Aki stopped in his tracks, his eyes stuck to that one particular corner in the room. He moved his eyes away, yet, somehow, it was as if something drew him in. Liam told him that was where he placed his not-so-good paintings, and Aki believed him.
Subconsciously, he took one step inside the room. That place seemed to have grown larger than the last time he was there. The cloth covering the canvases was bulgy and could not quite cover them all. Apparently, Liam had not changed it when the number of paintings grew.
Those covered canvases piqued his interest, sure. It always bugged him what was painted there that Liam could not seem to part with. But if Liam was not ready to share it with him, then fine.
'I might as well clean, or at least, put things in order since I'm already here,' Aki thought, tapping his index finger on his lips as he considered how to clean this part of the house. The least overwhelming spot in this room was the table.
He strode to the other side and put the camera and the sketchpads back to their proper places. Aki found an open album on top of it. He did not mean to take a peek, but when he saw the hill and other shots that were taken from their vacation, he thought that there was no harm looking through it.
Aki smiled to himself as he flipped through the pages. Liam took some astonishing view of the country. His favorite was still the sunset from the hill, even if Liam took that while he was with Nancy. Aki's mood soured a bit at the thought of her.
The pull of looking at the pictures was stronger than cleaning, so he took the album to take a seat near the window. Once he gathered the album in his arm, a single photo dropped from it. He stooped down to pick it up and stopped midway.
It was a picture of him.
"Huh?" He turned it over as though he could find an explanation on the other side.
In the photo, he was looking at something by his side. Judging from the plaid shirt that he wore, this must be during his phase back in the first year. He recognized this place as the lecture hall. There were other students in the background, but the focus was on him. The photo was a wallet-size one, it was worn around the edges as if it had been held quite a few times.
'Why does Liam have this?' He knitted his brows and tried to come up with an explanation. 'Wait... we do not know each other yet during the first year.'
Aki titled his head. Come to think of it, Liam seemed to know a lot about him, but he never told Aki how he knew them. Like his name. Or Zy. Or his failed first love.
He bit his lip as he stared at the photo. Then an idea hit him. He grabbed the photo album and slumped on the floor, checking every photo. While the first few pages were from the vacation and other events like the party, there were photos where the focus was on him. Beautiful, candid shots as though that was how the photographer really saw Aki in his eyes.
Nothing made sense. These pictures were from the events after they met. They were unlike the first photo he saw. As he thought, his eyes landed at the haphazardly covered paintings in the corner.
He laughed at an even wilder idea that came to him. "No way."
Those paintings... Of course not. He was thinking about this too much. There would be no way, right?
Yet something nagged at the back of his mind. No matter how much he shoved it down, it always made its appearance.
He clicked his tongue. 'Fine. just so you could have your peace of mind Aki.'
It was really nothing. It should be. It was not like his sweet and charming boyfriend was a creepy and perverted stalker.
He sauntered and gripped the corner of the cloth, taking a deep breath. "If it was nothing, then I'll apologize to Liam."
As he pulled the cloth, his mind went blank. The photo in his hand was replicated... or at least tried to be replicated on the canvas. And not just one. There were a lot of other unfinished versions of this photo like the painter tried to create in a clean slate when he was not satisfied with the previous one.
Aki glanced at the paintings next to it and found some more familiar-looking scenes. Like that painting of a person sitting on a bench in what seemed like the back of the Art building. Then there were those bar seats at Moonlight where he used to sit with Zy.
"I'm not good with portraits but recently I've been trying to do it."
Didn't Liam say something like that? Was he using Aki's picture to practice or was he practicing to paint Aki?