a sequence of eight peculiar nothings (2/2)

[horrours]

part one

VI.

Taekwoon is a ghost painter. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't mean he paints supernatural creatures. It means that for a cut of the profit and absolutely no credit, he finishes the minute and mundane details of beautiful paintings for famous artists. Much like a ghost writer, his contributions to the finished work are never acknowledged to the general public. But much like a ghost writer, he gets paid for the anonymous efforts he contributes. That pay is something he desperately needs. Therefore, he tells himself that it doesn't bother him at all when his 20% of a painting is hailed as another genius masterpiece by a very skilled and well-known artist. He tells himself that none of his matters as long as he can pay the rent every month, and maybe buy food once every two weeks. Sometimes, he convinces himself that it's true.

Most people mistakenly assume Taekwoon is a vampire or a horror story writer or a private investigator hired to stalk people in the dead of night. Most people semi-correctly assume that Taekwoon is socially awkward and misanthropic. The truth is that Taekwoon is a starving artist with a crippling case of shyness and a relatively low level of patience. The truth is also that, when interacting with the other seventh-floor residents of the building, Taekwoon gets the sense he's drastically misunderstood.

For example there's Hongbin, who seems nice enough, but always keeps a safe distance. There's Wonsik, who is well-intentioned, but is inexplicably difficult to get close to despite how endearing he is. There's Sanghyuk, who seems awkward and uncomfortable every time they run into each other in the hall. There's Jaehwan, who Taekwoon has an extremely limited desire to actually be around. And then there's Hakyeon, who tries quite enthusiastically to actively involve himself in Taekwoon's life, but unfortunately seems to think he can pull Taekwoon out of his shell by incessantly pestering him until he breaks out of it.

Therefore Taekwoon prefers to spend his time locked in his dimly-lit flat, his long unkempt hair tied back from his face in a messy ponytail as he hunches over yet another painting of a landscape and adds in miscellaneous background nature. His spine stiffens up as he spends hours shading the tiny leaves of trees and his wrist cramps as he endures even more time filling in frothy waves, but it's employment. After the last music store job Taekwoon lost for being "too intimidating to interact with the customers", this is all that stands between him and resuming his usual pattern of intermittently spending several months living on the street. Winter is approaching, and he'd really like it if he never had to be homeless again. Currently, he's succeeding at that. (Not going hungry is something he's still working on.)

And so Taekwoon paints. He adds dainty flower petals and shimmering reflections of sunlight on ponds and subtle variations in colour on the different sides of clouds. He does this for days on end. When he's done with the paintings, he sets them down to dry on the kitchen table that he borrowed indefinitely from Wonsik and was inexplicably allowed to keep. He likes the table. It's much better than leaving the completed paintings on the floor, where any number of terrible things could happen to them. It's saved him from having to re-do at least three paintings. In his line of work, this is a priceless assistance.

Maybe, Taekwoon thinks, he could try a bit harder to engage with the others - at least Wonsik, if not anyone else. But the thing is, he doesn't know how.

One day, Taekwoon takes a painting outside. His lack of a lamp means no artificially controlled lighting, and opening the curtains means a blinding influx of sun that obstructs anything else from his view. Opening them only partway casts a bizarre shadow over the room that doesn't help at all. And so, quite reluctantly, he gathers up his supplies. He takes the half-finished painting, his palette of paints, several brushes and an easel. He also brings a spare hair tie in the likely event that his current one snaps. He slips on his shoes, casts a longing glance backwards at his lair and then heads out into the hallway. Miraculously, over 50% of the lights are working. He sits down on the frayed patch of carpet between the five-legged bench and the plastic palm tree, sets up the easel, spreads everything out around him and then gets to work.

"Hm, what's this? A painting? Ah, it's beautiful! Our Taekwoon is so talented! Why didn't you show us sooner?"

The noisy disturbance hovering impolitely over his shoulder is Hakyeon. Of course it's Hakyeon. Only Hakyeon would have the instinct to appear only three minutes after Taekwoon and the rudeness to immediately interrupt him. Takewoon's eyes narrow.

