#about: sharp edges | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

straywrds · 2 years ago

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Thank you so, so much for reading Edges and for giving it love. For letting it mean something to you.

It couldn't make me happier to know you've signed up for painting classes!! I hope you'll enjoy it, feel free to update me on that if you want? (no pressure)

This story is very important to me. Thank you for this, really. I'll carry this in my heart.

letters

part four of sharp edges | part one | part two | part three | 《 masterlist 》

—hyunjin x reader (f) (other skz members are mentioned) —word count: 20.4k [ao3] (i honestly apologize. this is an imperfect chapter, and it is lengthy, but i hope it will do. ♡) —genre: non-idol au, painter!hyunjin au, romance, explicit smut with (a lot of) plot. 18+ minors dni

—warnings: multiple povs/flashback pov. angst/hurt/smut. adult themes & language. established backstory content. mentions and depictions of severe injuries caused by a car accident. mentions of psychological issues (hj). mentions of suicide ideation but no intention of acting upon it. minor character(s) death. drinking. heartbreak. explicit sexual content: (no major warnings, vanilla sex) safe, consensual & unprotected sex but within the realm of semi-public sex, farewell sex, oral (m/f receiving), vaginal sex, creampie. emotional distress (hj, mc).

Love, when you had it, used to look good on you. But sorrow, now that you have it, is obvious on you.

playlist: keshi - limbo | zaza fournier - vodka fraise | sung si-kyung - solar system

tag list ♡ : @hh0320 @simpsarzie @taeriffic @kittykatprincess15 @cixhoneyhuns | a special tag & thank you to @cb97percent for providing prompts, playlists, support, inspiration, courage and love. some of the prompts she sent me to fulfill are directly used in this chapter and are now part of the canon. 🍊🧡 you, Ren.

Really, Hyunjin ought to be dead.

Once, when he was a little boy, Hyunjin fell down from a tree. Not very high on the tree—one of the lower branches. It happened while he was visiting his aunt, back when she was still married and living in the countryside, down south. She lived in a beautiful house. In the yard, there was a mandarin orange tree.

He especially liked visiting his aunt during mandarin season. Every morning, she would take his little hand in hers, and she always smelled like fresh roses, and together, they would walk to the tree and pick a few fruits. Often, Hyunjin wouldn’t even wait until he made it back to the house, and peel the mandarin to bite into it right away, the sweetness of the fruit filling his whole soul with joy.

To him, mandarins taste like sunshine, like warmth in his winters.

But, the time that he fell from the tree, Hyunjin had been a little boy, and the tree was tall, and one morning, his aunt couldn’t come with him to pick mandarins—most likely she had asked him to wait five minutes while she got something done. But Hyunjin couldn’t wait. He had ventured out into the yard only to realize that he couldn’t reach any of the mandarins anymore, as the ones of the lower branches had been picked already.

So he had climbed on the fence and then onto the tree next to the orange tree, figuring that if he laid on his stomach on this big branch, he could reach the fruit and could surprise his aunt with his harvest.

Hyunjin fell from the tree that day. He didn’t get injured, not a single broken bone, just a few bruises here and there. He got lucky. His aunt scolded him but in the end, she gave him a peeled mandarin and a kiss on the forehead.

Today, Hyunjin hurts all over.

The memory of this, of his aunt’s orange tree, the sweetness, the tangy taste of mandarins, the way it felt when the breeze caressed his hair, the way it felt when his aunt left a tender kiss on his forehead—it evades him as soon as he can grasp onto it. He can’t grasp onto anything. There is only darkness, only fear,

only pain.

Hyunjin screams, and screams, and screams. He feels the pavement under his head but he feels a sticky moistness, too, lukewarm, it smells like metal and his mouth tastes like it, too.

There is not a single molecule of his body that doesn’t hurt, and he is screaming so much that now his throat hurts, too.

He was walking, earbuds on focused on the choreography he had been working on with Minho and Felix. Just walking home, like it was any other day. There had been bright lights, and then there had been pain.

And now he is here, motionless, his damaged body laying on the asphalt, blood leaking from many places but he does not know from where exactly. And he can’t move his legs, can’t move his head.

All that Hyunjin can do is scream, and scream, and scream. But for the life of him, he cannot remember what mandarins taste like, cannot recall the scent of roses, or how it feels to be loved. Really, Hyunjin ought to be dead.

The first time he wakes up at the hospital, Hyunjin throws a fit.

He comes to with a gasp, his throat still raw from all the screaming. Hands are trying to keep him in place, and strong arms are holding him against an uncomfortable mattress. But even this is better than the cold pavement the car dragged him on earlier. He shouts, he tries to squirm around, to fight them all, the people holding him in place. The strangers dressed in white and blue.

Every move he makes hurts him. But even when they manage to hold him down for a few seconds, the pain remains. Everywhere. His left side is the worst—it feels heavy and light at once, and it just feels wrong. He writhes, he squirms, he shouts, and every millimeter of motion hurts like a car hitting him all over again.

Hyunjin feels a prickle in his arm, and darkness overcomes him once more. His head falls back into the thin pillow and the hands leave his body alone. All but one, and Hyunjin recognizes his mother’s touch, the way she squeezes his wrist. But for the life of him, he can’t remember the taste of mandarins.

Really, Hyunjin ought to be dead.

Hyunjin ought to be dead but he is not.

“I know you can do it, hyung, I know you can.” Felix is… Felix. He never isn’t Felix. Supportive. Strong. A ray of sunshine. The best friend anyone could ask for. “I can help you. Let me help you…”

But it hurts, it hurts so much.

Hyunjin’s hands are clammy and he can barely hold onto the walker he is supposed to use to get around. But he can’t even walk, not really. The pain in his right arm makes it hard to cling to the walker, and the motion of Hyunjin’s gait is reminiscent of a zombie dragging itself aimlessly. Heavy, difficult. Painful. No purpose other than just going somewhere.

Hyunjin remembers the taste of mandarins now. He also remembers the time when his body was light, the time when he was whole. It feels like a million lifetimes ago, but really, it’s been two weeks since he was himself last. Two weeks ago, he was preparing for an audition that would change his life. An audition that would, potentially, make his dream come true. Make his existence worthwhile. Worth anything.

And to think that he used to hate dancing. He only wanted to hang out with Minho and Felix—but sitting around in the studio while they danced their asses off was boring. Boring, and frustrating. So one day, Hyunjin got up and tried to keep up with them. ‘Actually, you’re not bad’, is what Minho had told him. Apparently, Hyunjin had it in him—to understand choreography, to replicate it, to dance. He just needed to unlock the part of him that would make him a good dancer.

It had taken too long. There were nights when he would call his parents to tell them he wouldn’t even go back home—it was just easier to crash at the dance school, in the teachers’ lounge. Minho had access to it from being a teacher’s assistant and, often, the three of them would just sleep on the couches there instead of going home. The studio had become their home. In the morning, Hyunjin would get up and go to school, and return dancing after class, often spending several days with clothes and supplies in his backpack, without the need to go home.

They had become each other’s homes.

“Hyun, you’re doing good,” Felix says again, flashing a smile at him. But Hyunjin knows that is a lie. He isn’t doing good. He is barely doing anything.

They gave him a single room at the hospital, and it’s quiet in that part of the hallway. Hyunjin has a TV and a table with two chairs. He wants to say that he hates it here—because he really does—but it’s… peaceful. It makes it all less real than it will be the day he will leave this place. When he has to walk on a street again. When he has to face reality again.

They were supposed to be removing the staples on his scar today. But for now, Hyunjin is trying to make his way from his bed to the table, where Felix is already sitting and waiting for him with fruit juice and a deck of cards.

He can walk. But it hurts, it hurts so bad. They were supposed to be removing the staples on his scar today, but it’s irrelevant—they need to operate on his hip again tomorrow. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. It doesn’t want to move.

Really, Hyunjin ought to be dead. There’s the hip and there’s the several concussions, brain hemorrhage from the head trauma, the sprain on his right arm, the sprain in his neck, the damage in his back. The damage all over. He should have died. Hell, he fucking died. Whatever he is now, it’s not him. Not anymore.

At night, they give him pills to sleep, or else he has the same nightmare, over and over, and he squirms in his bed, waking up with a film of sweat all over his body, his clothes and his blankets sticking to him. When he sleeps, he sees the light, the bright light, and he hears the brakes, the tires screeching on the pavement, he sees the light, he feels the pain, feels his bones crumble in his body, he forgets the taste of mandarins all over again.

Hyunjin is too weak—halfway towards his destination, his legs fail him.

Fortunately, Felix is quick enough—his friend jumps out of his chair and positions himself behind Hyunjin, catching him before he collapses, supporting most of his weight.

“I got you, hyung,” Felix’s voice is the same as it was before his accident, but now, when Hyunjin hears it, he feels colors bloom within him. Felix’s voice is a royal blue with teal undertones. “Take your time, I’ll help you get back in your bed.”

Take your time. For what? Time has no meaning anymore. He ran out of time. Time is all he has left. A million lifetimes ago, Hyunjin was a dancer, he moved beautifully to the sound of music, he spoke the language of dance, and now he is broken.

They told him they needed to replace his left hip, that it had been crushed but that he would dance again. They lied. They fucking lied. The damage was too important—so important that the prosthetic hip isn’t healing right. They will cut him open again tomorrow and they will try to fix him again.

They told him he would dance again but he can’t even walk the nine steps that separate his bed from the table. They told him he would dance again but Hyunjin is dizzy all the time and he forgets a lot. He isn’t sure he remembers the choreos. But he does remember the taste of mandarins. They told him he would dance again but he feels colors when Felix speaks to him, and he smells rain when he hears piano music.

Minho and Felix—they didn’t go to the audition, they said they didn’t want to do it without Hyunjin. Minho said it wasn't worth it.

They said he would dance again, but Hyunjin knows he will not. And now, his friends have given up on their dream, too, because of him.

Really, Hyunjin ought to be dead. It would have been easier if he had just died.

Love at first sight? What about it?

In the second drawer of your bedside table, there is a photo album with a smooth, jade green cover. Sometimes, you take it out just to caress the linen the cover is made of because you need to feel it beneath your fingertips. Sometimes, you only want to touch the spine of the photo album, you do not want to open it to look inside. You don’t need to, because the memories the book is filled with also fill your mind, and you remember everything very clearly.

Other times, however, you need to look inside. You need to see it with your own two eyes.

What you had. What you lost.

Love at first sight? What about it?

Turns out, you wish it wasn’t real.

You accepted to take over painting class immediately—both the Thursday evening and Saturday morning ones. The committee behind the organization of the art classes in the city offered to postpone, to give you a few weeks to prepare, but you do not need preparation. You can’t let anyone in these groups go for too long without the painting class. Officially, you begin tomorrow, on Saturday, with the group you are most used to. Your group.

There was once a time in your life when this painting class was what kept you alive. You respect that. You wish to honor that. You wish to honor Mrs. Yoo. You wish to honor the fact that it made you who you are today.

Mrs. Yoo died at the hospital just two days after your visit, and your brain hasn't quite processed that yet. As if losing her was yet another stroke of black on an already dark canvas. You have cried for her, prayed for her. You will do your best to honor her legacy. Your heart is oversaturated with pain of all colors.

