Puzzle

Chapter Three

~In which they put together the bigger pieces~

Picking out all the red pieces already proves to be a somewhat harder task than it seemed at first (and it didn't even sound that easy to begin with) and no matter how many of them Jongdae gathers in front of his feet there still seem to be even more scattered all over the room. And he still doesn't know how to differentiate between flower and parrot so he just grabs all of them and hopes he will figure it out along the way.

By the time Jongdae has gathered all the red pieces together Minseok has already started putting together a light green, almost yellow-ish, snake that wraps itself around a dead branch somewhere in the left upper corner of the picture. Jongdae stops in his movements for a moment to watch Minseok put together the pieces. The way Minseok puzzles seems so much more efficient. It's like he picks up a piece and immediately knows where he has to put it just by looking at it. He's not trying to find it's spot, he's just putting it there without hesitation. Jongdae, on the other hand, always has to find where the piece fits through a process of trial and error. His eyes are not sharp enough to tell if this puzzle thingie (he has decided to just call them that) will fit into the hole of the other puzzle piece or not so he always has to try them. Most of the time he just randomly connects two pieces, putting aside those he has already tried, until they finally fit together and then the whole process starts over from the beginning. It's somewhat exhausting but as time passes Jongdae finds it easier to guess which pieces might fight together. Sometimes the position of the hole already rules out a bunch of the puzzle thingies and other times the thingie has a very particular shape that makes it easy to find the hole it's supposed to fill. And as the flowers begin to grow under Jongdae's fingers he finds himself actually enjoying this.

He also quite enjoys the conversation with Minseok. Today Jongdae left it to Minseok to pick the music and somewhere in Minseok's playlist was the opening to a drama Jongdae's mother used to watch all the time when he was a child. And that kind of lead to a conversation about movies and their childhood and pretty much anything they can come up with. They ask questions back and forth while connecting puzzle piece after puzzle piece. By the time Minseok has finished the snake Jongdae knows that he used to play with dolls together with his sister because he just couldn't ever say no to her, that he is somewhat afraid of bees because he once got stung by a bunch of them when he got stuck trying to get his football out of a small space and that he really likes coffee.

While they talk Minseok finishes the snake and moves on to gathering the pieces of the leopard, Jongdae is still stuck on the flowers but at least he has kind of figured out the difference between flower and parrot. The parrot is a slightly lighter red and the texture is also a bit different.

By the time they decide to call it a day the flowers are still not completely finished but both of them have made some progress. The pieces are coming together bit by bit and slowly Jongdae begins to get a vague idea of how it will be when they are done. It still seems awfully out of reach but maybe, just maybe, if they continue like this he will one day see the full picture.

The next day they start puzzling in the late afternoon since neither of them has any late lectures that day. Well, at least no lectures that they really have to visit. Jongdae actually has this one really boring lecture he should be at but the professor never takes attendance and he knows someone who will give him his notes. And puzzling together with Minseok just is so much more enjoyable than listening to the drowsy voice of an old professor explaining how chord inversion works.

By now Jongdae has finished the red flowers and is trying to use the leftovers of the red pieces to start building the parrot, Minseok is still working on the leopard, but that thing is at least three times as big as the flowers Jongdae just finished and Minseok is almost done with it. He really is a lot better at this than Jongdae but it's starting to become less frustrating now. And they are really making some progress. There are still so many blank spaces and they only just started filling them but Jongdae feels like he can see a small glimpse of the picture now and it's actually starting to feel exciting. He wants to finish it. He wants to see the full picture laid out in front of him and not just the small print on the cardboard box. And every piece that finds its place gets them a bit closer to their shared goal.