"It's not all my work. Only some."

"Which part?"

The painting is of an erupting volcano. Taekwoon pictures Hakyeon falling into it. But still, with considerable reluctance, he points at the shape of the sulfur clouds he's filling in above it.

"This part."

It's only the beginning of the thing, just a vague fluffy outline of sharp blacks and hazy charcoals and acrid greys, but Hakyeon still looks suitably impressed. Taekwoon picks up two clean brushes and dips them into an orange and a red, adding a few extra sparks of lava mixing in with the clouds for extra effect. Shockingly, Hakyeon doesn't disrupt him for a full thirty seconds. This is utterly unprecedented. Taekwoon feels a slight flicker of annoyance when Hakyeon does speak again, but he doesn't mind it as much as he thought he would.

"It's nice, Taekwoonie. It looks really good."

Taekwoon ducks his head almost shyly, and goes back to working on the clouds. Hakyeon watches with interest, following the paintbrushes with his eyes and tilting his head to keep up each time the direction of Taekwoon's brush-strokes changes. They do this often, with the way the clouds are in various long, nebulous shapes. The effect on Hakyeon's posture is fairly comical. Taekwoon may or may not swirl the brushes around with extra vigour just to watch Hakyeon's bizarre contortions.

Taekwoon also may or may not violently swirl the brushes around on Hakyeon's face when Hakyeon decides to back-hug him before heading off for lunch. Hakyeon is warm and his sweater is fuzzy and he smells like fancy shampoo, but he also clings like a leech and his bony arms dig into Taekwoon's sides at an uncomfortable angle. Considering that Hakyeon has once again decided to ignore Taekwoon's aura of never touch me ever, Taekwoon feels very justified in replicating a sulfur cloud on Hakyeon's cheek and several lava sparks on his forehead. Maybe Hongbin is a work of art, but a screeching flailing fleeing Hakyeon makes a wonderful canvas.

Taekwoon does not willingly attend the First Unofficial Seventh Floor Hallway Picnic. In fact, attending is not his choice at all. He ends up at the event through a combination of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting stuck in the wrong area and catching the attention of the wrong people. To be specific, Taekwoon is returning from delivering a completed tropical island painting to the artist that will get the credit for it when he turns the corner and immediately stumbles into a whirlwind of festivities that he did not anticipate the presence of. Somehow he gets dragged into the chaos, and within seconds he's trapped between Jaehwan and an enormous tray of lemon squares and the wall. Before Taekwoon can attempt to wriggle free, Hakyeon spots him. Hakyeon's eyes light up in triumph. To Taekwoon, it looks like sadistic glee.

"Taekwoon is here! Look, Taekwoon came!"

The people Hakyeon is yelling this announcement to are all of the seventh floor residents, who, for a reason Taekwoon cannot fathom, have gathered in the hallway outside their flats and decided to hold some sort of impromptu feast. Taekwoon's neighbours and various food items are strewn all over the hideous maroon paisley-print carpet. He sees Hongbin, who's slicing up several strangely-shaped purple fruits over by the five-legged bench. Sanghyuk is beside him, somewhat squashed by the fake palm tree, mixing the chopped fruit into a large colourful salad with something that looks suspiciously like ham. Hakyeon is sitting in the middle of the hall, surrounded by stacked-up plastic containers of kimchi and a dish of vegetable lasagna and a rice cooker plugged into the wall. Behind him is Wonsik, who appears to be using Hakyeon's back as a surface to grade calculus exams on as he simultaneously stirs a pot of completely unidentifiable stew on a hot-plate and tries not to surrender to the urge to take another one of his several daily naps (the hip hop music he's got blaring from an old-school boombox somehow does not seem to be helping the cause). And then of course there's Jaehwan and the carefully-arranged several-tiered display of lemon squares, both of which Taekwoon is about a millisecond away from accidentally faceplanting into. Despite the incessant chatter and cooking noises and thumping beat, they devote a moment of their attention to Taekwoon. For some reason, they seem appreciative of Taekwoon's presence - at least, more appreciative than Taekwoon is of theirs.

