“HELLO MS. SON! IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK!” a petite girl shrieked in delight after bursting into the art room, giving the teacher a mini heart attack.

“I-It’s good to see you again, Chaeyoung-yang.” Ms. Son smiled as she tried to calm herself down from the shock, “Enthusiastic as always, I see.”

“Of course! I’ve been dying to get my hands dirty for some new art projects all summer.” Chaeyoung grinned widely, “What will we be starting the semester off with? Practising the basics? Learning a new technique? A large group projec-”

“Woah easy, tiger. You sounded like you were rapping.” the woman laughed while Chaeyoung picked out an easel to her liking, “That’s way too many questions for my dusty brain to comprehend at once.”

“Sorry, my excitement carried me away.” Chaeyoung grinned sheepishly back, “So what are we doing today?”

“I’m going to keep it as a secret. You’ll know as soon as everyone else arrives.”

“Ms. Son, that’s meaaan!”

“Revenge for damaging my eardrums, sweetie.”

By the time the school bell went off, every single seat was occupied. 

Ms. Son went to the centre of the classroom while clapping her hands twice to gain the attention of the students.

“Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a great summer! It’s good to see some familiar faces in the room, and I’m excited to get to know the ones I don’t recognise.” she started her welcome-back speech like any other teacher on the first day of school, “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Son Naeun and I will be your drawing-and-painting program’s teacher for the semester. Speaking of which, if anyone has realised that they aren’t supposed to be here, now is your chance to escape. If you don’t leave now, your soul belongs in this room forever.”

The students laughed at her entertaining phrases while she waited, making sure that there weren’t any lost lambs in the room.

“Well time’s up and I’ve successfully collected your souls. You’re all my children now. Anyways, moving on to the important part, for a start to a brand new semester we will be-”

Ms. Son’s sentence got cut off by a sudden knock on the door.

Before the woman could even answer it, the door was swung open by another lady who had a student following behind her very closely.

All eyes were on the sudden guests- except for Chaeyoung who was too busy with sharpening her pencils for later use.

The small girl had always hated long speeches, thus she was keeping herself entertained somehow.

“Hey unnie, hey kids.” the tall woman greeted everyone in the room, “I’m here with a delivery. I believe you requested for a model?”

“Yes I did, and I see you’ve done your job properly.” Ms. Son smiled, “She’s absolutely model-material. Where did you kidnap her from?”

“I assumed you’d want someone with fine and sturdy lines so I hunted at the Dance Department. Namjoo-unnie let me watch one of her class’s self-introductory dance session and this one really caught my eyes.” the woman answered, “She shines the brightest, and is also one heck of a ballerina. You should make her do some ballet poses- I want to see how long she could hold an arabesque.” she teased the student behind her who was now blushing from embarrassment.

“She seems a little too timid to be stared at by 25-pairs of eyeballs though.” Ms. Son doubted as she tried to take a good look at the ballerina that still used the tall woman as her human shield. “Will she really be okay working as our model?”

“What’s wrong honey? You weren’t like this on stage before.” the lady asked the shy girl before quickly turning back to face her colleague, “For your information, I didn’t kidnap her literally. She agreed when I asked, so don’t imagine me dragging her over here by the legs or something.”

“Have you ever modelled before?” Ms. Son asked softly.

Instead of words, the student shook her head as her reply.

The art teacher tried her best to comfort her. “Well I’m sure you won’t be as nervous once you get the hang of it. I promise it’s not as scary as it may seem. I’ll make sure to take care of you and let you rest.”

“You better. If anything happens to her, I’ll be the one who gets killed by Namjoo-unnie.” the other woman sighed, “Anyways, have fun. DRAW HER WELL, CHILDREN!” she screeched at the art students before waving herself goodbye and making an exit.

After giving her close colleague a wave back, Ms. Son refocused her attention back to her own class.

“Sorry for being too slow with the explanations. I didn’t expect Ms. Oh to beat me to it, but ta-dah! We’ll be practising drawing the human figure for a few months, and here is our lovely model who will be working with us.” she placed a hand gently onto the dancer’s shoulder, “Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class?”

The introverted student looked around the room nervously, embarrassed from all the attention she was receiving.

Her eyes landed on Chaeyoung who still wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on around her; the small artist had started doodling in her sketchbook since they were taking so long to get started.

Since she didn’t want to make any eye-contact, the ballerina introduced herself while looking at the only person who wasn’t staring at her. “M-My name is Myoui Mina. I’m from the Department of Dance. Pleased to meet you all.” she hastily bowed 90 degrees towards the art students after her brief speech, gaining a round of applause.

