TRIGGER WARNING: DESCRIPTION OF DEPRESSION

Clothes strewn across the floor, dishes and mugs littering the sink and coffee table, art supplies scattered about in a chaos; all of it lit in a dim light through the heavy drapes. Something in the air smelt stale, stagnant and slightly like the green of nausea. Ravi stood in the doorway of his apartment, one hand still on the doorknob as he looked around at his home. Heaviness was settling into its old place across his shoulders. He let the door swing shut. It closed the door on the joy he had been holding on to as well.

He moved through the room, the indigo stain on his soul darkening as he did. It was almost as though the room itself was full of it and it was seeping inside him from every angle. His movements becoming heavier with each step, he made it to the glass doors and threw the drapes open. Sunlight blasted him, burning through the room and chasing some of the gloom away. He let it warm his face for a long moment.

When he turned back, the room was unchanged. Full of signs of his failures, of his uselessness over the last year. A sigh escaped him. He didn’t want to be useless anymore. He wanted to be better. He wanted to be whole again. He ferried the mugs and plates to the sink, each one was a little victory. Until the sink was too full, his brain was too tired and he collapsed onto the couch to sulk.

The indigo crowded him once more. It had been waiting for a chance, waiting for the moment of weakness it knew would come. He pressed his face into the couch. He was always weak.

In the reflection of his mirror a woman waved with a smile. Hongbin waved in return, his face stretching back with a friendly smile. When she disappeared from the room it dropped, returning to a worn look of resignation. With slow, practised movements he cleaned the makeup away. He had been doing this as long as he could remember.

Some of his earliest memories were posing before a camera. Others were peering up at artists as they sketched or painted him. His whole life had been spent as a piece of art. He was a sculpture that just happened to walk and talk. He was perfectly formed. Perfect to be a muse, a model, an artwork. From the beginning of his life he had been treated as one. Passed from studio to studio while his parent’s friends painted or photographed him. He was featured as the star of so many exhibitions he had lost count. He had been carried here and there on the currents of fate. Here to his modelling job that he hated, there to his life where people saw him as a thing rather than a person.

He tossed the dirty cotton swab down and let his head fall into his hands. He wanted to be more than this. He wanted to exist outside of this. His eyes searched his face in the mirror. He was more than this.

At times, through the years, of course he had found people that saw beneath the skin. Ravi, practically his brother, had seen it first. Two kids being whisked along through the tumultuous art world, they had stuck together. He was the subject of their paintings, but also a member of their family. Choi Sungmi doting on him as much as she did her own son. It wasn’t that his parents were bad parents. They were simply artists, more interested in the art they had made of Hongbin, than the boy himself. She had been a mother to him. A friend.

He wiped at his eyeliner, trying to kid himself there wasn’t a prickling behind his eyes. He hated that she had ultimately become his muse. He hated the sacrifice she had to make for them all to begin to grow. He missed her. His new work, his new project, was the only way he could think to honour her memory. He would struggle against fate. He would take it by the throat and cast it off him, throw it down and take hold of his own destiny. He would not be reduced to art. He would create it. For her. For all of them.

With a sigh he tossed the last swab away and stood. Taking up his bag he extracted his camera, pointing it to the mirror and letting it snap a photo. He stowed it once more and left the studio.

Ken’s eyes surreptitiously scanned his phone. No missed calls. It was definitely set to loud. His brow crinkled.

“Just call him,” Leo laughed from the bench.

Ken tried to rearrange his face, ending up with an exaggerated expression of innocence. Leo laughed a little more.

“What if… I dunno, I don’t want to be too desperate.” Ken set the phone down only to snatch it back up within seconds.

“Just call him,” Leo rolled his eyes. “He’ll want to hear from you.”

Ken’s eyes narrowed, Leo didn’t sound overly pleased by that fact.

“Ken,” Leo pointed the knife in his hand across the room. “Call him. Now.”

“You’re so bossy,” Ken grumbled, standing from the table and shuffling out of the kitchen as he clicked Ravi’s number to dial.

Something was droning. Buzzing. Demanding his attention.

Ravi looked away from the TV screen to find his phone vibrating on the floor. He sighed, turning away to ignore it when he caught the contact name. After a long moment he scooped it up and pressed answer.

“Hello?” He sounded weary even to himself.

“Hey,” Ken was bashful; soft and careful as he spoke.

“Hey.”

“You didn’t call when you got home.” There was a squeak and a sound as though he had clapped a hand to his mouth.

“Oh,” Ravi swung himself into a sitting position. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you OK?”

His eyes swept the dark room, the mess and gloom of it all.

“I… Don’t think so.”

He closed his eyes, leaning over his knees as the indigo swallowed him.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Something in that voice, the pure light of his tone. Ravi felt a