"Come on, don't just sit there! Have some food!"

Today is Tuesday. On Saturday, like usual, Taekwoon was planning to show up early to the lobby for breakfast and abscond with half of the free provisions. He's eternally grateful for their appearance, because they help supplement the fact that his weekly food budget is usually enough to buy only a small bag of rice and some vegetables. Sometimes his weekly food budget is nothing, in which case said provisions are essential for survival. But on Saturday, Taekwoon's alarm didn't go off. Therefore, he arrived in the lounge approximately an hour and a half late, after everything had already disappeared. All he managed to procure was ten cups of coffee and a miniscule amount of cream cheese. This is one of those weeks when Taekwoon's food budget is nothing. Saturday feels like a long, long time ago.

"Don't be rude, Taekwoonie! Eat what we made!"

At this moment, Taekwoon's whole view of the situation shifts as he realises he's not surrounded just by strange food, but strange food that is actually available for him to consume. This changes everything. Suddenly, his unwilling attendance to the First Unofficial Seventh Floor Hallway Picnic is seemingly like a very good idea, and the other attendees are seeming like moderately decent company. His hesitation to trust anything edible that may have been handled by any of the other seventh floor residents proves to be weaker his need to eat something for the first time in several days, and tentatively he selects a lemon square. Satisfied, they leave him to his own devices and return to their own incessant chatter.

Taekwoon eats half the lemon squares. He also hovers over the rice cooker until it's done, and subtly fills a few bowls with its contents. He sneaks a container of kimchi back to his corner between Jaehwan and the lemon squares tray and returns it empty. (He does not, however, touch the purple-vegetable-and-ham salad or the unidentifiable stew.) And if anyone notices that a suspiciously large portion of the lasagna has disappeared, no one says a word.

The invitation that is slid under Taekwoon's door the next day couldn't possibly be less anonymous. There are only two people he knows who could team up to produce a note written on the back of an answer key for a maths quiz, with an accidental smudge of some toxically orange-coloured bb cream on the corner. But nonetheless, Taekwoon takes it over to the window and draws back the heavy black curtains just enough to read the message.

First Official Seventh Floor Hallway Picnic
Friday, 5.30PM
(There will be lemon squares)

Upon further inspection, Taekwoon could swear the particular shade of green marker ink is the same as the felt-tip pen Sanghyuk uses to make notes about the various misbehaviours of the residents on the records he's required to provide to the landlord. There's also a large coffee stain in the middle of the paper, and a beetle clinging to the edge of it. Logically, the first two contributors must've had accomplices; there is only one particular group of people nearby who could manage to create and deliver such an incompetent and incriminating disaster.

For some reason, Taekwoon appreciates the effort. He flicks the beetle off the paper and then sets it down on the kitchen table between a painting of an ocean and another of a rainbow. This way, he'll see it every day - not that he could really forget.

VII.

Sometimes, Jaehwan wonders if his students have even seen an insect before in their lives. As he flips through messily-sketched pencil diagrams of various heteroptera insects in which several of his students have yet again mixed up the prothorax and the mesothorax, he truly begins to think that they all show up to class with earplugs in and he's never noticed. Or perhaps they are all sleepwalking. Or both. He tells this to Wonsik when they meet up between classes for sandwiches, because as a fellow teacher, he thinks Wonsik will understand his plight.

Wonsik does. "The other day, I had a student try to use the use the trapezium rule to solve a Pfaffian differential equation. I don't even know how you do that."

Jaehwan doesn't remember in the slightest what the trapezium rule is, but he nods anyway. He understands the spirit of the thing, if not the letter. Forlornly chewing another bite of his fire chicken pizza sandwich, he leans under the table to rummage around in his briefcase until he comes up with his gradebook. After flipping through several pages of disorganised scribbles and a few notes about a ladybird he found clinging to the lightpole that fell on Hakyeon a few months ago, he folds the pages back so that one titled MIDTERM GRADES is clearly visible. In return Wonsik pulls out his own gradebook, and they swap. There is an audible hiss as they read over the pages. Jaehwan winces. Wonsik shudders. Slowly, they close the gradebooks and switch back.