Here is the truth: love at first sight is real as hell and it is the kind of love that will rearrange the fuck out of the atoms that make you you. Turns out it doesn’t matter how you fell in love with somebody—whether it was through mutual friends, after years of friendship, or just because they asked you if the seat next to yours was taken. Turns out that, after all, what matters is everything that happens after you fall in love.

Here is also the truth: love at first sight is real but it is treacherous. You are in love with Hyunjin and he is in love with you, but he only showed you the parts of him he wanted you to see. He showed you the painter, all of him—he showed you how to mix and blend reds and pinks to make them beautiful. He showed you the kisses with a mouth that taste like mandarins, the way a light pink rose’s thorns can cut into your skin. He showed you that he loved you enough to keep all of your memories together in a pretty jade green album. He painted for you, and he painted you.

Hyunjin the painter thought that you could not love Hyunjin, the boy who used to dance. The boy with a broken body, a broken soul.

You did not know Hyunjin the dancer, but now, you do, in a way.

For the past week, you’ve been spending a lot of time with Lee Minho, watching footage from their dancing days together. Drinking, too. At first, he ignored it when you cried, but you knew it just made him uncomfortable—you simply couldn’t help it, though. Eventually, he got used to it, but he still gave you a hard drive with all the footage on it, so that you could watch it at home, on your own. He did look sorry, but you do not know what he is sorry for. Is it for you, or for his old friend?

That is what you do now, every day, whenever you have time. You study the videos, you learn Hyunjin the dancer the way you learned Hyunjin the painter. You can recognize the sound his brushes make with your eyes closed.

And now, you could recognize the footwork in his choreography. You’ve learned that part of him, too. The part he didn’t want you to see.

To say that he is skilled is an understatement—watching him feels more like watching the wind. Unpredictable. Strong, but delicate. You see him, his soul, in every move he makes. You see Hyunjin’s bold brush strokes in the way he dances.

It has become obvious to you that Hyunjin seemed to believe he could divide himself into two halves—the painter and the dancer. It has also become obvious to you that these two halves are very much part of a whole, no matter how hard he tried to keep them separate.

Your bed is empty without him. Tonight, the wine doesn’t help—it doesn’t even make you sleepy. It rarely does. You know you will spend countless hours staring at your screen, studying the dance moves, listening to the squeaking sounds sneakers make on the floor of a dance studio.

You feel your phone vibrate somewhere in your blankets—you fumble around until your fingers lock around it. These days, every time your phone rings, you hope to see Hyunjin’s name on the screen, but you don’t even know what you would do if it ever happened.

You knew that one day, Hyunjin would leave you. You knew that it would hurt you beyond anything ever had, you knew that it would unmake you.

But you do not hurt alone.

lee minho: are you asleep? lee minho: i found the photos i told you about the other day lee minho: i’m not far from your place. if you want them.

you: i can’t sleep. you can come here whenever you want.

It takes Minho twenty-three minutes to get to your place. You buzz him in and assume he just got out from a performance—he’s wearing casual clothes and his hair is tousled. He doesn’t smile at you and neither do you at him, but you greet each other with a stiff nod as he makes his way into your apartment, which he knows, by now, as he’s been here on a few occasions.

“I found my old phone,” he tells you, sitting on your couch after leaving his bag and shoes near the door. “I also found the charger for it, so I transferred all the old photos into this one.”

You nod again, sitting beside him and pulling your laptop closer to allow him to connect his phone to it.

“Do you want something to drink?” you ask, your voice no more than a whisper. “Water?”

“Do you still have some of that strawberry vodka?”

Strawberry vodka it is. You avoid drinking it when you’re alone, as the taste reminds you of Hyunjin’s lips, his mouth. The way he kissed you, the way his tongue danced in your mouth and on your body.

You mix the vodka with ice and sparkling water and bring back two large glasses as Minho, a man who should be a stranger, is using your laptop freely, without care.

Here is the truth: Lee Minho is a stranger to you in many ways. You don’t know about his childhood, you don’t know much about his personal life, the things he likes, the things he dislikes. Here is also the truth: it seems that anyone who has touched Hyunjin’s heart and has been touched by his soul in return could never be a stranger to you.

You know Minho likes strawberry vodka, you know he likes gin and you know how he drinks his tea. You know that one time, he went on a trip to Japan and ate pudding so delicious it changed him in a way, but you do not know in which way specifically. You know he is a dance teacher, you know he dreams of owning his own dance school someday. You know he cooks excellent chicken soup. You know he cooked this soup for Hyunjin one day and then he never saw him again. Until the other day, on Hongdae Street.

You know he had to reinvent himself after Hyunjin’s accident. They had been the closest of friends, Hyunjin, Felix, and him, and without the evenings spent dancing together his life had become empty. For a long time.

At least, this was an accurate warning of what to expect for your own future. Already, your existence feels like a void—like something is missing. Like you don’t know how to exist without Hyunjin. You definitely existed before him. But you do not think you will exist after him.

“Some of those pictures are graphic,” Minho warns you, licking pink vodka off his lips, his serious gaze fixated on you. “Just a heads up.”

“I don’t care. I want to see.”

There are so many ways in which Minho is a stranger to you but he has shown you nothing but kindness in the very short while you’ve known him. He brought you chicken soup. He gave you Danceracha footage. He offered to find old photos of Hyunjin for you to see. Because you needed to see what it had been like for him after his accident.

Minho holds you when you cry. He never speaks a word when it happens. He just holds you.

You do not hurt alone.

Even if Minho hadn’t warned you about the violence in the photos you are seeing, you wouldn’t have been surprised by them. You’ve seen those bruises before, you’ve seen the purples of them, the reds, the black. You’ve seen the cuts—you’ve seen all of it, all of the wounds, before.

You’ve seen them on your body the night Hyunjin stained your skin with watercolor. The night he made love to you on the floor of his living room, fucking his torment away, fucking it all into you, his cock taking up all of the space within you, within your soul, fucking you with all of his might.

Now that you know him to be a dancer, you understand this about him, too. The way he fucked you is the same way he dances. Gracefully. Thoroughly. This is how he paints. This is how he loves. Intimately. Delicately. Violently. Yes, this is how he used to fuck you. And, god, you miss him.

The first batch of photos shows a person in a hospital bed. You know it’s Hyunjin, but if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t recognize him. His neck is in a brace and his face is bruised and swollen. He seems asleep—one of his arms is in a cast, as well as one of his legs. He has several IVs plugged into him. You see someone else’s hand on top of his—his mother, you guess.

“Fuck,” you sigh, swallowing a good amount of strawberry vodka.

“They put him into a coma at first—just a few days, to let him rest. His body was broken.” Minho’s voice is low, and you can barely hear him over the sound of your heartbeat. “When he woke up, all he did was cry, and scream. He couldn’t really move. He felt trapped.”

“With good reason,” you point out, clicking and clicking and clicking, making more and more photos appear on the screen.

There is always so much red, so much purple. So much pain. You wonder why these photos even exist—who would want to remember such things so vividly?

Maybe bad things are worth remembering too.

You figure, he probably still feels like that. Trapped. In this body that hurts him. This body that they put back together but doesn’t feel quite right. Hyunjin feels trapped in a body that can no longer support his dream.

You are crying again. But you do not hurt alone—Minho wraps his arm around your shoulders. You feel his warm breath on the side of your face and it smells like strawberry vodka.

You knew there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you. That day has come and passed, and even if it has been only a week, you do not think you will exist without Hyunjin.

You knew there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you. You prepared for that day carefully. You took your time—even if you fell in love with him at first sight, you didn’t let it get to your soul immediately. You didn’t let his colors mix with yours right away. Some colors aren’t meant to mix.

But some mistakes are worth making.

When you picked up oil painting, you made plenty of mistakes at first. It took you a while to learn how to mix colors properly and took you even more time to learn how to blend them on a canvas. Up until recently, your reds and pinks weren’t good. They weren’t lifelike.

Until you had witnessed Hyunjin’s lips, how the shade of their pink was so drastically different from the color of his tongue, and yet, both were pink all the same. His lips have this soft old rose tint while his tongue is one shade more vibrant in the same color. The same color and yet, they do contrast with each other.

His mouth looks best when it is coated in something shiny—the juice of a mandarin, or after he licked honey off your finger while baking, or after he made you cum, his head between your thighs, his mouth all over you, his mouth full of you, your juices. Sweeter than any mandarin. Better than any fruit, than anything, he used to say.

He used to whisper your name into your pussy, he used to whisper more things down there, too, but you didn’t always hear them. It was like he was saying prayers, his lips glistening with you, his tongue dancing on your skin. He would swallow all that you gave him, would kiss you hard, and he would kiss you softly.

You did not know how to mix reds and pinks until you witnessed Hyunjin’s lips. What you would give to witness them again.

You knew there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you. You prepared for that day carefully.

One day, after he had made love to you on your couch—the very couch you are sitting on right now, with Lee Minho—Hyunjin put on some music and went into the kitchen to prepare snacks for the both of you. A song played, a song you had heard in the past, but hadn’t really paid attention to before. It does not matter what the song is exactly, but when you heard it, you knew it would be the song for when your heart breaks all over again.

You prepared for your heartbreak. You tried tricking yourself into thinking mandarins hadn’t become your favorite fruit. You tried tricking yourself into preferring a different brand of paint, as you and Hyunjin used the same. You tried to make sure that when he would leave, there would be as little of him as possible left around to hurt you.

You tried to keep the walls protecting your heart up, but Hyunjin just went past them. He was not the bomb, he was the shockwave—when he made his way to your heart, it was not a loud explosion, it was a silent deflagration that destroyed everything in its way. You prepared for your heartbreak. You tried, so hard, not to associate anything with him.

But now that Hyunjin has been through your life, now that you have tasted love, now that you have compared the soft pink of his lips to the vibrant pink of his tongue to the dark flush of his cock just moments before he stretches you with it, he is everywhere. Hyunjin is in everything, and all of your efforts were futile. You will never not hurt. You will never not love him.

You will never not see him in everything. The sunset, the sunrise. A little girl holding a citrus fruit. A beautiful painting in a gallery. A light pink rose. A rose of any color. Any flower. Any time of the day, any temperature. Any music, any song, anywhere. Groups dancing on Hongdae Street, teenagers banging their heads to the sound of a song, people drinking coffee, people drinking tea. The flame of a candle. The smell of roses. A photo camera. The squeaking of sneakers on a wooden floor. Notes of a piano track. Silence. The taste of strawberries, the sweetness of watermelons. Beautiful cursive handwriting. Fleece jackets, tv dramas, a really good place for jjajangmyeon.

The portrait of you that he painted. The scene of your bedroom that he painted. Your body, which he painted in reds. Your body, which he painted in off-white, deep inside of you, or on your skin, your face, your breasts.

You will never not see Hyunjin in everything.

“Minho—” you start, a sob choking you. You bury your face in your hands. Sometimes, Hyunjin’s absence is so overwhelming that it fills you. It fills you with emptiness.

He holds you tighter. You do not hurt alone, but you hurt nonetheless.

“It’s okay.” Minho’s voice is a strawberry-and-liquor-scented whisper into your ear. It tickles you all over. “Just cry if you need to.” He knows. You know he knows how it feels to lose Hyunjin.

