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Khada Jhin arrives at dusk. He brings with him a bag, the clothes on his back, and a violin, but Hwei doesn’t know that yet. The twilight makes his face murky. The world is painted in warm purples, shades of sunset washed up from the surrounding sea. Everything is vaguely violet, especially Koyehn Temple, which absorbs any color thrust upon its gray stone. Koyehn loves color. In the evenings it catches purple, then blue, then black as the hues escape, and in the morning the sunrise presses color back into it, saturating it with fiery orange.
Hwei is always expecting visitors. It’s a temple after all. That’s what people do; visit, but he’d also been secretly hoping for a break. He’d been laying in bed and when the bells had rung he’d had to throw on his clothes and pretend to be normal. He does a lot of pretending, nowadays, much more than he used to.
Jhin’s face is done up in purples still, distantly blurry. Hwei won’t remember much of their first meeting, his head is full of fog and the light from his lantern is too distracting. He holds it behind him, sacrificing visibility for quiet relief.
“I’m sorry,” he tells Jhin. “I’m having a migraine.”
Jhin’s mouth is a wet smear of paint against an already dark canvas. “Don’t be,” he says.
Later, back in bed, Hwei will think about the chord of Khada Jhin’s voice. His head is pounding. He’d promised to give Jhin a proper tour tomorrow, but in his dreams they’re already walking the grounds. Jhin is a tall set of strokes, across for the shoulders, down for the length of his body. There are four courtyards, Hwei tells him. This is the first.
Four, repeats Jhin.
Yes, four. And we have studios between, if you’re a painter.
You’re a painter, Jhin tells him. His face is just a shadow, lacking any real detail, a dab of white for the gleam in his eyes. The temple is scratchy behind him, like it was painted with a dry brush, leaving the canvas aching.
I am, Hwei agrees, and laughs, and because he laughs Jhin does too. It sounds more like Hwei, because he hasn’t actually heard it yet. Tomorrow Hwei will hear Jhin laugh for the first time and he’ll be unable to describe it.
***
Koyehn summers are wet. The sea surrounds them on all sides and the breezes aren’t enough to mask the humidity. In the mornings Hwei wakes up with the windows thrown open, damp air sticking to his skin. He can taste the ocean when he inhales, and the sunlight and the sweltering beginnings of monsoon season. It is early but Jhin is already in the middle studio. Hwei follows the sound of his violin, notes tested on the wind. The studio is very bright, and there’s almost a foggy quality to the air because of the humidity.
When Hwei was younger he’d tried to learn the flute but his fingers wouldn’t move right. Music is harder than it sounds and Hwei is no stranger to practice but his heart lives elsewhere. He’s known Jhin for less than a week and he makes it look so easy. When Jhin plays he closes his eyes and tips his head and suddenly he is his instrument and his instrument is him, and maybe he’s no longer in an empty room but instead standing in a round amphitheater full of listeners, who’ve come to appreciate his talent or the way his fingers dance across the strings. The world is quiet after he stops, not breathing, watching a bead of sweat slip down his throat—and then Hwei is at the forefront of course and he’s clapping.
Jhin pulls the violin away from his neck. He’s reserved so Hwei claps quietly. The room is long and they are standing at either end,
“I’ve never heard that one before,” Hwei says. Admittedly there’s a lot of music he’s never heard before. Artists and musicians come and go often but Hwei’s never left the island and there’s no replacement for that.
“It’s my own composition,” Jhin tells him.
“It’s wonderful,” Hwei says. “I’ll miss it when you leave.”
Jhin looks at him and for a moment Hwei backtracks in his head, sits back down on the amphitheater bench and wonders if he’s said something wrong. That’s one thing he’s not the most certain about, all the traditions. At Koyehn they are open and familiar but the rest of Runeterra isn’t the same—not even the rest of Ionia is the same. Sometimes someone will come from one of the farther provinces and they will blanch at a compliment. We aren’t family, they might say, scandalized, and Hwei will nod and correct himself, and mind himself accordingly until they leave. The heir of Koyehn must deal with it often, so it helps to know, even if he’s used to saying what he thinks, (even if he’s used to hiding things.)
“Thank you.” Jhin nods. He’s quite red in the face but it’s not Hwei’s fault. It’s the humidity. Hwei’s seen it all before.
“You’re unused to the weather,” he says, more of a statement than a question.
“I didn’t expect such conditions,” Jhin concedes.
