Work Text:
"For the last time, Wonwoo, I told you only submitting 3/4 angle busts and stick-straight standing poses would not be a good idea. Why did you even try to use my KAWS figure as a reference! See what grade you've gotten now!” cried Jihoon exasperatedly, as he rifled through the plastic slots of the beaten-up black folio.
The pair were seated at their usual spot at their dormitory's common sofa which they flumped onto almost daily to relax after most of the grueling studio sessions and lectures as students of Seoul City University's art department.
"Look, I had two days for twelve works. I tried my best and it's the damn school's fault for mandating this stupid class for us. I don't even want to major in illustration!" Wonwoo snapped back, still frustrated over the big fat F grade and chiding he received from the professor.
That was on top of the humiliation he felt at the critique session earlier, ears burning as he had to justify why his model's hands were suspiciously hidden in most of the drawings.
Jihoon continued flipping through work after work, pursing his lips as each drawing deteriorated in quality the further he went, "So?" he asked after closing the folio with a shudder, "What's gonna happen to your GPA now?"
Wonwoo raked his fingers through his hair and sighed, "Never mind the GPA, if I want a first-class honours out of this I can't fail any courses. Prof Lee said I can retake the course next semester and it'll replace this grade," He left out the part where the surly professor mentioned an expectation of proper work instead of uninspiring dogshit.
"Jihoon, you got the highest grade, didn't you? You have to help me out here, man. Lend me a couple hidden works, huh?"
Jihoon rolled his eyes at the plea, "No. It's really just practice makes perfect when it comes to figure drawing. Stop starting on your work only a week before too, anything would look shit on an hour of sleep no matter your skill."
Wonwoo groaned as he sunk deeper into the couch.
"I hate this. This is discrimination against film students. I'm suing the school," he muttered.
"I can only tell you that if you want to practice well you should find a live model. Nothing beats the real thing, you know," Jihoon advised as he stood up, lightly kicking Wonwoo in the shin.
"Ew. People."
"Ew, not getting first-class honours. It's for your own good, I'm serious. Go find some poor soul to model for you, compensate them well, and say goodbye to ever struggling with anatomy in the future ever again. I gotta go for club now, catch you back at the dorm." Jihoon shrugged and walked off, leaving Wonwoo alone on the couch wallowing in a mixture of self-pity and dread.
He couldn’t refute the criticism, and he needed to clear this class as soon as he could. With resignation and reluctance, Wonwoo took Jihoon’s good advice yet again in what felt like a monthly bruising of his pride.
Wonwoo began with mentally sorting through his close circle of friends for potential modelling candidates. He didn't want to further burden the other third year students or the seniors who would soon be starting on their internships or research projects, but crossing them out left him with a paltry number of choices. He needed to get his shit together during this summer break, before the next academic semester began, and he was sure that numerous people would also be going back to their hometowns for summer, which shrank his pool of models even more.
If the modelling were anything like the few live figure drawing sessions he had experienced as part of the class, there were only two scenarios that could come out of a friend modelling.
Either it would be the most painful and awkward hours of their life or in the more probable case, they’d end up distracting each other with stupid things and not getting anything done.
Mostly, though, he didn’t really want to stare at his friends’ bodies for hours on end all that much.
The logical conclusion from his rumination and all the undesirable imageries conjured was to pick a stranger to model for him. It would be a contract for a few months, he could book one of the studios where they would meet every week for half a day or so, getting paid by the hour for every session. Wonwoo's pockets stung pre-emptively at the thought of how much he would have to fork out for someone to agree to essentially be a live posable Barbie, but he also knew, from plain observation of an environment teeming with broke university students, that many people would happily do the weirdest things for a couple hundred won.
At the end of the contract, he would never have to see the model again, as they would re-join the many faceless crowds that just existed around the school. "Zero awkwardness, all gain, and frankly, incredibly smart," he thought, nodding to himself in affirmation of his own genius.
Wonwoo usually ate dinner by himself while Jihoon was away and he decided to walk a little further from the main dining hall to possibly scout for some models. Hands tucked in his sleeves, he glanced back and forth with every stride, and before he knew it, he'd gone slightly off campus, but was still close enough for the place to be brimming with youthful faces.
Settling for the fast food restaurant just to quickly sate his hunger, he chewed on a burger, eyes still scouring his surroundings. It seemed like everyone here was studying instead of eating, their heads buried in their laptops and textbooks, the mandatory in-house drink next to them like a pass to use the table.
Wonwoo could already anticipate the rejections if he were to approach any of them, with a litany of reasons that would all boil down to needing to use the summer break for revision and catching up on school.
"Damn elite school and all its scholars," he couldn't help but think to himself as he stuffed the last morsel of the burger into his mouth, picking up his tray to discard the wrappers into the nearby bin.
As he went further to the back of the restaurant to use the sink to wash his hands before he left, a nearby shout froze him in place. He turned off the tap and unmistakably, there was the sound of a scuffle behind the door that led outside.
"-makes no sense-" "-fired!"
He could hear snippets of the conversation as the voices of two men outside escalated, one higher and louder, but the other far coarser. He had seen many a bar fight and altercation in his three short years of university, and he also knew the number one rule was to get the fuck out if he did not want to be implicated.
He soaped his hands quickly, hoping that the door would not suddenly swing open and reveal him to have possibly eavesdropped on the fight. The voices grew louder, and then he heard the familiar sickening thud against flesh of a punch.
Alarm bells began ringing in his mind and on sheer impulse, he ran to the door, heaving it open to reveal a middle-aged ahjussi and some... kid.
It was dark, but even in the lowly lit alley behind the establishment, the red, speckled hue visible in one side of the boy's cheeks was evidence enough for something more than a petty argument.
"Cut it out or I'll call the police," he raised his phone, one hand still gripping the door.
"Stay out of this, unless you want to replace this disrespectful piece of shit!" The middle-aged man shouted again, giving another shove to the boy.
"How is it disrespectful to leave when my shift ends? Especially if you're not paying me for it," the boy still clad in the fast food chain's staff uniform seethed, straightening his stance.
"Pay? For some extra time? This isn't some fancy office, brat. Not like you'll be working anywhere good if you can't even hold a job dunking fry baskets for a week-" The older man scoffed, but was interrupted by the boy lunging at his collar.
Wonwoo, who had been standing there still with phone in hand watching the argument reach its boiling point, had to intervene. He rushed in-between the two, struggling to push them away from each other even though he towered over them in height.
"Just get out. You've been fired already, but I'm telling you again, fucking brat," the middle-aged manager pulled back first.
