7 

Twin Flames

(Suffering disappears, love remains)

"We believe that we are hurt when we don't receive love. But that is not what hurt us.
Our pain comes when we do not give love. We were born to love. You might say that we are divinely created love machines. We function most powerfully when we are giving love."
-Alan Cohen, Chicken Soup for The Soul.

Everyone is simply in a struggle to break out of the mould that they have been forced into.

Wheein has accustomed herself to that principle her entire life. Being nice doesn't mean that you have to break out of your bubble. Being sincere doesn't mean that anyone should find you relatable. Everyone deserves a ing break once in a while.

Now she has come to a point when she can let anything pass by.

Her day-to-day task comprised of exactly toiling herself with different colors in the secluded space of her dorm (her roommate is used to the beating sound of Wheein splashing and smearing the painting oil to the canvas, smashing a vase to the ground and using the pieces to puncture the sides of the canvas: a routine that the roommate from a different major can never comprehend but no judging.), waiting for inspiration to strike through and skip lunch and dinner altogether, only pausing for toilet breaks in between (she does attempt to sneak a used plastic bottle into her workspace but her roommate soon snatch that and dumps it into the trash bin and solemnly makes Wheein swear on her ancestors grave to not appease that infernal idea again), rinse and repeat. Any bull that comes to your head, just put it on your drawing and dump it altogether. After all, this kind of bull is what sells. The agent that messaged her once in a while keeps saying that everyone is waiting for what she will do next, and based on the amount wired into her bank account every time she finished a piece, everything doesn't seem like a joke anymore. People buy her and think it's good.

The fact that she's able to contribute financially (despite her mother's insistence that she's doing fine on her own and Wheein just has to focus on her studies) does give her chest a flare of pride for being able to provide. Her mother didn't raise her painstakingly as a single mother for nothing.

And the fact that she, like every relatable tortured artist out there, is experiencing a block. She suspects Hyejin harbors the same syndrome as well, but they never really confide to each other on things like this so it was never in the conversation. Perhaps after vomiting one piece after another on demand, she longs for a release.

Should she just take a sugar daddy as well? But look at Hyejin. She could not afford the complications. It's called complicated for a reason. Although the professors suggested several times they can experiment with everything: have multiple partners at once, smoke incessantly, meaningless one night-stands, fall in love! Or drawing pentagrams everywhere and forming contracts with demons in exchange for a way out of this rut.

The last bit was intended as a joke, except the light in that professor's eyes when she muttered the idea sounded like someone who had survived through it to tell the tale. Wheein sneered. Love. Look what love got her mother into.

Anyway.

She's late for class. It's time to finally get this thing going. Throwing a tarp to protect the unfinished piece, she changed into the cleanest, crispiest white shirt that can be salvaged from the rubble and after throwing haphazard art supplies into the bag, she's making her way back to civilization.

--

Wheein does realize some eyes follow her as she sneaks into class and steps to take a seat at the farther back, throwing polite smiles here and there to greetings coming her way. Being a passerby in your life doesn't mean that you cannot be nice at the same time.

"Good morning, Wheein-shi."

Wheein turned and responded with a smile. "Good morning to you as well, Mino."

It didn't take a moment for her fellow classmates to fiddle, a little giddish; body language that she missed as she responded to every other greeting by pronouncing their names as well. She just had this good memory, that's all. If it can make her look attentive and empathetic then so be it.

Rough scritches of chalk against the blackboard wake her up from the vortex of greetings. She takes her seat in a jiffy and looks forward to Kim Yongsun, the professor from the Sculpture and Installation Department that shouldn't be here. She draws up pictures with surprisingly intricate lines as a sample for the students attending. "The assistants from the Oil Painting Department have to attend meetings for the upcoming festival." She answered the questions in their heads in a nonchalant way, retaining a strict attitude that earned her the nickname 'Ice Dragon' in a play to her name. "You can start as soon as I finish."

By all means, the class is not that boring. It's just the professor's lecture on the picture that seemed to be never ending and with half of consciousness on when they will start working, she ripped a page off her notebook and went impulsive.

Wheein knew that her mind was not equipped with the right hinges when a paper plane sailed its way smoothly until it stabbed the professor's forehead. As soon as it touched the desk Yongsun smashed it in her fist before dumping it to the trash bin with frightening accuracy.

The class became even more silent than it was before.

