It begins with the swirling scent of acrylic, and an angularly framed, petite girl folded over the floor with slender eyes rimmed and raw.

Kang Seulgi was tiptoeing over the last few aching hours of a throbbing hangover, with her body layered by sweatshirt fabric and her roommate fumbling about the cabinets in their little kitchen compartment. Her words were sharp and breathy, with the only redeeming feature of the moment being the tracing scents of paint. Paint that was calm, that lapped over her like a warm, cyan ocean, and traced over her deep set collarbones with the strongest finesse. She also desperately wanted to know why she was angrily nattering with every word blinking at a broken sob.

“Hey,” Seunghoon, her dear ‘almost, kind-of’ brother, cooed from the kitchen. A homemade, messily hemmed and badly fastened fabric apron caressed his waist, and concern thinned his lion-like eyes, “Here.” Within Seulgi’s incomprehensible mutters, he padded round the used and crusty paintbrushes decorating the floor, articulately shifting some instant, watery ramyun across her lap. The steamy warmth blowing over her folded body caused her to curiously and automatically arch her back forwards; without saying Thank You, she suddenly began to stare alertly at her best friend.

Lee Seunghoon was terrified by the sudden fade of blurriness from her pupils. “What?”

The younger girl shifted her vision, croaking, “Nothing,” The next few words meant that the young man had to lean forwards in order to catch them, as all hushed syllables were sent straight to the floor, “It’s just been a while since I haven’t had to do something for myself.” Seunghoon had that same hardly quirked expression he always had when he was apprehensive yet unable to comply intimately. She propelled another garble of words from her pretty lips after a thickening pause, “It’s been a while since I’ve felt properly looked after.”

Seunghoon stilled his tantalising eyes for a flowing, breezed and frosted moment, dragging his eyes from the dishevelled girl sprawled over the carpet to an easel angelically mounting a fresh, paint-attacked canvas. Dark umbers blinked at every few traces of the piece, and faint, messy sketches lined in abstract, intriguing shapes - sinuous over the rim. The canvas painted the image of a dancing bear, sides torn deep and coat desperately uncared for, trapped within a bronze cage.

It triggered a nod, an understanding pause of breath, a supressed second-hand memory. An unspoken memory. On the fifth blink, he looked at her again, frantically trying to unravel the chasms and thoughts within her artistic mind just with his eyes. How could one so delicate deal with so much?

“Hey, you’re a beautiful and friendly young lady,” the tip of his words ejected the prominence of changing the mood, and Seulgi’s widely tear-bitten eyes broke into soft, more gleeful crescents, with Seunghoon finally gesturing at her with a matt fork for her noodles. He stepped around her with worn-in socks, trying to imitate a bounce within his step, “Why on earth could you still be single?”

“That’s a really dumb question, Seunghoon.” Her drowned voice cleared a bit, as well as her shrouded and entangled headache. Independent from her mood, her laugh was always that of a loud and plentifully contented sound.

“Seriously, though.”

The younger girl drew her thick cuffs around her sharp wrists, while blowing charmingly over the pale shadows rising from her ramyun pot, and let her dark brown eyes flicker towards him for a split second. “I’m specific.”

Seunghoon raised a strong eyebrow. “What about your new art tutor? You seemed pretty happy with her last night.” He chuckled in a high, rattling tone, hardly understanding just how foggily painful it was to be reminded of anything she had done the night before. With that, she groaned deeply, shovelling rough forkfuls of noodles through , and eying him without satisfaction.

Her art tutor was a fiercely delicate soul who signed her works with ‘Irene’, with the most enticingly twinkling eyes and receptive body language Seulgi had ever come across. Their minds were blurred, and she had been alongside Bae Joohyun for a time margin just tracing over a year now - both of them seemed assuredly comfortable with more than drunken flirting at a flourishing party.

She snapped out of a littered, regretted daze. “I messaged her this morning, and luckily there aren’t any awkward feelings. She’s really cool, so it’s alright.” Seulgi remembered arising from clutching, sweaty bed sheets with the throbbing itch of nerves writhing in the pit of her stomach, and memories of half-hearted kisses. She remembered shunning herself for perhaps even leaving a bruise on what could have been a splendid friendship – fortuitously indeed, Irene came with sincere smiles and mutual opinions. Relief batted through from her eyelashes to her cold toes: something else could be abolished from the swirling pool of regrets within her mind.

“Wow.” Seunghoon remarked, shovelling out his bottom lip, quite at ease while sinking his back into their waxy leather, dustbin-grade sofa. “So you’re specific…” He trailed off, eyebrows furrowed, intricately attempting to figure out this girl who was so usually carefree and pouring with honest warmth, but who now slumped over with purple cheeks and a hangover clotting her thoughts.

“Yes,” Seulgi drearily ladled herself into an upright position, her head acidic and nauseating, but trying so assertively not to be, “As you know, I’m a person who’s very keen to give anyone my affection.”

Seunghoon nodded kindly in return, as this was extremely true indeed.

“But it really takes someone-” she gently her lips subconsciously, keenly eying the splattered and murky jars of paint that lay across the floor around her easel and sashaying towards them with unsteady legs, “-someone significant-” here, she clasped her agile and yellow-painted fingertips around an unspoiled urn of pastel blue, her stunning eyelash shrouded eyes intrigued, rotating the jar to get a full essence of the colour, “-it really takes someone significant for me to want to give them all of my heart.” The sentence came out sweet and breathy, hushed with sighs; sighs decorated with seeping hopes that one day, her wholesome heart could be received by someone.

