Junhee closed her eyes to the steady rhythm of pencil against paper; it was a subtle melody, the muted sound of scratching and the little squeaks of a thumb running across a page, smudging lines and edges to redefine details. It was a constant aspect of her life, a replacement of sorts, to stilted silence, the pressing need to initiate conversation. A page fluttered slightly in the breeze, stopping too soon at the sound of a hand clapping against hard wood.

“Put a paperweight on that, will you?” she murmured, eyes still closed. Her suggestion was met with the sound of rolling pencils and shuffling papers, followed by the soft thump of something hitting the grass and muttered curse.

“I don’t have any –at least, nothing that I won’t be using anytime sooner,” a male voice said, sounding slightly put out.

Junhee let her head loll sideways, opening her eyes a crack to glance at the boy seated next to her. He was dressed in jeans and a simple yellow shirt, with a cardigan draped over his shoulders, its arms carefully wound into a knot above his chest. He had soft chocolate hair streaked with chestnut highlights. A light brush of the sun’s rays had bleached it into fascinating gold, settling on his head like soft snow. His bangs dropped in layers (uneven, jagged at the tips) over his eyes, hiding a forehead as smooth as cream and accenting eyes as warm as the sun.

“You’re always unprepared, Chanyeol,” she said with a sigh, nudging a rock she’d picked up next to her feet at his direction.

“I did come prepared,” he protested indignantly after firmly placing the rock in the middle of his fluttering papers. “I have an umbrella in my backpack. Stupid weatherman said it’s going to rain. Never said anything about the wind.”

She smiled at him in amusement. Chanyeol was always ruffled, always flustered. His jerky movements were the result of uncoordinated limbs and his inability to rein control over what his body was going to do next, leaving him blundering through halls, tripping over all surfaces (be it raised or flat), and clumsily knocking things over with knobbly elbows. His glasses were always askew in front of his eyes, though Junhee knew that in actuality, Chanyeol didn’t need them.

“I always thought glasses looked nice,” he told her when she’d asked, when they were still only a few weeks into each other’s acquaintance, “and it’s amusing how a simple accessory could make people look at you differently. I don’t like attention, and these glasses sort of dispel it.”

“So, what do you think?” he asked, holding his sketchbook up. He fumbled with his pencil, one hand crookedly holding the book up while the other worked to slip it above his ear, tucking it beneath a layer of chocolate curls.

“It’s beautiful,” she remarked, and meant every word of it. Chanyeol may be unsteady with his hands, but he drew beautifully. She had always been amazed how someone with such butterfingers could possess such control over his movements on paper, how he was able to coax the graphite from soft, barely discernable into thick, rough outlines so easily. Chanyeol’s drawings were usually depictions of manga characters and fictional creatures, though in class he did experiment with other styles to please their professor.

This particular sketch, also his most recent, depicted a bird with long and flowing feathers, artfully overlapped, dripping down a pair of curved wings that were expanded in flight. A long, wondrously luxurious tale flicked below the body, the feathers so carefully detailed that she was sure she could see the vanes.  A plume extended from above its beak, growing past its head, flicking and branching like an elaborate headrest.

“A phoenix?” she asked.

Chanyeol grinned at her from above the sketchbook as he stored it away. He sat back, pressing his palms onto the soft wood of the bench as he gazed out into the campus. “Who shall be my next prey?” he muttered, bespectacled eyes squinting at the abundant amount of potential subjects strolling past them.

“Whom do you have in mind?” she asked, leaning slightly against his arm.

“I was thinking about the senior from the performing arts major: Sandara Park.” Junhee could almost hear the dreamy sigh that came after the name.

She rolled her eyes. “She’s way out of your league, Yeol. And I think she has other plans rather than modelling for an art student’s project.”

He frowned at her. “Can’t a guy hope?”

“Well, I think it’s time to give up hoping when it’s obvious that nothing’s going to come out of it.”

He sighed in frustration. “If not her, then who?”

“There’re lots of others to choose from. Why not Byun Baekhyun? He seems eager to model.”

“He’s eager for anything that would end up as a record of his face,” Chanyeol remarked drily, but pulled out his phone nevertheless to send a quick text to Baekhyun. A minute later, his phone beeped and he received a chirpy reply.

