Sunday morning, Top and Jisoo came to Lisa's studio with their own versions of hardboiled eggs, plated messily with apparent attempts at being artsy.
"What's all this?" Lisa asked, wearing a bemused look.
The plate in front of Jisoo had three hardboiled eggs on them, with strips of bacon on the bottom part and a mound of sliced romaine lettuce with grated parmesan cheese mixed with croutons at the heart of it.
"Is that supposed to be a face?"
Jisoo poured Caesar salad dressing all over the plate in a crisscross pattern. "Dude, it's abstract art! It's not supposed to be anything you perceive it to be. Just be the judge whose hardboiled eggs were done better!" She stipulated, shooting a competitive side-eye at Top who merely shrugged without any word.
Lisa blinked at Top's creation—a bowl of jammy sliced eggs sitting in a tangy-salty marinade of chiles, soy, mirin, and vinegar. "Is this your version of The Scream?"
Top raised an eyebrow as he stared at his own work as if seeing it for the first time. "Now that you mention it, it does look like it. Maybe subconsciously I did that because Jisoo kept calling you Edvard Punch."
Before 6 AM that morning of Paris Haute Couture's first show, Top landed back home.
"Thanks for picking me up," said Top as he got into the passenger seat of Lisa's Jeep Wrangler after putting his luggage at the back.
Jisoo squinted at Top but did not miss checking his neatly waxed hair. "Love the hair but since when did you become such a spoiled brat, huh? Uh, there's this thing called Uber which I'm sure you've heard of."
Top laughed, extending an arm to initiate a hug into which Jisoo fell in. "I missed you too!"
"Still a brat."
Letting go of the hug and putting the seatbelt on, Top groaned. "Blame Lisa. She promised to pick me up but before I boarded, she remembered she had a fashion show to watch."
"Ha! Lisa and fashion show. Now those are two things you never thought would end up in a single sentence." Jisoo put the car into drive. "And why the hell did you book your flight at this hour? Jeez."
Top hung his head, shaking it a little. "I don't like the crowd."
"That or you really just want to treat me to some good coffee. Care for a stopover?"
"Cheongsudang Gallery?"
"Of course, just like the old times. I bet you missed being part of the Iced Americano-crazed country?" Jisoo teased, snickering at the end.
"For some reason, it does taste different here." Top gazed outside nostalgically. It had been almost a year since he was home. The first appearance of light cracked across the sky ahead of them and it added to his bittersweet homesickness.
Eyes on the road, Jisoo sensed what Top may be thinking from her peripheral view. "Missed home, huh?"
"Nothing like it. Nothing like it." Top repeated the phrase more for himself to emphasize that he was indeed back home and should no longer carry with him the immensity of being alone in a foreign city, dealing with the incident he wanted to forget since it happened.
The black-haired woman was all smiles. "Lisa would be so happy that she has you here now. Me too, because I've been at the receiving end of her nonstop musings on art, and I don't remember a single thing she said anymore."
YOU ARE READING
a misty gashed aperture
Fanfiction"The Panorama." Artist Lisa Manoban and global supermodel Roseanne Park's first meeting was far from kismet. It was not fireworks going off but finding the sky clear of any smoke. With a stroke of fate, the artist started dreaming again with a futil...