“Today’s especially humid.” Hwei adjusts his bangs. He moves a little closer. Jhin is composed of angles, the planes of his cheekbones and the way his shoulders fit to his biceps, the length of his forearms, the sharp but slight hook of his eyebrows. “Even I have trouble with it sometimes.”
“When you paint?” Jhin tilts his head again, the other way, and in the light he suddenly looks—
“Oh,” Hwei breathes. “You’re like The Amateurs, by Sanno. Do you know it?”
The other man blinks at him. “No,” he says, but it’s not a thoughtless no. It’s cautiously intrigued.
“Let me show it to you,” Hwei tells him.
The Amateurs sleeps in one of the storage cellars. It’s not displayed in the summer, the season would hurt its delicate paints too much, so visitors rarely see it. It depicts two men playing tellstones at a table, surrounded by white marble. Sanno had been Demacian and therefore knew how to draw color out of pale stone, how to expertly paint white with pinks and purples and blues. And the figures at the center are soft-skinned and well blended. The first has his back to the viewer, face out of sight, but is leaning on his arm thinking of his next move, and the other is stretching backwards in his chair, head tipped to collect light on his cheeks, mouth trapped in a small, knowing smile. Hwei holds his lantern closer and hovers his finger above the man’s face. The cellar is dark, except for them.
“It’s silly,” he decides, now a little embarrassed. “I just—thought of it, in the light.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jhin says, staring.
“You are lucky to see it,” Hwei tells him. He’s glad Jhin hadn’t agreed with him, that it was silly.
“And you.”
“Yes.” Hwei glances at Jhin, catches the sight of his face in the lantern light, and glances back at the painting. “I suppose I am.”
In bed later that night, Hwei can’t sleep. The heat isn’t the issue, he’s used to it, but he keeps thinking about the cellar. He’d never paid much attention to the room itself, just the art kept in it and of course how much cooler it is. As a boy he’d hide in there sometimes to survive the weather and look at the art.
He keeps thinking about The Amateurs, newly refreshed in his memory. The man’s slightly knowing look in his eyes, like he might be hiding something, and Hwei’s thinking about two people surrounding the same painting, the ornate frame leaned against the wall, and the light from his own lantern. He thinks about it like a viewer looking in through a window and seeing what it could’ve been. (The moment he’d looked at Jhin, or the moment he’d looked away.)
Hwei thinks about it, staring at the ceiling. In his head he sketches it with thoughtful charcoal and he sees the vision of possibility. He’d paint the cellar in dark blues, nearly black, more purple by the light, and he’d need to paint the frame, and the two people gathered by it, looking at it or at each other, like art of their own.
(Hwei gets up and stumbles to his easel. He’s tired but this can’t wait. Inspiration is equal parts kind and cruel.)
***
Hwei has never met someone like Jhin before, and he’s met a lot of people. He can’t put his finger on what makes him so different. Maybe it’s just the cadence of his words when he talks, or the way he sometimes only exhales instead of laughs. Or maybe it’s the way he stands, limber like the whipper trees that grow in the dunes, bending in the breezes. Hwei’s promised to show him tomorrow, when it’s hopefully not so hot. They’ve spent a lot of time together. It’s as if they know each other. Hwei shows him how to manage the oils when it gets too humid, and Jhin shows him how to cradle his violin and also how to write music. He’s very good at it. Jhin plays a set of four notes and then pauses to write them down one after another, and then he tries two different sequences but only picks one, and they are both in the secondary courtyard when Jhin finishes composing his new song. Hwei had meant to draw but he’d gotten lost.
His sketchbook has lolled to his knee, half-tipped, his thumbnails forgotten in favor of greater wants. He studies Jhin’s straight posture, the practiced ease of a performer. There’s something about him, he hasn’t figured it out yet. Hwei perpetually slouches, but if Jhin’s figured that out then he hasn’t said anything. (Hwei adjusts his tunic, hooks a finger at his collar and pulls it forward.) The sky is bright blue above them, Hwei could mix it without even thinking, could create Jhin from it in the sunlight, the way Sanno had. The line of Jhin’s back practically begs to be drawn, recorded on a canvas or hung up on a wall, just the single line. Hwei would see it and he’d know what it means, but Hwei can’t bring himself to draw because then he’d have to stop looking.
“What will you name it?” he asks.
“I’m sure it will come to me,” answers Jhin. A strand of his hair has fallen out of place across his forehead.
“I never know what to name my pieces.” Hwei closes his sketchbook. The cover is almost falling off from how much use he’s squeezed out of it. “It often eludes me.”