“What about you?” he asked, storing the phone away. “Who are you going to choose as a model?”

She hesitated, toying with Chanyeol’s pencils as she gazed ahead, past the sea of bodies and towards the horizon. “I don’t know yet.”

“How about Jung Daehyun?” he suggested, tapping his fingers on his knees thoughtfully. “In an artistic point of view, I think he has interesting features, and almost all the girls in class are raving about his eyes.”

She shrugged half-heartedly. It was true that Jung Daehyun was the campus heartthrob, with eyes famously rumoured to be exceptionally enchanting: as black as jet, a sort of swallowing darkness that could engulf you whole, equal parts drawing and daunting. There was something those eyes lacked though; they were too cold, too glazed. They leeched out warmth like a void; pinned a person down with one lazy flicker. They were a far cry from Jongdae’s dark eyes, which twinkled in amusement and brightened with laughter, as warm as water touched by the sun.  

“Not really seeing it.”

Chanyeol sighed. “I should be glad,” he stated, running his fingers through his hair. “At least you’ll have a fighting chance against whatever spell they seemed to have cast upon a good number of the female half of the student body, but that’s only because you’re still not over him, right?”

She dropped her gaze to her hands and said nothing.

 “It’s been a year, Junhee,” he said firmly, but not unkindly. “I think it’s time to move on, you know?”

She cocked her head at him, levelling him with a solemn gaze. Chanyeol stared back at her, unflinching, but she could see the startled flicker in his irises –surprise over what he saw mirrored in her eyes. “Have you ever been in love, Chanyeol? For a short time, like during the summer, when you meet someone so interesting and are just so drawn to that person, but then, when you realise your feelings, you already have to leave.”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to say something, but thought the better of it and closed it.

“That’s how I feel, Yeol,” she said, pulling her feet up and tucking her chin behind her knees.

Chanyeol sighed again. The bench wobbled as he shifted closer, placing a gentle arm over her shoulder and pulling her close into a hug. She leaned into his touch, glad to finally have some comfort.

“They say if you’re meant to be then fate will bring you together,” he said, voice deep with uncharacteristic wisdom. “Maybe you’ll meet this Jongdae kid again.”

“Maybe,” she muttered softly, but not exactly believing it.

Jongdae’s collection of pictures –his gift to her –sat in a special box hidden at the back of her closet, wrapped and virtually impossible to find unless one thought to dive into the mess of clothes and knock on the floorboards. Nobody knew it existed; not even Chanyeol, who remained her steady confidant for three years and her mother, who was her only confidant for eighteen. Sometimes, she took it out to run her fingers over the glossy pictures, to feel its texture beneath her skin. Hours of sunshine and laughter came back to her, the screech of wheels against asphalt, interspersed with moments of stillness and the clink of spoons against porcelain cups. And somewhere at the back, Jongdae’s voice lingered still.

She ran her thumb through the sheaf of pictures, feeling it bend and curl at her touch, before springing free as soon as the pressure was relieved. Glimpses of different sceneries, the bits and pieces of old memories, flicked up before being replaced by another. The jetty, its planks glowing orange in the light of dusk; the town square with its squat shops and timeless air; the lake at night with lights reflected on its shadowy surface; the race track, worn by the horses’ hooves. She spread them all over the table, fingers flitting from one picture to the next, and sat back to admire them.

The sun above was hot; heat crept across the campus like a rising tide. The courtyard was a distant buzz, a mixture of individual voices and pattering footsteps, along with the occasional ding of a bicycle bell. The bench and table (the same set that she and Chanyeol had occupied a few days ago) were set underneath a large tree, swathed entirely by its shadow. There were tiny cracks though, little spots of light that broke through the tiny spaces between the leaves, drawing patterns on the tabletop.

Now, they danced over the pictures Jongdae took for her, specks of light highlighting the bits and pieces most commonly overlooked: the horses’ hooves, blurred in motion; the spots of dandelions tucked in between the grass of a rolling field; the gleam of blue on a pair of wings.

