A/N: Because I live to see y'all suffer.

< #24b221 >

< … blue??? >

< 땡 >

< Noooooo I hate you!!! ㅠㅠ >

< Green >

This happened a few times per day a few weeks after the Colors Class had ended. HakYeon turned out to be a bit of a dunce, so he enlisted the help of SeJung. Of course, he first tried asking TaekWoon (considering he attended alongside HakYeon each day), but TaekWoon responded with nothing, so he figured it was a dead end. SeJung, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic about the idea of being HakYeon’s tutor, and she stopped at nothing to make everything a lesson of sorts.

So when TaekWoon suddenly texted < #1212cb > to HakYeon out of nowhere, HakYeon honestly had no idea where it came from.

< What is that?? > HakYeon had replied. When TaekWoon didn’t respond after an hour, HakYeon followed up with, < Is this a secret address? >

< You’re an idiot. > TaekWoon promptly responded.

< What?!?! What is that supposed to be?!?! >

< Naver. >

< Eh? > HakYeon skipped around the website on his phone. < I don’t get it. >

< Idiot. >

< YAH!!! You’re making me mad!!! >

The next message he had received from TaekWoon was a screenshot of the Search bar on Naver’s homepage. Oh my deity, you dunce. HakYeon searched the mystery encryption. After some thorough clicking around, the dumb grin found his way on his face again.

< Red!! >

< 땡 >

< What?! >

< Blue >

HakYeon really was a dunce, but at least TaekWoon figured out his own way of coaching HakYeon. Now if the sunshine idiot would actually get something right.

“Wait, no. This is… blue. Right?!”

“Right!”

HakYeon quietly rejoiced with SeJung, rolling the pencil across the desk to figure out the next one. The two were back in the studio, broken off from the rest of the group to sketch near one of the large windows. With the sun shining brightly through and the panoramic third-floor view, their artistic senses were prodded to life. Medium of the day was colored pencils.

“This one is…” HakYeon caught a glance of the name of the color on the side. “… ‘Macaroni and Cheese’…? What the…?”

SeJung burst out laughing. “What kind of name is that?! Ah, but I guess the color is the same.”

“Wait. This is… yellow?”

“Hmmm… I’d say it’s more orange than yellow.”

“Orange. Orange. Okay. So then this one – ”

Violent streaks of black swept through the left side of HakYeon’s vision.

“Wah!!” He flailed, flinging the pencil in his hand across the floor. “What was that?!”

“Eh?! What?!” SeJung looked around.

HakYeon followed suit, but nothing was out of the ordinary. If anything, the rest of the group in the studio were bustling about and starting to pack up for the day, but there was no sign of anyone causing mischief. HakYeon looked back to SeJung.

“You didn’t see anything?” he asked, an odd feeling of dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

SeJung shook her head. “No. You just freaked out for a second.”

“I could’ve sworn…”

It was happening again. Something was happening again. Thick, black spots dotted his vision. There was no pattern; they appeared, heavy globs of deep black that faded almost as quickly as they appeared. HakYeon darted his eyes away, rubbing at them as if he could wipe the spots away. Maybe it worked. The last of the spots faded, and his vision was back to normal again.

“HakYeon-ah, are you okay?”

He looked up and saw SeJung staring at him warily, a bit concerned. Honestly, he felt dread, anxiety biting at the edge of his skin, and he had no idea why. The odd blotches of black that had invaded his vision left him shaken, but he shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Let’s pack up. I have to go to work after this.”

He tried to shake off the shivers that trailed up his spine and went all the way down to his fingertips, especially while handling the glass and ceramic cups and mugs of the customers of his shop. The drinks rippled in his hands as he strode across the floor. He’d never had this issue before. It felt nothing like the attacks he’d experienced before.

His phone in his apron pocket buzzed. HakYeon quickly ducked just inside the kitchen to fish out his phone, his hands freezing and shaking even though the temperature in the shop itself was normal.

< HakYeon, > SeJung had texted. There were various typos throughout the message, like her hands were unsteady as her fingers fumbled across the screen. < TaekWoon got in an accdient at work. Were going to Yonsei. Meet us there? >

“HakYeon-hyung!” SangHyuk’s voice was too loud. “Table four was wondering…”

HakYeon looked up. SangHyuk had frozen halfway through the door between the front and the kitchen. He was staring at HakYeon with some odd expression.

“Hyung… What – ?”

“I have to go.” HakYeon’s voice didn’t sound like his own in his ears. His hands moved mechanically as he reached behind his back to pull at the knot of his apron; it felt like they were reaching somewhere far away. “Tell… Tell SunHo-nim that I had to go. Sorry. You can take care of it here, right?”

“Yeah, I… SungJae-hyung and everyone else is here. It’s fine.”

“Sorry.”

HakYeon pushed past the giant youth, tossing his apron in some direction without even paying attention to where it landed. He ignored the questioning looks some of the customers gave him as he blindly strode the long trail to the front door – was it normally this long?

For some reason, the door was heavy. He leaned his weight against it and realized he was the one feeling heavy and weak. The late-afternoon sun was glaring across the street, the shadows growing longer.

The shadows…

HakYeon froze. The people across the street were walking along without incident, as if their clothes weren’t just dissolving into gray. The couple at the corner taking a selca didn’t even notice the sky fading into gray. The flower pinwheel that hung from the awning of the coffee shop HakYeon had just stumbled out of continued to spin lightly from the breeze, its petals forming a dizzying ring of gray.

The ice in HakYeon’s stomach turned over. He collapsed to his knees as the world around him dissolved to black, white, and the gray in between.