SPACE ;; TAEGGUK

;;

jeongguk
was very behind
with his portfolio.

not that mr kim would
mind of course, the
man seemed not to
be concerned with
all of what he was
probably supposed to
be concerned about.
but really, his nonchalance
was jeongguk's coping
mechanism, he leant
on it a little too much
to be okay.

sometimes he forgot
that he was an art student
who was in their final year
of their gcse's, as though
he wasn't going to sit some
of the most important exams of
his life during the summer
term. sometimes he forgot
that he was nothing but an
ordinary teenager with
a crush on his art teacher,
sometimes he forgot that
he still had a lot to learn
in this world, of things that
he turned a blind eye to,
things that would take him
a while to understand and
accept, things that he probably
wouldn't want to understand
and accept but would
have to anyway at
some point because that
was 'all part of flourishing
into a young adult.' as
his mother often liked to tell him.

he rarely listened to her
pointless lectures, not that
he minded them, they were
entertaining from time to
time. she'd talk about things
that were unimportant to him
at the ripe old age of sixteen.

sixteen.

oh god, he was fucking
sixteen.

how on earth was it
that he felt like he was
on cloud nine? how
oblivious did you have to
be to believe that you'd
fallen for your teacher
at such an age? if jeongguk
could have slapped some
desperately required
sense into himself then
he would have done so,
long ago.

oh jesus.

was he desperate?

it didn't matter, that
was not what he was
supposed to be focusing
on, right this second.

jeongguk stared
at his sketch with
a blank frustration on
his face. he didn't
show that he was
annoyed. there was
little to be annoyed
about other than the
whole piece of paper
itself. he'd gotten the
dimensions all wrong,
it was so goddamn
inconvenient.

jeongguk heavily
wondered as to why
he had managed to draw
mr kim's eyes oh-so- prettily
the other day, and now
he was struggling to do
a simple school study.

he wondered why he'd
found it so blatantly simple,
why the charcoal bled from
his fingertips and drowned
the crisp white paper in a
sombre sea of pitch black,
why it had embraced the
contrast and blended in a
heavenly, aesthetic, carefully
executed fashion.

he wondered why it was
so easy to draw mr kim.

'if i adore it, my work
turns out near perfection.'

of course.

jeongguk giggled
to himself and leaned over
his desk, returning to his
dreadful shading as mr
kim's words rang through
his head. of course he
was struggling. why would
he find something easy to
paint if he didn't have a
passion for it. jeongguk
was passionate about
mr kim's obvious perfection.

mr kim was so, so
perfect.

it was almost surreal
how long jeongguk
could think about him
without getting distracted.

he tried to find his flaws,
he searched far and wide
for them, he tried to tell
himself that there had to
be something that brought
him down from being so
high up in the sky.

the teen either didn't
know of it, or mr kim
didn't have any imperfections.

he prayed that it was the
latter.

and he prayed that it wasn't
too good to be true.

"still up, cupcake?"
jeongguk's mum asked,
leaning against the teen's
bedroom door.

jeongguk's eyes
flickered over to his
clock. oh, it was already
one o'clock in the morning.
worse still, it was a school
night.

"i have a lot of work,
mum." he mumbled,
dropping his pencil down
and pouting at his paper.

his mother walked towards
him and gave him a soft,
silent kiss to his head.
she stared at his piece
for a while, it left jeongguk
wondering what she thought
of it. it was lacking in every
aspect. he wondered if a
non artist saw it too.

"why don't you take
a break sweetie," she smiled.
"you deserve it, you've worked
hard today." she ruffled his
raven hair, eyes glimmering
with love. he wished he could,
jeongguk needed a break.
but there was far too much
to be done.

"my shift is about to
start, i'll be gone in a
few minutes, love. you'll
be alright won't you?"
she leaned over jeongguk's
desk and switched the
night light off, the room enveloped
in a dusty pale, moonlit glow.

"yeah mum, i'll be okay."

he'd be okay.

whatever happened.

__________

sorry for the short chapter but the next is in taehyung's perspective :) we goin belgium bois... 😀👊

also, some of you were asking me about the art. a lot of the pieces don't mean anything, i just put them in because I think they look pretty. but some of them really do. they have a direct correlation.

the one in this chapter for example.