On the screen of your laptop, there is a broken boy with bruises the same color as his lips—but in the photographs, his lips have turned blue and purple. On the screen of your laptop, there is a broken boy, and in your chest there is your broken heart.

You will never not see him in everything. It will hurt you. It will hurt you for as long as you live.

But if this is the only way he can be with you, still—in the taste of mandarins, in the colors you paint on a canvas, in the songs that you hear—then you will take it, and you will take the pain that comes with it, for this pain is better than forgetting Hyunjin.

Love at first sight? What about it?

It’s in this very art studio that you learned that it exists. It’s in this art studio that you fell in love with a boy who brought with him a mandarin on the first day you met him. You were in love with him before the class had even started.

You walk into the studio with your head high, but your heart has sunken somewhere deep in your chest, behind the wall you are trying to rebuild around it. But there is no mortar anymore. But there are no bricks anymore. They were turned to dust when you let Hyunjin in, when you let him explore your body, your colors, your soul. If you ever manage to rebuild your defenses, they will be flimsy.

Maybe they will be made of mandarins or roses. Maybe they will be made of canvas paper. Maybe they will be made and unmade, just like you.

Jisung is sitting at his usual easel. Hyunjin’s is empty, naturally, and you are surprised to see that Seo-yeon’s is as well. But you do not let it show.

You knew that there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you—that day has come and passed. And today, you want to hurt alone.

You keep your head high when you cross the studio and leave your bag on the desk that was once Mrs. Yoo’s. You miss the woman already, you miss the kindness in her eyes, you miss speaking with her. If it weren’t for her and for the long hours spent chatting after class, you may not have had the strength to keep going.

You do not think you will exist without Hyunjin, because you do not know where you will find the strength to go on.

“Good morning everybody,” you say, your voice raw from the crying and the strawberry vodka with Minho last night.

It is still watermelon season, but you have none with you. You came in today with a bottle of water, some paint, and some brushes. You look at the seat you once occupied in this studio, the empty easel, the one next to it. The table where a Jeju mandarin rearranged the atoms that make you. The class echoes your greeting, and you do your best not to look away under the questioning looks you are getting.

Love, when you had it, looked good on you. You know you look different today—you know it’s not just the dark circles under your eyes, your pale skin, your chapped lips. You know that love made you radiate warmth. You know Hyunjin made you the best version of yourself, and you are ashamed to stand in front of your esteemed peers as the lesser version of her.

But then—maybe this is the real you. Maybe the boost of sunshine Hyunjin gave you was all artificial and didn’t count. Didn't matter.

Maybe you’ve been miserable all along, and he just made you forget about it. When he kissed you. When he talked to you endlessly about paint mixing, about his favorite artists, about his favorite songs. When he held you in his arms for hours and hours, just keeping you close, his body around yours, warm, safe. The way he made your name dance in his mouth whenever he spoke it aloud. Or when you made him moan it, your name, him clinging to you, his eyes rolling at the back of his head. Maybe it was just a temporary illusion of something.

Today is the painting class. And today, you are officially leading it, for the first time. Even if you are the miserable version of yourself, you owe it to Mrs. Yoo to do your best.

So, you do that.

“Would you like to paint water studies today?” you ask the group, trying to put a smile on your face. Trying, so hard.

“You’re the teacher now, you’re not supposed to ask us,” a younger woman points out, but she is smiling a true smile. “By the way, thank you for this. I’m sure Mrs. Yoo would be very happy. Very proud…”

You swallow your tears, but not fast enough—a few roll on your cheeks, and you quickly wipe them before more can follow their path. This is all you seem to be doing these days. Crying, drinking, remembering.

“I fucking love water, man,” Jisung calls overenthusiastically from farther into the class. You look up, noticing that he, too, has dark circles under his eyes. That his lips are chapped too. That something is lacking in him. “Let’s paint that!” He, too, tries to smile, and it is not convincing.

You guide a few students when they need help mixing their blues. You always did good with blues—it was your reds that used to be weak, after all. But you do not think about this. You can’t be thinking of Hyunjin’s lips right now, or how the blood caked on his face after the car dragged him on the pavement.

Love, when you had it, used to look good on you. But sorrow, now that you have it, is obvious on you.

The class is just as you remembered it, even if you only missed one week, it feels like you’re returning from a long absence. The quiet whispers, the sounds of brushes painting on canvas… the smell of thinner, the smell of paint, the lack of sweet scents of fresh fruit. You will never not see Hyunjin in everything, even in the absence of things.

“Is Hyunjin not here today, miss?” a woman asks you. She is your age, but you never spoke to her much—only niceties, really. But she seems truly concerned. “He paints such pretty water.”

Yes, he does. He paints water beautifully, he paints your bedroom just as skillfully. Nobody blends colors the way he does. He can blend teal and pink and make it look effortless. He stained your soul with red, and now red is all that you can see.

Today, you wanted to hurt alone—but you do not have the strength to do so.

“Hyunjin is gone,” you tell her. You know everybody heard you by how oppressing the silence becomes in the room around you. You find yourself wishing for the white silk ribbon, so that you could use it to cover your eyes. Just like you, it is stained with red now, but at least, you wouldn’t have to feel everybody’s eyes on you. “He is gone. That’s all there is to say.”

The woman moves first—she reaches for your wrist with her delicate hand, and she gives it a soft squeeze. “We can go have coffee later if you want,” she offers. “Sorry I asked about him, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” you say. You didn’t mean to cut her off, but you don’t want to watch all of them as they observe the damage within you, as they take in the sight of the dents in your soul. “Don’t forget to change your brush soon—yours is looking a bit tired, I’m afraid it will reduce the effect of the flapping water on your sand.”

Changing the subject is one thing. When you reach Jisung’s corner, even if you make yourself very busy observing a nearby student’s work, you only see him. Jisung. He is an old friend by now. He puts his brushes down when you approach and sits in front of a half-finished lake on his canvas, staring in your direction. He’s waiting for you.

So you make your way to him, sit on the stool that was once yours, and swirl until you face him. You make sure to swirl it to the right—if you did so to the left, you would have caught sight of Hyunjin’s empty seat, and there is only so much anguish your heart can take all at once.

“Is it because of… of me?” Jisung asks, without any sort of greeting. He is pale, and from up close, you barely recognize him. You’ve never seen him like that.

“What?” you shake your head, confused. “What would be because of you?”

His gaze shifts, just for a second, to the empty seat next to yours. “I went to see Mrs. Yoo at the hospital before she… before she passed. I know Hyunjin isn’t just gone. He’s gone gone, he fucked off and he left you.” You had never heard Jisung speak like that, and it hits you like a wave of icy water, like molten lava. “Is it because I took you to the arcade bar, and Hongdae Street? What happened that night?”

You sigh, feeling tears in your eyes, feeling sobs in your throat, threatening to spill into your mouth. Jisung is an old friend. When Hyunjin left, the first time, he did take sweet care of you, no matter how much you all joked about it afterward. He took you for lunch every Saturday. He texted you kind messages every other day and sent beautiful, calming pictures, or soothing music. You thought he was just trying to get in your pants, somehow, and maybe it had been a little bit of that. But, truthfully, Jisung cares about you, and you care about him.

“Ji—do you really blame yourself for that?” You think you understand now. You think you understand the pain in his eyes. “It’s not you. It’s not your fault. It’s… it’s him, his… past.” You don’t want to get to the bottom of it, not today, not right now. Today, you wanted to hurt alone, but you rarely get what you want anyway.

“But if we hadn’t gone there, he would still be here, wouldn’t he? And you… you would be happy,” Jisung says, his shoulders slumping, trying to conceal the tears in his eyes.

You consider it. What Jisung said. Maybe he’s right. Maybe if instead of going out with him and Seo-yeon that night, you would have gone elsewhere with Hyunjin, he would still be here. It’s when he saw Minho that things really got bad.

But then maybe he would have run into Minho at the grocery store. Maybe he would have heard the song that he was working on with Felix and Minho at a party one day, or maybe he would have dreamed about his accident, and he would have left. He would have left regardless, eventually.

You understand that now. You didn’t, not before this very second. Jisung watches you carefully, a slight frown on his brow. He is concerned. Out of love for you, he is worried. Out of love for him, you are worried.

Love is extensive. Love takes many forms. Love looks like a Jeju mandarin. Love looks like a hard drive with hours of video footage on it. Love looks like a photo album full of memories. Love looks like blood or watercolor paint on a white silk ribbon—doesn’t matter which it is, for both are red, and even if you are in love with a painter and are a painter yourself, sometimes, red is just red. You have seen so much of it, so much love, and yet, it still surprises you.

Today, love looks like a friend who is on the verge of tears at the idea that he is the reason for your heartbreak.

You take Jisung’s hand in yours. He has blue paint on his fingers and you feel it coat your fingers in return. Until today, you hadn’t even considered it—that it was the fact that you all went out together causing Hyunjin’s brain to short-circuit, this time.

“Ji…” you sigh. His hand is cold in yours. “No, no, no… it happened on that day, but… Hyunjin would have left anyway, at some point. It’s… it’s not your fault…”

But Jisung’s heart is too heavy, and you end up in the hallway with him. Now, there is a little less blue paint on his hand, as it has been transferred onto yours. You know there is meaning in that, but you can’t think about it, your brain won’t let you.

This is how you learn that Jisung has been tortured by guilt since he found out for Hyunjin, for you. One night, it became too much, and he cried, and he cried, thinking he had caused the rift between his two friends. Seo-yeon had said it was stupid to cry about this. She suspected that Jisung was in love with you, or something similar.

Or maybe she simply couldn’t process watching a man crumble under the weight of guilt, and pain—in any case, she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. You don’t recognize Seo-yeon in Jisung’s words, not at first. As if he was painting an inaccurate portrait of her. Or painting someone else’s portrait and claiming it was of Seo-yeon’s. It sits strangely in your chest as if you had swallowed a bite too big, as if you had swallowed a dead bird.

But, after all, she had spent all this time playing with him instead of accepting to go out with him straight away, flirting with Hyunjin and other guys in the class. Maybe, after all, she wasn’t good enough for him. Sometimes, life is just unfair like that, and it offers no explanation. Maybe she just wasn’t meant for Jisung.

Sometimes, red flags are just what they are—warnings, omens.

You are a painter and you know color intimately. You are in love with a painter who blends colors like no living being ever did. But sometimes, red is just red.

You want, so badly, to believe that Hyunjin wasn’t meant for you and you for him, but you know that your soul will always seek for him because this is where your soul belongs.

So Jisung is alone, guilt-ridden, broken-hearted, and you are alone with the pieces of your shattered heart. He holds you. You hold him. Today, love looks like two friends who have lost too much, like blue paint smeared on two pairs of hands.

When you return to your desk and Jisung in front of his easel, you listen to the chit-chat in the room for a while, trying to let it soothe you. It does, until the screen of your phone lights up.

Hyunjin: are you at the painting class, angel love? Hyunjin: i want to talk. with you. i’m so sorry. Hyunjin: i’m at my place. i’m… packing a suitcase. Hyunjin: i want to say goodbye. i need to say goodbye, please?

Only love can hurt like this.