He exited through the door before the boy can get a word in, and moments later a black sling bag was hurled from a crack in the door, landing with a dull smack onto the gravel outside. A slam and the click of the lock followed.
The kid sank to his feet, defeated. Wonwoo, who did not intend to be part of any of this at all, was left standing wide-eyed, still next to the boy. In an attempt to be helpful, he retrieved the bag and brought it back to the boy, sitting down next to him even though the gravel dug into his tailbone severely.
"You alright?" It was all he could venture, and the moment the utterance slipped out he felt like slapping himself in the face. No kid would be alright after being punched and fired. No full-grown adult would be either.
"Yeah, it's- I'm fine. I wouldn't have survived more than a month under that asshat anyway." The boy's tone is wry and behind the hand that covers his face, Wonwoo sees a slight grimace.
"What's your name? How old even are you?" Wonwoo asked, hoping that he didn't have on his hands a case of assault against a minor.
"Lee Chan. I'm 20. You really didn't have to intervene, I'm fine," Chan accepted his bag from Wonwoo with a nod of thanks. His words were curt, but his voice had a slight waver that Wonwoo still picked up on.
"Not as long as that bruise on your face grows. What happened?"
"Ugh, it's just- My shift was supposed to end thirty minutes ago. I tried to leave and he held me back, saying I wasn't supposed to leave until all the work had been done. What are the shifts for then?" Chan's voice cracked with his agitation, "I've been late to the studio all this week because of this damn job and how am I supposed to go there now like this?"
Wonwoo listened, nodding reassuringly, though the gears in his head turned. This was a terrible time for his little idea, but he was also incredibly desperate, and after Chan ended his rant, he bit the bullet.
"This is not a good situation for me to be saying this, but I feel like it could help," Wonwoo began with a preface, as Chan's eyebrows raised.
"See, I have this favour that I need to ask from someone. A paid favour. You see, I'm a third-year art student and I have these classes on figure drawing... Do you want to be my model? I'll pay you." Wonwoo finished his proposition quickly, and remembering Chan's anger over the shifts, added, "It's just over this summer, flexible and in the day. Mornings, probably. Near here too, just at the Arts building, you know?" With the mention of studio, he assumed Chan was a performance major freshman.
Chan stayed silent, processing the request, and then he spoke, apprehensively.
"So I just... stand there? And you'll be drawing me?"
"Well, you'd have to pose and stuff. Maybe with some props. Simple things. No pressure, of course. If you're not okay with it that's totally fine, I know this favour is pretty strange." Wonwoo tacked on disclaimer after disclaimer, and hoped fervently he wouldn't become the campus' local art weirdo by tomorrow.
"It does sound strange. I'll take it though." From Chan's terse look, a slight smile broke through, and though his features were blurred by the low light and Wonwoo's own cursed astigmatism, the clear enthusiasm lifted his own spirits as well.
Helping each other up, they also exchanged numbers, as Wonwoo promised Chan a text once he booked a studio for their first session. They parted ways with Chan rushing off to the studio, and Wonwoo going back to the hostel, still slightly unable to believe that the past hour had happened. He did, however, have one huge burden lifted off of his back, with his plan working out perfectly, even if the way he achieved it was nowhere near an ideal route.
Back in his room, he got onto the college web portal to snag a room for the next Monday, relieved that the competition for art studio slots had largely died down now that it was summer break. The memory of having to camp on the website to midnight as if he were ticketing for a pop concert just to grab any timings he could to have somewhere to work on his five simultaneous deadlines was visceral. He sent off a reminder to Chan and headed off to the showers and then to bed, with the worries and frustrations of earlier in the day now vaporised from his thoughts.
Once Monday rolled around, Wonwoo hurried through his morning shower and skincare, glancing at the clock every five minutes to make sure he wasn't suddenly late.
"Dude, you're like a cat on a hot tin roof right now. Anywhere you need to be?" Jihoon's voice drifted from the bundle of him and approximately four blankets on his bed.
"Oh, did I forget to tell you? I managed to get some dude to model for me. Your advice better work or I'll waste my whole summer and half of my bank account, Jihoon," Wonwoo said, still fixated on tucking his hair into his cap just right.
"Mhm. Money back guaranteed," Jihoon's voice tapered as his attention went back to lying down and focusing on becoming one with his bed.
Arriving a comfortable fifteen minutes early, Wonwoo set up the studio, arranging his chair and getting his paper out and clipping it down onto the easel. If there was one amazing thing about the school's art studios, it was that they took natural light seriously. French windows covered the side of the studio on the East, letting the morning sun fill the room and bring warmth and rejuvenation.
Wonwoo angled Chan's stool in the middle of it, imagining how the light would fall onto him and not realising, as minutes ticked away, that the boy in question was late. It took him Chan bursting in with an accidental slam of the door, apologising profusely for him to turn from the stool with a jump.
"No need to apologise, I think my directions could have been better too. I remember losing my way around my own department's buildings as a freshman, I don't expect you to know another's," Wonwoo waved away Chan's apologies, tapping the stool in front of him like an invitation.
Putting aside his bag, Chan scurried over to Wonwoo, still out of breath and perspiring from the traverse around the campus he'd undertaken to find the art studios. He looked at the artist expectantly, as if waiting for some command or instruction.
"I don't need anything specific for today since it's just the first day. Uh, maybe just take a seat on the stool? Sit in whatever way you find comfortable, okay?" Wonwoo attempted to sound like he knew what he was doing; from the way Chan immediately hopped onto the stool with no hesitation that seemed to work for the both of them.
The direct morning light, besides the warm hues it blanketed Chan in, created shadows that sliced and dissected the parts of his body with separations of dark and light.
The sliver of light that cut from his temple to his cheekbone, high and jutting out just slightly, while illuminating his left eye, was captured in Wonwoo's deft lines. Now that he had a proper reference, the unfamiliar parts of the human body came to life. Curves joined rectangles, lines joined circles, and Chan was recreated from the real world to a careful arrangement of geometrics on the paper in front of Wonwoo. Wonwoo knew nothing about the boy in front of him, but his body told his story.
The casual black shorts he wore only made his pale skin glow brighter in the sun, the sun that also brought out the tone of his thighs and the dense calf muscle, raised from the flat shin. The gentle, yet visibly taut curves were speckled with hairs that belied an age that contrasting his innocent smile.
Most noticeably, however, were the number of bruises, scrapes and scars. Like ink in water, the pools of yellows, purples, and browns dotted the milky skin of Chan's limbs; the contusions concentrated, spread out, diffused, and disappeared, and if he collaged the different bruises on the parts of the body, Wonwoo was sure he could make a near-perfect life cycle. Like badges of honour, they demonstrated a commitment to his art.
