Chapter 25: Golden Confusion

Taeyeon’s school looks larger and more imposing than it ever has. I take a breath, pull up the handbrake and turn off the ignition. There is a certain nervousness buzzing inside of me and I almost want to hit myself.

It’s just Taeyeon. Why should I be nervous?

But now, more than ever, the thought of Taeyeon brings with it a plethora of other thoughts and questions that have no definite answers or solutions. I squeeze my eyes shut and collect myself.

Taeyeon. This is about Taeyeon. Her wellbeing, her; she comes first. She has to. My own confusion and uncertainty can wait, or can go untouched. Prodding at it could make things more complicated.

I grab my handbag, thud the car door closed, and tread my way toward where I know she is. Despite having been here multiple times, the winding corridors and interlocking passageways still find a way to confuse me. Before long, I turn a corner and see the unmistakably multi-coloured swing doors leading into the art department. I push through and glance into the empty classrooms and stop when I see Taeyeon’s back as she sits at her easel. Beside her stands a teacher. I watch for a moment as they converse lowly.

After a moment, I step forward and knock. Both Taeyeon and her teacher turn and look at me.

“Fany, hey.” Taeyeon greets, and there’s a certain warmth in the way she says it that wouldn’t usually be there so readily.

“Tiffany-shi,” The teacher bows slightly as she shakes my hand. “Nice to see you again.”

I recognise her from the principle’s office when Taeyeon had her last incident of walking out of her art class. “Mrs Chun, nice to see you as well.”

“Seeing you up close this time, I can see why Taeyeon’s chosen you as her new muse.” She says jovially.

“Oh?” My eyebrows crease in confusion but I continue to smile politely. “She has?” I flicker my eyes over to give Taeyeon a questioning look and notice she’s grimacing slightly.

“I, uh,” She clears uncomfortably, “I haven’t actually, uh…asked Tiffany…yet, Mrs Chun.”

Mrs Chun’s mouth drops open in realisation. “Oh, I’m sorry, Taeyeon. I didn’t realise.” She gives a forced, shrill laugh. “I just thought since you’d already began a painting with Tiffany as the model…”

Taeyeon scratches at the back of her neck uneasily. “Uh…well…this painting is actually my birthday present for Tiffany. I just brought it in to finish it off…” She trails off, her eyes trained to the ground.

Mrs Chun looks from Taeyeon, to the painting, back to me, and I can’t help wonder what she must think. Maybe Donghae was right. Maybe painting a portrait of me is outwith the normal bounds for a therapist and a patient, maybe so are the outings and bringing Taeyeon into my home, maybe the fact that majority of my thoughts are usually occupied by her…maybe that’s not normal either. But my way of approaching Taeyeon has never been normal. So, maybe, right from the beginning, I had unknowingly set this up to happen…

“Oh, I see. How lovely.” Mrs Chun pushes on a small smile, and from the way her eyes move away so quickly and how she clasps her fingers in front of her, she is almost certainly wondering how close Taeyeon and I must be for her to want to spend hours constructing my face on a canvas. “Well, anyway, I’ll be in the staff room if you need anything. Again, lovely to see you, Tiffany-shi.”

She bids farewell and leaves the room. For a moment we listen to the sound of her heels echoing down the corridor.

“Sorry about that,” Taeyeon says as she stands, rubbing her hands down the front of her jeans. “Mrs Chun can be…a bit much sometimes.”

“It’s fine,” I shake my head. “Nothing to be sorry about.”

She smiles briefly before sauntering over to one of the desks and situating herself on one of the stools. Mindlessly, I follow and settle next to her.

“If anything,” I continue, “I should be the one saying sorry after running out on you yesterday.”

She shrugs, brushing some eraser shavings from the tabletop. “It’s not like you could help it, right? One of your clients needed your help, and you had to go. So, you don’t need to apologise.” Another small smile comes to to reassure me.

“I know, but it means that we never really got to finish our session, and I kept you waiting-“

“Honestly, Fany, it’s fine. I understand.” She places a measured hand on my forearm to stop me, and as if realising that she’d initiated the contact first, she moves her hand away just as fast as it’d come. She clears . “You have people depending on you.”

I exhale and nod, the memories from the day previous coming back to mind, the amount of progress that we made in those hours; the truth she had spilled about her feelings, the death of her parents, the grief, the way we had sat side by side and I’d shown her snippets of my life, my family, and how she took care of me, how she understood. The warmth of her body and her lips on my forehead…

In a way, it feels somewhat hazy – like I’d been asleep and dreamt it all. And the phone call from one of my other clients, saying that she needed an emergency session, had woken me with a start.

