You Can Paint Me

Chapter 4

"Jisung sweetie, how many times do I have to tell you?", Mrs April sighed frustratedly. "You don't rub the charcoal eraser onto the charcoal sketch. You have to tap it, lightly. Now look at what you've done. The whole thing is smudged.", she pointed at the sketch infront of her.

"Shoot, I'm so used to the classic pencil eraser that my hand does this automatically. Sorry.", Jisung frowned.
He looks so disappointed at himself.

This is such a common mistake. I've done it countless times.

"Hey man, cheer up. It can be fixed easily, don't worry.", Hyunjin reassured him with a smile.

"Yeah Hyunjin's right. Just tap it lightly over there and it'll get better.", I added, gesturing him with my index finger the area that he should do it on.

Although Jisung seemed to be still upset with himself, he managed to give us a little smile while nodding at what I suggested.

"Yeah mate, listen to the strawberry shortcake over there. She seems to know her way around charcoal.", said the, I-forgot-he-was-here-again, model of Hyunjin's.

Okay...

Two things.

First of all,
I don't know if my pencil case, my water bottle or my necklace gave away my..." healthy" obsession with strawberries, but you can't imagine my rage when he used my favorite dessert as a petty nickname to mock me with.
Secondly,
How does he know, I know "the way" around charcoal?

Apparently, I said my last thoughts out loud, because I heard a voice saying:
"Because, shortcake, you are basically covered with charcoal dust and I've never seen so many different charcoal pencils on someone's desk before.", he looked at me with raised eyebrows.
"So this tells me that you probably know how to handle this thing.", pointed at me.

"For the love of potatoes, Chan, stay still, will you?" Hyunjin ordered angrily.

"Chan?", Mia asked puzzled.

"Yeah, his full name is Bang Christopher Chan, but we normally call him Chris.", Jisung answered nonchalantly.

Well, that's an information that I find unexpectedly... useless.

As Mia was about to say something, I bet, cheesy about his names, she was cut off by the bell ringing and Mrs April saying that class is dismissed.

With that, we started packing our things and as I was putting my water bottle in my bag, I felt a hand laying on my shoulder and I saw a finger pointing at my canvas.

"Well, aren't you a talented one?" a familiarly annoying voice with a strong Australian accent said from behind me. "Why did you sketch grapes though? Didn't you paint fruit again, like, a couple days back?" he questioned.

"I don't know whether I should take your apparent investment in my work as a compliment or as the act of a soon-to-be stalker.", I said, turning my head to look at him and slap his hand off my shoulder.
"Nonetheless, if you must know, this is a different synthesis. The previous one was about fruit whilst this one is about wine. Now,", I slightly patted on his shoulder, "you seem like a moderately brain-active human being, so you should get the correlation. Grapes. Wine. It should ring a bell.", I grabbed my bag, stepping outside the door along with Mia, leaving him sanding there speechless.

Before I turned to walk in the corridor, I got a glimpse of Jisung shoving past him while saying,
"What do you know about drawing anyway, Chan?"

Wow, is he still upset about his drawing earlier?
He kind of seemed mad at Chris, though.

***

We met with Ava at the lockers to head to the cafeteria together, as we always do. But a voice stopped us in our tracks as a running Hyunjin came towards us.