Pure concentration was what Chan saw every time he stole a glance at the still unknown senior as he was fixated on his easel.
He had been so caught up in the embarrassment of being late he had yet to even ask for a name. The large board obscured most of the senior’s face, but the movement of his arms and wrists, flicking, turning, drawing across the paper slow, fast, staccato was rhythmic, with the confidence that only endless practice could grant. He knew nothing about art, but he did know a great deal on being an artist, and it was always an awesome sight to see another work in their element.
From the periphery of his vision, he still sensed intensely the artist’s eyes boring into him every time he took another look. Occasionally, he would raise his pencil, closing an eye and squinting behind his glasses, tongue stuck out in concentration. (Chan was mildly surprised that the stereotypical artist mime was actually true.) The silence that permeated the studio and the focused aura that emanated from the working artist made him wonder if this was how all art students were. It was a stark difference from his own practice sessions, with the music blaring or, otherwise, his own counts of beats and vocalisations often punctuating the air.
Yet, the departure from what he knew didn’t feel awkward. He heard faint laughter from the adjacent studios, bits of chatter from the hallway, even the birds on the trees he could see from the huge windows. And, as he took another short peek at the artist– who had at that moment also looked away from his easel, he finally got a good look at his face under much more favourable lighting than the day before. Sharp yet warm eyes and a high and broad nose greeted him as well as a mouth that curved into a curious mix of a grin and grimace as the man quickly ducked back into his work.
Last night, he had spent a tough hour reconsidering accepting this offer that would take precious time away from practice or even pile even more stress onto him. He was glad to find himself feeling more relaxed than anything else, as he let his mind wander back to the chirping of cicadas just a distance away.
The two students fell into a comfortable routine from that initial session onwards, with Chan finally getting the chance to get to know the man whom he accepted an offer from without even a name to go off on. Wonwoo slowly grew more familiar with both character and body of the once-stranger he would stare at for an inordinately long amount of time every week.
They eased into different poses, aside from the classic standing, sitting, and sitting slightly differently, as Wonwoo became more acquainted with how the body really moved, in the joints and muscles and the physics of it all. He began to understand why those Greek statues had such unnecessarily complicated movements when the answer stared him in the eye, taut muscle, sinew and all.
Chan’s crouching position in the centre of the room was meant to be a cower, but it felt nothing like one to Wonwoo. Rather, Chan was like a rubber ball on the ground, squished and smaller, but ready to fly at Mach speed and inflict some major damage. The boy seemed to keep a permanent steely gaze as his resting face while posing, and along with the prominent calf muscles that Wonwoo found himself emphasising a little too much in his supposedly rough sketches.
It seemed like the bruises on his leg were near perpetual as well, as Wonwoo found himself unconsciously tracking their development as weeks passed. It seemed like a new batch had appeared, this time blotching his knees and shin with mauve. They almost resembled love bites, to and from Chan himself, from his passion for dance.
Wonwoo thought he had to be a force to be reckoned with on stage. He had seen a few dance performances in his life, though most were on talent shows or showcases that he tagged along to as moral support for Soonyoung. It was much too easy to imagine Chan alongside his friend, spinning across the stage and executing moves with control over their bodies down to the hair.
"Which part are you on now?"
Chan's curious question put a premature end to the little imaginary concert Wonwoo was holding in his imagination as he sputtered out an answer, "Uh, calves."
"Ah, not a pleasant sight?" Chan jokes, something about dancing too much and them looking out of place on his legs, but Wonwoo wants to cut him off, protest that they are in fact, nice to look at, and so he does.
"Ey, what are you saying? Loads of people would kill for that definition. It's only natural if you're dancing all the time too."
"Yeah, I guess I should be thankful for them. I wouldn't be standing here without them after all."
The room fell into silence, but Wonwoo's poor attempt at muffling his laughter inevitably failed, and Chan followed with his raucous laugh, falling on the floor from the terrible joke he made himself.
"You. Do a stupid pose now, as punishment for that horrible joke.” Wonwoo commands after he manages to suppress his laughter enough to get his words out.
"I have perfectly good humour!"
"Another punishment for lying, do a dance or something!"
"Ha! Wait, actually?" Chan broke out of their silly banter and looked at Wonwoo with eyebrows raised.
Shit. He said that forgetting Chan could actually dance, as if he wasn't puppeteering imaginary him dancing about his mind just a moment ago. But there was no taking back what he said, and it wasn't like Wonwoo wasn't curious to see Chan in his element.
"Yeah, why not? There's enough space here, right?" Wonwoo tried his best to keep his tone level, his smile casual.
"I guess I can get my practice in this way, too. You should pay me extra for this, you're getting front row seats too." Chan responded, relaxed and smiling as usual, grabbing his phone to presumably select the music. The phone was set on the stool, pushed well out of his way.
Chan sidled to the middle of the studio, but with the deep breath he took, Wonwoo saw the nonchalance in his body replaced with a determination that straightened his posture and steeled his gaze like before.
The music that filled the room had foreign lyrics he only understood snatches of, but the soul of the song, hard hitting beats and surging synths were captured in every movement of Chan's body. Wonwoo, making mental sketches of the lines of movement, hurried to transfer that to paper in quick croquis, trying not to let his gaze stray from the dancer as much as possible. Every part of Chan's body seemed to work independently, from his head to the limbs, down to the extremities in the skilled isolations and finely handled angles. Yet, the movements were still cohesive, coming together with power at the hits and then, so fluidly relaxing into the graceful glissando of the chimes.
When Chan stretched and contorted in ways Wonwoo knew he was making look too easy, the noon sunlight was like a spotlight through his loose white shirt. It created an ethereal halo all around his form, and the crisp lines that segmented light and shadow gave Wonwoo a glimpse of the small and broad body hidden by the formless oversized shirts Chan seemed to live in. The fabric gathered, got caught and then released, almost cyclically by the muscles in his back as he stretched his every move to the maximum. The wide arcs of his arms and extensions of his legs brought to mind the geometric arcs of the Vitruvian Man, and Chan's movements were synchronised with the circles and lines that laid the foundation of the universe.
Wonwoo realised why artists, since the classical eras, had been obsessed with the human form. He realised why they made sculptures, sketches, drawings, paintings, murals, in the desperate hope of capturing the fleeting moments of a body's prime in something permanent.
When you have a figure so perfect, so divine in front of your eyes, and hands that have been trained for years to mimic to exact perfection, isn't the course of action obvious?