It was at that moment Chaeyoung finally left her own world as the ‘sudden’ loud claps snapped her out of it.

She quickly glanced towards her teacher to see if she was caught dazing off, yet she found herself making eye-contact with someone else instead.

The two stared at each other for 3 seconds before they both looked away shyly.

“W-Who is that?!” Chaeyoung gasped in her mind, confused since she failed to even pay attention to the girl’s self-introduction, “How can someone be so pretty?!”

“Alright guys, let’s finally get started after such a long delay.” Ms. Son exclaimed after clapping twice again, “Come grab a few pieces of paper from this drawer and get yourselves ready. Mina-yang, this way please.”

The art teacher lead Mina to the middle of the room where there was a small platform for the model to pose on. As she was deciding on a position, the woman chose to help the girl with her nerves.

“Hayoungie said you acted completely different when she saw you dancing. Was it because you were in a familiar environment?” she questioned.

“That’s a possibility…” Mina mumbled back, “The stage is a safe space for me, so I’m capable of letting go.”

“Then how about this,” Ms. Son smiled upon coming up with an idea, “Think of this as your performance. The pose I’m putting you in is the choreography to your dance, and this small platform is your stage.” she suggested thoroughly.

Mina closed her eyes as the woman finished adjusting her pose.

When she reopened them, the teacher in front of her face raised her eyebrows in surprise- the dancer’s expression and aura had changed drastically.

Her body was no longer trembling from being nervous, while her eyes sparkled with confidence. Ms. Son couldn’t help but to nod in awe.

“Such professionalism… I can see how she managed to catch Hayoung’s attention.” the woman thought, but quickly got her act together as everyone else was waiting for them. “The model is ready to be sketched beautifully. Your 5 minutes starts… now!”

As soon as the timer started, the art room was filled with nothing but the sound of pencils against paper.

It was incredibly awkward for the first-timer model, but she tried to ignore it by focusing on not moving a single muscle.

Although holding a pose may seem like an easy task, Mina learnt instantly that having her movements restricted was far more difficult than any of her dance choreographies. She could already feel a drop of sweat trailing down the back of her neck as she struggled to stay frozen.

“Mina, you can do this. Pretend you’re a statue made of marble. You’re a piece of brick. You’re a tree. You’re Medusa’s newest victim. You’re Jack from Titanic after the tragedy.” she attempted to brainwash herself, thinking of anything just so she could push on for another minute.

“Time’s up! We’ll be resting for 5 minutes as this is Mina-yang’s first time being a model. We’ll slowly increase the drawing periods and decrease the resting time in the future, but for now we’ll take it slow.” Ms. Son addressed while the dancer huffed out a lung-full of air as she relaxed her body.

Modelling for art is indeed a tough job.

“Here!”

A voice suddenly called out to Mina who flinched in surprise.

After turning towards the direction of the sound, she realised it belonged to the girl who paid zero attention at the start of class.

“You can have my seat while you take your breaks. I prefer to stand while I draw anyways.” Chaeyoung gave her a shy grin, her pointy canine teeth poking out of her lips slightly. Mina took notice of it and caught herself smiling back.

The wild-cat, fang-like teeth was actually a desired look named ‘yaeba’ in Japan; usually for women, people found the look cute and would even purposely have their teeth surgically crooked. Mina’s Japanese heritage was showing while Chaeyoung’s admiration for the pretty student was also leaking out subconsciously.

The short artist couldn’t help but to look at the girl’s pretty face, though she managed to bounce back into drawing before she got caught staring, all thanks to Ms. Son restarting the timer.

The process repeated itself until the session ended after a whopping 2 hours. When the school bell rang soundly to indicate the end to the period, Mina was visibly exhausted while the art students tidied up their seats.

“Hand in your work on my desk before you exit, please!” Ms. Son called out as her students prepared themselves to leave, “Oh, and Mina! Good job today. It may seem super tiring right now, but your body will slowly get used to it. Trust me, it’ll get better.” she expressed, “Go get lots of rest, okay? Eat something too, you’re so slim.”

“Dae.” Mina bowed politely for the words of encouragements. “Ah Ms. Son, is it okay if I take a look at their drawings?”

“Of course, you deserve to!”

The dancer went over to the table stacked with the newest sketches.

She gasped audibly as she admired their talent; the way she can see herself from different angles also fascinated her greatly.

As she looked at the sketches one by one, a particular piece of paper caught her attention. To her, it was by far the best one out of them all.

Not only did the artist nail the body proportions, they also managed to draw her facial features with incredible details.

Out of curiosity, Mina turned to the back of the paper in hopes to discover the name of the student.

Thankfully, she did.

“Son… Chaeyoung…”