Work Text:
°‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡
the palette, still unopened from its wrapping, lay scuffed beneath the softness and stickiness of acrylic paint. random bristles of hog fur crowded together, flimsy and cramped, the moment the layer of color was abruptly touched, tearing through the fragile film left behind after a night of letting go. they flailed, clinging to the bristles, and before long, they stuck fast and refused to let go. the sound of impact between the brush tip and the plastic wrap on the palette rang out every time yungyu found another unfinished spot on the canvas.
his expressions were never particularly rich, always kept buried inside, or perhaps simply difficult to articulate. the canvas was the same. a single color palette he had used for six years straight. strangely enough, endlessly mixing the same tone, touching the same tube of paint again and again, and painting over the same imagined figure did not dull his expression. perhaps that was true. it had become a habit, one that felt as though, if forced to change, he might pierce straight through the canvas once the brush hairs dried stiff with paint.
yungyu had never once placed a different color onto his paintings. this left those who knew him feeling puzzled, though it hardly mattered, he still had his own familiar circle of clients.
a painting could, to some extent, reflect the mood of its creator, even if colors could not speak and brushstrokes could not take on a human form. yungyu’s paintings remained the same: the same berry year after year, gloomy and unmoving, fixed strokes just as they had been from the beginning. yungyu’s expression was no different, not that he didn’t want to express himself, but rather that it was difficult to control. though the canvas never moved and the muscles of his face barely shifted, they left viewers at a loss, curious and guessing. had nothing on that canvas truly changed over nearly half a decade?
yungyu admitted to himself that he didn’t like exploration. whatever he could do, he would always find a way to push it further. canvases sharing the same color palette were stacked together like books with identical titles, or perhaps simply because their covers looked the same, piled without order against the quiet corner, works of a lazy author reluctant to turn over, too lazy to dissect the colors in his own mind. a difficult soul to understand, even to the author himself.
a senior student tried to strike up a conversation with yungyu as he passed by the gymnasium. he was tall.. very tall with a slender frame, just like yungyu’s brushstrokes in his early days, timid as they tried to move smoothly across the canvas, fearful that if emotions grew too hasty, the painting would descend into chaos. yungyu’s gaze stopped at the man’s nose, a nose that made him quietly marvel. it was the cutest nose yungyu had seen since entering university. could white be compared to it? cute and soft, just like white, the color he always hesitated over before pressing his brush down. but this nose was different. it left him flustered, made him want to touch it, to remember its shape. damn it, far too cute.
"lee yungyu from the department of fine arts, right?" the man’s voice pulled him back to reality. perhaps yungyu’s pensive silence excused the way he had been staring so intently at that face. from beginning to end, his expression hadn’t changed, yet inside, everything was tangled. the corners of the man’s lips curved deeply, like a cat yungyu always avoided painting with acrylic. soft salmon, a color he often mixed when working with poster paints. the way those lips smiled and called yungyu’s name made him hesitate. his erratic heartbeat struggled to control the muscles of his face.
"yes" yungyu replied, steadying his nerves by keeping his expression unchanged. his voice came out slightly displeased, edged with irritation. the internal struggle made speaking more than a short sentence feel impossibly difficult.
"that’s great! can i learn from you sometime? acrylic paintings and stuff.. like, maybe we could set a day to go paint together, exchange ideas? i want to get to know you. i mean.. your paintings have such a strong style!"
yungyu saw him smile, a smile in the sunlight, beneath a sky that wasn’t particularly blue. blue like the color yungyu longed for in what he painted, in what he believed to be beautiful. and yet, for reasons he couldn’t explain, the scene left him frozen. he felt unsettled by how it defied his usual self, contradicted every standard he had set for his own perceptions. so yungyu furrowed his brows as the gentle sunlight slowly spread across the boy's cheeks.
yungyu couldn’t refuse. from the very beginning, he knew he would do anything to meet him again. the glow of dusk seeped quietly into his chest. he stood dazed before a strange light that had suddenly stepped into his life, beautiful and warm. all his senses wavered, fragile, like a fantastical creature that had always lived in the dark.
slowly and unsteadily, he received that light like a child learning how to walk. yungyu accepted it, so that he could feel everything coming from the person standing before him, accepting the risk, accepting the possibility of ruining the blue wall he had painstakingly built. at the very least, for now, the words spoken by the person in front of him would serve as proof, binding him to kyungmin. yungyu held onto that thought and smiled, a smile like that of a small puppy, gradually learning to accept the affection it had long yearned for.
°‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