It was only at that moment where he regretted not brushing up on his anatomy earlier. Wonwoo erased and replaced stroke after stroke of graphite on the paper. He had enough skill to know something was wrong with his figures, but not enough to figure out where it was and correct it. As the song came to its denouement and Chan's moves slowed to an artful halt, Wonwoo wished, that if anything, he could capture this one sight right- Chan standing there, chest heaving slightly, his hair now parted strangely (yet, charmingly), fire still burning in his eyes even as the music died down.
Like a flip of a switch again, Chan shook his hair back into place with a grin, "How was that? I choreographed it myself."
"I know nothing about dance, but that was certainly an impressive show and your sins are hereby forgiven." Wonwoo replied, still absorbed in correcting for the thirtieth time the curve of Chan's shoulder.
"Don't you have more to say? You were staring so intensely while drawing, you must've seen something more right?" Chan circled round to Wonwoo's stool, tilting his head to take a peek at the mysterious other side of the easel. Somehow, he had also never seen the drawings that were produced of him, as his senior would just pack away the drawings back into his black folder at the end of every session, and he'd never thought to ask, even if he was curious. Wonwoo-ssi was still an enigmatic figure to him, not because he hid things away on purpose, but because he was just quiet. They had never really talked past the surface-level banter that would happen occasionally between poses.
Wonwoo jerked with Chan's sudden presence behind him, and he loaded another sheet of paper onto the easel to cover up the drawings.
"Shit, you scared me," Wonwoo pressed a hand to the blank sheet of paper so that it wouldn't fall off, but also inwardly prayed that it wouldn't smudge the graphite underneath. He looked up to Chan's anticipatory smile and could only eke out a hesitant laugh, pushing his glasses up as he did when he was nervous, "I mean, I don't know, I just drew what I saw, but there's still a lot of parts to fix and it really doesn't match up to what you showed me,"
Wonwoo wanted to say more, he really did want to praise everything he noticed and ask Chan about what he didn't, but he felt like he couldn't. Not without sounding weird or even worse, obsessed.
"Hey, I'll take that as praise, but I do want to see what else you drew. I deserve some rights of the image for being in it, right?" Chan's eager tone didn't falter, and Wonwoo felt some relief that he didn't seem to be too affected by his nonanswer.
"That's... definitely not how intellectual property laws work but you know what, I'll definitely show you some next time, okay? Just needs some touching up, you know how it goes." He laughed as he slid the papers back into his folio, shutting it quickly and along with it, hoisting his backpack up his shoulders.
For the next few days, Wonwoo worked with a fervour that had never been seen by Soonyoung or Jihoon, both of whom were surprised by his refusal to join them at the PC-bang for their holiday game grinding sessions.
“Never seen you drawing this hard even for graded critique sessions. You’re taking this seriously huh?” Jihoon inquired after returning to their dorm room. It was as if Wonwoo hadn’t moved an inch since he left the room in the morning, head still bent dangerously close to the graphite, squinting and daubing at the paper with his eraser.
“Mm, gotta get my money’s worth.”
Wonwoo’s answer was normal enough, and not particularly out of character for the mostly practical student. Jihoon didn’t question further and went to bed, lulled to sleep by the low rustles of paper, scratching of pencil and the rhythmic tapping of Wonwoo’s foot to a certain foreign song that had been playing in his mind non-stop the past few days.
Wonwoo was late to the studio.
It was not a particularly surprising event considering he had barely slept for the week and his tableside trashcan had filled with coffee cans to the point of smelling like a post-apocalyptic Starbucks. When he did finally get some rest, he ended up sleeping through multiple alarms and awaking in a panicked daze almost thirty minutes later.
But that was all okay, because he had worked on his drawings to the point where he could look at them for a whole minute straight and think, “Well this isn’t so bad.” (He had yet to try looking at it for longer, but he feared that would only make him see another mistake and send him into another frenzy of trying to correct it, only to have the outcome look twenty times worse.)
Holding his precious folio to his chest, he hurtled down the hallway of studios, still managing to weave past precariously placed busts and drying racks with still-wet papers with a precision that could only come from sheer luck. He spotted Chan, who enlarged from a dot to a blurry smudge that looked like it was waving its arms as he closed the distance.
“Wonwoo-ssi! You’re here!” Chan called out as Wonwoo halted, immediately bending over to catch a breath in front of the door.
“Sorry... I’m late... Slept through my alarm.” Wonwoo forced out between pants as he entered the passcode into the studio door, swinging it open for them to enter.
“You should cool off first, you were running so fast it was honestly kind of funny.” Chan’s remark was with equal parts concern and amusement, and Wonwoo shot him a look from the chair that he collapsed onto.
“I can’t get mad at that when you must’ve waited so long here. I’m sorry for that, Chan.” Wonwoo apologised once he could gather enough breath to speak a level and coherent sentence. “Also, you don’t need to call me that, just hyung is cool too.”
“It’s fine, Wonwoo-hyung. It wasn’t too long anyways. Besides, you have something to show me, right?”
“I suppose I do,” Wonwoo released the folio he still kept on his lap, placing it on the table for Chan to look through.
“Wow, it’s actually pretty hefty when you lay it down like that,” Chan ran his fingers over the smooth plastic cover, pausing at the edge.
“What about you give me a guided tour of your works, artist-nim?”
Wonwoo, who had been watching and shrinking into his chair, bracing for what Chan would comment about his works, started.
“It’s just figure drawings, what can I say?”
A beat passed, and Wonwoo got up to stand at the other side of the table.
“Honestly, I can’t stand looking at my works for very long. But you know what, I ought to repay you for that performance the last time too.”
Holding back the urge to just grab the folio and run out, he opened the cover to Chan’s gasp.
“This is crazy.” Chan wasn’t sure what else to say at the sight of himself captured in motion. He’d watched his own practices and recordings endlessly, monitoring himself as much as he could. He thought he knew how he looked; he had to know how he looked if he wanted to dance well. Exact angles, exact extensions of his limbs, the position of his feet, his hands; all of that seemingly fell away in Wonwoo’s depiction of him. With the hue constricted to greyscale, his attention was drawn to parts he had never felt important or considered at all. His skin, his hair, and the way light fell on him was suddenly so clear in the image. Although it was supposed to be a mirror of himself, he found the man on the other side unrecognisable. It was him, or at least, Wonwoo-hyung’s perception of him, but he didn’t think he could look like this.
“The light was good so I did try to get the contrast shown in here. I don’t know if I got the energy just right so I tried to go a little looser with the strokes around the torso...” Wonwoo pointed out, and Chan nodded along.
