“- Do you have any information about the artist ? Youngjae asked to his co-worker, trying to hide the emotion in his voice.

- Nah, they just sent it here anonymously.”

There was still a chance it was by him, then, thought Youngjae.

“- Is it possible that it’s you ? The guy on the painting, I mean. It’s so strange, he looks exactly like you if you didn’t have a face.

- No.”

Yes. There was one, but he didn’t want to think about it. It was impossible that it was Jaebum, not after all this time.

Youngjae continued inspecting the other paintings, telling Jinyoung which paintings he wanted to include to the exhibition.

He only got home a few hours later, after he took care of every details left for the inauguration, the next day.

The walk home was pretty nice, yet a bit saddening. He had the habit of ordering a taxi everytime he had to get home, but he felt like walking this day. Maybe it was the tiny drops of rain hitting his pale skin, maybe it was the spring flagrance of the flowers he walked by, maybe it was the confusing painting he saw hours ago - but he felt surprisingly bad. Everything was reminding him of Jaebum these days and he didn’t know what life was trying to tell him, but he wanted it to stop. He was done with him, he had been for the past two years.

He decided to buy a coffee to cheer him up, to forget and to warm his freezing hands that was starting to sting.

It wasn’t long after that that he entered his flat. It was a really nice flat, yet very simple and white : not something you’d expect from the owner of an art museum. But even though Youngjae adored paintings and everything linked with the word “art”, he was too afraid of getting tired of all these colors. He had cleaned his walls for a few years now, being too afraid it might affect his vision and his “talent”, as they said, to find the best masterpieces. Maybe this talent was the reason he fell for Jaebum, because he was a living masterpiece.

Shaking his head to change his thoughts to something lighter, he decided to eat a little snack before getting on his computer. Armed with his two cookies, he didn’t know what to do to distract him from his ex-boyfriend, so he let his fingers express themselves. He was a strong believer in this whole “unconscious” concept, so he liked to make his mind empty and let his fingers write for him. Today, somehow, his mind seemed to want to solve the mystery of this painting he saw in the gallery, because when he glanced up to his screen, the name “DEF” was written, and his screen was fulled of similar portraits than the one he saw.

The first paintings were full of colors, and the faceless man was surrounded by flowers, clouds, leaves… Yet the most recent ones showed a contrast with the red lips of the man and the dark background he was put in. Everything about him was either pale like his skin, red like his lips, or black like his hair. The paintings were really different, based on when they had been created. You could see love, hapiness, and a certain trace of fascination in the oldest paintings, and pain, sadness and anger in the newest ones. Youngjae even found himself tearing up in front of a painting called “The Departure” : the man was walking away from what seemed like a hand, like the painter’s hand, as if he wanted to catch him before he could go farther away. The background was dark around the hand, and a bright shade of blue around the walking man, as if he took away all the colors in the painter’s world. It was heartbreaking, fierce, powerful.

Youngjae had to meet this DEF, that was the only thing he was sure of when he went to sleep that night.

The next day was mostly spent organizing the inauguration party that was held later in the evening. Jinyoung and him still had to decorate the room with a few flowers and white ribbons. They only finished when the first guests arrived, and they took a five minutes break before the party started.

Greeting his guests with the cheesiest courtesy he could, it was soon his time to recite his speech. He walked on the small stage and started scanning the crowd, searching for DEF’s face, even though he wouldn’t be able to recognize him since he had never met him.

“- I first want to thank everyone who came tonight, and those who supported both Jinyoung and me in this project. I created this branch of the gallery to give a chance to every new promising artist, and I am glad to say it’s now open. I hope you will all love this new branch as much as I do, and thank you for -”

And then, his eyes met a familiar pair of brown eyes, the ones he could have died for a few years prior. His heart stopped beating at the sight of his dark and shiny hair he had once caressed, his muscular body he once posessed, his fingers stained by a few hues of paint that once left colors on his own skin. It was him, but it also felt so unfamiliar. He couldn't recognize the cold expression on this man's face, the one who was once his. But his eyes, oh, his eyes - he could have recognized them in the dark. And as his mind fell silent and his eyes blinded every other face around them, he was frozen. The pain was freezing him.

It was him, he knew it, he knew it all along. DEF. It was so obvious. Mentally slapping himself, he tried to take his eyes away from his, but he couldn’t.

Jaebum.

Oh, how much it hurted to see him.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

HI

I FINALLY WROTE THIS CHAPTER LOL

I'm sorry it took so long. I was really excited to write this fanfic but my mental health became even worse than before and it was impossible for me to write anything. I'm not going into details, but even if it isn't fixed yet, I'm feeling better.

I'm on holidays though ! For three months ! So expect a lot of updates ;)

I'm pretty proud of this chapter, and I hope you like it as well :)