I like to be quiet
So no one will look
So no one will stare
So no one will judge
But I have many things to say
And telling him that I love him is one of the many.

He liked to be quiet. Maybe it was because the new language had been slapping him in the face every single day. Maybe it was just because he genuinly enjoyed being quiet. It was easy, it was peaceful. It also came with some disadvantages. People in general avoided him, didn't ask him anything, or didn't take him seriously. But he was fine with all of that.

Back home he did have friends but here everything seemed to be harder. His English was okay enough to communicate, but he still had an accent. So he just kept quiet, observed, and minded his own business. He had other ways of expressing himself, ones of which he made sure others wouldn't understand the least. He enjoyed his art a lot, but with it having so many hidden clues he knew others would simply not see what it was actually supposed to mean.

And like he said before, this too he didn't mind. He didn't really miss home neither did he really miss his friends. You could say he was kind of superficial on the topic but he just accepted that this was the way things went. He minded himself and others didn't mind him.

Deep down of course no one likes to be forgotten, no one likes to be overlooked, ignored or simply be put aside. That feeling of not being important can hurt ones pride at first but it will hurt your soul when you take it too far. But for now he didn't care. Like all ignorant fools Jinyoung believed that he could make it on his own, that he didn't need anyone or anything to get by.

So he kept quiet. Minded his own business. So no one would look, no one would stare, no one would judge.

The problem is. Keeping quiet often makes you stand out even more. Not responding makes people view you as rude or inconsiderate, not talking makes people think you're arrogant and selfish. To put it simply, behaviour that is slightly off draws attention. And Jinyoung had noticed.

It started with the small looks. Then the whispers started, the straight out gossip and the teasing quickly followed. When people don't know something they will make up their own story about it, their own adaptation of what they supposedly heard from 'someone' else. He wasn't stupid, he knew what they were saying and he had a good idea of what they were thinking too.

In the midst of all this so called horror he managed to find someone that was not like them. Someone that didn't seem to judge him whenever he had the chance. He had never spoken with this person, but that didn't mean he didn't know everything about him. Mark Tuan was his name.

Jinyoung could say he was well known, maybe even popular. He was tall, had beautiful facial features that made girls swoon, was sportive and also, to Jinyoung's suprise, rather quiet. Now this was the thing. Mark was the living example of the difference between their quietness.

Mark was quiet simply because he enjoyed being so. He was quiet because he liked to listen or simply because he didn't have anything to say. Unlike Jinyoung who forced himself to be completely blank just so he wouldn't draw attention. Mark didn't need alternative methods to express himself, simply because he was content with the amount of expressing he was doing. Jinyoung admired him and slowly but surely this admiration developed into love.

Now Jinyoung didn't let the tangles of love fool him. No he surely wasn't like that. But he did let it consume him. For him Mark was everywhere and in everything. This could be clearly seen from his paintings and drawings, that was if he would ever show them to anyone. He knew Mark's face like that back of his hand and could probably draw it in his sleep. He knew his classes and schedules, his address and family, the names of his friends and pets.

His admiration for Mark never faded and he became a little more comfortable with being silent. He adapted his ways of being quiet and managed to keep the attention away from him. He watched Mark from a distance, not like a creep, but simply because he enjoyed watching him and learning from that. He was content but he couldn't stop his heart from wanting more. There was only one problem.

To Mark he didn't exist.

He was the smart kid in class that never said anything and no one bothered talking to. He would be suprised if Mark even knew as much as his name. And so he just kept watching and observing and hiding in the silence that was slowly consuming him.

He watched Mark play sports, he watched him chat with friends, he watched him go out with girls and occasionally, boys. It hurt him to see someone be this happy whilst also being themselves. Not because he didn't wish it upon him but because he didn't seem to be capable of that himself. But it was fine as long as he could watch Mark. He'd give anything to see Mark smile.

After a while of studying, if you will, Mark's behaviour, he noticed that Mark had started to notice him too. He knew certain things simply couldn't go unnoticed but he had been consequent, or so he thought. Whenever he was sitting at a distance just observing, Mark would throw glances at him every now and then. He made sure to never make eye contact but he knew Mark was watching him the same way he had been watching Mark.

After that happened more often he noticed Mark looking at him even more often. Looks turned into little encounters that his heart wasn't prepared for. Words were never exchanged, never did they look each other in the eye, but he knew there was something going on.

All the stress it was causing him resulted in him drawing and painting even more. And of course he would draw his favourite thing to draw, Mark. He had only a few paintings of him, but the drawings were stacking up. There were loads of them that he wasn't happy with, loads that didn't translate the feeling Mark radiated as well as he would want them to. There were also loads he could stare at for hours.

One faithful afternoon he was painting in the school's studio. It was a painting of Mark but not directly. His face was covered with patterns of flowers and mountains that reflected the way Jinyoung saw Mark. As something simple yet powerful, quiet yet beautiful in every way. He knew his perception of Mark was rather poetic but he enjoyed thinking of things that way. The patterns also made Mark's face less recognizable symbolizing the distance he felt to be away from Mark.

Back to the happenings of that afternoon. He was painting when suddenly someone stormed into the room and accidentally knocked him over. He managed to quickly straighten up and look at the person that had so rudely disturbed his train of thoughts. Of course he hadn't been expecting to see Mark. No words were exchanged as he swiftly bowed and left the room. 

Now Jinyoung wasn't a sloppy person, but in his rush to get away from the only person he genuinely liked, he forgot his sketchbook. He internally cursed himself for being so utterly stupid and immediately gave up on ever recovering his pride or chances to communicate with humand kind.

Everything he had never dared to express was stored away in that sketchbook. Now ultimately Mark wouldn't understand a thing or wouldn't even look at it, and just return it to him. Realistically he would look at it and then return it to Jinyoung with a ton of questions Jinyoung wasn't ready to answer.

The next day he dreaded waking up and going back to school knowing that he would probably see Mark there. To his suprise he didn't see Mark for the entire day. He knew Mark's schedule and he always saw him, but today he was no where to be seen. He didn't exactly go looking for him either, it was better to avoid it then to go looking for it. He felt lost without his sketchbook or Mark to observe. He realized how much his days were consumed by watching Mark and drawing him.

He had lost his heart to the impossible. He had given away his love to someone that didn't even know of his existence. He had been stupid to think that he could make it on his own and to cover up for that he had engulfed himself into the life of someone else. He had been stupid, but he knew that much by now.

The next day he decided to not go to school. He needed to sort out what was going on with him and he needed to get his mind straight and accept that he had to crawl out of the hole he had dug for himself. He decided to go to the park to take a walk and try to clear his head.

He had been sitting close to a lake for a while when he suddenly saw a familiar face approaching him. He completely looked up to see Mark coming his way. Mark looked exactly the same as always, but he could see that something in his eyes had changed. Mark came up close to him and held a little sketchbook out in front of him that Jinyoung recognized as being his own. 

He could see the understanding in Mark's eyes. There was no pity, no mockery, Mark wasn't laughing at him. There also wasn't the will to fix him. Mark was the first person that didn't have the look on his face that told him he was trying to fix him. He slowly took the sketchbook from Mark's hand and looked up to him.

"Hi" was the only thing Mark said.