Name of my Love | on hold

ten

A glimpse of past

We're sitting across the study desk with a pile of brittle off-colour papers on the desk, by our side. He extends his back to lean forward. "See, sketch this character's features. She's the female lead," he says, pointing his pencil towards a roughly sketched figure, "give her some more details over her hairstyle and make her look different from any typical manga. Can you do it?"

"I'll try." What a great way to start Sunday?

"I've noticed you aren't good with details, you rather draw superficially which surprisingly looks pretty good." He says as he gazes me, streaks of light from the window falls on us and cleanly outlines his jawline, "your sketches aren't exactly fit for manga so uh... may be you should go with their facial expressions only," he passes me a file stuffed with his animations, "here, use it for reference."

"Okay." I fix my eyes on the black-leathered file, which is evidently stitched a few times before by someone not good with needles, probably him. 

"I'll build their actions and moves. Background filling would be for both of us. What do you say?" He raises a brow, clearly wanting my full attention.

I nod, "sounds great." It's pretty embarrassing that a professional manga artist is judging my amateur works. We've been planning to give the characters a very unique look so that the manga readers can pinpoint it out of the flood of same-looking drawings. It isn't that easy as it looks. We've discussed about the female protagonist till now whose age range is about 18-20. And the male will be accordingly 4 years older than her. It's all his plan.

He has started to scribble a figure now. I interrupt, "do you like the age gap?"

"Yes." He nonchalantly replies.

"Okay," I tap the pen-cap on my lips, "would you still say yes if it was 10 year old gap?"

He smiles, and eyes me, "you're talking like someone from 1920's," he fixates his gaze back on the sheet of paper, "I mean the question makes no sense. Age and love do not coincide, Sky."

I follow the length of his arm and reach his fist which is firmly gripping the pencil and a weird question pops in my mouth, "you fell in love before?"

He stops stroking and gives a brief thought before starting to shade the blank portion. He takes his time in smudging the shade with his thumb. A feeble voice follows, "no, not really, I guess."

I nod, and start to lightly slash on the protagonist's cheeks to give her a natural blush. He has built the front, back and sides of the female-lead but left her bald-headed for me to give her a distinctive hairstyle. I was thinking of going with bangs but later it dawned on me that 'bangs' practically scream 'common'.

Wait. I have this question in mind for a long time now.

"Jungkook," the curious soul inside me is sprinting up since I've finally gotten the opportunity to question him about himself, "what's your age?"

"22."

My eyes go wide, virtually choking on air. Just twenty two.

He's so young.

"Don't give me that look. I look exactly my age."

"I didn't say otherwise,"

But, am I around his age? Perhaps I'm younger since I look clueless about any kind of work. I didn't know cooking either. If I were a working person I'd have been more mature and acted like a woman. I am even lacking the confidence to face perils or new people. But again, it is not necessarily necessary to be overwhelmingly responsible and think like an adult all the time.