The croquis fascinated Chan, and the little figures of him in different points of movement played out like an animation as he glanced across the paper. It was “simplified into the basic shapes”, as Wonwoo put it, and he couldn’t see things like his fingers or face, but he saw the energy he tried to show and Wonwoo tried to capture shine through.
They looked through the previous weeks’ work together, Wonwoo explaining his process as best as he could, answering Chan’s questions, and trying to suppress a smile every time Chan gave another loud interjection of amazement. Wonwoo felt relaxed, and it was nothing like the anxiety of having to let another take a peek at his art and indirectly, his innermost self like at class critiques.
That was until Chan flipped a page and was greeted with Wonwoo’s past semester final work.
“Oh! This is different.” A barely suppressed tone of surprise pervaded Chan’s voice, as he looked up to Wonwoo who yet again had that half-smile, half-grimace on his face.
“Did I ever tell you why I needed to do this whole figure drawing business?”
Chan shook his head slowly.
“Well, you’re looking at the reason. My work last semester was so shit I failed the class. So this is like summer school for my skills.” Wonwoo admitted with a wry chuckle.
“No, it looks... great!” Chan emphasised the last word, and Wonwoo laughed, “Stop lying already. I’m not paying you any more.”
“Can I see the rest?” Chan asked for permission, but his hand already rested at the page’s corner. Wonwoo just sighed and nodded. Unsurprisingly, many pages later, Chan was breaking down in laughter.
“Why do they all have no hands?”
“Do they really need their hands?”
“But they’re so important! They express emotions and define your line in dance. If you take out the hands, it’s just not complete.” Chan grabbed Wonwoo’s hands and the latter drew back instinctively from the touch. Unfortunately or fortunately, Chan had a strong grip, and Wonwoo’s hand was not going anywhere. “These are what make your talent and you can’t draw them?” Chan continued on his lecture, shaking Wonwoo’s hands for emphasis every other word.
Wonwoo twisted and turned his wrist, wresting them from Chan’s unrelenting enthusiasm, “Drawing hands are hard and pockets are easy.”
Chan momentarily let go of his hands, only to shift his grip to the fingers, bending them back and forth to crack the knuckles. “Yeah, and find me someone who has their hands in their pockets 24/7. That said, your hands are really cold. It’s summer, are you okay?”
Wonwoo didn’t really see the connection between pockets and the temperature of his hands, but his brain’s capacity was also fizzling out. “Don’t worry. That’s what everyone says. Just a me thing.”
It was true that Wonwoo was the kind of person that had perpetually cold hands. But he suspected there was more than just that reason because every other part of his body felt like it was on fire, and he prayed that it didn’t show on his face.
“Wait, is this a callus? I didn’t think you could get these on your hands.” Chan’s hands grazed over the bump at the tip of Wonwoo’s ring finger.
“I hold my pencils weird, and combined with drawing a lot, it’s just kind of been there, but I guess you’d have them too as a performance major after all, my friend—well, your senior has a bunch on his feet from all the dancing.” Wonwoo responded in as casual a manner as he could, when his mind was being overloaded from being so hyperaware of every point of contact.
Chan’s grip tightened for a second, and then he released Wonwoo’s hand, to Wonwoo’s silent sigh of relief.
“Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It looks pretty bad, but it does kind of protect the feet too. Anyways, shouldn’t you be practicing drawing hands more? Can you even see from the distance you’re usually at?” Chan held up his hand with a teasing grin.
“Alright, you got it,” Wonwoo groaned and took out his papers to set on his easel, Chan still seated at the table now much closer than he usually was, letting out his characteristic laugh at Wonwoo’s pained expression.
In the remaining time of the morning they ran through different poses, with and without random props (or, whatever they found lying around in the art studio).
From seeing hands as mysterious and unnecessarily complicated appendages to, well, just hands, Wonwoo found himself finally understanding the muscles and mechanics of the previously shunned body part. The bends of the phalanges or the lines of the palm, little things that Wonwoo would never have fussed over before, he now found himself fussing over and wanting to get just right. It wasn’t like he had a newfound passion for figure drawing, but it was more like a newfound desire to simply do the figure justice.
When he could see up close Chan’s own concentration in staying still for his drawing’s sake, he felt obliged to do his job well. At the same time, there was an unshakeable sense of performance anxiety. Chan’s curious expression, so clear as he arched his neck to catch a bit of the drawing made only put more pressure onto Wonwoo, who was desperately trying his best to un-sausage the fingers he drew. This was still while his brain was picking up the pieces from the shock he had earlier when Chan took his hand.
Now that Wonwoo knew what his hand felt like and looked like in full detail, it was hard not to imagine his touch replicated elsewhere; Feather light on his arm, or deeply indenting into his back, or— and that was all he would allow his mind to venture before he desperately tugged it back to the more important matter at hand.
It was interesting, to Wonwoo, seeing hands that fit the little markers on the table just right. He always found the markers obnoxiously small and hard to use, but they fit perfectly into Chan’s hand as he spun them absentmindedly. Even though Chan’s hands had broad, masculine palms, his skin was unblemished, delicate to the point of near translucence. It was a curious and unique juxtaposition, but what wasn’t one when it came to Chan? Short height with immense power, an innocent face with a strong voice, the unexpected was natural to him.
With every iteration, the fishstick-appended ovoids began looking more and more human, into the familiar small hands and short fingers, a raised and veined back with cleanly trimmed nails. It was a pity the graphite couldn’t capture the pink that dusted Chan’s fingertips and knuckles, or the faint green on the underlying veins, but he would just have to commit those to memory instead.
“...and there’s the end of our slot. Good job today!” Wonwoo made the final strokes of his pencil before slowly lifting the paper off the drawing board to put back into the folio.
Chan gave a cheer and raised his hand to Wonwoo, who gave him a little celebratory high-five.
“I guess I have to thank you for your impassioned little speech on hands, I never thought I’d conquer the most annoying part of figure drawing. The things I learn from you performance majors, huh.” Wonwoo slung the folio back onto his shoulders as he exited the room, Chan beside him.
“You don’t know Soonyoung, right? Year 3 in Interdisciplinary Performance? He might know you though; from what he told me, it sounds like he spies on the juniors whenever they practice for an inordinate amount of time— if you see him, don’t tell him I told you that.”
“I’m not— I don’t know him, yeah.”
Wonwoo continued, “Well, maybe I should introduce you to him. I think you guys would get on great, with your crazy passions for performing and dancing and what not.”
“Mm, I don’t know about that.”
“Why? Do the seniors terrorise you guys? Must be tough, huh?” Wonwoo patted Chan’s back, offering his consolation.
Chan just laughed in response, leaning into his senior’s side as they walked down the corridor together before parting ways.