Jhin looks up at him, his long fingers steady on his violin. Hwei glances up at the blue sky and then at the courtyard entrance. They’re alone.
“The masters prefer things to be titled a certain way,” he explains. “It’s difficult to understand unless you live here.” He’s not trying to be evasive, it’s hard to describe exactly how they steer the way art is called. (Or painted, he thinks.) You cannot call things Despair, or That Feeling Under the Moon. You can’t call something The Drowning if no one is drowning and the only reason you can entitle a piece The Amateurs is if you’re not from here, because those tellstone players at the table don’t look like beginners. You can paint a feeling but you can’t call it that. You can depict a beach and it’ll be called a landscape, you can draw a person and it will be called a portrait, you can paint a whipper trunk and it’ll be called a still life instead of a spinal cord. It may seem counterproductive for a temple of the arts to lack so much imagination, but Koyehn boasts fundamentals and education, so that’s how it’s always been. (And magic can be dangerous anyway, both Hwei and the masters know that. You must create with purpose, you mustn't wander, and you never paint the ocean if you don’t really mean the ocean.)
Jhin has moved closer. When Hwei looks up at him he takes note of how blue the sky is above him. “Who cares what they think? You’re the heir of this temple.”
“I—” Hwei finds himself tongue-tied. “Yes, that’s true.” He looks down at his hands, smudged with graphite. “But I understand their reasoning.”
***
The next day they leave the temple as planned and walk through the village to the western beaches where the whipper trees grow. The dunes are soft and warm and not too hot. Hwei takes off his shoes and wanders barefoot and when they find a good whipper tree they both sit in the dunes nearby to draw. Hwei loves the thin line of them, tracing up from the ground like veins, like he could turn Jhin’s firm arm over in his grasp and point out the whipper tree hiding beneath the skin. Everything is connected.
They draw and they talk and Jhin hums his new song because he didn’t bring his violin, and it’s something and it’s also nothing. Jhin’s style is different from Hwei’s and Hwei likes looking at it, the way he folds lines to make flowers out of them. He’d brought a set of paints, only a few primaries that they share, balanced in the sand between them, and Hwei cannot remember a better summer. He can’t resist sketching Jhin; a circle and the shape of his chin, hidden under his hand when Jhin looks his way again.
Where will you go after this? he almost asks, but he doesn’t. (And he’ll wish he had.) Instead he turns the page and paints a feeling instead, finds a butterfly on the paper. The masters don’t understand how easily ideas come to Hwei.
The butterfly peels off the page and flutters upwards. Hwei finally notices how green the sky has gotten overhead. Clouds are drifting in front of the sun.
“Oh,” he says, sitting up. There’s sand in the back of his hair. “We’d better go back, before it rains.” He stands up, wobbling as his feet sink into the sand, adjusting his tunic again.
Jhin asks, “have you ever painted a storm?”
Hwei looks at him. He’s standing too, staring up at the sky where the butterfly had gone. His back is turned to Hwei. He looks like a work of art.
“No,” Hwei answers. But—he almost says. I’ve painted the same idea before. I’ve painted a drowning.
Jhin turns around to face him. His face looks curiously blank, as if maybe he could sense the hesitation, the secret at the end of Hwei’s response. Or maybe he’s waiting for Hwei to say something more, to add to it, to create something.
“And you?” The wind is starting to pull on Hwei’s clothes. “Have you ever composed a storm?”
“I’ve never found the melody,” Jhin says, wryly.
Hwei glances up at the growling clouds, blooming with green like an old bruise. “Storms are just a feeling.”
“And what do you feel?”
Hwei draws in a shaky breath. He bends down to pick up his paints. I feel like we know each other, he thinks. I feel like I could tell you anything, is that strange? “Like I could jump into the waves and swim away from Koyehn,” he sighs. Restlessness is always short-lived. He loves the temple, even with its flaws.
Lightning darts between the clouds, branches long and thin and reaching like the underside of Jhin’s arm when he takes Hwei’s wrist. They help each other up the melting sands and when the green sky finally opens wide, they begin to run.
***
By the time they get to Koyehn they are soaked and Hwei has lost his hair tie. The keepers at the temple usher them in, worried, but Hwei is laughing and breathless and completely wet. The sky has gone from green to terribly dark. Hwei runs up to his room, slipping on the stone, and Jhin follows him without asking.
