With my left hand, I drew a picture...

Arts Night is something along the lines of a burden to the typical art student. It’s a prelude to graduation, a showing of everything that you have accomplished during your time at school. That was why Myung Soo was sitting on the floor with photographs scattered all around, and his laptop set beside him. He had to figure out which prints he wanted to put in his space.

What was going to represent his walk through life?

How was he going to define four years?

He heard several fragments of a piano piece being played through his wall. Just like he was doing right now, Soo Kyung was trying to finish a piece that he had in the works for a while. The last time he commented on it when they went out for dinner, Soo Kyung merely scrunched his face up in distaste and moved on to a different subject, as if he hated the song. Ever since then, he heard lots of revisions being made to the point that it no longer sounded like what it started off with. The melody sounded unclear, muddled, and perhaps angry. It was as if he had lost all sense of direction.

He looked at his photos. Many of them were still-life, a lot of landscape, but there were some posed objects that were around from his portfolio from high school, when he had started to take photography seriously. There were several of him messing around, photos of his friends’ playing around – where everything had first started. His stills of Sung Yeol stood out to him, prints of the other male’s smile captured in a discreet moment. While they were in his portfolio, he had never shown his high school portfolio to anybody. If they saw these pictures... he was pretty sure they would figure out his feelings.

He hadn’t noticed when the feeling hit the first time, but now that it did, the pending dread that wanted to settle in his stomach couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t as if his friends were prejudiced, but he knew something would change if they knew of them. That’s why this was better. It was better for them to turn a blind eye on his inner turmoil involving Lee Sung Yeol and the two of them not talking to each other for nearly a month.

And then there were pictures of his current... muse of sorts. He held the impromptu picture under the shelter in the rain to his heart. It brought a plethora of ideas he wanted to explore. Because Chae Soo Kyung was as complicated as he looked. The younger male wasn’t distinctly someone you could call pretty, unlike Sung Jong, even with the lengthy locks of hair. He had angular features and a deep hooded stare that made him look slightly older than his actual age. And then there was the issue with his instrument of choice. He had been carrying a violin case with him the day they had inadvertently crossed paths, so he had thought the male was a violinist. Imagine the surprise he had when he learned that the violinist was actually a pianist.

“I don’t really want to get into that.”

He said those words and it was enough to make Myung Soo back off, knowing there was something that made him not want to talk about it. But, now he was thinking that he really should’ve pursued for an answer.

He started arranging the pictures, overlapping them so that they formed a crude collage. He pulled out the ones that didn’t fit, switching them with something else until there was some coherency with what he was looking at. Every picture he laid down was of his past, his bright outlook into the future. It was raw, lacking much in technique, a comment that he had heard from someone off the cuff during his first year, but it showed lots of promise. He didn’t know what their critiques meant, but looking at the compositions of the pictures now, he was finding his growth to be a little inspiring.

“Don’t you think it would be better if I stood in this direction instead?”

He blinked, looking at the first picture he used Soo Kyung as his model. Seoul was starting to settle in summer a bit early with the warmer weather and bright display of sunlight, his window making sure he knew that every morning. They were going to go out for lunch that day, until he actually went into Soo Kyung’s place for the first time. Unlike the slightly older officetel, his space had a slight modern feel to it, practically minimalist from the lack of varying colour in the furniture (the rest was fair game, which explained his pastel mugs, plants and what not). The space looked even bigger with the large window that his own space didn’t have (his two windows were big, but it was an understatement). It made him want to bust his camera out, which he did. After not much convincing, Soo Kyung lent out his personal space for a small photoshoot.

The smile on his face was as warm, for his lacking of other words to describe it, as the day they shot it. He got a number of compliments from his professors from this particular shoot, noting how different it was to his usual work. It was his first time, in a while, where he felt a spark. Just like back in the rain.

He clutched the photo to his chest.

He had forgotten about Sung Yeol’s month of silence.

of what my heart cannot say.

Chapter 13: (searching for an) answer.

A/N: Countdown – seven.