everything is here except my serotonin

Beside you, a body shifted its weight, and you heard him sigh. You glanced over, concerned for a moment, but your fears were quelled almost immediately when you saw that he was just as immersed in the rectangles as you were. He noticed you looking at him and flashed you a shy smile, his dimples pressing into his cheeks.

“What do you think of it?” Namjoon asked softly, taking a half-step closer to you.

You hummed again, taking a second to gather your thoughts. Suddenly, you were nervous. Namjoon seemed nice, and you’d like to think that he wouldn’t make fun of what you said but… truthfully, you didn’t know much about fine art. 

“I like the vibe,” you told him, a little sheepish at the simplicity of the statement. “It’s warm, but a little lonely. Like the kind of lonely you feel in an unfamiliar city.”

He nodded, watching you as you spoke. Miraculously, you didn’t feel like he was judging you–his brown eyes were soft as he focused on what you were saying. When you were finished, he nodded again quietly, his brow furrowing slightly in thought. You were struck, not for the first time, by how pretty he was as he considered your words.

“Interesting. I get a similar feeling from it.” He turned back to the painting. “I see it more as a mask, though every time I come here, I find myself going back and forth on whether it’s the darkness masking the vibrant, or the vibrant masking the darkness.”

You laughed, causing Namjoon to jump slightly. He shot you a curious look, and you could tell that he wasn’t sure if he should be amused or offended. “Sorry, I just… there’s a play by this American playwright about Rothko, and there’s a line in it that’s strikingly similar to what you just said.”

“Oh?”

“There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend... One day the black will swallow the red," you quoted. “I saw a small production of the play when I was undergrad. His abstraction has fascinated me ever since.”

“It’s amazing that colored rectangles can make us feel so strongly.”

“It’s fascinating,” you agreed, following him to the next exhibit. “When I was traveling in America, we visited a museum that had this installation that…” You sighed at the memory. You weren’t always very good with art, but this had been something else entirely. “It was meant to represent the artist’s partner who died of AIDS. It was just this pile of candy in the corner of the room, and the exhibition encouraged you to take a piece with you. I still have mine somewhere.”

“That’s one of the reasons I love art so much.” Namjoon paused in front of a canvas full of grey and white swirls. “It can capture so much in something so simple.”

You followed him throughout the rest of the museum, through the modern art installations, to the romance section, to the historic Korean pieces. You weren’t very familiar with most of the artists, but you recognized a Van Gogh, and a Matisse, and a few others that you learned to recognize when you were in high school. 

Eventually, you ended up at a bench outside the museum’s cafe. Despite the afternoon sun, it was fairly cool, the shade of a tall oak stretching above the bench and into the courtyard. The bench itself was a work of art, the little plaque beside the concrete creation said that it was called ‘Jiyoon, 23.8.12’. The whole bench was a circlet, the flat part to sit on was round, but directly behind where you sat, the concrete turned jagged.

“It looks like a heart monitor,” you remarked softly, sitting beside Namjoon. He’d bought you a coffee–you weren’t quite sure what he’d gotten for himself, but true to form, it was much lighter than your own drink–and a pecan twist so large it was almost pornographic.  

He hummed, pulling a piece off the pecan twist. “I hope Jiyoon is okay.”

You sat in silence for a few moments, admiring the courtyard. Namjoon was sitting so close that you could practically feel the warmth of his body, his thigh mere centimeters from your own despite the fact that the rest of the courtyard was empty and the bench was big enough for four people. You’d spent the past few hours talking–chatting about the art and your lives and just enjoying being together. It was nice. But now it was nice to bask in the silence, together in an entirely different way.

You’d read somewhere once that you could tell a lot about a person by how they spent the silence in their life, and Namjoon was a fascinating study in quiet thoughts. He paid close attention to the littlest things, studying the leaves flutter in the tree, watching a sparrow hop along the paving stones of the courtyard, turning his face to the wind and letting it gently tousle him. His silence wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable. Strangely, it was almost cozy, like a cup of spiced tea on a cold morning.

“Thank you for agreeing to come here with me,” he said after some time, deep voice like warm honey. He shook his now-empty cup, stirring up the ice so that he could sip the last dregs of coffee from the bottom. “I know not everyone finds these kinds of places as fascinating as I do.”

“I had fun,” you said earnestly and he smiled, a deeply dimpled gesture that warmed you to your core. “Honestly I don’t know much about art or any of it, but I like looking at it. It’s hard not to be captivated. Especially when you’re with someone who’s so invested.”

Namjoon chuckled and looked away, a shy smile replacing the one that was on his lips only moments before.

You drove him home in the early evening, dropping him off in front of his building and bidding him goodbye with a quiet wave. You watched as he disappeared into the tinted glass doors before driving off. There was a part of you that regretted committing to dinner with your graduate cohort that night. Namjoon had looked almost disappointed when you said you had to leave.

And when you got home and were cleaning out your bag in preparation to go to dinner, you found a small box, a little larger than the size of a chalkboard eraser. It was plain grey, and there was a serial number in one of the lower corners, but otherwise it was almost entirely indistinguishable. You opened it, confused, and nearly dropped it when the small structure contained inside slid out. 

Sitting in your palm was an exact replica of ‘Jiyoon, 23.8.12.’ They’d had them in the museum shop, and you’d looked at them briefly. Namjoon must have bought it for you–tucked into the box was a receipt of purchase folded up tiny enough to slip in without actually opening one of the flaps–but you had no idea when he’d found the time. You smiled to yourself and sat the miniature bench on your bookshelf, a place of honor beside your nearly dying aloe plant.

You pulled out your phone as you walked out the door, opening your message app as you hurried down the hall. Luckily, your friends wouldn’t mind you being a few minutes late. You typed the message as you punched the elevator button for the parking garage.

“I had a really nice time today.”

Part of the Long Term Couples series. Read more here.

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