By Zephyria 
Han Seung-jae took off the suit jacket he was wearing. Paint smeared onto his palm as he pushed over a canvas, but he didn’t even seem to care.
He tossed the suit carelessly onto the work table.
Seo Yi-kyung moved sluggishly. He slowly unfolded his work apron and looped it around his neck. He stalled even further as he tied the waist string. Eventually, pushed by Han Seung-jae’s piercing gaze, he placed a new canvas on one of the wooden easels standing side by side.
What should I do…
His back didn’t just prickle; it felt as if he were being pierced through, his heart tightening.
Seo Yi-kyung stood before the canvas. His eyes darted around incessantly, searching for an excuse. Eating, claiming to be sick, or perhaps even fainting seemed like good options.
Just as his haphazardly tangled thoughts were reaching a peak, Han Seung-jae picked up a brush from the work table and held it out.
“Start now.”
Seo Yi-kyung, who had been standing frozen until then, took the brush. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
There was no turning back now. Once he saw the mess of a painting, he would realize his true skill level.
There seemed to be no way out.
‘Stay calm. I saw it yesterday, so I should be able to mimic it.’
He couldn’t possibly finish it today anyway. He could just make an excuse that the paint hadn’t dried and needed more layers.
Seo Yi-kyung steadied his breathing and recalled Seon-yu’s actions. He had seen it with his own eyes, right beside him. And only yesterday. Recalling how he had squeezed the oil paints, he performed the same actions at the work table.
As Seo Yi-kyung put green oil paint on the brush, Han Seung-jae picked up another color and held it forward.
“This would be better.”
Seo Yi-kyung looked at the blue oil paint approaching him.
Then, he slowly shifted his gaze to look at Han Seung-jae’s face.
‘If you’re going to be like this, why don’t you just paint it yourself?’
He struggled to swallow those words.
Seo Yi-kyung rinsed the brush. As if accepting the request, he squeezed out the blue oil paint and moved the brush smoothly to apply the color.
Holding the palette in his left hand, he looked at the stark white canvas and raised his arm with solemn determination.
There was no longer anywhere to retreat, nowhere to run, and no way to avoid it.
Seo Yi-kyung pressed the brush gently against the canvas. Then, he slid it straight across.
“….”
Seo Yi-kyung diligently filled the corners of the canvas. Han Seung-jae, watching the scene with indifferent eyes, looked down at his left wrist. Checking the time on his watch, he asked,
“Are you only going to apply that one color?”
Without looking back, Seo Yi-kyung replied,
“I told you it would take time. If you’re bored waiting, you can go up first.”
Perhaps as a stroke of luck, the voice that escaped his lips sounded calm and steady, even to his own ears. However, Seo Yi-kyung’s heart was leaping wildly. Because he couldn’t predict what Han Seung-jae would do, his chest tightened even more. He had even planned to use the excuse of knocking over the canvas again to escape the painting studio.
After remaining silent for a moment, Han Seung-jae leaned back and perched on the edge of the work table, watching Seo Yi-kyung’s back as he moved his hand in silence.
Still seeing no progress on the canvas, Han Seung-jae took a step forward. His thumping footsteps stopped right beside Seo Yi-kyung.
Han Seung-jae stood before the canvas.
“Is this how you usually paint?”
“Yes. This is how I paint.”
Colors were layered on, making it look like a deep lake.
Han Seung-jae had told him to paint, not to finish it immediately. Would it be enough to endure this for six months? He felt the canvas might be worn to shreds by then, but for now, Seo Yi-kyung’s only thought was to get through this moment.
However, he hadn’t expected Han Seung-jae to pick up a brush.
Using a brush he had taken from the work table, Han Seung-jae scanned the palette Seo Yi-kyung held in one hand. Seo Yi-kyung’s gaze froze like a nail.
“What are you planning to paint?”
Seo Yi-kyung mumbled randomly.
“The sea.”
“That’s not bad.”
Han Seung-jae brought the brush to the corner of the canvas. Though coarser than Seo Yi-kyung’s touch, blue paint was being layered on.
Seo Yi-kyung couldn’t take his eyes off Han Seung-jae’s profile. The intellectual eyes capturing the canvas with a heartless expression were cold, and his refined features looked like those of a person devoid of emotion.
He had never even imagined such a man spreading paint on a canvas. There was no such scene in the original novel.
Since the ‘Seo Yi-kyung’ of the original wouldn’t have struggled while painting, perhaps there was no need for such a scene.
“When did you go there?”
“….”
Seo Yi-kyung couldn’t answer immediately. There had been no such question in the original. Nor did he remember ‘Seo Yi-kyung’ ever visiting such a place.
Unlike before, when Seo Yi-kyung failed to answer immediately, Han Seung-jae turned his head. He looked down.
Seo Yi-kyung murmured,
“When I was young.”
Though he had never read such a detail, Seo Yi-kyung made it up.
Did he realize it was a lie? In the original, the details of ‘Seo Yi-kyung’s’ childhood were not clearly depicted. Furthermore, Han Seung-jae received frequent reports about him.
Just as Seo Yi-kyung’s face began to stiffen, Han Seung-jae indifferently turned his head back. He moved his hand.
“Next time.”
“Yes?”
Stiffened, Seo Yi-kyung raised his voice. Han Seung-jae added as he pulled the brush away from the canvas,
“Let’s go together.”
Seo Yi-kyung blinked. He doubted if he had understood Han Seung-jae’s words correctly. To the sea, with him? However, he couldn’t bring himself to ask that out loud.
Han Seung-jae withdrew the brush he had been smearing. He turned his body naturally.
“More importantly, how long are you going to keep playing around?”