You would have known that Hyunjin was in his apartment even without the warning texts. The smell of him is stronger than it was when you visited a few days ago trying to see if he was back, and some art supplies have moved around in the living room. Before, the couch was full of them, but now it’s clear, and there are organized boxes full of them aligned against the wall.

But the room is empty and so is the kitchen—however, you hear noise coming from the living room.

He texted you. Your heart jumped out of your chest when you saw his name on your phone screen, but you didn’t believe it to be true. You had already begun the process of mourning him, mourning your love—if it was really him who texted you, then it meant you had to start from the beginning all over again. Feel that grief all over again. Process that shit all over again.

And yet, you can’t help but to hope. That it’s actually him. That you’re about to step into his bedroom and find him there, feel the way his presence fills a room, see his big, dark eyes. His plush lips, his soft voice.

You stop just a few steps away from the door and the noises stop in the room. You put your hand on your chest as if searching for your heartbeat, but it’s not there. You would have expected it to go off the rails, but your chest is like a quiet sea. Too quiet, maybe.

“Angel love, you’re here...” You hear his voice from the bedroom, and the tsunami spills over you.

You breathe but there is no oxygen making it to your lungs. Drowning. You’re drowning—he is here but he is not here the way you want him to be. You wanted him to get into the art studio today, a fruit in his hand. You wanted him to casually take his usual seat and say, “Hey”, because he had nothing else to say. You wanted to see the banter between him and Jisung, like last time.

You wanted him to come back and stay.

He looks just the same as he did the last time you saw him. You don’t know why, but you almost expected him to look different. When you step into the bedroom, he is standing near a chair on which an open suitcase is resting, half full. There are piles of clothes and various belongings on the floor.

You see grief in Hyunjin’s eyes. He sees the blue paint on your fingers. You see the dents, the scratches that life left in his soul, in his body. The color of the crescent-shaped scar on his left upper thigh, where they cut him open to give him a new hip—the one that robbed him of his happiness and yet allowed him to live a normal life—is so similar to the color of his lips.

You see his sharp edges.

Sometimes, love looks like a fleece jacket on a cold night. Sometimes, love looks like a light pink rose wrapped in a white silk ribbon. Sometimes, love tastes like Sancheon strawberries. Sometimes, love looks like smearing red paint over someone else, just to see what one looked like when they were the one covered in bruises and blood and suffering.

“Angel love…” Hyunjin’s voice is quiet and raw. He might have been crying. Or screaming. Or both.

There is so much in your heart. Anger. Desperation. Relief. The relief of seeing him, the delight, the happiness of seeing him. Wrath, outrage—there are too many emotions trying to take over you, so many that you wonder if you will maybe pass out, or hit Hyunjin in the face, or run away and jump off a bridge.

Hyunjin says that his brain short-circuits sometimes. Well, at least you have an idea of what that feels like.

When he reaches for you, his fingertips brushing against your face, you jump back, adding to the distance between you two. You are not ready to be touched by him. It’s already too much to see him here, to see the suitcase, to hear his voice. Hyunjin’s arm falls back to the side of his body and he sighs. A long, long sigh, the end of it turning into a choked sob.

“You don’t have to leave,” you point out, your voice full of tremors. But already, you’ve walked back towards him, close enough to see a few droplets of tears stick to his eyelashes. “Hyunjin, don’t leave me.”

After your ex, you had promised yourself a lot of things. You had promised yourself you would never touch a man again, that you would never fall in love again. That you would never beg a man for love. For anything.

So much for that. So much for anything. So much for all the nights you spent crying yourself to sleep, waking up with sore eyes and a raw throat and an empty mind. A mind filled with lies, with fog.

You are in love with Hyunjin. And he is in love with you. But you are angry at him, even if you know he is hurting, too.

“Angel…” This time, you let him touch you. You let him touch your face carefully, let him cup it in his hand. He brushes his thumb over your trembling lips. “I made a mistake when I bought you the rose. When I confessed my feelings. I told you, I’m no good for you.”

He is there, his face so close to yours, his warm hand on your face. You smell him, the cologne, the rose scent. His skin against yours. His piercing gaze, the shape of his mouth, the color of his lips. You never want to forget him.

You knew there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you. You prepared for that day. He left. He came back. He is leaving again. He is breaking your heart. You will never not love him. You will never not see him in everything.

“Some mistakes are worth making,” you say under your breath, but he hears you.

Hyunjin nods, pulling your face close but stopping just before he is kissing you. You feel his breath on your face, you feel it as it creeps past your parted lips. You breathe him in, let him fill your lungs with his air.

“My angel. My most beautiful mistake,” he says against your mouth. “I’m leaving because I want to become someone who is good for you.”

A love so big that it seeps through the cracks of his soul, through the cracks of yours, too. Your hands find their way to his waist and you hold him hard enough to bruise him. Hard enough to keep him from leaving you. You knew there would be a day when Hyunjin would leave you, and you prepared that day carefully, prepared for your heartbreak. Still, you’re not ready. No amount of preventive measures could have prepared you to lose him. Again.

You can lose the same person over and over, many times, always in the same way, and you think that you get used to it—but really, you don’t. Or, rather, you do—some things in life you can expect, you can get accustomed to, but it doesn’t help you, doesn’t make it any easier.

The way you can’t brace for impact if you are standing in the middle of a wide field and a meteor is plummeting your way. You can try running away, you can roll into a ball and hide your face behind your hand, but it will not change the outcome—you will be crushed. You will be unmade.

This is it. The love you have for Hyunjin, the love he has for you. The fact that he will leave you is the meteor. You know loss intimately, you know all of its darkest corners. Bracing for impact will not soften the blow.

Love at first sight is real. Today, Hyunjin leaves you, and he will unmake you for good.

You close your eyes when Hyunjin slowly presses his mouth against yours. You revel in the sensation of it, in the supple flesh of his lips. His mouth tastes like his favorite bubble tea—the lychee and bergamot one he used to get every other day after work. He then would come home to you, his mouth tasting exactly like this.

Hyunjin pulls back from the kiss, pressing his forehead against yours. There are tears in your eyes, there are rose thorns in your heart.

“I’ll become a better man. I’ll fix myself,” he whispers into your mouth, and you inhale him, the lychee, the bergamot, the love. “I will never not love you, angel love.”

“Please don’t go. Please.” You will never not see him in everything. You will never not hurt from his absence. You will never paint beautiful reds again. “Why do you have to go?”

Hyunjin takes a deep breath, his hand leaving the side of your face to travel on the small of your back, joined by his other hand. He presses you against him, making sure that his body touches as much of yours.

“I’m going to Australia,” he tells you, and you hear the pain in his voice. “I have a flight tonight. I’m going to stay with… with—”

“With Felix?” You finish the sentence in his place, but silence fills the room. “You’re going with Felix?”

Hyunjin cocks his head to the side, fear growing on his face. Fear, shock, and shame. He knows now. He knows that you know. You see the demons dancing behind his eyes.

Now you know these demons, you know why they make his eyes bleed crimson. These demons have names. These demons had a dance crew together, and they were the best of friends. One day, one demon got his body broken into pieces and put back together, but it wasn’t quite right. And this demon no longer dances. The familiar demons behind Hyunjin’s eyes, the ones that you see haunting him in his darkest days, you now know to be Minho and Felix. And they dance, relentlessly.

There it is—the vermilion fear in Hyunjin’s eyes, the demons pirouetting in them, making him dizzy. He pulls away from you and walks out of the room.

He always fucking walks away.

But he doesn’t go far, this time—you find him in the living room, sitting on the couch, staring at the blue sky in the window.

“Who told you about Felix?” he asks, his voice as empty as his eyes. “How do you know about him?”

You get closer to him and put your finger under his chin to make him look at you.

“Did you really think I was going to stay there in the dark, Hyunjin? Did you really think I wasn’t gonna try to find out what’s wrong with you?”

He doesn’t look away, but it’s clear that he wants to. Instead, you let go of his face and sit next to him. This is the first time you ever sit on his couch—the last time, too, you figure. Before today, it was always full of painting and art supplies. Today, the supplies are neatly organized in boxes. Today is the day Hyunjin leaves you.

“You could have told me, you know,” you whisper, leaning your back against the couch. Even if demons are dancing in his eyes, Hyunjin wraps his arm around you and pulls you against him. “When I asked how you got the scar.”

He nods. “I should have told you,” he agrees, his voice bleeding reds and blacks. “I’ve made so many mistakes…” And not all mistakes are worth making. This, you know a little too well.

Hyunjin holds you for a while, the two of you quiet and motionless, just together. You never liked goodbyes. You were never good at them.

“How much do you know?” Hyunjin asks, burying his face into your hair. He inhales you the way he smells flowers or perfume or the air after a rainstorm.

In return, you lift your head to look at him, you feel him retreat from your hair as he looks down into your eyes. God, he is so beautiful. He is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. His soul is full of cracks, of dents, but it doesn’t change a thing about your feelings for him.

“I’ve spent many evenings with Lee Minho,” you explain, and you see Hyunjin’s expression shift to something dark. “He showed me. He showed me your dances.”

He flinches. “He had no right to do this,” Hyunjin growls, and you’ve never heard him so full of anger. Actually, you’ve never seen him angry at all. It surprises you so much that you pull away a little, just to look at him, at how all of his body has tensed up. It’s almost like meeting him for the first time all over again. “He likes to act like—like he’s the boss of all of us. Like he can decide for all of us, but—”

“Hyun—” You want him to calm down. It hurts you enough to see the demons in his eyes, to know that he is leaving, to know that you will no longer be able to just sit in the same room as him and listen to the sound of his paint brushes gliding on a canvas. To know that he will no longer be in your bed when you wake up. You do not need to see him become angry on top of all of that. “I just… I just wanted to know why you were breaking my heart like this—don’t I deserve to know why you—”

You can’t even finish your sentence before breaking into a series of sobs. You’ve been holding those since the moment he texted you earlier, and you hate the fact that you are crying in front of him. You wanted to be strong. There are so many things that you wanted.

You wanted to be with him, forever. You wanted to witness countless seasons with him, by his side, your hand in his.

When Hyunjin kisses you, he is crying too, but he doesn’t shy away from it. He just kisses you, softly, as if his anger had evaporated with his tears. He kisses you for a long time, his lips taking control of yours and yours of his. His tongue trails on your bottom lip, leaving spit behind, before he goes on to explore your mouth, tasting you, spilling his vermilion into you.

You moan when Hyunjin’s hands travel under your blouse, his fingers touching your skin, playing with the waistband of your skirt.

You moan into him and he opens his mouth wider, kissing the air out of you, letting you fill him with your voice, with your blues. There are remnants of blue on your fingers, but it doesn’t stop you from running them in his silky soft hair, closing your fists in it. You can’t let him go. You have to, but you can’t.

“I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you—” Hyunjin breaks the kiss for a few seconds, his soft pink mouth glistening with drool and tears, just to tell you this. “I will never not love you. Never. I love you. I love you. I love—”

“I love you, Hyun.” you want to say more, so much more, but you never liked goodbyes and you were never good at them. So, instead, you wipe the tears from his cheeks and he does the same to you, his big eyes on you, always.

