The World Stopped Moving {MarkRen} | complete

quatre

Renjun doesn't text Mark. But he returns to the same art room the next day, not wasting a moment after class to cross the campus, sketchbook under his arm and soulmate dust buried under multiple layers of clothing. The weather isn't forgiving today, with grey clouds that refuse to reveal the sun and a crisp wind that numbs Renjun's fingers, so he wriggled into an extra jumper before leaving. He tightens the grip on his sketchbook when he reaches the door.

Peeking through the tiny glass window, Renjun recognises a few of the other students dotted across the room, but the twinge in his chest when he sees his usual table is empty confuses him. His toes curl in his shoes, and his eyes narrow as thinks too hard. He'd hoped to see Mark. Maybe he's pleased Mark isn't there. Either way, he takes advantage of the empty table to force himself to sit down and grab a pencil before the cage snaps back around his motivation. A mind map should be a suitable springboard to begin with. That's the approach most other students seem to have taken, judging by their discussions in the morning's workshop where Renjun kept his head down and bit his tongue, begging himself to not scorn everyone's projects out of jealousy.

He's had enough of jealousy. It lurks in a swamp in his stomach, and he broods over it, succumbs to its power, lets it hollow him out to a shell of resentment, a lame replacement for his anger towards the world. Where he used to look forward to seeing Jaemin in the morning and would buy breakfast with him in the school canteen, he can only sit opposite the couple and force his cereal down in a stormy daze. Where he used to fill a sketchbook in a month, he now can't draw a line without feeling his eyes wander away to examine someone else's artwork, desperate to compare them and remind himself that he isn't good enough.

He knows he shouldn't. He knows he is good enough, for he wouldn't have got into the university otherwise, but the lie provides an explanation for his heartbreak. So Renjun twists himself to live with that lie; it's easier to just blame himself than to try to decipher the complexities of fate.

Renjun grimaces when, yet again, he realises he sees the world as a miserable place. The world through his eyes is dark, a waste of energy, plagued by plastic and pollution and too many people, and he'd be embarrassed to make any of that the theme of his project. All those people, and Renjun had to be the one chosen by fate's cruel game, led down the wrong path, towards the wrong soulmate. Digging the pencil into the palm of his head, Renjun shakes his head at the empty mind map and hopes that ideas will magically appear, or at least that the negativity will vanish.

Cats. The little plants in his bedroom. Ice cream. He writes those things down instead, all things he likes. But none spark creativity in his gloomy mind. While he's doodling a small cat curled up asleep, the chair beside him scrapes across the floor as it's dragged out, and Renjun would recognise the scent anywhere. Mark smells of lemon, of the sea, of freshly cut grass.

"I hoped you'd be here," Mark says, the words seeming a little rushed. He sits down, immediately tapping his fingers on the desk. The younger takes in the blush across his cheeks, the faint beads of sweat on his forehead, the knots in his hair, and guesses he ran across campus. Renjun doesn't know if the information should flatter him or not, so makes no comment.

"Well, here I am," Renjun replies. He furrows his eyebrows, snaps his sketchbook shut to hide the messy mind map and doodle in the corner, then rests his elbow on it.

Neither speaks for a moment. Mark's gaze gets trapped on a pile of pencil shavings on the other side of the large, square table, and Renjun's own traces up and down the elder's side profile, past the mole on his cheek to land on the hickey. It's still there, in the middle of his neck with no attempts to hide it, and Renjun's curiosity only grows. In fact, the reddish-purple has barely faded since they met, instead persisting like it's meant to be there, like it was made with purpose, and his heart doesn't agree.