A loud groan was heard when Minseok entered his and Jongdae’s shared apartment.

“What is it this time or you just remembered the time when that attractive tutor came close to look at your painting and you got so nervous you spilt paint on his shirt?” Why did Minseok always remind him of it? What did he do to deserve a friend like this?

“Like you are any better. Remember the time Luhan serenaded you in front of your whole group and you got so red that everyone started to call you Tomato?”

“No one called me that. Most people, unlike you, actually respect me.” In reality Jongdae did respect his hyung, its just Minseok always got shy when Luhan was involved and sue Jongdae but he enjoyed teasing Minseok like nothing else.

“Yeah, whatever. So do you actually want to know what happened or you just wanted to remind me about the thing with Minho hyung?” Jongdae knew Minseok would give a sensible advice, after he finished complaining about Jongdae’s idiocy that is.

Minseok just granted while looking for his slippers, so Jongdae took it as an agreement.

“I drew the Angel again.” Minseok just sighed. Typical. A part of him did understand Minseok’s attitude, after all, his situation was ridiculous even to himself.

xxx

It first happened when he was sulking while trying to come up with a painting. His professor assigned to paint something beautiful, but it had to be personal. However, Jongdae found beauty in everything - in the trees that swayed with the wind, in flowers that always managed to lift his mood, in old couples who came to park hand-in-hand and seemed like the world belonged to them. Everything is beautiful if you have the careful eye of an artist. For some reason today nothing came to his mind. Maybe he was too stressed, maybe he wanted to impress his professor, or maybe the world lost its all beauty in a day, but no matter how Jongdae tried he couldn’t come up with an idea. He groaned loudly and threw himself on his bed. Maybe he should just give up and paint whatever comes to his mind first, no matter whether it was “personal” or not, but he mind was blank and he was slowly but surely getting annoyed.

Jongdae closed his eyes and tried to calm down humming a song under his breath. He nearly dozed off when suddenly an image appeared in his head. It was a guy’s face, a very attractive guy’s face. He was staring out of a window and seemed deep in thought. He had short black hair with bangs, droopy eyes, long nose and full lips. Everything about the boy seemed ethereal. Jongdae abruptly set up. He didn’t know where the image came from nor did he know who it was. It was just an image of a person but how he could have made up an entire person in his mind? He surely saw him somewhere before, but he didn’t know where or when.

In the end, Jongdae decided that finding the secret muse was impossible at this point, but on the other hand he could finally start doing his assignment. So that’s what he did. Next week, when his professor gave him a knowing look and asked if this was his crash, he just smiled sheepishly.

xxx

After that faithful day the boy’s image appeared in Jongdae’s head more than it should. He kept seeing him when he was listening to sad love songs, when he was painting and even when he was dreaming. This was getting out of hands, but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about that pretty face and those deep eyes. He even came up with a nickname “angel” because he had to share his problem with his best friend, but saying “the handsome guy I imagined when I was doing Mr. Min’s assignment” was a mouthful.

“So, the Angel again,” Minseok sounded exasperate. “I’m like 90% sure you made him up at this point. You know, the best artists always had some ed up issues, so maybe this is yours. I mean, what if after going mad because of an imaginary boy you’d get famous and I’d write your biography and be able to afford buying a coffee shop like I always wanted.” Minseok whistled dreamily.

“If this goes on I might think you are right. At least when I go completely nuts, please visit me once in a while and maybe name your coffee shop after me or something.”

“Will do”, said Minseok heading to kitchen to make something for them to eat.

xxx

     A week passed with Jongdae’s whines about going mad before having made a worthwhile art after which he’d be remembered. A long week for Jongdae and even a longer week for Minseok. Minseok did love Jongdae, but some times (read- most of the time recently) he felt like murdering him and feeding the stray kittens with his remains, at least he would be of any use. Getting fed up with Jongdae, Minseok dragged him to his favourite coffee shop to “at least have a proper cap of coffee before having to put up with Jongda’s antics”. They sat at the back of the coffee shop near the window and after taking their orders begun to quietly enjoy the atmosphere. They both loved this place because it had some really good cupcakes and even better drinks. The best thing about the coffee shop was that it was mostly empty around 11am - exactly the time they had a free class.

The chocolate cupcake was a nice distraction, but it didn’t last long, so Jongdae was left with his thoughts again. He tried to think where he could have seen the Angel. In his image of the boy, he was looking out of a window so he had to have seen him 1) at his university, 2) on a bus, 3) in the coffee shop, after all he didn’t really do anything else besides studying and hanging out with Minseok. He was sure the guy wasn’t from his faculty, but maybe he was from the university, because that’s were Jongdae spent most of his time. But he could have seen him on a bus too. He used buses frequently whenever he felt like going to the park at the other side of the city to paint. After all, he could have seen the boy at the coffee shop. He spent here a lot of time too. This was hopeless. No matter how much he tried he couldn’t remember where exactly he saw him, so Jongdae could only hope he’d see the Angel again.

xxx

A month passed with Jongdae slowly losing his mind and Minseok trying to come up with a nice title for Jongdae's biography; he was hesitating between "My of a roommate" and "The idiot that lost his freaking mind after seeing a dream with a cute boy in it". For a month Jongdae spent looking for the Angel to the point that he came up with the idea to take portrait of the guy and ask people if they had seen him, before Minseok stopped his friend desperately trying to explain how “incredibly stalkerish” it was. After Jongdae stared at every guy at his university and realized that the Angel wasn’t from there, he tried to find the guy in the coffee shop. He went there everyday after classes. However, it only resulted in Jongdae’s disappointment and his wallet’s emptiness. It really was hopeless. There was no way Jongdae could find a guy in Seoul while he didn’t know his name or his address. Whether he wanted or not Jongdae had to admit his defeat.

xxx

     Minseok was happily discussing his future plans to move in with Luhan and adopt bunch of cats when it happened. For a moment Jongdae thought he got struck by lightning, but it was quite impossible considering he was inside his favourite coffee shop and it was a sunny Friday. He saw the Angel. After spending a week dreaming about the boy and a month of hopeless search he finally found the guy. Jongdae could only stare at the guy with wide open, still not understanding what was going on. The Angel was here, he was actually in Jongdae’s favourite coffee shop, right in front of his eyes. He spent a month, a whole freaking month, coming here hoping to see the guy in one of the costumers, but this had to be a sick joke, because apparently the boy has been here the whole time. Who could have imagined that the Angel was not a customer, but rather the baker of the said coffee-shop?