Steal His Heart - Hyunlix

New Starts

"No, no, no, no! Fuck!" Hyunjin screamed out as he slashed his paintbrush across the canvas, covering the red and black silhouette with streaks of white paint.

He dropped the paintbrush and ran his hands through his disheveled hair, leaving behind streaks of paint in the strands that matched the look for the canvas.

He stood up from the stool and opened up the doors to his balcony. The sounds of the passing cars far and few between at the ungodly hour of 2 am. He fished a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and placed one between his lips. With a flick of his thumb he lit the lighter and held it onto the butt end if the cigarette, puffing it a couple of times until the black smoke entered his lungs and gave him the familiar warmth he craved much too often.

He held the smoke a couple seconds before releasing it, tapping the excess ash off before placing it back in his mouth. He took in another drag before leaning his head back and blowing the smoke straight above him, watching as it blew away in the wind.

Looking up at the stars, he didn't feel any peace like he used to when he was younger. He remembered sneaking out in the middle of the night to go and get high with Wooyoung, running way into the woods at the fear of getting caught. In reality, nobody gave a shit that two seventeen year old boys were smoking some weed, but Hyunjin always thought that the journey through the woods with the goal of isolation was one of the most stress relieving parts.

Life was shit back then. His parents were in the process of getting a divorce, his girlfriend at the time decided to go and take pleasure on a dick that did not belong to him, and he had no fucking clue what he was trying to achieve in life.

How he decided to lose himself in the pile of shit that was his current life, was the beautiful THC that unfortunately came with the smell of skunk. He was very much aware that there were methods that were not nearly as gross, but he was 17 year old teen with limited funds, he made do with what he had.

When the weed ran out, alcohol was second best. Yeah he was a screwed up teen. Absolutely shit at dealing with his.. well shit. Somehow, through all of that, he did find one thing that was legal that he could use to escape. Art.

Since his sophomore year when everything started to fall apart, whenever hyunjin needed to get out of his own head for a while (and Wooyoung and his weed were not available) the paintbrush and canvas were the next best thing.

What was once his escape when he was forced to be sober long enough to actually feel shit, turned out to be an actual escape. An escape to Arizona, specifically, the art institute of Arizona.

That brings us to the present, 4 years and 1 degree later, where he currently stood on his tiny balcony outside of his tiny apartment, attempting to gaze at the stars through the polluted air.

"What I wouldn't give for a little bit of weed right about now.." He mumbled to himself as he took the last long drag of his cigarette, crushing it on the railing afterwards, and tossing it into the tin with the rest of the discarded filters.

"Fuck it." He pulled out his phone and opened up his long abandoned Instagram account, ignoring all of the notifications because he could really only think about one thing. Escape.

His fingers sped over the keyboard at a speed his brain could barely keep up with and thankfully, before he was even able to lock it, the chat bubble popped up. The agonizing wait for a response felt like an eternity.

A smile appeared on his lips as he locked the phone, picked his jacket off the couch, spun his keys around his finger, and slid into his shoes.

He locked the door behind him before heading down the street. He felt like an actual zombie, a shell of a person.