Seoul, South Korea
Present Day
They called him the Untouchable Artist.
Han Ji-won, the youngest painter ever to have a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Critics wrote odes to the "feverish, almost violent warmth" that bled from his canvases. They called him a genius who had mastered the alchemy of light, a man who painted with pure, distilled emotion.
They were wrong.
He didn't paint with emotion. He painted from a single, finite source: a memory. A boy.
In the penthouse high above the glittering Han River, far from the adoring crowds and whispering critics, was a room no one was permitted to enter. The locks were biometric, the air perpetually chilled and still.
Inside, there were no windows. The only light came from sterile, white spotlights, each one trained on a painting.
There were thousands of them.
Every wall, every available space, was covered. Not with the celebrated works that hung in galleries, but with variations of the same subject. A boy with chestnut hair, caught in a perpetual sunset. A boy laughing, his eyes crinkled into crescent moons. A boy turning, his hand outstretched, forever just out of reach.
Lee Haneul.
In the center of this silent, suffocating museum of one, Ji-won knelt. His tuxedo from the evening's gala was rumpled, the bow tie hanging loose. He was not the untouchable artist here. Here, he was utterly shattered.
His forehead was pressed against the canvas of a half-finished painting—Haneul sitting on the school rooftop, a bite of kimbap halfway to his smiling lips. Ji-won's shoulders shook with silent, ragged sobs that tore from a place deeper than his soul.
His voice, raw and broken, was a whisper in the sacred silence.
"Please…"
A tear traced a path through the dried paint splatters on his cheek, falling onto the palette still clutched in his hand, diluting a spot of perfect, sunbeam yellow.
"I was wrong… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He clutched the fabric of his own chest, his knuckles white.
"You painted me alive… and then.... I have enough canvases. I have enough fame. I have built a kingdom from the memory of you."
He lifted his head, his haunted, brilliant eyes begging the boy who would never answer.
"It's enough now. So please… just come back."
....
INTRODUCTION..
HAN JI-WON (한지원)
· Age: 18
· School: Sejong High School (Section A)
· Birthday: December 21st (Capricorn)
· Height: 183 cm (6'0")
· Habits:
· Wakes up at 5:30 AM without an alarm.
· Organizes his stationery with military precision.
· Hides his feelings behind a wall of cold logic and silence.
· Works a part-time job to support himself and his mother.
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LEE HANEUL (이하늘)
· Age: 18
· School: Sejong High School (Section A)
· Birthday: August 8th (Leo)
· Height: 175 cm (5'9")
· Habits:
· Always carries a sketchbook and at least three pencils.
· Talks to himself when he's nervous or thinking.
· Tries to befriend everyone, even the class goldfish.
· Believes every problem can be solved with a little bit of sunshine.
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YOON MIN-SEO (윤민서)
· Age: 17
· School: Sejong High School (Section B)
· Birthday: March 3rd (Pisces)
· Height: 162 cm (5'4")
· Habits:
· An avid consumer of BL (Boys' Love) manhwa and dramas.
· Is the self-appointed shipper and chief strategist for her friends' love lives.
· Speaks her mind with hilarious, unfiltered bluntness.
· Is fiercely protective of those she cares about.
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PARK DOYUN (박도윤)
· Age: 18
· School: Sejong High School (Section B)
· Birthday: November 15th (Scorpio)
· Height: 188 cm (6'2")
· Habits:
· Captain of the basketball team; practices free throws to clear his head.
· Tends to act before he thinks, especially when jealous.
· Is surprisingly soft-hearted beneath his tough, athletic exterior.
· Carries a torch for a certain sunny artist.