VMINKOOK / THE ART OF BEEKEEPING

24

— PART TWENTY FOUR.

To Taehyung, the concept of confidence just simply doesn't derive any form of sustainability nor any form of ease within his soul. So, he allows himself to fall into the thrills of being pliable. Ever the astute entity, Taehyung decides that instead of shocking false confidence into him, he'll create an archetype of himself; he shall be the hyperbolic example of his own thesis, shall form a caricature of his own inability.

He'd decided his plan, upon waking up in his bed, with a splinter in his head on the Sunday morning after the party, nauseating ripples bouncing throughout his brain cells, pulsating his mind in formaldehyde densities and misleading condensation. The clouds outside had been a manifesto of his emotional turmoil; they were heavy and pallid, allowing wan-glazed precipitation to bring them down, sodden and blue. Within himself, he could feel blood stirring, a whirlwind of upturned guts and gore defining his current disposition, an intermediate of black and white. It hadn't rained in months, and he hadn't cried in months, so, there he was, miserable and foolish, with his emotions splattered across the grey skyline.

The rain was solacing, if only a little. Being out of the sun, enabled a clear state of mind and the patter of rainfall against his window, accompanied by Chet Baker's 'look for the silver lining', allowed him to do just that. He sat on his sofa, looking for the 'sunny side of life', revising each cloud with great intensity, unpicking the metaphorical silver lining, until an idea crafted itself into his mind.

Why was he trying so desperately to detach himself from his accustomed way of life? It's surely so much easier to just create exaggerated examples of his mannerisms than to create new ones? So, he decided, that rainy Sunday, after the party, he would simply give in. He'd give them exactly what they're looking for; would adapt to fit his body within their palms, while subconsciously slipping into their minds and eating away at their thoughts and desires. He shall uncover their darkness and destroy them with faux-submission. Easy peasy.

It's the following Sunday, now, and Taehyung's got the same song on the record player in the living room (which is conjoined to the kitchen). He finds himself rethinking everything he'd established the previous week, a little giddy after having shared a kiss with one of his targets — why didn't he think of this method earlier?

"You've been playing this damn song on repeat for the past week, are you not sick of it?" Comes a teasing chide from his father, after he returns from the supermarket, two plastic bags of microwaveable meals and canned fruits in his hand (Taehyung's positive the woman who works there thinks he's some kind of apocalypse-nut, constantly buying items that'd survive the end of the world).

"How could one ever grow sick of artistic genius?" Taehyung says back, not even glancing in his father's direction, his head drooping off the front of the sofa, as his legs hang off the back. Golden tinctures twirl and dance in the glacial sunlight that leaks through the window, his hair a mess of curls that scrape against the floor due to how they hang.

Yejun roles his eyes tentatively, chucking objects into cupboards and the fridge haphazardly, "you ought to get back into the piano, you know, maybe you'd be able to play like this one day."

A scoff can be heard throughout the meandering crashes of tin cans, as Taehyung sits up momentarily, "yeah right, I'm way too busy."

"Busy? Funny, you don't look particularly busy to me." Yejun remarks, undoing the top button of his flannel shirt — the man's outfits never really consisted of anything greater than a flannel and ripped jeans. The man was only thirty three and didn't quite want to give into the tiring lull of parenthood just yet, he wanted his long forgotten youth to live on, thus the tattoos of cartoons that spiralled up his arms, in an ancient map of his mind's innards. Taehyung has always had a fixation with the Popeye one upon the man's bicep, he adores how it disfigures when he flexes.