"We should've just become singers," Jaehwan says, very sadly.

"There's still time," says Wonsik, with absolutely no sincerity whatsoever.

It's true. Once upon a time, Jaehwan's dream was to become a singer. The problem is, Jaehwan also used to think he was a mosquito. The circumstances surrounding the origin of this delusion are unclear, but what is clear is that Jaehwan's life as a mosquito irreparably damaged his career as a singer. When asked to replicate the touching performances of his beautiful ballads during auditions or crucial evaluations by company CEOs, all he managed to produce was a high-pitched whining noise reminiscent of the others in his species. Producers, it turned out, were not very impressed by the Song Of His People.

Through a combination of the natural passage of time and some in-depth work with a very skilled doctor, Jaehwan came to realise that he is not, in fact, a mosquito. However, after spending so long living as a mosquito, Jaehwan felt a deep and unbreakable bond with his fellow mosquitoes and extended insect family. Thus, he decided to go into the field of teaching entomology, to better explain to the world the misunderstood and often scorned Culture Of His People.

As it turns out, teaching entomology is sort of a niche market. When Jaehwan finally found a university that was willing to hire him, he immediately accepted the position. When he discovered they were also willing to give him research funding and money for a home laboratory, no further questions were asked. This is how he ends up moving into the building on 6 Vixx Street, with the broken lift and the rodent-infested mailroom, teaching five classes of students who can't tell apart the prothorax and the mesothorax.

At least he has his insects. Although he gets the feeling that if Sanghyuk gets his way, that won't be the case for much longer.

Jaehwan comes back to his office after an 11AM Wednesday lecture about white cave velvet worms to find the place looking like it's been ransacked and a body lying motionless on the floor. For most people, this would be a cause for alarm. For Jaehwan, it's a fairly normal occurrence. He proceeds through the doorway with caution, taking great care not to step on any of the crumpled papers or red pens or graphing calculators scattered across the floor. He nudges a few larger items to the side with his foot, such as an instructor's manual for A Simple Guide To Numerical Integration and a pair of headphones with a hip-hop beat still blaring out of them. The trail of mess leads to the body, which is sprawled out on its side with a backpack tucked under its head. It is wearing a sweater over a collared shirt and a tie that might be Hakyeon's, along with pen marks on its cheek and a few paper clips in its hair. Jaehwan steps over it and sits down at his desk, setting down his briefcase beside the body. Conspicuously, the body snores.

This isn't anything unusual. Somehow, Wonsik has got in the habit of sneaking out of the school he teaches at in between classes to nap on Jaehwan's office floor. Since Wonsik's own office is only a tiny cubicle in a room full of fifteen other noisy teachers, Jaehwan takes pity on Wonsik and allows the routine to continue. He knows Wonsik can't survive for more than five hours without a nap, and that would be a very sad way for Wonsik to go. Plus, Jaehwan would not want to be the person to break the news to Hakyeon.

As per their usual agreement, Wonsik has left a cereal sandwich on Jaehwan's desk as payment for his temporary rent of the floor space. Jaehwan chews absently on it as he checks the unread messages on his phone. There's a text from Sanghyuk begging Jaehwan to cover for him with the landlord because he ducked out of his shift early the second he got an invitation to accompany Hongbin on some errand or other, and another one from Hakyeon demanding to know if Jaehwan will be bringing lemon squares to the picnic on Friday because Hakyeon told Taekwoon there would be lemon squares and so there had better be lemon squares. There's also a voicemail from Hongbin warning Jaehwan that he should sneak back into the building undercover because one of his caterpillars seems to have grown ten extra legs, increased to three times its normal size, turned neon purple and decided to dangle from the fake chandelier in the lobby terrifying all the passersby. Jaehwan regrets giving any of them his number.

