When Ryan finally recovered from the emotional intensity of Elias’ painting, he continued down the hall, and found two girls whispering to one another as they headed in the opposite direction.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, and they halted right away, looking up at him in surprise. “I’m looking for someone … Are you art students?”
They nodded, and giggled as they exchanged gazes, confusing Ryan all the more.
“Then … Where can I find Elias Kang? Do you know?”
Once more, the two girls stared at one another, their faces almost turning pale. “Elias … ? Um, I don’t think you want to go to him right now.”
“Y-Yeah,” the second girl with curly, brown hair agreed. “Maybe come back another time. He’s in a horrible mood today.”
“Isn’t he always?” the red-headed girl responded, and the both sighed, suppressing their mocking laughs.
“I have something to give him, though,” Ryan mumbled. A horrible mood? Surely it wasn’t because of … His eyes drooped down onto the sketchbook in his hands, and his heart slid lower in panic.
“Well …” The girls hesitated, but gave in eventually. “He’s always in the very last atelier down the hall.” They pointed in the direction they’d come from.
“But we warned you!” they giggled, only to run off. But Ryan did hear them whisper to one another. “Who’s that? He’s so cute!”
“Should have asked for his number!”
Ha! I knew it! I’m handsome! With a bright grin, Ryan rushed down the hall, but his gleeful manner disappeared a soon as he found Elias in the very atelier the girls had mentioned. The other workshop beside him was filled to the brim with students, whereas his was completely abandoned. His classmates, and all other art students in this faculty, avoided him like the plague.
Ryan peeked through the little window at the door, and witnessed a pondering Elias.
He held his breath as he stared, unknowingly so, taking in the sight of Elias all the more. His hair, this time, was bound up into a short ponytail, with only some bangs dropping into his face.
That way, it exposed his long, pretty neck, making Ryan all awkward and nervous, but even today, Elias wore a turtleneck, and a white, over-sized shirt right above it, with blotches and splatters of old paint all over it, serving as a protection for the clothes he wore underneath.
Elias stared at a white, empty canvas, all while fiddling with a dry brush in his hands. He wore ear buds, listened to music while he did, and didn’t react to Ryan’s first knock, nor to the second, and Ryan wasn’t about to start hammering against this door to be noticed.
Nibbling on his lower lip, Ryan wasn’t sure if he could just barge into the room, either. Once more, he knocked, and if Elias didn’t react, he would enter the room.
It wasn’t like Elias was in the midst of painting — if he was, Ryan would have reconsidered, since he didn’t want to scare Elias into slipping off, and getting paint where it didn’t need to be. But at the moment, Elias just sat there, and stared, endlessly, at the empty canvas in front of him.
Without further ado, Ryan swung the door wide open and entered the atelier with an even louder gulp, one that could have easily been hurt throughout the entire room. But even then, with his back turned towards the door, Elias didn’t react. His music was too loud to notice the creaking of the door, or any of Ryan’s steps.
Even Ryan’s voice, he didn’t listen to. “Elias … Hello.” An awkward chuckle followed, and Ryan scratched the back of his head, but nothing happened. He had no choice but to inch closer towards the wild animal, and ever so slightly tap him onto the shoulder.
“Eek!” Ryan’s screech came out too high-pitched for his liking and he flinched away when Elias turned around so quickly, ready to stab him with the wooden brush he held.
Ryan raised both his arms in a squeak, and Elias’ sketchbook with it. “I—I come in peace!”
But Elias’ gaze was long focused on the black book in Ryan’s hands, and he snapped up from his chair, and snatched it right out of Ryan’s fingers.
“What the hell is your problem? Why do you have this?” He turned around all the quicker, and started flipping through the pages, as if to make sure everything was still there. In anger, Elias whipped about before Ryan could even answer, poking Ryan’s chest with the corner of the sketchbook.
“What the fuck, huh?”
“I—I came to return it!” Ryan defended himself. “It’s not like I stole it or anything!”
Elias’ frown grew, and his angered pout all the more, but Ryan couldn’t focus at all at the anger in Elias’ face, not when he looked so intriguing with his hair tucked out of his face and into half a ponytail, hair still tickling his shoulders, but less, and still trickling into his face as bangs.
Ryan gulped.
“Why did you have it, then?” Elias’ breath had turned ragged, and he took even deeper ones, now, and they all shuddered, and his face heated up as if he’d panicked, all day, about the whereabouts of his sketchbook.
I should have texted him about it, Ryan now thought, guilt flooding over. Seeing how distressed Elias had been over it … Ryan had been selfish, trying to see him again through the lost sketchbook alone.
“You forgot it at the restaurant last night. You rushed off too quickly, and I didn’t know which way you went.”
Elias grumbled all the louder, holding onto his sketchbook with both his hands as tight as he could, worried about ever losing it again. Even though he was relieved, his anger at Ryan remained.