The days of summer flew past, with sweltering sun and shared boxes of Melona bars in the studio filling the inescapable heat of July. The studio sessions lengthened with every week; not for any art-related purpose, but for them to just lounge about together, talking about this and that. Numerous times they ended up being chased out with curt coughs and hard knocks at the door from the next students as they far overstayed their allocated durations.
As per the routine they fell into, Wonwoo and Chan headed to the nearby Starbucks for their drinks to chat over.
“Whoa, is it almost autumn already?” Wonwoo commented, looking at the big banner they had put up outside the store, advertising the usual seasonal tumblers and cups that they would be stocking come September.
It was an off-hand comment, but there was a tacit understanding of what autumn meant for their arrangement. Just as Wonwoo himself had it all envisioned just a few months ago, he would go back to school, finish up his damn class, and finally have time to work on his core film classes and source for his internship. The other party, the model, Lee Chan, the endearing, diligent, handsome Chan would go back to the other side of the campus, to a studio somewhere in Seoul, and become a face in the crowd. It was a perfect plan, once upon a time. As much as he wanted to indulge his feelings, take back everything, and ask for more – it was an agreement between the two of them and if Chan was just here for the quick buck, there was nothing he could do about it.
A nudge at his arm snapped Wonwoo out of his rumination, face to face with the cashier, an eyebrow raised. After ordering his drink in a fluster, the pair settled down at an empty table.
“You okay? What’s on your mind?” The question was part concerned, part bemused.
“Oh, just— you know, school, I guess, since start of term’s just right around the corner.”
Wonwoo felt a little guilty about the white lie, but to his defense, it wasn’t entirely false either.
“Dreading the anatomy class?” Chan ribbed.
“Honestly? Not really. I think I’m in a much better place than I was last year.”
This statement was fully genuine, and Wonwoo continued, “Thanks for your help these weeks, I’d probably be retaking the class for eternity if you didn’t accept my offer that time.”
“And I’d probably be at my fifty-third part time job,” Chan echoed Wonwoo’s joke with a laugh. “I don’t think I’ll ever get an opportunity like this or a boss as nice as you ever again, thank you for that, hyung.”
The call of their names from the counter a distance away interrupted their conversations, and Chan jumped to his feet to retrieve the drinks for them, sinking Wonwoo back into thought. He knew that from next term, he’d be swamped in his academics and this last week would be his final proper respite from school or employment. He’d spent the past few months in a Bermuda Triangle of the campus, his dorm, and the PC-bang on some occasions and let out a sigh at the depressing realisation.
Was this really going to be his summer?
Was this really going to be enough? He didn’t want to be just an opportunity or a boss, to Chan. He wanted to be a dependable senior, a supportive friend, or—
Chan returned to their seat with their drinks dangerously balanced in one hand and a pastry on a plate teetering on the other.
“It’s a spinach quiche. They just put it out in the display and it looked good,” Chan explained unprompted.
“You should’ve called me over, those drinks were five seconds from disaster!” Wonwoo relieved Chan’s hands of his drink and placed it on the table, clearing away their belongings from the centre.
“You looked like you were thinking really hard about something again. Didn’t want to have to interrupt it.” Chan replied, taking a long sip of his drink as he relaxed into the chair opposite Wonwoo.
“Just thinking about how to spend my last summer break.”
“Last?”
“I have a mandatory summer internship next year, so…” Wonwoo trailed off with a shrug.
“Well, a week’s still some time. If you want, we can cancel next week. Take some time for yourself, hyung.” Chan made the offer with an understanding smile and Wonwoo’s felt his stomach drop.
“Oh, no. No, it’s fine. I’ll— figure something out.” The reply came out too fast, and then, slower, Wonwoo continued with a question, the scenario he’d imagined too many times over the weeks finally brought to life.
“Have you heard of the term en plein air?”
“On plain—What? Am I supposed to have?”
“It refers to observational art done outdoors. So there’s less rules, more unpredictability, and a greater focus on the surroundings and the light or other natural aspects,” The technicalities tumbled out of his mouth, and straining to regain control of his brain-to-mouth pathway, Wonwoo rerouted into the question he wanted to ask.
“Would you want to try it out? Maybe at a beach or something for the last session?”
“That’s a thing? Of course!” Chan accepted the offer without hesitation, to Wonwoo’s surprise.
“That was a fast response,” Wonwoo chuckled. “You don’t have any concerns?”
“How can I turn down a trip to the beach?”
“You’re not, I don’t know, worried about being stared at or anything?”
“Are you?” Chan put down his drink with a look, “Why don’t we go earlier then? There’ll be less people and we can go at sunrise for a view.”
A sunrise meeting at the beach was a cliché torn straight out of a cheesy romance, and whether that was going to be heaven or hell for him, Wonwoo had no idea.
“That sounds good. Would you rather a beach nearer Seoul or further south?”
The two departed the café with a date set for next week starting with a meeting at Seoul Station at night for the overnight trip to Jeongdongjin Beach.
11p.m. on a Friday night in the middle of summer break would be clubbing time for most university students, and that was evident by the countless sets of tipsy students who had stumbled past Wonwoo at the bus stop just outside the campus. A group of girls dressed to the nines crowded the bench next to the one he sat on, whispering and giggling. Clad in casual clothes, his oversized folio slung on his shoulder and backpack filled with art supplies and a neck pillow, it was hard not to feel out of place.
He personally wasn’t one to hit up clubs regularly, but he wondered if Chan did. It would be a different sight from what he saw in their modelling sessions, in the dark, with lurid artificial lights bathing him, rather than the pure sunlight of the studio. Away from the stand, the stool, the room, and in a way, en plein air for the dancer. Another day, perhaps.
The bus promptly arrived and he stepped on, quickly transported to Cheongyangni interchange where he met up with Chan, who held up the two tickets he just purchased earlier as soon as he caught sight of his senior.
The pair fell into step as they headed for the platform, between them a comfortable silence that matched the quiet atmosphere of the station. Even as announcements blared from speakers regularly and the sound of rolling luggage and footsteps filled the air, the passengers waiting alongside them were heavy-lidded, mostly workers heading back for the weekend.
The Nooriro train was unsurprisingly empty, and they took their adjacent seats with no trouble, sinking into the upholstered seats to get comfortable for their long ride to Donghae station. After setting down his folio, Wonwoo unzipped his bag to pull out his trusty neck pillow only to hear a snicker from his side. With a turn, ready to defend his comfort he saw Chan too holding an obnoxiously brightly coloured travel pillow.
“I thought I might look stupid with this but it seems that great minds think alike, huh?” He remarked, his lips curling in a barely suppressed laugh.