On the floor, Wonsik rolls over a few times until he bumps into Jaehwan's briefcase and it falls on him. It's a few moments after the thump of it hitting Wonsik's skull before Wonsik finally groans and opens an eye. "Thanks for the floor," he yawns, rolling out from under the briefcase and flopping onto his side with clearly no intention of getting up. "So tired. Quizzes to write. Projects to grade. Hakyeon texts to ignore. Office-mates won't shut up." Wonsik raises his head for half a moment, then lets it drop back to the floor with another vague noise. "They gave the desks next to mine to Byungjoo and Hyosang from the English department. Byungjoo is having a Deep Life Crisis about dying his hair neon, and Hyosang is in trouble for buying socks for his boyfriend's birthday. I might be over here a lot."

"Bring more sandwiches." Jaehwan cheerfully leans down to pat Wonsik's head. Several paper clips fall out of his hair.

"Yeah, yeah." Wonsik waves his hand dismissively, then balls up the backpack and stuffs it under his head again. Jaehwan winces as Wonsik nearly impales the side of his hand on the sharp end of a drawing compass. "I'm going back to sleep."

"Don't you have another class in an hour?"

"An hour is a long time if you know how to use it."

Within a second Wonsik is snoring again, and Jaehwan turns back to his grading. His eyes light up when he sees a paper where the student finally identified the prothorax and mesothorax correctly. He almost cries in joy. But then all the light in his eyes and his soul fades away when he sees the student has identified the cephalon as the pygidium. His people, he thinks, are so misunderstood.

The Saturday after the First Official Seventh Floor Picnic, Jaehwan opens Hakyeon's front door to find Taekwoon standing outside it. Never in a million years would Jaehwan expect to see Taekwoon standing outside Hakyeon's door, but there he is, his eyes nervously fixed on the atrocious carpet and a large bag of apples in his hand. There's a smudge of purple paint on Taekwoon's cheek that Jaehwan is not entirely sure if Taekwoon is aware of. Taekwoon's voice is still very quiet, but for once, Jaehwan doesn't have to strain his ears to hear it. "May I have a lemon square?"

The reason Jaehwan is at Hakyeon's place, actually, is because of the lemon squares. He was not allowed to keep any of the leftover food in his own refrigerator, due to the poisonous millipede that has been on the loose in his flat since Thursday; to avoid tremendous waste, Jaehwan managed to coerce Hakyeon into lending him a shelf in his and Wonsik's refrigerator for the food. Jaehwan has a lot of lemon squares left over. Actually, considering the fact that the attendees to the picnic showed up armed with the contents of an entire grocery, the amount of everything Jaehwan has left over could feed a small country or a large army for several days. So he nods, opening the door wider to let Taekwoon in. Taekwoon slips off his battered shoes inside the door, standing there with the bag of apples and waiting for any direction of how to proceed from there. Jaehwan gets the sense that Taekwoon is not really used to this "visiting people" thing, especially initiating it. He's proud of himself for earning the distinction of changing this. Enthusiastically, he drapes his arm over Taekwoon and drags him and the apples to the kitchen where the lemon squares are. Taekwoon trails after him silently.

Hakyeon is sitting on the kitchen floor, fiddling aimlessly with the ancient radio Jaehwan brought over after finding it in a box he'd never unpacked. His eyes light up in delight when he sees Taekwoon, and he smiles triumphantly. Taekwoon, to his credit, does not flee. Instead, Taekwoon drifts past Hakyeon and rummages in the refrigerator.

"Aren't you going to say hello?" Hakyeon pouts, and then tugs obnoxiously on the leg of Taekwoon's trousers when he gets no reply.

It's funny, but Jaehwan will later swear that what happens next isn't quite an accident. The exact details are fuzzy, but he does recall seeing Taekwoon shove several lemon squares into his mouth and nudge the refrigerator door shut with his foot before an apple from the bag Taekwoon brought slips out of it and thumps down hard on the top of Hakyeon's head. And then another. And another. Jaehwan could also swear Taekwoon looks a bit satisfied with himself as Hakyeon squawks and topples over onto the tile floor, fallen apples scattered around him. But before he can confirm any of these suspicions, Taekwoon slinks out of the kitchen to chew his lemon squares in peace.