There is so much pain in him, and the demons are still going at it. So you pull his head closer to you, kissing his eyelids, trying to soothe them. Trying to soothe him. In response, he pulls you on him, and you sit there, straddling him, your head resting in the crook of his neck. Your hands are still holding him by his hair. He is holding you by your waist. As always when you are on top, he shifts in his seat a little until his left leg is comfortable. But now you know why. It has nothing to do with you—it’s the hip. It’s always the fucking hip.

“Do you really hate him? Minho?” you kiss Hyunjin’s neck softly, just a few quick pecks, but he shudders. “He’s been nothing but kind to me.”

Hyunjin sighs. From here, you hear the air move in his lungs and feel the exhale on your face. You kiss his neck again, pressing your open mouth on his skin there, kissing it as if you would kiss his lips.

“Maybe I hate him, I don’t know.” Hyunjin’s voice is quiet, strangled. His hands are back under your shirt, his fingertips dancing on you, following the cadence of the demons twirling in his head. “He…”

“He misses you,” you point out, whimpering under Hyunjin’s incessant touches, your skin prickling all over, heat spreading to your core.

You spent all of these days missing him, crying over him, and he will be gone again tomorrow. And yet, it’s easy. It’s easy to talk with him, cry with him. It’s easy to kiss him and it will be easy to make love with him.

It will be the hardest thing you will ever do. To kiss him, to have this conversation, to make love with him,

to let him go.

But you can’t let him go like this, not with his heart full of ugly reds, full of demons, full of resentment. Resentment is caustic enough, it might just kill him, devour him, inch by inch, until none of the painter, none of the dancer is left.

“Minho cares about you,” you go on, letting go of Hyunjin’s hair to take his face into your hands, looking him right in the eyes. “He cares for you the way he would for a brother.”

Hyunjin flinches, swallowing hard, looking away but just for a second before gazing at you with those eyes of his. The doe eyes, the soft eyes, the almost black eyes. The eyes that see beauty in everything, even in you. Especially in you, despite the demons dancing behind them.

“But he doesn’t act like it, angel love…” Hyunjin’s sinful mouth turns into a pout and his hands stop moving as he settles them flat on your back, ready to pull you flush against him if the need arises. “He acts… he acts like he’s the boss of me, like he knows better than me, like—”

“Hyun…” You put your thumb over his lips, urging him to stay quiet. He frowns but he obliges you. He frowns but he kisses your thumb softly. “I won’t invalidate your feelings towards him… He… He told me about the dancing, the accident. He told me about the chicken soup and how that was the last time he ever saw you. But I don’t know—”

“You want to know?” Hyunjin questions, just a drop of irritation in his voice. You don’t like this, you don’t like any of it. Today is the day Hyunjin leaves you. He is breaking up with you, for good. And yet it feels easy because you have missed him this much already, and his body is beneath yours and your mouth tastes like lychee and bergamot bubble tea. “Fine.”

They were the best of friends. They met when Minho transferred schools for his last year—he was already friends with Felix, who he met at the dance school. The friendship was easy, and soon, Hyunjin found himself spending most of his time with them in the dance studio.

He’d sketch in a notebook while the other two practiced, until one day he was feeling restless. He had been watching them practice for their next performance so much that he knew the choreography by heart. That day, he got up and tried following along. ‘Actually, you’re not bad’, is what Minho had told him. And it had changed everything.

Because Lee Minho was the best dancer Hyunjin knew. He knew his work ethic, knew the time he put into his skill—so if he said that Hyunjin wasn’t bad, then it meant something. It only felt natural to at least try. And try, he did. Mornings, evenings. Any moment he could, Hyunjin tried to force his body into becoming the body of a dancer.

The night it happened was an epiphany. This, you know, for you have seen the footage of this very moment more than once. You have learned the choreography from watching Hyunjin perform it. He practiced and performed this dance often on his own after, and you have several versions of it on the hard drive that Minho gave you.

There were auditions, and small performances—Hyunjin had a good time then, he was happy. You know this was the happiest he had ever been, but he would never admit it to you. But you see it in his eyes—a glimmer that’s a bit more than simple nostalgia. You see fondness, you see regret, but you do not see the demons anymore. Maybe they have taken their crimson pirouette elsewhere.

The major audition, the one Hyunjin couldn’t make it to because he was in the hospital, because he was broken—Minho and Felix could have gone to it.

“Minho said it wasn’t worth it without me,” Hyunjin whispers, his eyes looking somewhere at your neck, but not really seeing. He’s seeing Minho, a hospital bed, and delicious soup that tastes like music. “They didn’t go. They didn’t even try.”

You sigh, taking his face in your hands again. Hyunjin has just handed you the answer you’ve been seeking so desperately.

It’s not the accident. The accident, the hip— it isn’t the problem. It’s only a fraction of the problem—Hyunjin fucking misses dancing. It used to be his oxygen, his dream, his present and his future. He was not just good at it, he was great at it. He moved like he was made of music, like he was the sound of a violin floating in the breeze. He moved like he was thunder, like he was a storm, like he was the sky itself, set ablaze by forces unknown.

You know that it broke his heart when he was told that dancing was no longer an option.

But you know it broke him when Minho told Hyunjin that he and Felix had given up on the audition. That they were giving up on performing altogether.

Your sigh travels to Hyunjin and you see one strand of his hair move a millimeter, swayed by your breath. You anchor yourself on him, against him, and pull him in for a kiss. Your painter. Your dancer. Your Hyunjin. It’s one thing to see a dream fail—it’s a whole other thing to witness your friends give up on the same dream, and to have an involvement in the reason why.

There are no demons in his eyes, just tears.

You kiss him. He kisses you back, the soft sounds of your mouths meeting each other making you dizzy. God, you’ve never kissed a mouth like this, a mouth so plush, so smooth, a mouth you can get drunk on. Today, Hyunjin leaves you. You will never kiss a mouth like this again.

So you kiss him with your mouth open—a hot, wet kiss, the both of you slurping up the other, tasting the other, hands tangled in hair, hands latching onto whatever they can while they can. You taste him while you can, you try to record everything in your mind. You are not ready to let him go but you know you have to, so you want to remember how it feels to taste him, to feel him move under you.

He presses himself against your core, wrapping his arms around you, keeping you close. Hyunjin has a mouth meant to be kissed. So you do that, again, and again, the pressure between your legs becoming more and more distracting.

When he pulls away from you, there are tears on your face, too. Yours and his both, blended, fused. This is what you want, for an instant—for your whole existence to exist within Hyunjin, and his within you. To be woven into him.

You knew he would leave, and you knew he would take with him the best parts of you. The girl who laughed easily. The girl who painted lifelike reds, blended them beautifully with whites or pinks. The girl who cried out his name while he whispered yours in between your thighs. The girl who was no longer afraid. Of meeting new people, of loving them.

You knew that Hyunjin would leave you, and you knew he would take with him your hope.

“Hyunjin,” you whisper against his lips, moaning into his mouth at the feeling of his hardening cock under you. “Hyunjin, let me come with you. To Australia.”

He moves under you, again, and you feel him better. It makes you wet. It unmakes you. Hyunjin licks his bottom lip, swollen by the urgent kissing.

“I wish,” He cups your face gently, staring at you like he is a dying man and you are his prayer. “I wish it would be this easy… I… I wish I could stay… I wish I could take you with me. I wish I wasn’t like that. I wish I never had my accident, I wish Minho and Felix went to the audition, even if they didn’t get the part they would have tried, but they didn’t try. I wish they tried. I wish my brain didn’t short-circuit.”

Hyunjin takes a deep breath—it’s always like that with him. Either he doesn’t speak at all for sometimes even hours at a time, or he just can’t stop. He has no in-between. You always liked that. You didn’t mind the silence, it was never oppression. It was just there, it was comfortable, like the warmth of the sun on a cool day or a breeze on a warm day. You also loved to hear him talk about anything and everything, You will miss him.

You will miss him like he is the sky and you are the ocean.

“I used to wish I had died,” Hyunjin tells you then, unbuttoning your blouse carefully, but swiftly. “I used to wish the car had crushed my head instead of my hip. Had nightmares about it, like I could feel my skull crack, my brain burst under the pressure and leak on the pavement. I used to wish I had died in the accident, my angel. Until I fell in love with you at first sight. I will never not love you, but I have to go to Australia on my own.”

You know this, you understand this. It makes all the sense in the world—you know healing is a treacherous path, a dangerous one, and you know it’s never the obvious one to take. It will be easy. It will be difficult.

It will be beautiful. You only wish, selfishly, that you could witness the beauty of Hyunjin’s healing. The reds of his soul, no longer the color of blood, the color of pain, turned to a strawberry red. His eyes bleeding yellows and greens. His laugh filled with bright blues and pastel pinks. His footsteps as graceful as a light pink rose, his voice as soft, as meaningful, as a photo album with a smooth jade green cover.

His smile shining like the orange of a Jeju mandarin.

There are so many colors within Hyunjin, and the world should see them. He deserves to see them, too. Today is the day Hyunjin will leave you.

And you will let him go.

Your blouse falls to the floor quietly, for the fabric is as light as a rose petal, as a cool winter morning. Hyunjin stares at you hungrily, not wasting a second until he rids you of your bra and presses his face in on your breasts, taking one in his hand and the other in his mouth, twirling his tongue over your nipple, kissing you there, playing with the other. His fingers are warm. His fingers know you.

Your blue-stained fingers pull his shirt off him and fumble to unzip his pants, but he stops you when his mouth leaves your breast to return to your lips. You wanted a lifetime of this, of him. And you don’t even believe in forevers. You used not to. Until a boy set a Jeju mandarin on a table in between the two of you. Until he stared at you with big, almost-black eyes.

The taste of lychee and bergamot is long gone from his mouth, and you want to remember his taste. You want to remember the way his tongue plays with yours, the way it feels when he sets his hands on your ass, making you grind against the bulge in his pants. Hyunjin is an artist, his soul is complicated and stunning, and enthralling. You will never not love him. You will never not want him.

You moan your complaints when, instead of helping you get rid of his pants, Hyunjin buries his face in your neck, his hands still massaging your ass. His teeth graze your skin there, making a soft whimper escape your lips, making your pussy clench.

“I’ll be back someday,” Hyunjin breathes into your neck, in between kissing and nibbling and licking. God, he licks you like he is a dying man and you are the water that will save him. “When I’m better. When I’ve fixed my brain.”

“I’ll wait for you,” you moan into his hair—his fingers have left your ass to go and feel the wetness sticking to your panties. “I’ll wait for you, Hyun—for as long as it takes—”

“No, angel love,” Hyunjin sighs, grunting when you give a good roll of your hips to make your soaked panties meet with his concealed erection, his fingers buried deep into the skin under your skirt. “Don’t wait for me, it could take too long. What if it takes me ten, twenty, thirty years until I become a man that deserves you? What if I never deserve you, no matter how hard I try? What if I only deserve you when I’m old?”

You frown, stopping all of your motions—your incessant grinding on him, the pulling of his hair, even your breathing slows down.

What if he’s old?

You wanted a lifetime of this, a lifetime of him. You wanted him when he would be old, too—maybe too old even to steadily hold a paintbrush. You will love him then, still. You will love him when his hands have tremors and he can’t paint like he used to. You will love him when his black hair has turned gray. You will love him when he can no longer make love to you, you will love him when he dies.