Hwei grabs a towel out of his closet and wrings his hair into it, then he grabs another for Jhin. When he turns around the man is already peeling his shirt off. Hwei digs his fingers into the towel, framing the sight of him in his head and most importantly the discovery. He crosses the room, shoes squishing underfoot, and can’t help but reach out to touch the end of one of the scars on Jhin’s chest. Jhin twists away instinctively and Hwei withdraws his hand too.
“Sorry—”he says, still breathless from the run. They’d sprinted all the way back. “I—” he looks down at himself, his own tunic which has gotten dark and heavy with rain. “I was surprised.”
Jhin doesn’t say anything but he takes the spare towel from Hwei’s arms. Hwei sits down on the edge of the bed, not caring that he’ll leave it wet, and maybe he fixes his posture for the first time since Jhin’s been here. He pulls up the bottom of his tunic, at first slowly, then relieved to have it off. Jhin is mopping his face.
“When did you know you were—” Hwei trails off. He covers his sketchbook with his towel and attempts to press it dry, already knowing it’ll prove ineffective. It’s dead.
“Always,” Jhin murmurs, and it sounds so pretty when he says it. Always, like something beautiful. Always is also a feeling, Hwei thinks. It’s more feeling than word.
“Not I,” he admits, glancing down at the ruined sketchbook. The green cover is practically fused to the pages underneath. He only ever takes his shirt off when he’s alone.
“It doesn’t make a difference,” Jhin says.
“No,” Hwei agrees. “I suppose it doesn’t.” He leans back on the bed and Jhin pulls up the corner stool and they are both wet and they’re also both looking at each other—like really looking at each other, the same way they’d looked at The Amateurs. Sanno hadn’t started painting until he was already graying around the temples—it doesn’t matter. Hwei hadn’t started hiding his chest until he was nineteen.
“I’m sorry for touching you,” Hwei adds again.
“Don’t be.”
Hwei leans way over, a long line of action to the lamp on his nightstand. He lights it as they both listen to the thunder roaring, the wind howling.
“I knew there was something about you,” Hwei admits. “I couldn’t decide what it was.”
Jhin is very still. The lantern paints him with yellows, rapidly fading to black. A wash of ochre. Koyehn is losing her colors again.
“I guess deep down I knew we were similar,” Hwei continues. “Without knowing it.”
Jhin tilts his head, eyes glittering in the dim light. “I guess so.”
***
The season is almost over. You can tell because of the birds that start to leave, heading towards Ixtali jungles, and the whippers on the dunes are already turning orange, far too soon. Hwei had imagined going out in the night and painting the leaves green again, if only to convince Jhin to stay longer. A week, a few more days, an extra hour. He’s spent the last month holding his breath, waiting for something to happen. (That something—he doesn’t know it might be. It’s a feeling. He paints it, late at night, and he doesn’t know whether it’s a still life or a landscape or a portrait. It’s something. Maybe it’s a yearning.)
The air isn’t so humid anymore. Hwei thinks about that at the end of every summer without fail, how slowly things change. At some point you notice the weather or the leaves or the heaviness in your chest and you realize that things have always changed, the paints mixing and creating new colors, darker shades. Orange like melancholy, watching the sunset take everything away from you. Hwei rolls onto his side, feeling guilty. He and Jhin have been inseparable, their connection unequaled, but Hwei still keeps some secrets from him. He hasn’t let him into his private studio yet—the art he’s not allowed to name.
(He can’t. They can talk all day but Hwei can’t push it. Jhin’s friendship is too precious to risk.)
Tomorrow morning they’ll go see the sunrise and Hwei will be sure to point out the exact moment where you can blur your eyes and confuse it for a sunset; the moment where the colors are blending, orange is bleeding, and you are the same. (And Hwei will still be holding his breath.)
***
Koyehn goes up in flames. Hwei can’t believe it. It’s gone in one morning, like Jhin.
For several days afterwards Hwei barely speaks. His throat is scratchy from inhaling too much smoke and his eyes hurt from crying. He doesn’t know what else to do.`
Hwei paints the beach in red. He paints the whipper trees like veins, jagged, sharp lines. He coaxes smoke into the corners and he throws the finished painting into the surf.
Mourning, he calls it, since there’s no longer anyone alive to stop him.
(At least Jhin is alive, wherever he may be.)
Hwei lays on the dune and listens to the ocean. He hums Jhin’s song, still untitled, and he thinks about The Amateurs. It doesn't take much to kill a masterpiece. It doesn't take much to change. He thinks of that butterfly he’d sent up for the stars and he wishes it would come back. Deep, untreated yearning surrounds him, like saltwater, and Hwei can finally breathe again.