The World Stopped Moving {MarkRen} | complete

vingt-quatre

Renjun doesn't stop drawing.

The sun crawls across the sky and he switches on his desk lamp, unbothered by the moon pitying him through the window. He draws all night: sketching his ideas, testing different colours and media, finding the best kind of paper, which in the end turns into buying a brand-new sketchbook.

It's dainty and thin with just enough pages and bound by a leather cover as blue as the sky on the sunny days where they'd walk to the market together. Mark's favourite kind of blue. Renjun thumbs the paper between his fingers and sighs happily. So many pages, ready to accept all kinds of exciting colours, to absorb all the ideas that tingle in his core, to bring them to life. Inspiration strikes in the middle of a lecture, and he ignores the dirty glare he receives from students around him to rummage through his bag for the sketchbook and pencil case, immediately getting to work so he doesn't waste a moment.

Mark floats on a cloud in this sketch. The exact shapes don't quite form, but Renjun finetunes the details of Mark's smile and fluffy hair in the meantime. He learns to be patient. There's no point prodding and scratching to drag ideas out before they're ready, so he lets them develop on their own until the flowers bloom and he can gently coax them out. When he can't paint, he writes in his journal. He figures he'd want to show that to Mark at some point, too.

He paints a lot of flowers that evening. White and red roses for a fresh start and deep love; gladioli with long, sturdy stems for faithfulness; a field of daisies for purity, and for fun. He plants meaning and symbolism into each piece of art, knowing Mark will melt when he has the chance to explain it all.

Then studying catches up with him. It was inevitable, really, but Renjun keeps his chin high and keeps going, the promise of a break luring him to the library with his friends. Exams lurk around the corner, also inevitable, but he paints until his neck is stiff and he doesn't have spare energy to waste on extra studying, content to just tick the bare minimum off his to-do list. He does enough work to get by, enough to justify being at university, and even that is enough to drain him and send him to bed earlier each day.

Regardless, he doesn't sleep. The alarm blares through his tiny room before the sun has even broken free from the horizon, and when he does a quick calculation while tripping into his socks, he's grateful for two hours of sleep. No one comments on his tense shoulders or swollen eyes, but their silent stares are loud enough.

"Don't." Jaemin takes Renjun's cold hand in his own, guiding it away from the pot of instant coffee.

Renjun lets him take the mug, afraid it'll slip from his fingers and smash on the floor tiles. It's all too much for a Thursday morning. He has a lecture at nine. Jaemin has two mock exams, and Chenle an important recital. But they still fuss over him, making sure he gets a soothing mug of tea and steers clear from caffeine. Had he even had the tiniest sip of the battery acid Jaemin depends on, Renjun would have lost it. He wasn't thinking, however, and supposes the intrusive thoughts had taken advantage of his sleepiness. He drinks his tea and laughs to himself at the thought drinking coffee.

He gets fifty-six percent in his own mock exam and lets the emptiness brew. It's far from satisfaction but not quite disappointment or anger, either. Just emptiness. Like he's stuck in a fierce tug of war between too many emotions, so he collapses and cries in the middle of the floor to let them rip him apart late at night, a flightless bird abandoned as easy prey.

Another week passes, and Renjun is tetchy. He has been all day. The fears about Mark persist, now harder to swallow and laugh off, and Jisung's chatter and Chenle's bickering and the click of Jeno's computer keys don't soothe them. They only rile him up, feeding the fear so it can beat Renjun down until it's eight in the evening and he's curled in bed, unable to breathe.