Wheein was filled with something between not caring and wanting to die that instant. She drops her head to the desk and shuts her senses, muffling the thrum in her skull.

Her head finally chose today of all days to go bonkers after pulling those all-nighters. Bracing herself for the incoming inferno, Wheein scrunched her eyes several times before lifting her face up at the exact moment the professor passed by.

She cannot miss the slight pull at the corner of the Ice Dragon's lips.

--

Kim Yongsun, the renowned cold professor of the Sculpture and Installation Department, is laughing at her? Not that Wheein ever paid attention. She never did. She has this talent of selective memorization, which can be very useful if she can choose what she wants to remember.

Instead of getting offended for being laughed at, another side of the dragon that she never witnessed before starts to stick at the back of her mind.

And like a rejected post-it note, it fell and was forgotten when she walked out of the class. Her shirt is still clean, and she has the obligation to sully it to the point of being unsalvageable by the end of the day (she can just ask her roommate to wash it later). What to paint next? is the last thing on her mind before she falls on her back to the tile floor of the classroom.

--

Wheein has always considered herself a character with no plot.

She just goes with the flow and what has been set up for her. The plot will be too complicated. A character will be fine without one. Without it, there will be no expectations. She can just focus on how to be good without any obligation to be really good.

GROWLLLLL.

Wheein peels herself off the bed, embarrassed at herself being woken up by her own stomach. That's not the only sound that awakens her. Soft singing lulled from behind the curtain, prompting Wheein to get off the infirmary's bed and sneak a peek.

Mumbling and humming with tilted head facing the open window is Kim Yongsun, having a jam with herself, rifting between the notes with no effort. She's too busy in her own small concert until their eyes meet.

"Ah. You're awake."

"I am… Professor Kim." Wheein mumbled carefully without losing the honorific. "Why are--"

"You fainted and some students from the class informed me on the way." Yongsun explained, putting a paper bag on the desk, next to the thermometer. "They brought you here and I volunteered to wait here for a while. Be honest with me." Her eyes changed. "You haven't eaten anything today, have you?"

A shake of the head and annoyed I knew it mumbled in the air. Yongsun pulls a chair for Wheein as she unloads the contents of the paper bag: a roll of heated kimbap and what appears to be… "Here."

The student lifted an eyebrow. "I don't really dig jajangmyeon…"

"Aigoo, how picky." Yongsun clicked her tongue, switching the kimbap to jajangmyeon, pulling the wooden chopsticks apart and slurping without any preamble whatsoever. After hesitating, Wheein grabbed a bite and munched it slowly. It's good.

"It's good, isn't it?"

Halfway munching, Wheein choked out a yes.

"It's a diet kimbap. I need to lose some weight."

Wheein and everyone else will share the same view that there's basically nothing Yongsun can lose at this point with such a killer figure. If not for the stern, unapproachable image she will certainly become a campus bombshell, which by the way, is such a stretch right now. The professor is all smiles and hums. "I rolled it with red rice. I can share some with you if you want it next time."

Wheein doesn't know why she nodded to that. "Um. My name is--"

"Jung Wheein, right?" She waved her chopstick in the air. "The prodigy of the Oil Painting Department that has sold her works in Korea's galleries and is going international?" She slurped again across Wheein's surprised look. "Well, you are quite famous. People talk, you know. Must be nice, huh? Be so good at what you do."

"Being able to sell some is not the same as being good."

The professor lifts her head at the sass to find Wheein still munching away with a nonchalant attitude. "You just have to stick to the basics, abiding by the guidelines, that is all there is to it."

Yongsun shot an inquisitive look. "Oh my, are you sulking right now? Because I call you a prodigy? Well, that's what they said."

Jumping into conclusions is the greatest sin of humanity and Wheein blushed for making such a newbie mistake. "Things don't have to be complicated as soon as they get what they want." Yongsun put the chopsticks on the cleaned bowl and let out a burp, inciting an offended Wheein.

"Well, complicated and scary has always been a very thin line to get across." She tapped Wheein's head gently, stood up and left the infirmary.

Leaving the art student holding back her laugh, the professor leaves with jajangmyun sauce smearing her lips. The feeling soon replaced the moment Wheein touched the top of her head, detecting the remains of caresses.

This is complicated.

--

Complicated has their share of bad endings. It's been proven for centuries.