They say that nothing is lost, nothing is created, that everything is transformed. There will be a day when Hyunjin dies. Maybe it will be before you do, maybe it will be after. It does not matter. You know that the atoms that make you, the atoms of your soul, will seek for the atoms of his, always, for they are meant to be together. You will never be whole without him, without his reds and his blues and his blacks. Without his mouth kissing you, whispering sweet things to you.

“Please don’t wait for me,” Hyunjin pleads, tears filling up his eyes again, each and every one of them a painful stake through your heart. “I won’t be able to get better if I know you’re just waiting for me.”

You fucking hate his guts, you hate how he’s right every single time he opens his pretty mouth to say something. Every time he speaks to you, he finds a new way to make and unmake you. You love him, you love him more than anything in this fucking world. Every time he says something, it is honest, it is uncomplicated and intricate all at once.

He needs this. You would give him the universe if he asked it of you. Instead, he is asking for more than that, for worse—he is asking that you let go, that you move on, that you let your heart be filled by colors other than his.

But he will not move. He will not let you take his pants off, and this is what you need right now. It’s your brain’s turn to short-circuits, it’s your turn to have demons dancing in your head, clouding your thoughts. It’s your turn to feel empty—you need Hyunjin to make you whole again, to make you full, to make and unmake you.

So you pull away from him entirely, pushing yourself off the couch until you’re standing in front of him. He leans into the couch then, sitting more comfortably, opening up his legs to ease some of the tension in his cock. You see the outline of it in his pants and lean over to gently caress it with your fingertips.

When he goes to reach for your skirt, you don’t let him. You evade him and manage to unbutton and unzip his pants. Normally, he would have smiled at you then, as Hyunjin enjoys playful sex quite a lot. You will never forget his smirk when he’s about to fuck you. You will never not love him. But today is different. Today, he is leaving you.

You waste no time freeing his cock—you’re back on the couch, sitting beside him. The couch is cool under the warmth of your skin. In this light, Hyunjin’s cock is the most beautiful you’ve ever seen it to be—or is it just because it might as well be the last time you see it? You hover your head over it, looking at it from all angles before gathering enough spit in your mouth to coat it with. You watch as it lazily glides on the smooth surface, listening closely to Hyunjin’s breathing pattern.

He loves it when you take him in your mouth. He’s hard, sensitive. You touch him, his inner thigh, let your fingertips dance on him like he let his dance on you earlier, teasing him, teasing his balls. He jumps, every time, and he moans when you take him in your hand, finally. He moans and it is the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.

Don’t wait for me, he told you. Maybe it’s time you stop waiting for things. Maybe you should have kissed Hyunjin the very moment he told you that it was mandarin season, the very moment he sat next to you. You knew already, you knew that your soul would always seek for his. You wasted too much time. You wasted time with your ex, you wasted time taking your time with Hyunjin. You should have let him claim you on the very first day and you should have claimed him back. You should have told him ‘I love you’ on the very first day you met him, you should have let him tell it back, too.

It would not have made any difference. It would not have fixed him, he would have left you anyway. But maybe you wouldn’t feel like you had a lifetime to catch up with in one night.

You’re terrified you will forget some of him. You will never forget Hyunjin, but what if one day you wake up and can’t quite recall the feeling of his smooth cock under your palm as you squeeze him? The way his legs spread further when you do so? The way your name fills up his mouth when he moans? The way his hair moves with his head when he lets it fall at the back, like a waterfall, like a deluge, like a shooting star?

He bites his lip when you squeeze him harder and begin stroking him carefully. You wanted a lifetime of this, but you rarely get what you want.

“My angel…” Hyunjin manages with a whimper when you thumb the tip of his cock, which is already leaking. He missed you. Fuck, you missed him too. “Let me feel your mouth around me before I go…”

You weren’t not going to taste him before he leaves you, but you give him a quick kiss on the mouth before your lips trail down on his chest, his stomach. When you take him in your mouth, Hyunjin bucks his hips impatiently, and you gag at the unexpected sudden pressure near your throat—but you cling onto his thigh and manage to keep him in your mouth.

Drool leaks from the corners of your mouth the moment you apply pressure on his cock with your tongue. Sometimes he cums when you do this, and it tastes good. You hope you never forget that, the taste of his cock, his cum, salty and bitter. His cock tastes like wine red. His cum tastes like garnet red.

You let him fill your mouth with the warmth of his cock, the taste of his precum, the feeling of being whole again. You bob your head around him, closing your lips tightly, and he watches your cheeks hollow out when you give him a good suck while playing with his balls —they’re tight and they feel good in your palm. He’s ready for you and you for him, but you want to remember.

You want to remember how it feels when his fingers run through your hair, grasp onto you, control your movement over his cock, control how deep you take him. He’s gentle. Hyunjin is always gentle with you, except for short moments—like when he wants to feel his cock push past your throat. Maybe he needs to remember this, too, so you lay your hands flat on his thighs as he pushes onto your head, as he makes you take all of himself, your throat burning at the contact, your eyes water. Even when he does this, he is gentle.

“You always take me so well, my angel…” You feel a throb in your pussy when he whispers this to you, his cock taking all of the space in your soul. “I love the color of your face when you’re choking on my cock a little… Let me see you—”

Hyunjin gently pulls on your hair until your mouth is free. You moan, your throat sore, your chin covered in spit and precum, his cock flushed and hard and beautiful. You look at the veins on it, the way their color blends with his skin, the way your drool is glistening on him.

“Perfect,” Hyunjin says with a frown, turning your head towards him. “Kiss me with that mouth, let me taste myself, angel.”

You share his taste with him. Maybe he wants to remember the flavor it creates when his taste is laced with the taste of your mouth. Maybe he just wants to kiss you. So you kiss him like you are a typhoon and he is the shore.

“My turn,” Hyunjin mutters into your mouth when he has licked and kissed all of his precum out of your mouth.

But he doesn’t leave you sitting on the couch. Hyunjin gets up, takes your hand in his, and for an instant, you assume he’ll take you to his bed. But instead, he brings you to the sturdy working table near the window, which, just like the couch, is empty for the first time ever.

“I want to see you,” Hyunjin explains, pulling your skirt and panties from you. “The light is good today. I want to see you.”

You want to see him, too. The table is cool under your ass as you push yourself onto it, legs dangling with Hyunjin just between them. He pulls you against his chest and you touch him. His back, his waist. His shoulders. You want to remember this all.

Hyunjin nudges your legs apart, one hand on your inner thigh. You moan when his other hand parts you open, and he makes you whole when he presses his tongue against your folds.

There is a throb in you, there is an earthquake within you. You cry because it is the last time you make eye contact with Hyunjin as he opens his beautiful mouth against your pussy, as he pushes his face against you. Your legs rest on his shoulders, and he begins his magic.

Today is methodical. Today is the day Hyunjin leaves you, so today is about remembering. Today is a bright sunny day and Hyunjin’s tongue circles on your pussy, teasing your lips, teasing your clit. He kisses you there, kisses your thighs.

“You smell so good, taste so good—” he whispers, his mouth back where it should be. His voice sends shivers to your spine, making you clench. “You’re my angel.”

He pushes two fingers in your entrance a little too easily—you’re wet and you feel yourself drip onto the table as he twirls his fingers inside you, as his tongue flicks skillfully around your clit. He will make and unmake you.

He will leave you and it will drain the color from your soul but you will try your best to remember him. You will never not see him in everything.

His fingers feel up your walls meticulously. Your hand is tangled in his hair but you have very little control over yourself. You haven’t been touched—or touched yourself—since he left you. You didn’t want to. But your body is alive again, under Hyunjin’s touch, under his mouth.

“Fuck, you taste so good—” his mouth is already coated with your arousal, and the pressure inside you is almost unbearable. You’re aching for him. You will ache like this for the rest of your life.

The fingers retreat from you, but Hyunjin’s mouth is back, latching onto your clit. You push the hair out of his face to look at his eyes. There are no demons in them, just lust, just red. Like embers, like homemade strawberry jam. Like blood on a white silk ribbon.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop—” you writhe on the table, suddenly realizing how near to the window you are—although Hyunjin lives high up in the apartment complex, you fear someone might catch a glimpse of you coming undone on that wooden table. Or maybe you want someone else to witness it. To witness the way he devours you whole, the way he carefully swallows your taste like he would a slice of a Jeju mandarin.

Maybe having witnesses makes it more real. “Hyunjin, fuck—”

“I just love your pussy, angel love…” This, he says into your inner thigh, kissing it softly. “I should have told you more often how much I love it. You taste so sweet, so nice...”

“Let me taste it.” You have no time to waste but you have so many things to remember. Like the way your pussy tastes in his mouth.

He licks you up, gathering more of your arousal, and climbs back up to kiss you hard on the mouth. Hyunjin’s mouth is like heaven for you. It’s your hell, too—you have tasted it and it will be taken away from you. This is your curse. This is your demise.

You taste good. You lick his lips, you explore his mouth all over again with your tongue. But he returns back to your pussy soon enough, inhaling you. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are glazed over. He is the most beautiful thing you have seen, and you have seen your fair share of art pieces, movies, sunsets, landscapes, and other wonders the world has to offer. Nothing even comes close to him. Nothing.

He drags his tongue over your slit, applying more pressure near your entrance, and you feel his tongue swirling into you, his thumb circling lazily on your clit. He will unmake you and make you again, you know it. You moan with your mouth open when he begins fucking you with his tongue in earnest, his head dancing, moving up and down between your thighs. This is where he belongs. It may take him ten lifetimes to heal under the Australian sun, but you will never be whole without him there, without his crimson love spilling from his mouth to your pussy.

Pressure is building within you, and there are tremors in your legs, and in your stomach. He’s trying to make you cum and it’s working—he knows the key to your pleasure, knows what to do, how to do it. He learned to play you like a person learns to play the piano. Except that when he plays you, you become the whole symphony.

Your soul used to be gray. Gray isn’t bad—in fact, gray is quite interesting. You can make such a variety of grays by adding just a drop of any color in white, and a drop of red gives an entirely different result than a drop of green, blue, or purple.

Hyunjin has rearranged the atoms that make you you. Hyunjin has made your soul tangerine orange.

Hyunjin’s tongue dances inside of you, and you roll your hips to meet him, you pull on his silky soft hair to push him further into you, to feel more of him between your legs. You’re close. He will unmake you and make you again. Hyunjin will leave you today, but he is teasing your clit. But he is making sure that you remember the way his tongue feels when it makes you cum.

He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t stop the twirling, the sucking, the licking, he doesn’t slow down as he eats you up. Like he is a chronic insomniac and you are a cup of strong coffee. Like he is an alcoholic and you are a bottle of fancy gin. Like he is a drug addict and you are heroin.

Hyunjin is devouring you like he is a dying man and you are his last meal.

He presses harder against your clit, speeding up the touches he applies, feeling up your walls with his tongue, and he finally unmakes you.

Your orgasm comes to you in waves of scarlet red, of strawberry red, watermelon pink, tangerine orange, waves of light pink and silky white. The flames take you whole.