--

“Your art course is starting again in two days. Aren’t you excited?” Park Sooyoung had this method of talking frantically two paces behind Son Seungwan that never failed to bleed into the older, never failed to soften her heart when she tried so desperately not to seem soft. Wendy hummed in response, attempting to seem as if she had not heard, while also very glad that Joy could only see the back of her and not the various and distorted facial expressions ornamenting her entire complexion.

Joy tugged on her sleeve again, willing her to pause. “You’re not excited?” It echoed a vivid silence, and Wendy began to miss the constant tapping of her heels over the pavement. The older girl raised beautifully angular eyebrows - Joy spoke through a fuddled pout. “But you’ve been talking about how much you miss it for weeks.”

“I know.” Wendy nodded, undeniably taken aback slightly by herself as well, as she was always one to embrace every feeling or action with aliveness and interest. Especially if it was to do with art; art blew with her every breath and flurry.
Gripping a pencil or a stick of dank charcoal came to her as a second nature, for instance, and a little piece of stationary always peaked over the balanced rim of her ear. Thinking about marbled days washed with nothing but the freedom of graphite and the deception of words would usually quicken her heart rate, and make her feel so indescribably alive, but suddenly everything had begun to lack capacity.

And in all reasoning, it was because she lacked a muse.

The day following, the pair sat comfortably within their favourite coffee shop, bitter mugs of tea accompanying their palms. Truly, Wendy had never liked tea – of course, she would never tell Joy this, as Joy’s favourite thing to do was animatedly order duplicates of everything she liked (it made her feel strangely accepted).
But if having an ‘almost, kind-of’ little sister meant stomaching bitterly grinded leaves and swirling what frankly tasted like brown, angry water around , Wendy would never refuse.

“Your art course is starting again tomorrow.” Joy whirred by default, grinning plentifully.

“Yeah.” Cooed the older of the two, studying how the hue of the tea exactly matched that of her own chocolate brown mane, and then re-evaluating the scribbled biro across the back of her left hand.

“So,” Joy’s actions were courteous, easily persuaded; she, too, led her eyes towards Wendy’s on hand doodles. “Have you found your muse yet?”

Wendy suddenly flushed, with a sip of her undesired beverage, her hairline red and angered by merely herself, while retracting her hands in order to anxiously sit on them. “I will.” she said.

“So you haven’t.”
It was as per usual for the younger to snap back like this, as she had a sense of evident and sarky humour that too many failed to follow. Wendy was never negatively moved by it though – yet still, a silence ensued, and Wendy let the flow of coffee beans adore her nostrils, this enjoyable sensation covering the less enjoyable sensation of said disliked tea being swallowed.

“I’d love to visit your class, you know.” Joy giggled slightly and elegantly, raising a mug to her soft chin, her eyes wide in a pleading manner. Wendy parted her lips, about to object, and Joy spoke as if trying to correct a wrongdoing, “It’s been a year, Wan-ah.”

“I will.” Wendy repeated again, her words not making much sense at all within context, her teeth gritted but her eyes loving, caring, alive. Just let me find my muse.

--

Seulgi had been the first to arrive at the new setting of Irene’s art group, as the college semester beeped into a full motion. Bae Joohyun was a girl who had newly succeeded with faultless grades and had left the campus after such achievements, but her playful, purple-themed abstract etchings and graphics, alongside enrapturing visual looks, had imprinted so deeply into the shield of the college. A beg had been sent from said students for her to instruct them, to overlook them – it would have been ridiculous to decline.

So yes, the day finally arose.

“Hi,” the last time the two had met, Irene had carelessly whispered sweet nothings into the arrival’s ear, and Seulgi had peppered her cheek. Sincerely, an awkwardness should have hung in fogs, but Seulgi’s presence was so endearingly warm while Irene was so endearingly cautious… there was little need for complicated amends.

“Hello again.” The younger girl chuckled lavishly, and Irene concluded that she preferred this connection to Seulgi much more.

As the horseshoe of seats filled and new frames were set around the studio, Seulgi barely resumed her seat right in the centre position of the right hand side string of tables, due to her polite and earnest nature compelling her to stand and bow at the slightest encounter.
All students had now arrived but one, and finally the angelically framed girl felt as if the ability to sit down was to be bestowed upon her – she could give into the grey plastic of her seat and dot all of her jars of variously saturated blues around her workspace. Blue was a key interest for her these days, which she too found hard to pinpoint. It was a colour so genuine and sincere – the way it lined and soothed her paintings made her feel as if it took its role so very seriously. As if the colour itself understood how important it was to her.

There was a clumsy guffaw behind her, where the wooden-framed glass door was placed, and a thread of chirpy apologies by which Irene kindly reciprocated.

Seulgi would’ve usually felt very annoyed if someone was to interrupt her musing over the variety of paint and variety of colour, but before even encountering the face of this voice, she was fascinated. It had so many tones and tints to it. It appeared so confident. So self-controlled. So genuine and sincere.

The lively-sounding girl, with a hidden amber pencil behind her petite ear, entered and placed herself fluidly in the remaining chair, directly opposite Seulgi, catching her gaze. There was an automatic, sincere smile.

And she had instantly become fond of the vivid life in her wide, deepening eyes.

A/N: Hello~! <3 I hope you enjoyed that chapter, sorry the prose seems so overly flowery and nothing really happened - I'm trying to describe the scenery a bit, I guess ;; But thank you for reading it!
Also, Lee Seunghoon, Seulgi's roommate/best friend in this fic, is from WINNER! They're both in my bias groups and I really think that they're such fitting personalities with each other, haha I couldn't help it :)