But here we are now, with Taeyeon before me, looking at me in that way that’s not dissimilar from yesterday.

“We’ll finish the session today.” I affirm, “But first…” I cast my eyes back over to the portrait. “What did Mrs Chun mean when she said you’d chosen me as your muse?”

A light pink tinge surfaces on Taeyeon’s cheeks, and it seems suddenly that she can’t look at me. “Uh...well…about that…” She runs her fingers through her hair distractedly. “I…uh…well I brought the painting in today so I could try fix the smudging, but when Mrs Chun saw it…she said it would-…you would be perfect for my portfolio.”

“Oh,” I inhale, “I see.”

“You don’t have to.” She cuts in quickly. “I mean…I can finish this painting and give it back to you and…uh…find someone else to pose as my muse. I’m sure Mrs Chun can ask one of the girls from class…or something.” She wets her lips; her eyes slowly moving up to meet mine. “I won’t do anything unless you want me to.”

Her sincerity almost winds me. I look back at the painting one more time, and no matter how many times I look at it I’m still overcome with this overwhelming feeling that I can’t quite comprehend. “What would being your muse entail? Would I have to do anything?”

She presses her lips in thought, humming. “If I’m doing still life, you would have to just…sit there as I paint. And…uh…I’d probably have to take some photos of you for…you know…reference.”

I take it into consideration, and find there’s something thrilling about it, something that has my insides thrumming in excitement. To be somebody’s muse, their inspiration. To be the thing they want to turn into art. I let myself imagine it for a moment; Taeyeon behind the camera as she photographs me, Taeyeon behind the canvas as her brush paint me. Standing before her, being seen, really seen, by her.

But the question comes again: am I overstepping the boundaries?

“It’s really fine if you don’t want to.” She says when I fail to respond. She smiles briefly, but the dip in her voice portrays her disappointment.

“No, I want to.” I stand up from my seat and move closer to the portrait, wanting to inspect it closely. It depicts my side profile as I sit in the driver seat of my car, one hand on the steering wheel, my hair afloat in the wind, a small smile on my mouth that yet somehow looks melancholy, and in the background, she has painted the sky a beautiful pink hue, dusted with soft clouds.

It’s like a snapshot taken from her memory, from her perspective. In a way, it’s stunning. And I want to ask her, so desperately: is this how you really see me? Because I don’t think anyone has ever, will ever, look at me in such a manner – not like Taeyeon.

“You want to?” She perks up in her seat, her eyebrows high on her head.

“I do,” I confirm, “but,” I sigh a little, thinking that maybe this is something I should consider more carefully. “Can you let me think about it? I’m kind of busy at the moment, with work and stuff, and I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep. Especially not to you.”

She nods. “Of course. Take your time.”

I smile at her gratefully. “If you’re nearly done here, why don’t we head outside and finish off our conversation from yesterday?”

She makes a noise of agreement before getting up. She tidies away her paints and brushes, folds up her easel carefully and stows the painting away with her others. I gesture her to lead the way, and with surprising surety, she does.

* * *

I let out a happy sigh as I lean my back against the tree. “It feels like a while since we sat out here.”

Taeyeon settles down in front of me, stretching her legs out over the grass, leaning back on her hands. She looks up at the branches hanging over us, like long spindly fingers attempting to enclose her and I into our own little haven. The sun is casting a lovely golden warmth onto her, dreamy little shadows printed to her fair skin, and I think if I could pick a moment to capture her in, whether it be photograph or painting, it would be this one right here, right now.

“It does,” She nods, squinting her eyes in the sunlight. “Good thing the weather’s nice today.”

I smile at her gently before digging into my handbag and pulling out my clipboard with Taeyeon’s file attached and my pen. I skim over where my notes had finished after our last extensive chat in my living room yesterday.

“We left our last conversation when you were talking about when you started painting. Do you remember?”

She nods, sitting forward and drawing her legs into a basket. Distractedly, she plucks a daisy from the ground and twirls it between her fingers. “I remember.”

“So, you felt panicked, you thought about calling me, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. And then you started painting. What happened after that?”

She bites down on her lower lip in deep thought, her eyes scanning the blades of grass beneath us, as if her memories were scattered about around her. “I just…kept painting and painting. Like I was lost in it or something. I just knew that…I had to paint and once I was finished, I had to give it to you.”

“Did that panic go away once you started painting?”

She shakes her head slowly. “It didn’t go away fully. I was still panicked but…when I paint, sometimes its like I get tunnel vision or something. There’s just one goal. Paint what you feel, or paint what you want to feel. And I wanted to feel calm so…”

“You painted me?” My breath is suddenly short in my lungs.

She nods, her eyes locking with mine, and she do