The faint scent of turpentine clung to Yu Nabi’s hoodie like a second skin, mixing with the crisp scent of late autumn that rolled in through the open studio windows. Her hands, stained with charcoal and oil pastels, moved with the grace of a dancer across the canvas. The portrait wasn’t of anyone real—it never was. It was a storm: delicate eyes holding back tears, wind-swept hair, a mouth parted in a silent scream.

She didn't name her work. It felt cheap to label something that bled so much of her onto the page.

Seol Ah leaned against the studio wall, sipping on a take-out coffee with two fingers—like holding anything more than that might be a commitment. Her cherry-red lipstick was smudged on the lid. “You haven’t slept, have you?” she asked, eyes scanning the stormy girl on the canvas.

“I didn’t feel like it,” Nabi murmured, brushing a streak of cobalt blue across the background. “She wanted to come out.”

“She?” Seol Ah smirked. “I swear your muses are just your moods dressed up in oil paint.”

Nabi didn’t deny it. Her world wasn’t made of reality—it was stitched together from emotion, from sensations too raw to speak. What she couldn’t say with words, she screamed onto canvas.

“You’re gonna be late for Ryu Han’s lecture,” Seol Ah added as she checked her phone. “And you know you never miss his class.”

Nabi paused. Her fingers twitched slightly. “I know.”

Seo Ryu Han.

Thirty, sharp-jawed, quiet, and devastatingly magnetic. His presence filled lecture halls before he even spoke. Rumor had it he was the youngest full professor in the Art Department’s history, with a background in European contemporary sculpture and a personal gallery that only a few had ever stepped into.

He had a fiancée—Beak Jenna, a brand manager at SH Group. Beautiful, high-profile, untouchable. Yet every girl in the department watched Ryu Han like he might reach into the crowd and choose them.

Nabi never fantasized like that. But she did feel things when he entered a room. A strange awareness. Like the air thickened. Like he noticed too much. Like he saw straight through.

The lecture hall buzzed when they walked in—Seol Ah floated to the back, but Nabi took her usual seat, third row, center-left. Close enough to observe, far enough not to be obvious.

Ryu Han walked in three minutes late, eyes cool as a winter morning, carrying a leather folder that looked older than most students. His voice, when he started speaking about the role of chaos in neo-expressionist art, was low and unhurried. Like silk over skin.

But today, his eyes met hers.

Just a flicker.

She felt it.

And then again.

While explaining a brush technique used by Georg Baselitz, his gaze dipped to her. Not to the girl beside her. Not over her. To her.

Her heart skipped. She didn’t blush, but her fingers curled around her pencil like it might anchor her to the ground.

Was it her art? Had he seen the piece she submitted for the pre-exhibition portfolio?

No. It wasn’t professional. It didn’t feel like admiration.

It felt personal.

Too personal.

“You’re flushed,” Yu Han said later as they sat outside the art hall on low concrete steps, sipping canned coffee from a vending machine. The trees around them were shedding yellow, gold, and burnt orange leaves like confetti from another universe.

“I’m fine,” Nabi said quickly. “Just didn’t eat.”

Yu Han studied her. He always did. With eyes that held affection and a pain he refused to name.

“You’ve been... different lately,” he said. “Since midterms.”

“I’m just tired,” she lied.

He nodded but didn’t believe her.

Behind them, Na Eun and Jae Wook were laughing, feeding each other sweet buns and talking about weekend plans. Seol Ah had disappeared into the arms of some new musician she’d met at a bar. The group was warm, familiar—but Nabi often felt like a thread pulled too tightly in a tapestry of comfort.

Yu Han reached out, brushing a bit of paint from her jaw with the edge of his thumb.

She didn’t move away.

“You don’t have to break yourself to be great, you know,” he said softly.

But greatness wasn't the goal. Not anymore.

Not when someone like Ryu Han looked at her with something dark, unreadable, and potent.

That night, Nabi stood in front of her canvas again.

She didn’t know what she was painting at first. Her brush dipped in black, then red, then grey. A silhouette emerged, half-formed. Male. Angular. Distant.

Not love.

Possession.

And for the first time in months, she smiled as she painted.

Because someone had noticed her. Not for politeness. Not for talent. But for something else.

And she wasn't scared.

She was thrilled.

Even if she couldn’t name what it was—yet.

Nabi didn’t think the email was real at first.

From: Professor Seo Ryu Han

Subject: Portfolio Critique

Yu Nabi, your submitted portfolio caught my attention. I would like to offer some one-on-one feedback before final selections for the exhibition are made. If you're available, please meet me at Studio 6A, Wednesday, 4 PM.

– R.H.

She stared at the message, blinking once. Then again. The cursor hovered over the screen, taunting her like a dare.