That night, when Wonsik comes home, they take the remainder of the apples and attempt to make an apple pie. Hongbin comes over to see what all the noise is about, and Sanghyuk comes over when he is once again recruited during off-duty hours to investigate a call the landlord received about a strange smell on the seventh floor of something burning.

"This is nice," Jaehwan remarks, to no one in particular, as he listens to Hakyeon's screeching drown out Wonsik trying to order everyone not to panic. Sanghyuk has flung some sort of burning cloth onto the ground and is repeatedly stomping on it; a shirtless Hongbin appears to be in shock as he dashes over to the kitchen sink with the flaming ashes of the pie and turns the water on full blast. In the corner, Taekwoon is observing the chaos as he subtly adds a small bonfire to a painting of an idyllic campground. "Yes, this is nice."

Taekwoon ever-so-slightly nods as he makes the flames on the paint bonfire just a bit higher.

Semester break is a strange time for Jaehwan. Once all his grading is done, all the final lab reports analysed and the final exams bemoaned, there is approximately eight days in which he has nothing to do. For one whole day, he sleeps. And then, after that, he's left with the strange anomie that comes with the limbo between the time his normal life pauses and when it resumes. For another day he drifts between the flats of the various seventh-floor residents, delaying errands and interrupting conversations and intruding awkwardly into intimate moments. After that, he studies his insects and observes his neighbours. It's funny how many things can happen in eight days. In the space of eight days, there is time for a lot of things.

One time, Jaehwan comes home from the convenience store down the street to see Wonsik standing nervously outside his and Hakyeon's door in fancy clothes with a bouquet of roses. Jaehwan finds this a little strange because Wonsik lives there, but then again, no one really understands anything that Hakyeon and Wonsik do together. It makes a little more sense when Wonsik texts him later to let him know he's won the recently-started betting pool of how long it'll take Wonsik and Hakyeon to make the Boyfriends Thing official, but he doesn't dwell on it too long because this means he's just come into a small fortune and he's going to spend the rest of his life hiding from the rest of the betting pool participants because of it.

Another time, he walks into the lobby to find Hongbin sitting in the lounge, waiting for Sanghyuk to get off his shift so they can go out for lunch at a nearby bakery and buy a birthday present for one of his famous acquaintances. Hongbin is still wearing the makeup from his modelling photoshoot at some ridiculous hour of the morning, and it accentuates his work-of-art smile to the point that even Jaehwan feels slightly faint. He has never seen Sanghyuk look so nervous in his whole life. When he looks over at Sanghyuk and mouths good luck, Sanghyuk gives him the same kind of look he has when the landlord makes him go down into the possibly-haunted cellar in search of completely unnecessary holiday decorations. Jaehwan never asks how the date went, but the next day he swears he can hear Sanghyuk humming "This Is What Dreams Are Made Of".

Yet another time, Taekwoon stops by Jaehwan's place to pick up some more lemon squares, and he's carrying a shopping bag. When Jaehwan curiously peeks inside it and inquires as to its contents, Taekwoon tells him, "Shoes. Shoes with no holes." He looks satisfied. Jaehwan links this to the very intricate painting Taekwoon just sold for an extremely famous artist, and smiles.

It's funny how many things can happen in eight days. By the time Jaehwan has to start preparing for the next semester, a lot of things have happened.

VIII.

Sunday mornings become the Official Seventh Floor Breakfast Mornings. No one is quite sure how this decision was reached, but it seems to have been less of a formal agreement and more of an unspoken consensus. This consensus was probably reached because of needing a replacement for the Official Seventh Floor Hallway Picnics, which were banned by the landlord after the eruption of a territorial argument when the third one was invaded by a group of guys who call themselves the Bulletproof Boy Scouts and live in the penthouse and never turn their fucking music down. So every Sunday morning, all six of them gather in Hakyeon and Wonsik's flat starting at 10AM, and this becomes their routine.

