She had instantly become fond of the vivid life in her wide, deepening eyes. There was but a silent understanding between them, an unanchored greeting, a flicker of alive eyes – Maybe, they had found resemblance of themselves within another.

--

Son Seungwan shut her delicately wide eyes, abruptly resting her head against a soiled fence as the tawny sun printed over the side of her cheek. She lifted her phone to her ear, it lightly rattling against her mitch-matched, hooped earrings, as the smooth sound of her mother’s voice echoed so near to her. She hushed into her mind through the phone speaker, shivering down with the cold of an autumn morning, speaking as if right next to her and not on the other side of the world.

Peacefully, Wendy nodded after every word. Their conversations were common – but there was something about the current thickening amber in the sky and the more bitter, smooth breeze that gave Wendy more of a home-like atmosphere. There was newer, fresher depth to her mother’s questions of how she was eating and who she had met. As she leant against the outdoor fence, she could melt away. Melt back.

Yet, there was indeed one repeated claim by her mother that always launched her position upright; that cut into the dreamy fog.
“Wan-ah, you bring us back a nice young man, alright?”
Pursuing love used to be not a fraction under the key stimulant for Seungwan – she would be a girl to desert everything about her if she found it. Perhaps, even, that was the case with art;
Stranded forth into an inherited society far from the flags of maple, driven only by her affection for her ‘almost, kind-of’ younger sister and the power of fixed charcoal sticks, scattered pencils.
But what triggered a recurring thought now was her sheer absence of lust.
“Of course, Omma.” Wendy would always laugh as generously as ever, blocking her perpetual spiral of thoughts and attempting not to think anything of it.

Out of her bag, she serenely pulled a blank sheet of cartridge paper, with her eyes instantly zooming forth into every little crease, hoping to sketch up an image within her mind. This was now a habit. Today was the first sign of an outcome.

Faint bombards of ambers. Darkly lined, narrowly heighted but beautifully elongated eyes. As dark as bark and as vivid as the sun. Inner corners shaded like that of a wilderness mammal. A bear. Eyes like joyous crescents.

It was something.

--

“What’s up, Seul?” Seunghoon had padded past her bedroom, switching his gaze towards her for a second to witness a repeat of her crumpled state. He entered hastily, self-painted mug in hand, headphones sliding down the back of his long neck.

Seulgi liked to think, as her mind was always so moral and so avid for understanding things. She wasn’t easily made sensitive as her actions always resonated some sort of happy buzz – this position was very strange.
Her mind felt so littered; all that she could think about was the softening of her heart and the endearing chirp that came with that late girl’s smile, the girl who now sat opposite her in her last two college periods - her smile for her.

Is it happening again?

Erasing the obviousness of her gloom and prompting her eyes to fold into a beautiful squint, she mumbled into her folded knees, “Nothing much.”

--

“You don’t really suit your name.”

“Huh?” Wendy dragged her keen eyes from a very gradually filling ‘line and wash’ drawing, fumbling with her inky fingertips as she saw Irene standing over her workspace. The student’s full lower lip instantly dropped, nervously, trying to colour in the blanks of her statement.

“I mean, you don’t look like a Seungwan.” Irene spoke shortly again, her sentences sharp but her eyes so soft and pure that everything echoed with such a gentle touch. Wendy narrowed her eyes with a cheeky grin, liking this conversation. As much as she was an artist, she was a conversationalist.

“Back in Canada I went by Wendy,” she began, flicking her black-stained nails and so tumbling into a conversation. As the other students progressed with their own pieces or own small talk, Seulgi strangely stayed silent, registering every mere little fact. The girl was called Seungwan; also Wendy; she was also Canadian. It all meant an intriguing much to her.

After Joohyun had dipped into many a quiet topic with her and Wendy’s eyebrows had danced all around her forehead, the tutor folded her arms within her with a pause, looking over the vacancy of Wendy’s sketchbook. “You’re a slow worker.” Instantly, the younger, chestnut and wavy-haired girl meekly hung her head, and Seulgi couldn’t help but emit a sincere chuckle.

