Work Text:
The pencil moved on the blank sheet. A low and steady hiss elevating into the air.
Jungkook exhaled a breath while bending his fingers to crumble the paper, deforming it into a small ball together with his newborn inspiration. It seemed like he got perpetually sucked dry of it today.
He gifted numerous art boards an identity, that morning, but every single one of them have been destined immediately to the black hole that the trash bin represented; drawing after drawing, he had lost more and more faith, until he fell victim to a block at the mere action of resting the point of the pencil on the discouraging blank surface of the sheet.
Jungkook lifted his gaze from the notebook, which, at this point, had got to the critical half of its life as an artist tool, and looked over at his soft croissant with listlessness and repressed annoyance towards those ideas that seemed destined to exist only in the abstract world; its stomach wasn’t the one needing food supplies, it was his mind, which had fallen into a lethargy.
Stimulating his imagination wasn’t difficult. Jungkook had lots of ideas in his head about the subjects to recreate in his drawings: goddesses on pedestals representing an interior world, emotions turned armors of celestial warriors, portraits of faces in between dream and memory and landscapes never visited soaked in wanderlust, in the desire of catching every single detail in those rainbow puzzles.
No, Jungkook had lots of ideas, way too many.
So many that, if he could measure them in liquids, putting together the oceans of the world wouldn’t have been enough to represent them.
The problem, sometimes, like this time around, was recreating these artificial heavens and mysterious figures on paper. Every single line was a bridle that, little by little, as it was drawn, pulled into the real world a specific element that should match and combine with both the previous and the next one to find a harmony and a homogenous balance; a mistake would have been like a huge, fresh stain of smudged ink on a parchment document.
His mind had to find the right way to guide his fingers, the right strength to direct the point of the pencil on the paper, as if he had to choose the direction he needed in a maze of streets and the right speed to get the his destination.
Jungkook rested his chin on the open palm of his hand, moving his glance to the café window; beyond the glass, where the menu was scribbled with a white marker, the cars lazily passed by when the traffic light turned green and quiet women walked down the catwalks with their kids, crossing paths with elders with their pets. The contrast with the frenzy in his mind was evident to Jungkook: his head was a vortex of ideas that crashed against each other and generated new ones and the fire born from their yearning of expression was getting painfully suffocated and translated into a nervous lock of his fingers around the nibbled pencil.
Suddenly, a black car messes up the monotony of the street and pulled up in front of the café, its back door on the right side perfectly lined up with the narrow corridor between the big rose vases at the entrance. Jungkook would have looked elsewhere, hadn’t his instinct taught him that where there’s oddness and discontinuity could be hiding unexpected artistic potential.
And he had been right.
Someone stepped out of the car, a young man with such an unusual appearance and with such perfect technical proportions that Jungkook felt like he could faint right there and then, just like a tourist in front of a piece of art: Polykleitos would have proudly acknowledged the relevance to his canon of perfection.
His hair was as red as the sunset sky, so vivid you could think he got crowned by the vermilion sun itself; his wavy locks could have been traced with the precision of a brush, because where the shades were more deeper it seemed like a higher chromatic concentration of colour was responsible.
His profile highlighted his straight nose and slightly buttoned, his parted lips similar to mottled light pink petals which trapped a word and his chin, smoothed by time like an artisan working on a piece of clay and like that, down to the line of his neck, wrinkled lightly due to his head turned towards his right to talk with his driver; Jungkook thought there were invisible hands sinking in his skin, near to the echo of the heartbeat in his throat, the same ones belonging to the wind that had started blowing and that seemed to wished for the boy to turn around the other way, maybe to steal him a kiss.
His eyes, -good Lord, his eyes-, were little pearls in a shell turned eyelid with a neat, curving cut, the colour pure and so rich that it left no space to chromatic hallucinations; breaking through its density with a glance and getting lost in it must have been absolutely fulfilling.
But what allowed him to “reach the point where one encounters celestial sensations and everything spoke so vividly to his soul” was his shoulder blades, jutting out from the black cloth of the T-shirt like the bones of an angel; Jungkook’s mind worked frenetic and, instantly, two ethereal white wings were born from the back of the boy, bending like elbows and enveloping him in a maternal hug.
Jungkook was breathless: he didn’t even notice that he had bent forward to take a better look through the elegant letters of the menu of the bar written on the window; the blinding, bright wings disappeared in a twirl of feathers, as quick as they had appeared, and, at the same time, a flow of indescribable emotions spilled from his heart to the outside, pulsing through the walls of his veins with persistence and provoking him an odd tingling beneath his skin and a sense of disorientation as soon as his temples began pulsing.
Uncountable were the time he had tried to give Art a definition, but none had been satisfying enough. Nevertheless, when he saw a work of art, he was immediately able to recognize it.
For Jungkook, Art was the soul that spoke to the world: values, virtues, quality, dreams, together with flaws, passions, doubts, rationality and irrationality that through their transcendental state made their way in the world of senses like a ray of light through clouds and that got immortalized in a canvas, a picture, an object, or a statue; they got molded and shaped in concrete forms and stopped time for eternity.
This time, though, someone, that boy was Art itself.
The well-being of senses, the radiation of harmony and completeness, the perfection that flooded the observer with the force of a runaway train and the aesthetic factor on the surface that put itself on display and got fed on praises and glances of admiration.
Jungkook gulped deeply, his burning eyes begging for rest still glued to the stranger.