It wasn’t uncommon for professors to offer critique. It wasn’t even unusual for Ryu Han to select students for private feedback—he was known to mentor the best. But Nabi?

She wasn’t top of the class. She was unpredictable. A mess of talent and emotional chaos. Even Professor Yoo Dambi once told her she was “a wildfire—dazzling and destructive.”

Still, Nabi arrived five minutes early.

Studio 6A

Studio 6A sat tucked at the far end of the Fine Arts Building — a space few dared to enter without explicit invitation. Though technically part of the university, it was understood, without being said, that Studio 6A belonged to Professor Ryu Han.

It wasn’t listed on any student schedule.

There was no posted timetable.

But everyone knew.

He worked there.

He painted there.

He critiqued there — not with mercy, but with brutal precision.

The tall windows spilled in cold afternoon light, casting angular shadows across the varnished floors and empty easels. The air was always thick with turpentine, linseed oil, and the quiet authority of ownership.

His ownership.

It was the kind of silence that didn’t invite entry — it warned against it.

Because stepping into Studio 6A without his permission wasn’t just a boundary crossed.

It was a line willingly walked into — and no one knew how far the consequences would go.

He was already there. Ryu Han stood beside one of her canvases—The Withering Girl—the one she had almost torn apart before submission. The piece was messy, expressive, lines bleeding into each other, as if trying to escape the form entirely.

“I didn’t expect this from you,” he said without turning around.

Her throat tightened. “You said you wanted to offer critique.”

He finally turned to face her. His gaze was unreadable. But intense.

“I did. Sit.”

She obeyed, folding her arms in her lap like a schoolgirl being scolded. Her heart pounded—not from fear, but something stranger. Sharper.

He stood in front of the canvas again, hands in his coat pockets.

“You don’t care about technique,” he said. “You care about release. That’s dangerous. It either births genius or disaster. No in-between.”

Nabi looked up at him. “So which one am I?”

He tilted his head, almost amused. “I haven’t decided yet.”

The silence between them stretched, thick with something she couldn’t name. He took a step closer.

“You paint as if you’re confessing sins no one asked you to admit. That kind of rawness—if you’re not careful—will expose too much. Even to the wrong people.”

Her lips parted, but no words came out. Her stomach twisted.

“Why did you submit this?” he asked.

“Because I wanted you to see it,” she said before she could stop herself.

The air shifted.

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, a flicker of something dark behind the calm exterior. “You wanted me to see you.”

Her breath hitched. She hated how true it was.

He turned away again, breaking the tension as he reached for another canvas—one of her abstract pieces.

“You’ve got potential, Yu Nabi. But you’re careless with your gift. If you want it to matter, I suggest you learn control.”

She swallowed. “Will you teach me?”

Another pause. Then he said, almost absently, “We’ll see.”

Then he left her standing there, with her canvases, her trembling fingers, and the taste of something dangerous blooming under her tongue.

That evening, Nabi sat cross-legged on the dorm floor while Seol Ah painted her toenails black and hummed an old indie song. Na Eun and Jae Wook were curled up on the beanbag chair, laughing over something dumb on his phone. Yu Han leaned against the balcony door, watching the city lights, arms folded.

“Tell me again what he said,” Seol Ah prompted. “Verbatim.”

Nabi groaned, falling back onto the carpet. “I already told you. It wasn’t a big deal. Just a critique.”

“Right,” Seol Ah drawled. “Because all professors lean in and whisper about control and rawness and genius like they’re casting a damn spell.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

Yu Han didn’t speak, but his jaw was tight.

Na Eun tilted her head. “Do you… like him?”

Nabi hesitated. “No. I mean—he’s… he’s intimidating. That’s it.”

Seol Ah snorted. “Everyone’s intimidated by hot professors who talk like villains and smell like bergamot.”

Jae Wook raised an eyebrow. “I swear, you girls are dangerously into this man.”

“He noticed her,” Seol Ah said, pointing her brush like a sword. “That’s the real drug. When someone you think will never see you suddenly does.”

Nabi felt the words settle in her chest. Because it was true. Being seen by Ryu Han didn’t feel like admiration.

It felt like a fuse had been lit.

Yu Han finally spoke. “Just be careful, Nabi.”

She turned to look at him. His eyes weren’t warm tonight. They were shadowed. Distant.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” she asked softly.

He didn’t answer.

But the next time her phone lit up with an unknown number and a message that read, Studio 6A. Friday. 5 PM, she didn’t tell her friends.

Not even Seol Ah.

The studio was colder this time.

Nabi arrived five minutes early again, but Ryu Han was already there, his sleeves rolled halfway up, revealing the sharp veins of his forearms as he arranged a collection of student portfolios on the table. He looked up once, then back down, as though she were nothing more than a scheduled appointment.

