The next time it decided to have thoughts ­and other hominal flaws like feelings, the canvas was disappointed to find itself alone again. All the other paintings and photographs and the more recently put up rice lights had all been taken down, and the corridor’s walls were devoid of any embellishments.

It concluded that this was the perfect time to play at being sad­ and frustrated. It wasn’t that hard, all it had to do was to watch Jiyong return to his mechanical state. For some reason, the canvas found itself wishing that there was less of red on it, and more purposeless , with more force behind them. Perhaps smeared across, rather than carefully rubbed in. Or scratched through with something sharp, a fork maybe. But then what it wished for didn’t really make much of a difference. It had been too long since Jiyong had added a detail to it.

As if summoned by the hoaxed sentience, Jiyong stepped out of his bedroom. The canvas realized (with as much surprise as a stretched sheet of treated cloth could manage) that the footsteps were audible. There was no music playing.

His hair looked as if it had been tugged at, or pulled, and otherwise deprived of any ministrations of a comb for a questionable amount of time. The canvas decided that the fact that Jiyong wore a tee-shirt that it had often seen on Seunghyun would have been described as sweet by humans but then it looked awfully crumpled and even for a canvas which had been pretending to wish for more visible chaos on its surface, that looked wrong. And there was no music playing.

Jiyong looked at it then, and the canvas would’ve squirmed at the sudden attention, if it could. Or looked away, if it could. But since it wasn’t really living, and was mostly two-dimensional (the frame didn’t count) and immobile, it had no way to escape (were it actually capable of thinking and wanting it) and had to bear the sight of Jiyong’s closed off face, momentarily marred by an uncontrolled flinch. Then he turned away and slowly trudged away, abruptly sitting down on the floor with a thud loud enough to sound like a fall. It sounded too loud in the silence. The canvas would have grimaced, or reached out, or called for help, if it could. But Jiyong sat on the floor. Seunghyun wouldn’t be back for hours. And there was no music playing.