“Fuck, fuck yes, Hyunjin—”

Your head hits the window behind you when you collapse onto the table, your release too strong to keep any sort of control over your body, except for your hands—you might just actually pull some of his hair out if you keep gripping at it this hard—but you push into him, pull his face into you, you roll your hips into his face, his mouth. He moans, too, his voice traveling through you like lightning. Nothing has ever felt as good as this.

It might be a second or a minute or an hour, but after a moment you open your eyes again, witnessing the scene—Hyunjin’s dark rose lips covered in your cream-colored juices, which have also smeared on his chin, his cheeks. His eyes burning with a strawberry red fire. You are in love with Hyunjin and he is in love with you.

He thumbs some of your juices off his lips and licks his finger clean, swallowing your taste whole, swallowing you like he is a dancer and you are music.

“I love you,” he tells you, pulling you close, wrapping you in his arms, his mouth full of you, still. His cheeks are damp with tears, still. “I will never not love you.”

“I will never not love you.” You echo him, and tears spill from your eyes again when you see the same happen to him. You touch his face. “I hope you heal, Hyunjin. I hope you stop hurting. I hope… I hope you can watch people dance and that it fills you with happiness instead of grief.”

Gently, Hyunjin pulls you off the table—you almost topple over in his arms when your feet touch the floor, your legs still weak from your powerful orgasm. But he holds you. He holds you like he is a falling man and you are the rope that will save his life.

Your hand in his, he makes you spin until you are facing the window, almost as if you two were dancing together. You look over your shoulder to see if he feels the same as you, if there are demons in his eyes because of it. But no. It’s just him.

He presses himself behind you and you feel the smooth tip of his cock on your ass while Hyunjin pushes your hair to the side to kiss your neck hungrily, his hands pulling you by the waist against him.

The sky is bright and beautiful. It is a sunny summer day, and it feels strange. It feels as if today should be stormy and rainy. As if the world should turn upside down. But there is not a single cloud in the sky. But Hyunjin is leaving you today.

He pushes onto your back, bending you over just slightly—you lay your hands on the large window of his living room while he guides his cock near your entrance, after parting your legs open with one swift motion of his foot.

Let the whole world know that you are in love with Hyunjin, and he is in love with you.

Hyunjin buries himself into you, meeting very little resistance, the wet sounds of his cock plunging into you loud in the silence of the room. Loud and delightful, but not as delightful as the feeling of it—the space he takes within you, the way his cock fits perfectly inside of you.

He groans into your neck, his hand creeping up to your hair to grab a fistful of it until you are looking right in front of you, at the outside world.

You’re looking but you’re not seeing any of it—you don’t need your eyes on him to see Hyunjin. And you see him, his vermilion love, the way his hips roll. He fucks you so good. He always fucks you so good.

Today, he has a fist in your hair and an arm draped across your chest, keeping you against him, keeping you upright. You need your own hands on the window in front of you to keep your balance but you wish you could feel him under your palms. You wish you could feel him with all of your body.

When Hyunjin fucks you, he does so the way he dances. You did not know that before seeing him dance… But it’s all that you see, now. The way he anchors himself to the ground, or how one single motion can be powerful, delicate, beautiful, and meaningful all at once. Only a dancer can move like this—every thrust into you is purposeful. Every thrust into you brings you closer to heaven, to hell.

“So good—” Hyunjin says into your ear, his voice breaking mid-sentence, his pacing picking up a little bit. His cock feels warm inside of you, it feels like it belongs there. “Fuck—you’re so wet…”

You moan his name, again and again, your body going limp under Hyunjin’s relentless fucking. This is the last time he fucks you. This is the last time you feel his mouth on your earlobe, on your neck, the last time you hear him groan as he bottoms out, filling you. The last. The last. The last.

You do not think you will exist without Hyunjin. You do not need your eyes to see him, to see the crescent-shaped scar on his left upper thigh, to see his handsome traits twisted with pure ecstasy as he sinks into you over and over again.

“Don’t cum yet,” you request from him, your voice small and weak from the fucking and the crying. “Hyunjin, let me look at you when you cum—”

He moans into your neck, his voice like a choir, like birdsong, but he obliges and slowly pulls his cock from you.

You are empty. This is the last time. This is the last time he will push into you again, you tell yourself, as you spin around to face him. There are tears in his eyelashes and sweat pearling on either side of his face and his hair is sticking to it. There is some of your sweat on his chest, and your cream has been smeared onto his cock, creating a lifelike blend of red and off-white and transparency. Except this isn’t art. Life, often, imitates art, but today is not one of those times. Today is the day Hyunjin leaves you.

You pull him close to you and he kisses you as you help him sink into you again, meeting him halfway, and, by God, this is how you like him the most—facing you, his body all over yours, his cock buried in you as deep as he possibly can. He is stunning like that, with the sunlight hitting his face, so much that you feel a throb within you. In response, Hyunjin grunts, slamming into you a little harder, throbbing, too.

“I like this, I like you, I’m not leaving because I don’t like you—” You don’t know how Hyunjin manages to talk. After all, you can barely think. But you hear his voice and you hear his words and you let them enter your soul. You will need to remember this. After he is gone, you will doubt, you will doubt that this love ever existed. He knows this. “I’m leaving because I want to love you better.”

You roll your hips to fuck him harder and he responds by vigorously pressing your back against the window. Let the whole world know you are in love with Hyunjin and he is in love with you and when he is full of sorrow, he likes to fuck his sorrow into you.

He slams into you harder, hard enough to make you cry out and clench around him. He does it again, and again.

"I love you," he tells you. "I love you more than anything. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I will never not love you. You are my angel, my angel."

You’re close—it’s too much. His voice, the words, his cock. Your walls throbbing, clenching around him. This is the last time. The last time the last time the last time—

“Look at me, Hyunjin,” you say, panting, praying that your tears do not blur your vision when the time comes. “Look at me please, please—”

But Hyunjin kisses you tenderly, lovingly, his tongue playing with yours. You feel the tell-tale throbs in his cock, feel it in the way he’s erratically fucking you. You put your hands on the small of his back, anchoring yourself to him, wrapping one of your legs around his, to allow him even deeper within you.

Let the whole world know Hyunjin will fill you up and look like a God while doing so.

He looks at you when he cums, just like you asked, struggling to keep his eyes open, tears rolling down his face. This is the last time you feel the pulses of him against your walls, that you feel his load as he shoots it into you along with his ruby red sorrow, his strawberry red love. He moans, too, and you never want to forget that either. Never want to forget the way Hyunjin looks when he empties himself inside of you. Like you just made and unmade him.

Like he is a dying man and you are his angel.

You’re close, too. Again. This is the last time you cum with his cock inside of you, so you revel in it while it happens, as Hyunjin’s trembling hand reaches for your core to massage and tease your clit. He is still throbbing inside you, riding the aftershocks of his high, looking at you all over. Your tits bounce every time he slams into you. You touch him, touch his face, pull his hair. Your back arches for him, and your mouth chants his name like a prayer. You cannot let this memory fade away, ever.

“You’re the best thing I ever had, best fucking thing,” Hyunjin tells you, “let me see your face when you cum on my cock, my angel. Let me watch.”

He knows you’re close—he can definitely feel you clamp around him. His seed is lazily dripping on your inner thigh, the way juice from a Jeju mandarin would trickle down his wrist as he ate it. The way his tears and your tears trickle down your faces, too.

You look at him when you cum, your walls fluttering around him. You cry out, forcing your eyes open, letting him watch as he makes and unmakes you. This is the last time. This is the last time you come undone, your pussy full of his cum, full of him, your heart full of red. Let the whole world know that today is the day you cease to exist.

Hyunjin fucks you gently through your orgasm, kissing your face, your breasts, your neck, whispering inaudible secrets and sins to you. You wrap your arms around his neck. It feels good, so good. Warmth has enveloped you. Warmth has filled you up. You feel the sun on your back, but Hyunjin's warmth is better.

You can’t let him go. You have to, but you can’t let him go.

It will be the hardest thing you will ever do.

In a situation such as this one, technicalities take up so much space, too much. He has to pull out of you. He has a plane to catch later that day, and he isn’t even finished packing his suitcase. You have to let him go.

So you pull away from him, feeling his cock retreat from you inch by inch. This is the last time it happens. This is the last time his cock is released from your plush walls, leaving a trail of cum behind it, splashing a few droplets of it on your thigh. You kiss him. Again, and again. Hyunjin kisses you back, holding you in his arms, taking you away from the window. The world has seen enough, and now you are his, just his again, for a few instants.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you, his mouth flush against yours. He apologizes into your mouth, filling your lungs with his regrets, his love. “I’ll write letters to you. Emails. Texts. I’ll text you with my new number as soon as I have it.”

In situations such as these, technicalities take up so much space. You don’t want to hear about how he will communicate with you. This is the last time you are with him. He says he will be back, but he will be a changed man when he does so. He will have found love, maybe, when he returns. He told you not to wait for him. He loves you, but you have to keep going.

Technicalities. He helps clean you up and you both gather your clothes and put them back on. He tells you the apartment will still be leased in his name for the next year, as his aunt has paid for the rent for the next foreseeable future. He hands you a key.

“Let this become your art studio,” he tells you. “You should paint more, you do it so well.”

Technicalities. You could stay, hang out with him, and help him pack his bags. You could even get in the car that will drive him to the airport. But, you can’t. You have to let him go, and it has to be now, or else it might be never.

“I promise I will come back to you, my angel.” You know he means it, you see it in his eyes. “I will never not love you.”

You are standing by the door. He holds you in his arms one last time and you swallow your tears, swallow the ugly shrieks you want to let out, swallow the demons threatening to unmake you, and you lift up your face to stare at him in the eyes one last time.

“I will never not love you,” you say, and he kisses you, his soft lips pressing against yours, kissing your mouth whole.

You can lose the same person over and over, many times, always in the same way, and you think that you get used to it—but really, you don’t. You know loss intimately, you know all of its darkest corners. Bracing for impact will not soften the blow.

You kiss him, tasting yourself a little in his mouth, tasting his tears and yours both on his lips.

Some colors aren’t meant to mix. But some are. Mixing red and tangerine orange together would simply make it more red. Or more orange, depending on how you felt on that particular day. It only made it more real.

“Goodbye, Hyunjin.” Your voice is shaking, your voice is ugly, but you try so hard to stay strong. “I love you. I hope you get better.”

“I hope you stay happy.” His voice is ugly, too. He tries to stay strong. “I will get better, for you. I love you, and I always will. My angel.”

Here is the truth: you are the ocean and Hyunjin is the sky. Here is another truth: these two elements are strikingly beautiful when put together in a photograph, a drawing, or a painting, but in reality, the ocean and the sky are thousands of miles from one another.

This is the hardest thing you have ever had to do, but you do it—you open the door, and you leave.

Love at first sight? What about it?

Unfortunately for you, it’s real as fuck. And even more unfortunate that it’s the kind of love that sticks to you. The kind of love that nothing can wash away, not distance, not time,

not heartbreak.

You do not have much left of Hyunjin. He left one day and you have not been able to exist ever since. You wake up in the morning, you go grocery shopping, you go to work, and you give painting classes on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. You go out with your coworkers, you hang out at arcades with Jisung. You drink strawberry vodka with Minho. You have dinner with your sister, with your parents.