Taekwoon still doesn't show up unless specifically invited. One Saturday night they forget to slip an invitation under his door, and don't realise the mistake until 10.30AM on Sunday morning comes and there's still no sign of Taekwoon. Hongbin quickly scrawls out a note on a napkin, and Jaehwan hurries down the hall to shove it under Taekwoon's door. Half a second after he does, Taekwoon opens his door and steps outside, as if he's been waiting there for this exact thing.

Sometime during the preparation of the food, Sanghyuk's phone rings on the counter. The caller ID says Root Of All Evil, which they understand to be the landlord. Sanghyuk's hands are immersed in a sink full of wet dishes and soapy water. He shoots Jaehwan a panicked look. "Cover for me!"

Jaehwan obliges. After much angry yelling from the other side of the phone, Jaehwan interjects. "Hello! This is Jaehwan. Sanghyuk cannot currently come to the phone. Or his job. I accidentally let loose an entire horde of things that people are scared of." Leaning back from the phone, he makes a high-pitched mosquito whine along with a startlingly accurate impression of a scorpion hissing and beetle legs scuttling. For effect, Hakyeon pauses his gossipping with Hongbin and lets out a piercing scream. Unceremoniously, Jaehwan ends the call.

"That probably would've been more convincing if there wasn't Trey Songz in the background," Hakyeon says disdainfully, looking back at where Taekwoon and Wonsik are next to the blaring radio discussing in-depth Trey Songz senpai's entire discography. Taekwoon blinks back at him innocently. There's a cute ribbon in his long hair, for reasons unknown. Hakyeon can't bring himself to say anything to Taekwoon. Instead, he scoffs at Wonsik. "What kind of bug sounds like Trey Songz?"

"Don't make me come over there." Wonsik raises a wooden spoon, oblivious to the coconut syrup dripping off it. "You want to break up, Cha Hakyeon? Huh?"

"Not after how long it took you to finally ask me out." Hakyeon smirks, quite smugly, and blows Wonsik a kiss. Wonsik groans, with a familiar look of disgust that they all know by now is fake. Perched on the counter next to Hakyeon, Hongbin is keeping his eyes fixed in paranoia on Sanghyuk's back as he slides a cup of coffee down the counter to Taekwoon. Taekwoon looks pleased as he takes it and slinks away into the shadows with it. The coffee was specially prepared for Hongbin by Sanghyuk. Hakyeon sighs, leaning over to murmur in Hongbin's ear. "When are you going to tell Sanghyuk you don't like coffee?"

"Maybe sometime," says Hongbin, without any conviction, and smiles softly at Sanghyuk's back. It has escaped no one's notice that Sanghyuk and Hongbin's sweaters match a little too closely to be a coincidence. They'll probably start a betting pool next on how long it will take for them to adopt a cat together. It's only a matter of time.

On the floor next to Wonsik's new kitchen table, Taekwoon has begun working on a painting. This time, he was upgraded from background nature; this time, he was asked to fill in faces, hair and clothing on the vague shapes of a few people lounging on the grass in a park. If someone looked very, very closely, they might notice a few familiar things about the figures on the ground. For example, one holding an enormous centipede. Two in matching sweaters with a fluffy white cat lounging between them. One asleep amidst a scattered pile of pencil-scrawled papers, another brightly-smiling one curled up in the sleeping one's arms.

With a magnifying glass they might even notice that way out in the distance there's a long-haired man in front of an easel, working on a painting next to a tiny tray of something that looks suspiciously like lemon squares.

[a lot of notes about the fic]% uh this was going to be 6k or 7k i really don't know what happened

% part iii is because of this, part viii is because of this and hyukbin and the sweaters and the cat is because of this.
% ravi is a calculus teacher because i found this. yes really
% [contact] twitter // masterlist ♡
% there is now a hungarian translation for this fic by hongbab!
% i blame and/or owe my life to the enablers on vixx tlist. i don't know why i love you all (but i do)
% subsequently following this i am leaving the planet bye