Meanwhile the boy, after leaving the car behind, entered the place with slow steps; he looked around briefly and headed towards a table far from the window, keeping his head lowered. Every single movement would have been worthy of getting framed and be played on repeat, in a loop to infinity.
Without even registering his movements in his head, Jungkook stood up, with the intention of getting closer to him: he didn’t remember ever feeling this way in his life before. He quickly collected his stuff (the pencil found its place balanced behind his ear, while the rubber, the torn sheets and the notebook slid into his bag), drank in one sip the now cool cappuccino, abandoned in its tiny mug, and purposely forgot the croissant on the plate, aware that he wouldn’t have eaten it anyway.
His legs were shaking, his hands were beaded with sweat and his brain could only elaborate broken, or confused sentences.
Up to the moment he found himself exactly in front of him and got caught off guard by the boy, who raised his head and look, Jungkook feared he had been dreaming: contrary to what he had expected, though, it was those iris rich irises that broke through something in him, probably his heart.
«You…You’re really…» He spoke with particular speed, almost as if he wanted to get rid of those words as soon as possible. But Jungkook couldn’t finish his thought and the stranger came to his rescue.
«I’m Park Jimin, yeah.» His tone of voice totally reflected his mood: Jimin was smiling and he sounded cheerful. «Hello to you.»
Jimin.
Even his name had something artistic in it: he adored the way the “J” combined with the following vowel in a soft syllable, the way the “m” put down roots in his lips, the way the “i” showed off the accent and the final “n” held on the whole tongue the taste of the letters.
«Can I sit down?» Jungkook was fumbling at this point, feeling around for small, logical sentences that floated in the chaos that was his mind.
Something, to Jimin, seemed off, though: hesitation flashed in his eyes, but he then nodded at him. Right after, Jungkook took a seat right in front of him; from up this close, he thought that the boy was really marvelous.
His was a kind of beauty that attracted the eyes like a magnet, chained them to itself and had them slide over its lines like a caress; a kind that dried up the mind and tossed it incessant and greedy research of its shadow, its ghost, or its memory; a kind so vivid to live forever in memories like a rock at the bottom of the seat; a kind that teased the touch with the same ability of a snake charmer; a kind that took the heart’s breath away and whispered to the soul.
For a thousand times Jungkook went over the lines of the boy’s profile, eyes, lips, locks and jaw; he didn’t even notice that he was intimidating him a little.
«Do we know each other?» Jimin’s question got absorbed by the silence in a few seconds; then, Jungkook recovered and snapped back to reality.
«Oh, no.» He said and he couldn’t help but smile. The increasing emotions were having him forget how to have good manners. «May I tell you something, without you thinking ill of me?»
This time, too, Jimin seemed to be taken aback.
«I guess so, yes.» He said, accompanying his words with a smile –slighter- and the nervous gesture of sinking his hand in his hair.
«It looks like, once upon a time, a pair of wings blossomed from your shoulder blades.» Jungkook pronounced every single letter with calmness, too focused on something else to care about the sound of his voice.
The expression on Jimin’s face switched right away: he widened his eyes until those round rings were revealed completely, which shook Jungkook to the core, and parted his lips, a sentence dead in his throat.
They stared at each other, both silent.
Before Jimin could notice, the other had already picked up his notebook from his bag and stretched his other hand to get the pencil; Jungkook couldn’t lose such a chance, so unique and precious.
«Sorry.» He apologized, his heartbeat accelerating. «Thoughts of an artist.»
This time around, it was Jimin’s turn to fumble with his words.
«Ah, you…I mean yes, now it makes more…sense.»
«I would feel honored, if I could get your permission to set your persona in a quick portrait.»
«A similar plot ruined someone, once.»
«I heard of that, but mine is just an innocent request.»
«You won’t steal my soul, then?»
«Only your beauty.»
Jimin bit his lower lip to withhold a smile that was tickling his nerves and brought his hand to his face; Jungkook stayed still, rigid and impatient.
«Alright, deal.»
Then Jungkook didn’t lose any more time and opened his notebook and expert movements, then started drawing with no effort; he looked at Jimin and lowered his head after a few seconds to trace short and light lines with a certain hurry, as if his eyes, like a brush, had been soaked in a inkpot and now had to distend the color on paper before it could dry, or drip.
Before the essence of that instant could fade.
On the other hand, Jimin was fascinated by his work and watched his actions with curiosity; he said no word until the end, partly due to shyness and partly due to fear of distracting Jungkook.
Only after long minutes, the young artist let himself go to a satisfied smirk and showed his drawing to Jimin, who remained speechless.
«How can you even draw like this?» He carefully took that masterpiece in his hands, terrified by the thought of ruining it in any way even just by breathing on it. «Maybe you’re the one that sold his soul.»
Jungkook laughed, always focused on the subject of his drawing.
He felt a lot better, now that he managed to get rid of everything that he was feeling inside.
«I’ve only found the perfect muse and inspiration.» As he stated this, he stood up and Jimin looked at him, searching for a way to express his gratitude. «I’m immensely thankful for your time; if you ever had more, I’m looking forward to drawing you better. I’ve written my number on the back of the sheet.»
Jimin turned it around and noticed a phone number next to an elegant signature; when he heard a whispered “It was pleasure.”, this time, the boy couldn’t lift his eyes to notice the bow, or to share it, because they were all focused on the title of the drawing in between inverted commas, which framed it on paper just like a pair of nails.
Art itself.
THE END