They discussed the value of good pillows in hushed tones, leaning back in their seats and giggling in low voices to avoid disturbing the other passengers. Eventually, as the fog of sleepiness washed into their brains, their speech slowed into fragments, trailing into true silence.
With his remaining wakefulness, Wonwoo set a silent alarm on his phone for ten minutes before they would reach their stop, and stole a look at Chan. He had at some point swivelled his pillow around such that he leaned forward into it. He ended up using his hoodie as a blanket, and lightly, Wonwoo shifted the drooping hoodie to cover Chan’s shoulders. Resisting the added urge to smoothen his hair too, Wonwoo relished what he could of his sight before he removed his glasses and resigned himself to the drowsiness that was overtaking him.
An insistent tapping at his shoulder awoke Wonwoo, meeting Chan’s wide eyes as he held up his phone, pointing at the time. Or at least, he had a good feeling Chan was pointing at the time, because he couldn’t see much in the near darkness without his glasses.
Chan must have realised this from his nonanswer and whispered seriously, “Hyung, our stop is next. We should be reaching in about 15 minutes.”
Well, it looked like he didn’t need to set the alarm after all. The pair shook themselves out of sleep with trips to the washroom to freshen up, and their buffer time quickly passed as the train drew into Donghae station. They exited the carriage, and the shift in the environment was most evident in the air. Cool sea breeze replaced Seoul’s fine dust, and a shiver ran down Wonwoo’s spine at the chillier midnight air. Hurrying to get their tickets and transfer to their next train, there was a novel enthusiasm in the mundane activities now that they were in a different province.
The day before, Wonwoo gave Jihoon a heads up that he was due to go home for some matters. There wasn’t a real reason to lie, but he just wanted to cover his bases, and he knew Jihoon wouldn’t pry further. It charged his actions with an layer of excitement, of doing the unexpected, of an escape from the humdrum of most of his life.
Making it into their train with plenty of time to spare, they settled into their seats with mirth, the previously heavy atmosphere of sleepiness now lifted. The light-hearted mood permeated the train too, and Wonwoo had already observed numerous couples on his short walk to their seats. The matching outfits, happy selca-taking, and entangled body parts of other university students on their day trips were all on display in the relatively empty train, with no one to make snide comments at them.
Though this was another Nooroiro train, the same as before, the seats felt plusher and more comfortable. The economy-class train was the cheapest and longest route to Jeongdongjin, and it was clear from the ache that had built in Wonwoo’s legs from the limited leg room that was further reduced from his folio that he had to prop up below him.
Yet, the pain seemed to melt away as he got comfortable in the next train, eating the snacks that Chan had brought in with gusto. They had their fill of entertainment over the phone game Wonwoo had downloaded a few days before, as Chan continuously manoeuvred the pitiful character into its own death in a helpless display of his inability to play games.
Every time the phone screen faded to black after another tragic fall, Chan’s fits of laughter would send him clinging to Wonwoo’s arm, his head knocking into his shoulder, soft dyed brown hair tickling his neck and charging his brain with stinging static. Even as Wonwoo wrested his phone back from Chan to “show him how it was done”, he got no respite from his junior. Instead of bending to look closer at the screen, Chan craned his neck to view the screen from Wonwoo’s height, perching his chin on his shoulder, giving terrible commentary that was really mostly more giggling.
When Wonwoo inevitably steered his character into oblivion after another comment from Chan too close to his ear sent his hand jerking the controls, he placed the phone down with a sigh. He looked to the ceiling in despair for an answer, both for the game and the other much bigger problem that was offering him a consolatory corn chip.
(The corn chip tasted like salt, dread, and feelings.)
In a moment of perfect timing, the melodic chime for Jeongdongjin lilted from the speakers. Instinctively, the pair looked out to the window, to the sea view they had neglected for their mediocre snacks and crappy freemium game. There was still a good half hour before the sunrise, but the sky was noticeably different from the pitch darkness they left Seoul in, with hints of ultramarine seeping into and staining the duller Prussian blue of the night. They reminisced over the low-rise skyline, each reminded of their own hometowns. Houses like theirs dotted the landscape, far from Seoul’s less familiar apartment views.
When the doors slid open, they were the first ones out, almost dashing out of the carriage for the beach that they spotted just a distance in front of the station. It was funny how the heavy folio Wonwoo usually complained about carrying was suddenly weightless to him; With Chan, he careened straight for the sand, the equally new and familiar environment returning them to their boisterous adolescent instincts.
Their sprint stopped just short of the tide, shoes in soft, dampened sand. Wonwoo looked to Chan, and Chan met his gaze in a silent understanding. Leaving their belongings and shoes behind, yelps, shouts and laughter were rolled in one as they gasped from the cold. Every ebb and flow of the waves submerged and then let dry their feet.
Somehow, their careful steps became a race to wade as far as they could into the water. Wonwoo’s confidence with his slight advantage in stride length was quickly shattered by Chan’s attempted brisk walk through the increasingly frigid water, even as he screeched the whole way. The water he kicked up went everywhere, including most of Wonwoo, and with a cry of “Yah!” and a retaliating splash of water, all order was lost.
*
Wonwoo wiped his glasses with his sleeve for the nth time, preparing to defend another blitz of water from Chan, and suddenly realised that he could see a lot better than he could when they had started their little skirmish.
“Wait, Chan,” He signalled him to pause, and then turned to see the sky much brighter than it was. He burst into uncontrollable laughter, and to a perplexed Chan, choked out, “We missed—We missed the fucking sunrise!”
Chan’s jaw dropped at the realisation, and he erupted into equally unrestrained guffaws. The two waded back to shore with the result of their aqua-war being a truce. Just as quickly as it had built up, the energy high dropped and rolling out a mat, they collapsed side by side, chests heaving from exertion and the residual giggles.
“Are you gonna draw now?” Chan asked.
“In this condition? Are you going to model?” Wonwoo responded incredulously.
“Good—good point. Let’s just chill first.” Chan turned to Wonwoo, mouth quirking into his relaxed half smile.
As the sun rose further, the ambient sounds began brimming with seagulls squawks and the thrum of seaside business.
With the little sleep he had gotten the night before, Wonwoo felt himself being unconsciously carried back to sleep by the sea breeze, until Chan abruptly broke the silence.
“Wonwoo-hyung?”
The call of his name jolted Wonwoo back into attention, “Hm?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to meet a hyung as great as you again,” Chan admitted.
“Wh--” Wonwoo started with a sputter, and turned to reply only to be greeted with Chan’s eyes almost boring straight into him. He pursed his lips and clamped shut as it looked like Chan had something else to say. As uneasy as he felt attempting to maintain eye contact, it felt rude to look away, and Chan opened his mouth to continue.
