off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ seventy one

Lately, Yanmei had become the one person she did not want to be. No, not her mother, though that was also a terrifying thought. Rather, Yanmei had become sort of a miniature Ms. Jung, with less intrusiveness and more shame, as she guided Hanbin along on his journey to drawing better. Once again, the two of them met in her art studio to review his latest sketches, and Yanmei was mustering all of her restraint not to go on tangents about form and ambient occlusion and contrast between values that he would not understand. That being said, speaking about art to someone without experience was surprisingly refreshing. With her classmates, all discussions quickly got theoretical, sometimes competitive, so much so that they shifted far away from the artistic value of their pieces. Someone like Hanbin was only interested in making something that looked cute, not in making the most technically proficient piece of his class. With every doodle of his she saw, Yanmei found herself reconnecting with her past self, when she was a child and first discovered the value of art.

"You've actually improved," she remarked.

"Have I? Whenever I draw, it feels like everything looks horrible."

She chuckled. If he thought that feeling would ever disappear, he was wrong. "That's because your body is still catching up to your eyes. You know what makes something good, you just don't know how to do it yet."

In an environment where Yanmei was constantly learning about new techniques, it sometimes felt hard to keep up. From time to time, her art would suddenly turn terrible for a period of time, as her taste and vision got better and she could not live up to her own standards. The lesson she'd learned very quickly though, was that one needed to persevere through these times. Giving the pencil up would only make one's art worse when they would eventually go back to drawing. Art was all about moving forward, and never looking back.

"Well, it's stressful sometimes," Hanbin started, "but drawing has been really fun. Especially when I don't worry about the outcome."

Without thinking, Yanmei placed her hand on his shoulder. "That's the spirit. Of course the end result matters, but the process should be the most enjoyable part."

Before she could remove her hand from his shoulder, the door to her art studio opened swiftly. The both of them flinched as they turned to look at whoever had come in — and would you look at that! As always, it was Hao, who seemed physically incapable of knocking on doors, as if he'd been cursed. His face was already stern and closed off before he even noticed Hanbin was there; then, his eyes widened. Yanmei froze in her chair, a headache already starting to seep its way into her skull. Considering the last conversation she'd had with him, this would be a bad ten minutes to live.

"What the—" he choked out, his eyebrows coming down in a mix of confusion and rising anger. "Hanbin?"

Hanbin, save his soul, gave him a sheepish smile. "Oh, hyung, hello."

But even his friend's greeting did nothing to quell the rage that was starting to bleed through Hao's expression. "Are you serious?" he spat out, his head whipping in Yanmei's direction.

Finally, she removed her hand from Hanbin's shoulder, not once breaking eye contact with her brother. Usually, it would take him a little bit more time to shift to anger. Today, his patience seemed dangerously thin.

"Serious about what?" she muttered nonchalantly, silently praying he would just leave her alone.

"After what you said last time, don't you think you should stay away from Hanbin?"

The simple mention of their last conversation made her entire body tense up. She had said things she regretted, had said she was using Hanbin just to make Hao angry. And truth be told, Yanmei did not care if her brother had a bad opinion of her and saw her as the worst person in the world. Hanbin, though, she did not want to disappoint. He'd already given her so much goodwill, it surely wouldn’t stretch any further if Hao told him about the things she'd said in anger.