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When Gahyeon gathers up her whole courage into a fist to ask about something so trivial yet important to her, she has no idea this moment will be the starting letdown point of their relationship.
“Why you never draw me?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You’ve never sketched me even once,” her voice loses its initial confidence, the stupidity of her question creeping into head, her fingers fumbling the wool of her oversized purple sweater with a nervous manner, eyes focused on this action. “I mean, as far as I know every artist draws their loved ones. Am I... not pretty enough for you?”
“Gahyeon, what are you talking about?” the older woman stops hatching on the canvas surface right away and drops everything she was doing, approaching her girlfriend and enveloping her in a big hug. Her voice is assuring enough that Gahyeon could melt in those pretty eyes of the older woman when she cups her face securely. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Believe me.”
“Then, why…“
“Painting is my profession which became a chore for me,” a sigh slips out, yet the eyes of the older woman looked full of tenderness, dripping from corners with it. “Rather than drawing I want to enjoy our time together as much as possible.”
And this answer was enough for Gahyeon. For some time.
“So,” Minji, Bora’s old artist friend who‘s a literal eye-candy woman, asks with a quirk of her brow. “Gahyeon, what do you do?”
“I’m a student,” she chuckles lightly, lowering her eyes, unable to handle the older woman’s gaze. “Civil engineering.”
“Interesting!” ambiguously exclaims the woman which makes Gahyeon laugh nervously even more.
“I wouldn’t say so. It’s kinda boring,” Gahyeon honestly says and her eyes catch the sight of her girlfriend in the company of other artist personas in the corner of their living room. “Especially if I could compare it to all of your interesting jobs.”
“It's a rather time-consuming and energy-devouring job,” Minji sighs and beams a small smile, wine glass in her hand elegantly held. “You could confirm it by how busy Bora herself is all day long.”
“Yeah, I would agree,” Gahyeon nods absentmindedly, her eyes glued on the older woman who’s contagiously laughing at someone’s joke, but somehow this time Gahyeon has no desire to even smile.
“On which course are you, again?”
“Second.”
“Twenty years? I wouldn’t even doubt it.”
Glass gives a crack but no one notices it because only Gahyeon could hear it ringing within her soul.
“Why are you acting mad now?”
“I’m not even mad. Who said I was mad?”
They argue that night, a usual yelling contest of a couple that fights rarely. Gahyeon ends up crying with Bora hugging her and reassuringly whispering apologies in the end, internally pinpointing the words that were said today by her girlfriend.
...they’re older than me! I feel out of place!
—you dropped my hand!
…you don’t even want to draw me.
“If we had been closer in age,” Bora says one night sitting in front of her girlfriend who just got out of shower. The older woman lowers her eyes, unable to look at the full of love irises staring back at her. “Maybe it would have been fine. I know I’ll be sorry for the next words I’ll say, but...”
That night Gahyeon wanted to perish more than anything.
Even though her heart stopped beating so passionately as it did beside Bora, time goes on. Even if people suffer, time always will go on without waiting for anyone. It flies by as well and eventually Gahyeon’s feelings did too, though not utterly.
The last time she decides to hear this painfully close to heart voice is when she has to take the last piece of her belongings from her ex’s life.
From last night’s call Bora indicated the old spare-key was still in its place so she could fetch whatever she needed at any time. At last, the older woman noted to get it before her current girlfriend will arrive lest any drama would happen. Gahyeon was only left to roll her eyes, internally being marvelled at how she'd dated someone so honest yet so cold, biting down the urge to ask how old she is, a girl who replaced her so easily. But Gahyeon doesn't ask.
The apartment didn’t change that much since she left, yet there were some things she could note: replaced remote control and more brushes all over the place.
A sigh. Quickly fetching won't be that easy.
Getting through ajar door and she’s now in a working room. Even though Bora didn’t allow her here most times, a valuable ceramic bowl from her mother had to be here, lying unwanted and forgotten somewhere.
And she’s right because it still stands beside the largest canvas just like she left it the last time. In less than a second the fragile item is placed securely in her arms and her frame turns around to leave this room.
But something within her finally fully breaks without remaining intact pieces. Bowl gets placed back on the floor. Her hand roughly takes a huge brush from a paint can, the square tip being covered with vivid red. Other hand pulls off the sheet from the surface of the largest canvas.
it was always these paintings over me…
With an uneven breath she’s ready to swing with the brush and leave a big patch that would spoil the entire painting and would definitely break Bora’s heart this time - something she herself couldn’t do, being the one with a shattered heart handed into her own fingers.
The brush renders hanging halfway in the air and eventually falls on the floor with a sharp thud. Her eyes wide in shock.
A painting, a richly colorful portrait of a girl with pink hair is staring at her back. At first Gahyeon doesn’t recognise herself - she never had pink hair, but, in fact, it was her with the same soft features. After a short realization, her hand proceeds to discover the neighboring, the other one and another one - all of the paintings in the room to be portraits of her. So many pairs of eyes of her own were staring back at her with a kind and in some places mischievous hue in them.
“Did you find your ceramic bowl?”
“Yeah, everything went well.”
“Good, then. My girlfriend came after you. She has a habit of cleaning the place, even though the place is already clean!”
“I doubt that it’s that clean,” Gahyeon snorts and hears a painfully familiar laugh on the other end of a line. Her fingers clench the phone, the urge to be held in Bora’s arms unbearable for a moment, then the feeling subsides.
“Alright, my bad. It all was in my ‘artistic’ order.”
Gahyeon hums thoughtfully and she could swear she heard a deep sigh.
“Good luck on your flight tomorrow. On that, I guess, we’re done?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Goodbye, Gahyeon-ah.”
“Yeah, good…” Gahyeon hesitates.
After this call, they will become strangers, ghosts of each other and there’s no way of turning back. But she has to end this call, she’s promised herself that she won’t—
“Bora, can I ask you something?”