VMINKOOK / THE ART OF BEEKEEPING

23

— PART TWENTY THREE

He's mania and he's decadence and he's staring right at you. A russian roulette of crystals and caviar, draping across the negligence of his soul, black and red droll ever-present within him. He's the summertime overture, with incandescence blaring bright against the glare of the sun, fragments of gold zipping across his stature in dainty pirouettes. He's a variant of blue — or, perhaps, he's all the shades of blue, with blueberry's tumbling from his lips and smouldering his skin. There's tropics in his goldfish bowl eyes, and blemishes of beauty etched into his corium.

The chandeliers clinging to the ceiling are but nothings when compared with the paragon of his orifices. Citrus fruits ornament his skin, as his hair is settled in fluffy tufts of orange, spread evenly, meticulously, across his forehead. There's marmalade in his blood vessels, too sweet and yet also too poignant. He's in a black ensemble, his suit comprised of lavish fineries; bedazzling silver nipping at his earlobes and dangling against his neck, like crystalline waterfalls.

But, behind the upholstered facade of clear, cohesive superiority and exorbitance, Jeongguk can easily descry the remnants of disquietude wallowing within his shell of skin. They're sat beside one another, reclining back into reticent leather seats, both having been scooped off into this morbid, diamond-incrusted building, strictly reserved for those whose bodies are built from chemicals. Park Hanbit, the eldest of the two Park brothers, was visiting from university, the Park and Jeon families using this 'welcoming dinner' as an excuse to discuss business.

Jimin and Jeongguk haven't spoken since the last Saturday and Jeongguk hadn't actually let it slip that he'd kissed their current object of desire, fore he'd never quite discovered the right time (that, or he didn't really want to). So, right now, things were rather.. awkward. Sure, the pair didn't get on at the best of times, but things were never awkward between them; tension-filled and odious, yes, but awkward? Never. There's an interminable silence striking the air between them, and, despite the loud obnoxiousness of their family's voices, the silence between them is still the loudest thing in the room.

Jimin distracts himself, somewhat, by watching Hanbit; he's desperate to try and override the despair in his mind with frustration toward his infuriating excuse for a brother. His brother, who's smile reflects in the fulguration of his knife, flickering beneath the chandelier light, as if a fuzzy television screen; his brother, who's bound wine to his tongue and licks rambunctiously into his glass, like a particularly gourmand lizard; his brother, who's spouting egotism into the fine china and rattling eardrums with tales of his college escapades; his brother, who's maladroit fingers skip up the ladders of his girlfriend's tights, pressing his scales into her bleached skin, which transfigures into the image of china plates and china dolls and pretty, meandering eyelashes. Yee Juri, a girl with soot and cinder in her soul, disheveled beneath the thick coats of plastic and wax, plastered with gold-engrossed eyes. She's a girl with bundles of lust implemented within her intelligent and mindless mind, and a girl who's trying to oh so casually play footsies with Jeon Jaewon beneath the table.

There's a roar of laughter, which doesn't startle Jimin, just merely wakes him up a little bit, causes realisation to rattle through him, forces him back into the facade of composure and charming boyishness. He opens his mouth into a hubristic grin and attempts a little chuckle, knowing that whatever Hanbit has said wouldn't have made him laugh, even if he had been listening. The young man had this peculiar effect on Jimin, he seemed to create rashes against his skin and Jimin's nails couldn't quite seem to eradicate the itch, no matter how hard he scratched.

Jaewon curls his leather-smeared feet away from the heelless, bare feet which belong to Juri, not being one to enjoy the narcotics of her eyes, or the engaging flutter of her skin. He keeps his eyes clamped to Park Yohan, the man with his speckled bow tie, watching his favoured son (Hanbit) express joyless, indulging chuckles toward the table. Jangmi is sat beside Juri, comparing the older girls legs to her own, finding the other girl's a tad too similar to sticks of chalk, sticking out beneath her skin-enclasped skirt. Jangmi wasn't fat, not by any means, she just wasn't a walking Barbie doll and her legs looked a little less redolent to plastic.