“Sit,” he said simply.

Nabi obeyed, her legs brushing the wooden stool, nerves humming beneath her skin. Her latest work—A Girl in Pieces—was already propped up on the easel. She hadn't shown it to anyone, not even Seol Ah.

He studied it in silence.

Minutes passed. Long, excruciating ones.

Then: “You’re spiraling.”

Nabi blinked. “What?”

Ryu Han’s gaze remained on the canvas. “There’s a desperation in this one. Like you're trying to scream, but muffled. That’s not growth. That’s noise.”

She bit her bottom lip. “I thought that was emotion.”

“No.” He looked at her then, his eyes sharper than his words. “It’s recklessness.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said,” he cut in, stepping closer. “I said I’d see if I could teach you. But I’m not here to be your audience, Nabi. I’m not interested in watching a girl tear herself apart for art. There’s enough of that in this place already.”

It stung more than it should have. Still, she lifted her chin. “Then what are you interested in?”

He held her gaze, and for a terrifying second, the question shifted between them like something intimate.

He moved then, slowly, toward her—his presence quietly overwhelming. Her heart raced.

“Boundaries,” he said, voice like silk laced with smoke. “You’re going to need them. With me.”

Nabi blinked. “With you?”

He was close now. Not touching. Just near enough that she could smell the faint citrus and something deeper—like woodsmoke and ink. He leaned down, his voice low and deliberate.

“I push because I know how far people can fall in pursuit of being seen. And you… you look like you’ve been waiting your whole life for someone to see you.”

Her throat tightened. “And what if I have?”

That dangerous flicker passed over his face again—curiosity, maybe even desire—but he straightened suddenly, withdrawing like a tide.

“This session is over,” he said.

“You invited me here,” she snapped before she could stop herself.

“And I’m ending it.” His back was already turned. “We’ll talk when you’ve painted something worth the mess you’re making.”

The door clicked behind her.

And Nabi—angry, rattled, thrilled—stood there alone, burning.

Later that week – Regular Art Class, University

Ryu Han was back to being cold and clinical.

He stood in front of the class, discussing minimalist sculpture with measured detachment. If any of the other students noticed the flicker of his gaze landing on Nabi too often, they didn’t say anything.

But she noticed.

Every time his eyes met hers—just for a breath too long—she felt the thrill curl inside her like a secret.

She didn’t look away.

Professor Yoo Dambi hovered nearby, watching the class presentations and offering comments. “Nabi,” she called at one point, “I heard your early submissions were raw but promising. We’re expecting something brave from you.”

Nabi nodded, cheeks warm.

She didn’t mention that the last person to call her brave had walked out of a room without touching her—but left her permanently shaken.

When class ended, students filtered out in groups, talking about the upcoming University Year-End Exhibition. Ryu Han dismissed them all with a short nod. He didn’t say anything to Nabi.

That, somehow, felt louder than words.

That Night – Rooftop Gathering

The rooftop was strung with fairy lights that Seol Ah had hung with reckless charm. Someone had brought a speaker; indie music buzzed low in the background. Drinks clinked, conversation flowed. It was their usual group—Seol Ah, Yu Han, Jae Wook, Na Eun, and Nabi.

Seol Ah poured another round of soju into paper cups, wearing a leopard print jacket over a slip dress, barefoot on the concrete.

“So,” she drawled, tossing her hair, “are we gonna talk about the Art Daddy or not?”

Nabi choked on her drink.

“Art who?” Na Eun giggled.

“Professor Seo, obviously,” Seol Ah said with a wicked grin. “Come on, he’s basically a walking contradiction—cold, polished, but eyes that say I’ll ruin your life in the best way possible.”

Nabi rolled her eyes. “You’re insane.”

“I’m right,” Seol Ah winked. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that you’ve been glowing since that portfolio critique.”

“She’s been painting more, too,” Na Eun added with a soft smile. “Even skipping lunch breaks.”

“Because I have work,” Nabi muttered.

Yu Han stayed quiet. His gaze flicked toward her, unreadable.

Jae Wook nudged him. “You okay, man?”

“Fine,” Yu Han said. “Just don’t like professors who play favorites.”

Seol Ah raised a brow. “Ohhh? That sounds like jealousy, my dear Yu Han.”

He didn’t rise to the bait.

But Nabi felt the tension brewing. Between all of them.

And it hit her that her life was beginning to tilt.

Ryu Han hadn’t touched her. Had barely spoken. But somehow, he had already lit a fuse in her. The way he looked at her—like he was both sculpting her and undoing her at the same time.

And in the back of her mind, she wondered—

What happens when that fuse runs out?