“You’re such a damn idiot. You should have just left it there, and I would have gotten it myself. You always grab other people’s things and take them home with you? Are you a kleptomaniac or something? Seriously, you—“
“I—I thought I was helping you! I didn’t want it to get stolen or lost at the restaurant! I was gonna call you,” Ryan lied, just a little bit, to save face. “But I got busy with some other things, and then I fell asleep, and—so, I, uh … I thought I should just bring it over.”
Elias stomped away. All he did was grumble, and run his fingers through his bangs.
At first, Ryan thought Elias was embarrassed. About the sketches that hid within. But … he didn’t seem embarrassed. Pissed, definitely, and relieved all the same, but at the moment, he simply seemed to pretend Ryan wasn’t even in the room with him. Once again, Ryan felt rather unwanted, but then he remembered the sketch of himself Elias had put so much detail into.
“For what it’s worth,” Ryan mumbled. “You’re really amazing.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”
Do you know, though? Ryan wondered. Someone who loved their work, and had all the confidence in them, would they destroy their own sketches in frustration? “Then why did you scribble out so many of your sketches, and ripped some of the papers?”
Elias flinched, and his fingers tightened around his sketchbook. “What the fuck? So you had a peek inside? That’s why you stole it?”
“I didn’t steal it! I safeguarded it for you until I could return it!”
“And you still decided to have a look inside someone else’s things.”
“It’s just a sketchbook. I—I thought, I mean, you’re an artist. Don’t you want other people to see your art?”
“What do you think sketchbooks are for, you idiot?”
Ryan gulped when Elias turned around, and those dark eyes hit him with such intensity, it almost swept him off his feet. He forgot to breathe, and only felt his heart beat harder, and harder.
Elias was upset.
“I’m sorry, I was curious, that’s all. You are a really great artist, so you shouldn’t cross out all your sketches, I mean, keep them for later reference, and too see them again, and maybe after a while you’ll realize they were amazing, and—“
“Shut up!” Ryan did as he was told, though he didn’t know why. “Tsk. Why the hell did I bother with you tutoring me? It’s a waste of my time, and now you’re ruining my fucking day, standing there like a damn smart-ass, acting like you know so much better!”
“No, that’s not … I didn’t mean to pry, but—Elias—Hold on, stop! What are you—“
Elias turned away, and in his anger ripped all the sketched-on papers of his book out of its binding.
“Elias!”
“I don’t need you lecturing me on what’s good and what’s not,” Elias hissed. “Get out of my sight, and stop bothering me.”
With his eyes bulging out of their sockets, Ryan could only watch as Elias ripped all the pages to shreds, the sketch of Ryan’s face included. A second later, he dumped it all into the trash bin beside them, and Ryan stared, and stared.
“But … Elias.” Why? Elias wasn’t rational, there was no way. Ryan approached the bin, and picked out a few of the ripped papers, but there was no possibility that Ryan could puzzle any of them back together.
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone.”
“This was important to you.” Ryan stood there, with pieces of paper in his hands, and Elias simply threw his now empty sketchbook to the side. “Weren’t you stressing about getting it back? Then, why would you destroy your own work like this?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Because I looked inside … ?”
“Shut up.”
“But they were so good, even though they were just sketches. Your eye for detail is incredible.”
“Yeah, I know.” Elias avoided him and eye contact completely, and it made Ryan uncomfortable. Honestly, this whole situation was cumbersome, and he didn’t know what to make of it. But those rumors he had read online were true, with Elias completely overreacting over a quick glance.
In the piece of a sketch Ryan held in his hands, he could see parts of a hand and a piano attached to it. And now, it was all the more ruined, worse than before, when he’d just circled through it with his pencil.
“I saw your oil painting in the hall. The giant one, with the abandoned piano. It really took my breath away,” Ryan whispered.
“Get out of my workshop,” Elias grumbled, already tucking his ear buds back into his ears.
“It’s not yours, though,” Ryan said, an awkward stutter in his voice, and now Elias glared right up at him. “Well, I mean, any student can use these rooms. The—The tuition, that’s what it’s for, right?”
“Tsk.” Elias turned away, and reached for his brushes once more, only to stare at his blank canvas some more.
“You—You said my face bothers you.” Ryan loved digging his own graves, it seemed. “If you didn’t want that sketch, couldn’t you have given it to me? I—I really liked it. No one’s ever drawn me before, I feel so honored, and it gave me such a confidence-boost today.”
Elias’ shivers intensified, and he grumbled louder and louder, only to snap up from his chair, yank Ryan by the arm, and push him right back out of the workshop, making him stumble out into the hallway, and almost into other students passing.
“I told you to get out! Your voice is pissing me off! Do you ever stop talking?! You just yap, and yap, and yap! Can’t you see I’m trying to get some work done?!” Everyone in the hall flinched when Elias swung his door shut in a loud bang, locking the atelier right after so not a single soul would be able to bother him inside.
“That sucked,” Ryan sighed, staring at the few snippets of Elias’ sketchbook. But his patience was far from being worn out, and he had too much resistance for Elias’ attacks.
He was more than willing to take more of them if it got him even an inch closer to Elias.
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