attention | gyuricky

twelve.

He's always been the kind of person who plays hard but works hard to earn it. It's a failing he's been scolded for by concerned friends over the years; when Gyuvin's hyperfocused on doing something he generally forgets that anything else in the world exists other than him and whatever he's working on, which means he doesn't eat or drink or rest until something breaks him out of his focus.

It's late afternoon on a Friday when Gyuvin steps into the art studio allocated to the architecture majors, which means the building itself is mostly empty given the majority of the students are resting in anticipation of the coming weekend. His work's piled in a messy stack at his worktable and he flips through several sheets of half-finished designs and scrapped ideas to find the original copy of the sketch he'd submitted to the teachers.

It's a fairly straightforward plan and solidly his style, and he anticipates it'll be somewhat of an easy task considering he's done many similar projects in high school. Gyuvin rummages through his drawer to pull out a sheet of cardboard for the base and the pack of wooden popsicle sticks he'd stashed there a week ago and gets to work, measuring carefully with a ruler, marking precise measurements with the tip of a fine pencil, cutting clean lines with a sharpened X-acto knife.

By the time he's come back down to Earth, aware of his surroundings again, it's nighttime. It's a talent he's been envied for by many, the fact that he can function entirely on instinct, producing designs and models of top quality without even really requiring much active brainpower. Gyuvin's never been one to be cocky or complacent, though, he's always been humble about his skills and offered help to the people around him whenever the occasion arises.

It's another one of the things, he's realised over the years, that drove him to be so conscious of others' opinions of him. Perhaps it was because he'd done well all his life and never really worked very hard, that he felt like he had to prove his worth to every single person he'd ever met just so they wouldn't think he didn't deserve his successes.

Gyuvin knows it, but knowing it doesn't mean it goes away any easier. It's the reason why he's so bothered that his roommate dislikes him, even though he tries his best not to let it get to him. The same way he's been bothered about every single person who's disliked him, ever.

Sometimes he wishes he didn't care about anything at all. Maybe he'd be happier if it didn't matter to him if the world hated him or not.

A quick glance at his phone tells him it's close to eleven at night. The lights in the campus buildings shut off automatically at midnight every day, which means he's got about an hour more to work on his project before he's forced to stop.

Picking the squeeze-bottle of glue back up, Gyuvin aligns the tip to the clean-cut edge of a popsicle stick, and frowns. He hits the bottle against his palm for a few seconds before unscrewing the cap to peer inside; ah, he's out of glue.

It's a hassle to go back to the dorm and get a new bottle now, and he's not shameless enough to go scavenging in one of his classmates' drawers for a spare bottle of glue. Gyuvin remembers suddenly that there's a supply room down the hall, mostly used by the painting and sculpture students, where communal items and lost-and-found are kept. There must be some glue in there somewhere.

He locates the supply room a few doors down without any trouble and snaps on the light, flooding the room with warm lighting from a single overhead lamp. There's bottles of paint arranged haphazardly on the floor in the far corner, and a big dining room-style table covered with blots of dried paint and all kinds of art-related paraphernalia, from newspapers to scissors to bundles of unsharpened pencils and lone paintbrushes and, thankfully, a couple of bottles of glue in a woven basket next to a tall stack of cardstock.

Gyuvin trips over something on the floor in his excitement getting to the glue, and he vaguely registers the soft clink of something toppling. A foul, bitter smelling liquid spills from the bottle and he winces, covering his nose with his sleeve as he looks down to see what he knocked over. It's a nondescript clear bottle, filled with clear, colourless liquid that oozes out quickly, forming a pool, and as he bends down to put the bottle back upright he realises something's wrong.

There's a strange feeling welling up in his throat, an odd, distinctly uncomfortable sensation he's never quite felt before; almost as if it's squeezing itself. It's becoming harder to breathe by the second, and Gyuvin's panic rises exponentially as his head begins to spin and he realises there's a good chance he's going to pass out and there's no one around to help him.

He fumbles for his phone in his pocket as the lack of oxygen to his brain begins to send black spots across his vision, and he makes the sinking realisation that none of his friends are close enough to the visual arts building to make it in time before he blacks out. Even Gunwook's dormitory block was too far away.

As he collapses to the ground, chest heaving with the effort it took to keep breathing in, he saves his one last burst of desperate consciousness to dial Ricky's number with shaking fingers.

One ring, two rings...

Gyuvin doesn't even know if Ricky will be able to hear him anyway; his voice is barely anything more than a wheeze as he fights to keep pushing air in and out.

"Hello?"

"Please...help..."

There's a beat of silence, and Ricky speaks again. "Help? Is something wrong? Where are you?"

"Art building..." he wheezes. He feels like death; it takes more than everything he has in him to keep talking. "Supply..."

The last thing he registers is the muffled thud as his fingers lose their grip on his phone, sending it clattering towards the floor, and as the silence begins to swallow him whole he feels himself fade away, adrift into a calmness that envelopes him like a flowerbud at eveningfall, and everything is still.