Hyunjin left one day and it drained the color from your soul.

He wrote to you, almost every day at first. He wrote emails and then he texted you. Long walls of text, to tell you about the Australian winter, about the food. You often go back to these texts to read them, to remember him. There was one in particular that shook you to your core.

This one, you saved as a screenshot on your phone. It’s different from the others—no greetings, nothing, just straight to the point, so unlike Hyunjin, you wondered for a while if it really was him who had sent it. But maybe it felt unlike Hyunjin because he had just recovered a part of his old self, and you weren't quite accustomed to it, yet.

Felix’s cousin is a doctor and works in a big physical rehabilitation clinic. Their family came to visit one day and Felix told them about me. His cousin thinks they can fix me. He thinks they can do another surgery and fix me, fix my hip. He thinks I’ll even be able to dance. Maybe not as well as I used to… but I’ll dance. I hope I can dance for you, someday. Even if you found someone else by then, even if you just don’t want me back. If I can ever dance again, will you let me dance for you?

It is persimmon season. Hyunjin never liked persimmons, but you do. You eat them sometimes. Hyunjin never liked persimmons but when you eat one you think of him. You will never not see him in everything.

You do not have much left of him. Except for memories, a lot of them. Somedays they feel like having a warm cup of coffee offered by a friend after an apology. Somedays, they feel like biting into a fresh Jeju mandarin. Somedays, they feel like lovemaking that smells like paint, looks like sorrow, and tastes like the color red.

You do not have much left of Hyunjin except for the space he used to take in your life. In your body.

But he sends you letters. He writes to you like he is a dying man, and the ink on the paper is the only prayer he knows. He writes to you a lot more than you to him—there will be days when you're halfway into writing a letter and there are two more in the mail, waiting for you.

The first letter devastated you, and the second, even more. Not just because of the contents, but because of the way he writes them. His near-perfect handwriting, his choice of words, his choice of topics he likes to write about. The fact that, in these letters, he still calls you his angel. The fact that he writes these letters as if he hadn't left you.

It angered you. You cried, you cried so much when you saw it for the first time. But you understand him. You do not resent him.

You are in love with Hyunjin and he is in love with you. It doesn't mean you are meant to be together. It doesn't have to mean anything other than that. You love each other. The end.

There is another letter today. You haven't opened it immediately upon returning home—you always feel especially drained after the Saturday painting class. You know why, too. You've asked for the class to be transferred to a different studio but, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be possible. But you give the class anyway. Only, week after week, your eyes keep wandering to the two unoccupied easels on the left. To the wooden table in between them, where you once saw a mandarin orange, and nothing was ever the same after.

You have wine. One glass, then two, then you pour another. The wine is good. The wine is red. You twirl your fingertip on its surface, letting a drop of red spread onto the off-white of the envelope that's on the coffee table. Once, Hyunjin stained you in red, just to see himself in you.

You always feel the paper before opening the letter. You feel it with your hands, your fingers. You inhale it, just in case any of Hyunjin's smell would linger on it. But it never does. It just smells like paper. You never know what to expect in the letters because each and every one of them is different, except for one thing—Hyunjin always paints a little something for you at the bottom of the last page.

Halfway through the third glass of wine, you have enough courage to read his words.

My angel,

My mom called today. Her sister passed, it was cancer. She's been ill for a while and, honestly, it's a relief to know that her suffering is over. But my heart hurts.

She was the aunt I was closest to. She was more than an aunt… she was my friend.

My parents worked a lot when I grew up. As you'd expect from a doctor and a surgical nurse… but my aunt would come and spend evenings with me. She was the one to make dinner for me when I was little. She helped with my homework and she put me to bed. She is a big part of my upbringing. She always smelled like roses, too, but not an artificial smell…

Later, I found out that she used to make her own rose water, and was using it as perfume.

On my 10th birthday, she gave me all of these art supplies. And I'm not talking about these little kits that any child gets, no, no, my angel. She bought a box and then bought actual, real art supplies to put inside of it.

I tried the pastel first. There were all kinds of them in that big box—hard or soft, oil or watercolor… several brands. My favorites were the Caran d'Ache. The oil pastels specifically. I didn't stick with pastels all that much, did I? But I remember these so vividly, I can still feel the metal of the packaging in my hands. The colors were so real. It felt like the pastels were doing all the work for me.

There were markers too, but these, I didn't use too much… Instead, when I had a classmate home, I would let him use these so that they wouldn't ask to touch my precious pastels.

Or my paint.

My aunt bought so much paint—the box was so heavy I couldn't even lift it all on my own at that age. Watercolor, acrylic, basic oil paint, gouache… again, so many brands, with all the paint brushes I would ever need to experience them all, and all of the sketchbook and canvas paper any artist of any age could dream of.

Angel love, at first, when I opened the box, I didn't even know what to do with all of this.

I don't know why she gave it to me. I never expressed interest in art. I read a lot of books, I studied…

I wasn't very good at first. But I used every single object in that huge box of supplies because when I did so, I no longer felt lonely.

But I didn't understand. Like most kids, I liked it, though, there was just no spark. Yet.

Then, I got good at it. Paint, especially. I would paint gradients. My walls were covered with sheets of painted gradients, of all colors. I started with something easy, just two colors. One on both corners of the sheet, and I would do my best to blend them.

Then I added another color. Then another. Then, many colors.

The world was so loud, so crazy, but when I painted, I could be at peace. Painting just made sense. I mixed my paint, then I blended the colors on the paper. It drove my mom crazy because all of my clothes, my bedsheets even, had stains on them, from all the paint.

I stopped when I met Minho and Felix. From then on, I only danced. Until… well. Until the accident.

You know how they say… that learning another language rewires your whole brain?

This is what happened to me, I think.

I was worse at dancing at first than I had been at art and painting when I started. Angel love, I hated it. I hated dancing so much. My brain didn't have the wiring in it to comprehend the language that Minho was trying to teach me. And yet, I was fascinated. I saw him, I saw Felix, move in ways I didn't think were possible.

So I practiced. I practiced day after day, hating every minute of it. I forgot the language of colors and instead, I immersed myself in rhythms and precision and fluidity. I taught my body how to bend, I taught my hips how to move, my arms how to create shapes. I taught my legs how to support me elegantly. Minho was always there with me in the studio, and Felix, too. Together, we learned. Together, we became better.

I remember the first time I understood the language of dance.

I was alone. And I danced. Alone. Not looking into the mirror this time, I just really danced with my soul instead of my body. And I understood.

I danced the whole song, from beginning to end. When it was over, Minho was there and I hadn't even noticed him. He looked at me like it was the first time he saw me. We watched the footage from my dance and then I knew. I knew I was meant to dance.

I still had a lot of work to do. But at least now I knew how to do it. I knew how to create textures, I knew how to blend the movements to create something beautiful. Something powerful. It became my dream. It became my life. I know you know all of this, angel love, but…

After I had the accident… I stayed in the hospital for a long time.

One day, my aunt came to visit me. She came twice a week, always, and she would bring pastries, or fruit, or bubble tea, always smelling like rose water. This time, she came with a box.

In the box there was paint, canvas paper, and brushes.

I had forgotten how to paint. I had forgotten how to hold my brushes, how to blend colors, and how to make textures.

I started with acrylic while I was still in the hospital. It was just more convenient like that. Acrylic feels like dancing to an upbeat pop song. It looks easier than it actually is, but the result will always be satisfying if you're willing to put a minimum of effort into it. Mistakes don't matter as much—too bold of a brush stroke can easily be blended again, just like overdoing a movement in the choreography can simply look as if one is particularly enthusiastic. It won't clash. It won't be ugly. It will just be.

Pastels came next. I was home then, at my parents' place. Believe it or not, my aunt remembered which pastels I preferred, the Caran D'Ache ones, and they felt exactly the same as they used to when I picked them up again. Except pastel was more difficult. I couldn't blend them right. I couldn't remember how to work with them, how to make anything beautiful. But I remembered the time Minho made us dance to this really intense rock song… How I struggled, at first, to find a balance between strong movements and fluid ones. How, later, I realized I didn't have to choose at all—that a single movement could be both strong and fluid, and precise. From then on, I remembered how to use pastel.

Do you want to know about watercolors, my angel? Watercolors are like contemporary dance. Obvious comparison, I know, but I promise you that painting in aquarelle and dancing contemporary at the exact same thing. Quick but ample, light and airy but purposeful. You can easily saturate your canvas with watercolor. You can easily saturate your dance in contemporary. But sometimes, it's what you want to do, and yet at other times, watercolor isn't enough. Sometimes, contemporary isn't enough. But it feels good anyway.

I ignored oil for the longest time. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted my mind to suffer as much as my body did. Maybe I didn't want to return home the way oil on canvas makes me feel. I don't know, angel love. All I know is one day, I saw an ad online for painting classes with a specialization in oil paint, and I signed up. Class wouldn't start until a few weeks, and by then my recovery was over, and I had a job, my own apartment…

I bought the supplies that I needed for a complete course. My aunt came with me. Shopping. She kept saying how silly it was of me to take this class, that I didn't need it, that I already knew how to paint, even with oil.

But I went anyway. I took the Thursday evening classes, for months. I truly didn't need them.

Oil on canvas doesn't feel like any particular type of dancing. It just feels like dancing, period. It feels like being free. It feels like I can finally speak the language with which others will understand me.

Angel love, do you think I didn't notice your eyes the first time you saw my work? Do you think I didn't see the tears in them?

The colors that I painted on that day are the colors I see in my head when I think about my body. My broken body. Muted colors, but still bright enough to be there. To just be. Like I'm always reminded that I was broken and put back together. Like I'm always reminded that I'm not quite me.

Loving you felt like that. Like oil painting, I mean. It felt like dancing when I used to be really good at it.

You made sense. You made sense the way nothing else did.

I fell in love with you the moment I saw you understand my soul in that painting, the first day we had class together. Or maybe I already loved you by the end of the class. The whole week, I kept beating myself up over the fact that I didn't offer to share my mandarin orange with you that day… That whole week, I thought about the tears in your eyes when you saw the colors.

I hope that someday, my soul will be painted in different colors. I hope that I can show you these new colors and that if you cry, it will be happy tears.

I will miss my aunt very much, her smile, her rose water perfume. She is the reason I am who I am today, I'm convinced of it.

I miss you. I miss you every minute of every day.

You still make the most sense. I love you,

Hyunjin

Your days are empty. You fill them with colors. You paint, often in Hyunjin’s empty apartment. Except it is no longer empty—it is full of your saturated canvases, full of the colors you have smeared on them, trying to release yourself from the demon dancing in your head.

It is persimmon season. Hyunjin never liked persimmons, but they remind you of him anyway. In the apartment that is now your art studio, there is a white silk ribbon stained red. Not all reds are comparable, but sometimes, red is just red. Fruit is just fruit. Pain is just pain.

This is the hardest thing you ever had to do—you let Hyunjin go, and you kept existing.

a/n: this is not the end of this story <3 please have faith in me. thank you for reading, thank you for the feedback. i love you <3

your messages, reblogs, feedback, they mean the world to me. thank you for the support, thank you for reading my works. i appreciate it beyond words. i hope life treats you kindly. i hope to return to you with the next chapter soon! <3 - mari

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