Yet that doesn't stop Wheein for daily visits to the Sculpture Department, carrying a bag full of crockeries, wearing a collared shirt (that Hyejin picked for her in Uniqlo) for a change (while still maintaining the stained Converse), trudging her way through the eyes of admiring passersby (the prodigy visiting their department is a rare sight to behold) before stopping at the same class almost every day, peeking behind the window.

The same class with a certain Kim Yongsun.

The Ice Dragon is still the same, except with a leather apron that seems to be her default outerwear during her class, giving instructions here and there and critiqued what needs to be improved, and only from this close does Wheein realize behind the stoicity, the enthusiasm and eagerness of the professor in ensuring the students imbuing their own meaning in their work. It's baffling.

"I can just give you the recipe, Jung-shi." Yongsun takes off her glasses, cringing at the sight of the student wolfing down her kimbap. "You don't have to come here everyday."

"I don't have time to make one. Still have the painting to be finished."

Yongsun scrunched her nose in distaste and went on to do another rambling on why every artist needs their intake of nutrition to get the creative streak going and stop romanticizing torturing yourself to reach peak art. Wheein listened with one ear and half of the attention. "More importantly, you look different today."

Wheein's ear perked up. "Go on."

"Hm… You look cleaner than usual!" And Wheein exhales a sigh, eyeing the diet kimbap that she's been wolfing down these past few weeks. It started getting to her. For the kimbap, she meant. The professor has been having this for weeks. "Why did you need to lose weight?"

"My boyfriend asked me to. He thinks I'm too chubby."

A grenade dropped out of nowhere and Wheein could hear something crack.

--

It turns out Yongsun is a serial dater. The current one has lasted three months, the longest one to date. Wheein doesn't know if she should celebrate the bare minimum for the professor's ability to commit.

The prodigy was surrounded by colleagues on her way back from class when she caught a glint of a glimmering hair tie. After excuse me she ran to the side and stopped, fixing the collar of the shirt that she's been wearing for the past few days and stepping next to Yongsun, masking heaved breaths in the middle.

"Prodigy-shi!" Yongsun noticed her. Wheein looked away and muttered to the side. "You shouldn't do that."

"Do what?"

"Did you smile like that with all your boyfriends?" Yongsun blinked for a moment before giggling. "Girlfriends as well. Were." And a silly bud rose in Wheein's heart. The student cleared . "I will visit you again after class, Professor Kim."

"I don't have any diet kimbap today."

"I have." Wheein uncovered the aluminum foil at the bottom of her bag, a little bashful upon Yongsun's face closing in. "My roommate taught me how."

"Okay, okay." Yongsun threw her hands into the air, giving up. "I don't have any class today. Come."

Wheein knows she skipped a bit. It's normal.

--

It became another routine in Wheein's day. Only God knows that the reason she visits Yongsun is to get herself out of the rut. How does it work, technically speaking? Wheein has no idea. The bottom line is, she's willing to do everything. Including having her hands sticky with slime here and there, and the sight of Yongsun dribbling the said slime on the wooden surface of the desk, juggling it like a circus clown. It's irritating and endearing at the same time. "Is this sculpting?"

"It's not always about carving, you know. You feel like Michelangelo today?" Wheein masked her astonishment at getting her mind read with a huff. "Welding, cutting, metal work, it's all about creating a three-dimensional piece of art that makes people go wow or yeah or this is it. It is always fun to observe how your art provokes a reaction from someone."

It's been a long time since Wheein almost forgot the thrill but Yongsun didn't have to know. "What do you think about… mine?" The professor blinked several times. "Prodigy-shi, professors of your department always talk about you in a good light whenever the new work is published."

"But they are not you." Yongsun crossed her arms to the front and rolled her eyes upward, mulling. Another second ticked, and Wheein has never been this nervous. "When I look at your artwork, it's good, but that's it." Yongsun rubbed the back of her neck. "How should I say this? The lines didn't jump out of the frame and tickle me in the right places."

It stung Wheein at the spot between her eyes. She knew the truth all along but doesn't know how to handle it when given straight in her hand. Yongsun was about to ask if there was something wrong before Wheein broke the silence. "You didn't wear the hair tie that I gave you." The professor moved her hand to her ponytail in an unconscious move at the abrupt change in conversation.

"My boyfriend said it didn't suit my look today." And Wheein, against her better judgment on how it is best to conceal and no