She picked it up, smiling fondly at it. It was one of her favourite pictures, and one of Jongdae’s most successful takes of her. Maybe it’s because he actually told me he was going to take it, she thought. Jongdae’s ridiculous ideas were still fresh in her mind, and the way he said them, lips tugged into a smile as he cradled his precious camera between his hands, replayed at the back of her head like a broken record. The wings had been exquisite on brick, and somehow, Jongdae managed to capture every detail, its essence, into one simple shot. Somehow he managed to make her bright smile blend with its mystic feel. It was as if he was able to shift the light to enhance the colours, the black outline of the whirling patterns, until they looked real, as if they were actual extensions of her being, sewn underneath her shoulder blades and unfurling behind her back.

She stared at it longer than she did at the others, reluctant to let the memories go, though in the end, she did push it aside, placing it delicately on the table before reaching for another one. It was picture he took of himself, one that she didn’t realise had been present in the stack until she was in the bus, rearranging her collection and trying not to cry. Jongdae must have held the camera at arm’s length, for she could see glimpses of his arms at the edge of the frame. He was smiling, the corners of his eyes turned down into crescents, lips tugged up charmingly to reveal perfectly straight teeth. The background was blurred, but she glimpsed a stack of cluttered textbooks on a blurred form of what she assumed to be a bed, along with something brown, rising like a sentry behind his back, and tucked inside the open spaces appeared to be rows and rows of multi-coloured teeth – a bookcase, she concluded. It must have been his room.

She scrambled for her sketchbook, tugging it onto her lap and flipping the pages. Somewhere in the middle was the exact same picture, albeit hand-drawn instead of digital. Drawing out the picture was a decision made out of whim really, in a sudden desperation to preserve the memories she had of him. It had taken hours –his features especially, required delicate care to perfect –but the result had been immensely gratifying. The process to its completion was arduous; hours and hours and erasing and smudging, of redefining lines and shading, all blended together into a jumbled memory that had been so chaotic, she could barely tell the beginning from the end.

Lightly, she grazed her fingers over the paper. Soft and gentle made up his cheekbones and the corners of his eyes. The curl at the edge of his lips had been especially difficult. A set of twin flicks, calculated in length and thickness, was what completed the picture, and had required particular care to perfect. Somehow, she had managed to recreate the shadows in his eyes, contrasted by the light dancing in his irises. The curve of the jaw, the high cheekbones, the swoop of his nose –everything drawn to perfection. She was proud of herself, she admitted so.

She glanced at her watch, brows furrowing at the time. Half an hour until the next bus, about twenty minutes left to peruse and pack up. She reached for the last picture, and her eyes turned soft. It was the last picture Jongdae had given her, one of her at the cafe, sipping her latte with the corners of her lips turned up into a secret smile with the same sketchbook spread open on her lap. The picture had been taken from afar through multiple zoom-ins but regardless, it was surprisingly clear. She recalled the camera she’d taken notice of when she turned her head, lying harmlessly on Jongdae’s table as if untouched, but there had been one anomaly that she hadn’t been able to catch then but realised now: the camera had a zoom lens attached on it. That, she supposed, was how Jongdae procured such a high definition picture.

 She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, didn’t see the slow smile that spread across his face as got nearer and nearer to her. Something dropped from above her shoulder, slipping harmlessly onto her lap.

Her fingers trembled at the sight of the tulip, so much that the picture slipped out of her fingers, onto the soft the grass. Her heart beat wildly in her chest; breathing was getting difficult. She didn’t dare turn around, lest it was all an imagination, a fantasy born from longing, and she would end up plunged into disappointment again when she realised it wasn’t real. She was convinced that it was real though, when she heard the soothing melody of his voice.

“You know, I should have plucked up the courage and written my number behind that,” he said mischievously.

She staggered to stand, spinning around in her heels and taking in the dark brown hair falling in light waves over his forehead, sweeping over a pair of eyes as dark as a lake at night. He smiled crookedly at her, revealing slight curls at the corners of his mouth that she had desperately missed.

“Yes,” he laughed, arms automatically reaching out when she launched herself at him. “I missed you too.”

A/N: 

This wasn't explained in the story, but to answer all your questions, yes, Jongdae transferred to Junhee's uni. 

This was a fun story to write, and I think it's just the right length for my attention span. Haha. 

Thanks for reading and subscribing. Hope to see you guys soon :)