousy, and now she might never see it again.

She had to go. She couldn’t do this here, where there were curious eyes and she couldn’t even breathe freely. Jang Wonyoung did not cry in public. She didn’t, and she worried her lower lip with her teeth in an attempt to keep it that way.

Her apartment was only a few blocks from campus. She used to hate that it was in the opposite direction of Yujin’s, but now she was grateful. She didn’t know what would happen if she let her feet start to take her that way. Two flights of stairs was nothing after climbing six to Yujin’s place every day, but her chest ached and burned anyway. She fished her keys out of her pocket, looked up, and stopped in her tracks.

There, right in front of her door, was an easel– and on it was the painting.

The painting Yujin had done for her midterm project.

The painting of her.

Her face, her profile in a myriad of colors, colors that should’ve clashed, shouldn’t have made sense together but did, absolutely did. It was so bright it was almost blinding, but there was balance, somehow, in the depth of her painted eyes. She stepped closer, and it was then that she realized the beauty in Yujin’s technique. Yujin had painted her with her very own hands. Some of the finer details were lost, but Yujin’s fingerprints– Yujin’s fingerprints were everywhere, in the shadow of her jaw and the line of her hair. Yujin was in every part of her, and she had made her beautiful.

Her keys clattered to the thinly carpeted floor, and it was only then that she saw her– curled up on her side, dead asleep around the legs of the easel, her back to Wonyoun