“I’ve… had a lot of fun these couple of months. I don’t know what my year, or maybe even my life would be like if you had chosen to leave the door shut or like, called the cops and left or something. I don’t even know if I should accept what you’ve given me because I feel kind of bad emptying your bank—Anyways, Wonwoo-hyung, thank you for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. I learned so much from you too, and I’ve loved watching you work as an artist, I really respect it.”
Chan spoke fairly slowly, clearly from the thought that came with each sentiment carefully laid out into a sentence. Still, the words entered Wonwoo’s head and accumulating like a blockage, couldn’t be fully processed. The adjectives, words, and more swirled around in the clog, as he struggled to eke out a suitable response. But with a deep breath and a shaking voice as he met Chan’s serious eyes, he tried his best to articulate one.
“I’m, uh, really honoured to be thought of that way. I also loved seeing your craft, even if only once. And no, being a model is a legitimate job, you deserve to get paid for your time and your effort over this time.” He addressed what he could from what he heard last, and then with greater pauses in between as he thought harder, continued.
“There’s no need to think about what if you had stayed in that job because the fact of the matter is that, well, you didn’t. I intervened, made you an offer, you took it up, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. That is how it has been. It has been, and will be, okay.” There was a commiserative tone to his words, recognising the ruminative cycles he, too, found so familiar.
“Um, I’ve also had a lot of fun, Chan. I’ve been able to improve my skill and meet someone like you, tough as nails, always going the extra mile, passion personified. I really admire those traits of yours.” It was almost-confession at this point, but the gap between admiration and love, though but a gap, looked more like a chasm between two peaks.
And even if Wonwoo feared many things, heights were fortunately not one, and he took the jump,
“If you’d like we can hang out more? You’re just across campus right?”
Chan finally broke their gaze with a downward glance.
“I can’t. I’m not.”
From a near-paragraph earlier, Chan’s speech was whetted down to four words, to a precise point that did more than slash the parachute on Wonwoo’s back. It cut the ground to pieces, and Wonwoo’s stomach, Wonwoo’s body fell down to oblivion.
“Oh, I mean, that’s fine too.” The sea breeze was suddenly muggy, worse than the dust of Seoul, the salt stinging every breath he managed to take.
“The thing is, I wish I was across campus. I really wish I could spend every week, hell, every day like this.”
“Then why not?” This was all Wonwoo could manage to utter.
“I’m going to America. New York. Like, next week. For university.” The statement came out in stop-starts, staccato speech staircases tripping Wonwoo’s comprehension.
“America. New York.” Wonwoo parroted in disbelief.
It would not take long for the disbelief to morph into a darker, sicker feeling of betrayal, corrupting Wonwoo’s questions into venomous accusations.
“And you didn’t tell me? I assumed you were from Seoul City all these months and you never said a thing? Were you lying to me?”
Chan turned to look at Wonwoo again, and his gaze looked more like a glare now.
“No, think again. I never lied. I made sure I never did.”
Wonwoo sifted through whatever he recollected of the past few months. The part of him that was blind with rage wanted to disprove Chan, find something, call him a piece of shit liar. But as he thought harder, there really was nothing to hold against him. It was true, he had been smart with his ambiguous equivocations, conversational redirections, question avoidances. The greater part of Wonwoo that still treasured Chan felt more relieved than anything.
“Okay. Fine, then why did you just not correct me?” He asked again.
“I did at first, I also didn’t want to burst your bubble. I liked your version of me more, too. Being a student at Seoul City, having a fun college life and cool seniors. I took a gap year because I wasn’t accepted here and tried for Pace in New York just on a whim and, well, I got it.”
“Are you really trying to say you did it for me?” Wonwoo’s head spun, the feeling of vertigo intense even as he lay splayed on the ground.
“I don’t know who I did it for! If I told you, would we be here? You might’ve just cut me off or something—” Chan’s response grew incoherent as the pace of his speech picked up.
“What the hell? Where is that idea from? If you’d told me, I would—I don’t know, give you a proper farewell? It’s not like you’re dying, Chan, don’t be dramatic and stop victimising yourself.” Wonwoo cut him off, sitting up and pushing his glasses up.
“I’m leaving my entire life in Korea behind. It’s a one-way ticket, I’m as good as dead here. It’s easy enough to be ignored in a Kakaotalk chat here, god knows how I’d keep any connections with time zones screwing everything up more. Plus, that is if I get any time off in between school and working so I can survive.”
Chan recited the map of his doom with the exactness of a scene witnessed a thousand times over. To Wonwoo, who was already simmering in indignance, it sounded like self-pitying bullshit. Chan was clearly capable, he was a hard worker, he had applied to a school all the way in America for fuck’s sake.
“It doesn’t mean you can’t try it! You’re screwing yourself over with this useless doubt—”
This time, Wonwoo was cut off
“I’m sick of trying here. I’ve got my door to somewhere else, I need to embrace it fully if I want to succeed.”
Chan’s sense of determination was a trait Wonwoo thought he loved. But was it really determination or desperation? Would the latter have space to consider anyone outside of Chan himself?
He got his answer when Chan got to his feet, not even turning to give him a last look.
Left on the shore staring at a shrinking figure traversing the sand. Wonwoo somehow still felt part of him protesting to chase him.
“It wasn’t like Chan was a terrible person, and he hadn’t intentionally meant to hurt you,” it insisted.
But he stayed rooted, on the mat, weighed down by the realisation that perhaps, he had too much hope in Chan.
While Chan carved out scenarios of thousands of ways to fall, to fail, to die, Wonwoo sated himself with fantasies of his happy ever after with Chan—no, his version of Chan, a mere façade of him, even, possibly.
He recognised the selfishness in his hope, but still, he hoped.
He hoped that it was just not their time. Sometime in the future, they would meet again, and Chan’s realism would be there to temper his own idealism, he would be there to encourage Chan through his doubts. It would all be better.
Wonwoo dragged himself back to the station, salt and sand on him be damned, the folio a tonne on his shoulder, and paid out of his nose for the premium KTX ticket.
With his last leaf of paper, he filled it with his hope, with his last memory of Chan’s back, straight and resolute up the hill of sand. His legs and his calves, as they left clouds of sand in the wake of sure steps one after the other away from him, away from Korea.
He thought again of the sculptures, paintings, and sketches of beauties. He thought of the theory of mimesis, a pursuit of a picture of perfection, that ruled art from time immemorial.
Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder how many of them, model or artist, were ruined on the inside.