“You know, you’re a little bit like a butterfly,” said Irene, seizing the corner of one of Wendy’s beige pages and flicking tersely through, “You never finish anything in order; you go through, adding a little delicate trace to every piece, back and forth.” Son Seungwan’s sketchbook was indeed filled with absent blanks and bolder splashes – nothing ever fully complete. But everything triggering a new finding – everything with the hopes of signalling a muse.

Joohyun finally broke her leaning stance over Wendy’s work, significantly feeling less intimidating than a few minutes ago after breaking into such an easy mould with this lively girl, clasping her hands together and assuming her position in front of the projector.

“Some say the best way to show off a good artist is by giving them a really basic task, and seeing how they can highlight it with intricacy,” her smooth and softening words humming across the studio raised all heads, and tempered all glances, “I’d like you to pair up for a short project. We need two simple topics that you can merge together.”

Instantly, Seulgi’s mind flooded with rippling waves and gentle skies, the way the green of the sea met with darker turquoise, and filed into blue as it kissed the horizon. The way pastel blues emitted contours. The way it seemed so modest. “Colours.” She raised her hand, and requested after a signal from her tutor. Colours, colours, colours.

“Animals.” Seulgi had a daze so broken that it took her a tad of a moment to notice that another word had entered the soundscape, turning to see that this topic was suggested by the girl with alive eyes. Wendy.
As soon as Son Seungwan had heard Irene’s project description, her mind had filled with the traces of lions and the traces of amber eyes; the same eyes that coated all of her pages angelically, with the narrow glow of a bear’s. Then, she had looked forth, and seen such similar eyes staring back at her, exactly parallel across the horse-shoe tabletops.

‘Twas the girl fascinated by smiles and by the sincerity of blue.

“Okay, Colours and Animals,” Joohyun enjoyed analysis, and enjoyed how different the two girls seemed with their styles, yet how almost exact they were with facial and auditory expression. She had ideas. “Please have this done in one to two weeks. Or a year; I know so deeply that I can’t add a restriction to anything, when it comes to this subject.” She paused, and Seulgi grinned slightly seeing that Irene’s eyes flickered towards Wendy for a severed moment, “Whatever you yourself view as ‘short’.”

The class had then broken into an animated, eccentric cacophony, and Irene approached Wendy’s workspace again.
“Hello again.” Wendy drawled, her eyes shining as her speech sounded almost like a question, a can of fixative settled in her palm.
“I just came to say that usually I would let you find your own partner,” Joohyun tucked an imaginary stray hair behind her petite ear, naturally avoiding eye contact while staring calmly at Wendy’s hoop earrings, “But since you’re so slow I’ll put you with someone who’s very much the opposite…” she paused, turning towards the girl with a bear like grin who was desperately trying to seem as if she was not listening in, “Kang Seulgi.”

Seulgi’s eyes became instant, darkly and lusciously lined crescents; Seungwan’s eyes sparkled back as if a rippling tide at dawn.

“Maybe you’ll balance each other out.”

The yellow lights had been turned off with the string of everyone leaving, and the only brightness in the studio was from the dappled fractions of other doors and the small overhead skylight (as well as the glowing ray from each of the girls’ eyes). Seulgi gripped at her collarbones awkwardly, agreeing in her mind that she was never this nervous when talking to someone; warmth and friendliness oozed from her every pore. It filtered through her like a diluted watercolour.

Wendy, however, wasn’t too faltered – no matter her apprehension, no matter the instance, she had this endearing wish to constantly understand people. In fact, it even came to her without effort.