“!”
Han Seung-jae’s eyes gradually narrowed. He flicked the brush in his hand.
“Are you saying you don’t want to paint in front of me?”
That couldn’t be it. Seo Yi-kyung was doing his best to paint. And Han Seung-jae was seeing it with his own eyes.
This was essentially the limit of his skill. But as expected, it seemed unsatisfactory in Han Seung-jae’s eyes.
“Or are you expressing your dissatisfaction because I’m watching?”
Seo Yi-kyung barely suppressed a hollow laugh and straightened his posture to face Han Seung-jae.
“I told you my hands are slow. I paint meticulously. Filling it in without gaps starting from the corners is my way of painting.”
Seo Yi-kyung simply hoped Han Seung-jae would leave the painting studio now. Or knock over the canvas like before. As if his inner thoughts had been heard, Han Seung-jae tossed the brush onto the work table.
‘If he just leaves like this… it’ll be fine.’
Contrary to his thoughts, Han Seung-jae’s legs drew closer. Still not knowing the reason, Seo Yi-kyung was preoccupied with filling the canvas.
Han Seung-jae, who had stepped up behind him, placed his hand on Seo Yi-kyung’s waist.
“…?”
Startled, Seo Yi-kyung tried to create distance, but Han Seung-jae’s hand swept around his side and over to his chest.
Trapped in Han Seung-jae’s embrace, Seo Yi-kyung murmured,
“Wha—what are you doing?”
Seo Yi-kyung tried to break free, but Han Seung-jae’s strength was greater. Unbuttoning the dress shirt, Han Seung-jae’s hand continuously moved downward.
“Keep going.”
As the low baritone resonated right behind his ear, Seo Yi-kyung’s shoulders stiffened. In this unexpected situation, Seo Yi-kyung’s mind ceased to function properly. Nevertheless, he twisted his upper body to escape Han Seung-jae’s embrace.
Han Seung-jae’s gaze seemed to linger on his slender neck and hollow collarbone, and soon, lips approached. Every time he pressed his tongue against him, Seo Yi-kyung trembled.
“Seung-jae.”
Seo Yi-kyung squeezed out the words with all his might to call him. At that, Han Seung-jae’s breath hit the nape of his neck.
“What are you doing? Why aren’t you continuing to paint?”
With the palette in his left hand and the brush in his right, Seo Yi-kyung’s entire body froze like ice. Simultaneously, Han Seung-jae’s fingers, having undone all the buttons of the dress shirt, brushed bluntly against the tip of his nipple.
Clang—eventually, Seo Yi-kyung dropped the palette he was holding in his left hand and, clutching the brush haphazardly, grabbed the back of Han Seung-jae’s hand as it roamed inside the apron.
In response, Han Seung-jae’s two hands explicitly pinched the tip of the nipple and pulled. Seo Yi-kyung’s lower lip quivered.
Seo Yi-kyung’s chest heaved as he exhaled. He tried his best not to let it show that he was nervous, but he crumbled repeatedly every time Han Seung-jae’s fingertips caressed his chest.
The brush he had been barely holding fell to the floor. Blue paint splashed onto the suit pants Han Seung-jae was wearing.
As the white sandalwood scent pheromones dug into his skin, Seo Yi-kyung swallowed hard.
“I—I can’t finish the painting like this.”
The once white canvas was now filled with nothing but blue paint.
Han Seung-jae looked at Seo Yi-kyung’s now empty hands. His hands were gripping Han Seung-jae’s arm.
“You had no intention of finishing it anyway.”
As if hit right in the mark, Seo Yi-kyung couldn’t give any answer. It wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t say it was right either.
After all, hadn’t he been expressing a ‘sea’ in his own way on the canvas?
It might not have looked that way to Han Seung-jae, but Seo Yi-kyung had tried his best to express it.
“I am painting. You… you saw it.”
Han Seung-jae’s gaze lingered on the canvas. It didn’t look like that to him. However, he remembered what Seo Yi-kyung had said several times. That his hands were slow and he needed a lot of time.
If anyone else had said that, Han Seung-jae wouldn’t have accepted it. No, he wouldn’t have listened in the first place.
Han Seung-jae’s hand, which had been caressing his waist, slowly withdrew from the work apron. Seo Yi-kyung did not let his guard down for a second.
“….”
When Han Seung-jae didn’t move for a moment, Seo Yi-kyung lowered his head to look at the palette and brush that had fallen at his feet.
Seo Yi-kyung quickly put both hands into the apron, which was open at the waist, and fastened the buttons. As he then bent over, his slender upper body lowered, exposing his hips.
It was just as Seo Yi-kyung picked up the palette and reached out with his other hand to grab the brush.
“Are you sure you’re painting it properly?”
“Yes.”
Seo Yi-kyung straightened his upper body as he picked up the brush. His face was flushed red.
Looking at Han Seung-jae, who rarely trusted anyone, Seo Yi-kyung moved his feet. He placed the palette on the work table and rinsed the brush.
Paint was splattered here and there on Han Seung-jae’s suit, but he didn’t seem to care much.
“Well, let’s go with that for now.”
Han Seung-jae stepped closer. He stared at Seo Yi-kyung, who was cleaning the brush and removing the moisture.
With his eyelids lowered, Seo Yi-kyung was carefully wiping the brush. He looked as if he were handling a precious object.
Since he said he spent most of his time painting at home rather than going out, and loved art exhibitions enough to visit them frequently, was he upset that the tools had fallen on the floor?
Han Seung-jae’s head tilted slightly.
Though masked by the smell of oil paint, a faint scent of roses was floating around Seo Yi-kyung.