VMINKOOK / THE ART OF BEEKEEPING

18

— PART EIGHTEEN .

A twisted and overbearingly forlorn configuration of dark paint virgules run dry against plain paper. Procreation spills down from his fingertips, onto an unfazed canvas, as active eruptions of liquified imagination qualify for the label of artisanal. Quaint fingers wield a brush, which insistently tarnishes the purity of the milky, white canvas, creating the seething envisioning of a tormented, adolescent mind.

He can feel the stars bathe against his paint smudged, oversized t-shirt through the open window of his bedroom. But, where usually he'd take inspiration from the coruscating starlight, he, on this occasion, shuns it. He keeps his back firmly cast toward the open ambience of night and focuses all his thoughts into his fingers, allowing his solace to, for once, stem from releasing thoughts, rather than consuming them.

Taehyung's mind was muddled, that much was obvious. But, for once, this muddle of bubbling emotions wasn't so easily subdued, instead it skimmed the edges of his mind so much, it seemed to overflow and spill out into his actions. Taehyung could no longer walk with any sense of ease, without the bitter, predestining thoughts that consumed his mind, claiming what was no doubt going to happen to him. He found himself constantly on edge and confused over every single aspect of the PJ honey company and their respective sons.

One minute he'd find them aimlessly flirting with him or lazily trailing pulse-ridden fingertips across his skin, the next, they'd be all sugar-dripping grins and benign dispositions, and sometimes they'd even be cold-shoulders and ugly, glaring eyes, infested with malicious glass.

It was fucking infuriating.

And he misses being fucking invisible.

And so he paints away his stupefaction and intense frustrations by creating blurry lines and squiggles of what he'd like to class as abstract art. Truthfully he isn't sure what he's created; what began as an unrehearsed sketch of a pulsating heart, somehow transmogrified into a disarray of blood-coated pencil lines and obscene illustrations of infelicitous scenery.

Of course, beneath all that, beneath the masks of untimely monsters and somewhat malformed, alien features, were the intimate and uncanny honey-kissed beams that belonged to the faces infesting his mind. Beneath all the bloodshed and painted vexation, Jimin and Jeongguk were there, smiling as if they owned his heart, as if they had every right to take bites into it whenever they deemed appropriate.

Being owned was a foreign feeling to Kim Taehyung and oh, what a sickening feeling it was! He can feel the paint brush burn with agitation as he applies a little too much force to his painting. He can feel the blood rush through his arms and kiss the canvas in increments of ghastly aggression.

Taehyung did what he wanted, whenever he wanted because no one ever cared enough to check up on his actions. But, suddenly he felt as if cameras were following him everywhere, felt as if he was being examined — monitored. Even the moon behind him, something he'd always adored and he thought adored him back, was beginning to spawn these beady little eyes in it's craters, seemingly manipulated into extracting every aspect of Taehyung's being.

He felt it was a taste of horrendous irony, really. As, wasn't it just over a month ago when he was the one monitoring others?

&&&

Friday night, after school, Taehyung is forced to man the cash register in the front of his dad's tattoo parlour. Despite hollering about this being an "injustice" and "unpaid manual labour", Taehyung still found himself here, reading the ingredients of the new hair dye which Dahyun, Taehyung's dad's worker, had deposited in her little pigeon hole.