Just as she was about to hastily initiate a damp-palmed handshake, there was a buzz from the pocket of Seulgi’s mud-brown jeans. It startled her a slight bit, but went ignored. Probably Seunghoon. Her eyes crinkled automatically at the image of the mangled, ridiculous expression her roommate would give her for being more than a second late without notice – snapping out of the idea, she followed this action into a smile at Wendy. The way Seulgi’s upper lip curled backwards a tad to portray the most beautifully aligned set of the brightest teeth clung onto Wendy; it brought colour to her cheeks. Though now she could shake it off as nothing.

“So, Kang Seul-” Wendy blinked in reverse for a split second, every action spectacularly energetic, pretty eyebrows freely dancing, “Wow, sorry, I forgot the last syllable.”

“Seulgi,” said Seulgi, as she instinctively patted the top of her messy bun, toying with stray hairs and letting out a wonderfully unique laugh. It was the very kind of laugh that you wish you could bring into a jar, or animate into a painting. Wendy beamed. “Though you know, Kkangseul is fine too.” She itched at her sharp wrist, turning towards the adorably shorter girl again. “You’re Wendy.”

The named girl nodded, “I am Wendy.”
Her eyes were humoured and wide, “You know, I’m pretty tired of this studio already,” she traced long fingertips against dusty card, her fingers carefully swirling a trace of charcoal powder into a gracefully executed star shape. Seulgi’s eyes smiled again as she caught the genuine, sincere colour of blue painted over Seungwan’s ink stained nails. “I like to work around good smells, around food.”

Seulgi chuckled animatedly in agreement, her tone still soft.

With the fumbling of cyan and navy paint pots within a rugged satchel, and the patting of the shoulder, the two made their way to the near café.

Their daringly similar personalities moulded together like clay, as they sat in the same corner booth Wendy usually selected with Joy; it was odd, being surrounded by the same scented thickness and combined small talk with feelings completely altered, but a somehow good ‘odd’. Wendy was usually one to garble, but she let Seulgi’s words melt into her – learning about people, especially people with such engaging spark, was perhaps her favourite thing. It should have been awkward, and yet that vibe only ensued in the crevices of silence between them where they flicked their wide eyes back to the empty planning sheets regarding their project. Even then, the situation seemed to glide.

“What do you want?” Seulgi had asked, standing over the counter.

Wendy had at first waffled out a “Hm?”, her mind adjusting to the question, then her vision glazing as she let her view lethargically wander over the minimalist menu blackboards. Here, she realised that after years of being ‘almost, kind-of’ sisters with Sooyoung, she didn’t actually know.

“You order first.” She wrinkled her nose, after a pause. Really, she wrinkled her nose and let all facial features dance for a good few seconds, but Seulgi had already learnt the last part accompanied all of Wendy’s expressions.

Seulgi had a certain sweet tooth – beautifully light umber caramel lattes, and rich chocolate brownies. The combination of colours seemed so serene and inviting to Wendy that she ordered that as well (perhaps she inherited the subconscious obsession of matching orders from Joy without properly knowing).

“Two brownies? Ah, I’m sorry, but we only have one left.” The employee sighed, itching at her leaf green apron with two steaming foam cups in her palms.

“Oh,” Seulgi sighed in unison with the server, “I won’t have one then: she can have it.” She beckoned so very politely towards Wendy, though her sweet tooth clotting like harsh venom as she secretly hummed a hopeful prayer that Wendy would let her have it instead.

Seungwan paused for a moment, her excellently malleable face distorting again while her large gaze fluttered around her. She stepped forwards and brought an ink stained fingertip against the glass. “We could both try those.” They were plentiful cupcakes, bodied in scarlet and topped with lustful cream cheese. “I’ve never actually had a red velvet cake before.”

--

That night, Kang Seulgi paints butterflies. Butterflies which energetically oscillate over the coolest blue sky.

A/N: Ahhh okay - I'm so sorry that I took weeks to update ;----; I barely have a spare moment to write atm, but I'm so glad I finally got down to it ;;;; Thank you for reading!! Hopefully I won't be such a snail updating next time lol. <3