Post 5

Because I just happened to swing by this place again, I decided to put up something that I wrote last year just to commemorate 2008 or something or freaking or other. Total awesomeness. The title is...- cue drumroll-

Colour.

Read and enjoy.

She sat at the table, carefully working with a palette, a brush, and a box of paints. A stack of pictures lay next to her on the table. The different shades of orange mixed on the palette were being meticulously applied to the paper, creating a beautiful sunset.

Finishing the last strokes, she laid the picture aside to dry and wiped the sweat from her face. Her paint-stained hands left multiple orange streaks on her face, joining the multitude of red, blue, green, black, white streaks already there, as well as all over her clothes. She was careless like that. Pulling another picture off the stack, she began to paint.

She loved painting. She sketched many pictures just to paint them. She was rather often commended for her sketches, but after painting them, they looked far better. Even so, she hardly let anyone look at her painted pictures.

She was currently painting pictures that were predominantly orange, so as to save her the trouble of going back and forth from the toilet washing the palette, as well as saving paint. This was how she always operated, and it was rather sensible.

Sitting there with a brush in hand, a palette at hand, and a paper full of outlines to fill with colour beneath her, Jorryn felt at peace and composed. Almost automatically the brush dipped into the palette, mixing colours; sometimes her hand would drop the brush and squeeze a little paint where was required, and picking up the brush again, mixing another orange hue. Her brushstrokes were careful yet confident her eyes - no, her whole being – concentrated on painting that object – no, the object, the rundown building – bathed in the light of sunset.

Suddenly a voice sounded, and for a moment, her concentration faltered – and an ugly blotch appeared where none should have existed. Cursing under her breath, she spun around to face her mother at the door.

“Jack, isn’t it time for bed?” Her mother asked. “There is school tomorrow, right?”

Jorryn sighed. She wanted to continue, but true, it was getting late – almost midnight, in fact – and she did need sleep. The fact that her mother was telling her to go to bed at this very instant was probably because her teachers had complained that she was lethargic in class, dozing off every five minutes. Even then, Jorryn liked her mother. She was one of the few adults who had not forgotten that they, too, were once a child, a teenager, wanting to go out and frolic under the clear blue sky, or simply just staying indoors and enjoying each other’s company.

“Okay,” Jorryn said, beginning to change out of her paint-stained attire as her mother shut the door. It was only when she had turned off the light and gotten into bed that she realized that she was incredibly tired, and she let sleep consume her as soon as her head touched her pink, fluffy pillow.

Jorryn had never liked her first name. It was a jarring concoction, but yet somehow it sounded full of colour, representing her love for painting and colours even before she had taken to painting. It seemed to be general opinion that it was a horrible name, as everyone called her Jack, even those who hated her.

School, like for any other teenager, was a boring routine affair, made even more so for Jorryn as no matter how hard she studied, she almost always failed every subject except art. Even then, her grade in art was nowhere near phenomenal, instead ranging from A-s to Bs. She had always held a suspicion that her art teacher was biased against her, but that was not much of a reason. Even so, many many times she had sat down, looked at her grade, and complained that they should let her paint her pieces for a better grade, even though she thought her grade wouldn’t be much better if they did.

Today was a day filled with her most disliked subjects, and she spent this time doodling and getting caught at said doodling, then staring into space. As soon as the lesson ended, she would start doodling again, repeating the cycle.

When school finally ended, she moved like clockwork. There was something to be done, and quickly. She took lunch, ran out of school and reached the park, where she sat at a specific bench and waited.

He turned up five minutes later, sitting next to her on the bench. They seemed to move as one, their eyes panning around to check for prying eyes. Setting his childish-looking work file on his lap, he leaned close to her and mumbled, “How was your day?”

Shiraishi Masahiro was a Japanese teenager that had come to this very city to study art. He was a very unique person, because he ignored general opinion. Instead of staying in his country to do art, which would have been good enough, he opted to come out of Japan to do so. He refused to call her Jack, instead calling her by her jarring real first name, yet, somehow, he made it sound beautiful when he said it. Perhaps it was his accent – they would never know for sure.

She had ever asked him why he had come out of his country to study art, and his answer always was that he just wanted to look around different countries, yet, somehow, there was always pain in his eyes and voice when he said it. Nevertheless, Jorryn always felt glad that he had come, to be a friend, to mentor her, inspire her, and listen to her rant about anything and everything under the sun. He kept giving her things to paint which he had done out of his free time, despite his busy schedule and the fact that he himself painted much better. The sunsets, the construction site, the most beautiful things she had the privilege to touch and paint – they were all done by him. Nothing she or anyone else she knew could do anything close to what he did. Even so, he often encouraged her by telling her, “I’m nineteen, remember? I have five years of a headstart so don’t worry, when you reach my age, you’ll surpass me.”

Swinging her legs back and forth as she sat on the bench, she mumbled, “The usual.”

“Are you coming tomorrow?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“Okay.” He stood up and walked away.

She understood why he was doing so: This was lunchtime, and she had no idea how much of his precious mealtime he had foregone just to come down and see her. She always felt grateful for these times, however short they could only be.

Getting to her feet, she slowly returned home.

The smell of lasagna greeted her when she had arrived, and her stomach cried out to its higher powers to digest it in the form of a loud rumble, the request meeting little to no resistance from the higher-ups. Opening the door, she entered the house and walked towards the dining table to find her mother already seated there, her head on her hands and her elbows on the table, with a bowl in front of her and another opposite her, this one much larger. A smirk grew on her face as the young mother watched her daughter quickly remove her shoes and socks, throw down her bag, and dashing to the table, about to sit in front of her when she said simply, “Go and wash up.”

Jorryn complied, rushing to clean her hands and feet before sitting at the table, looking at her mother with puppy eyes to get her to let her begin.

Her mother laughed aloud and said, “You don’t have to do that, just eat.”

And immediately Jorryn bored untidily through the lasagna. She hardly ever displayed table manners, and lasagna cooked by her mother basically made her throw table manners straight out of the window. It took her five seconds to abandon the cutlery, and a little over a minute to start licking the bowl clean of everything her fingers could not reach. When she was done, the bowl looked as if it was completely clean.

Her mother finished her share of the meal, and collected the plates, giggling as she went into the kitchen.

Her gluttony satisfied, she returned to her room and took a long bath, enjoying the warm water against her skin and the warm lasagna against her stomach lining.

It took her a while, but soon she was out of the bath, and had begun painting again, much like what she did everyday. Her homework was by and large left undone until the end of the semesters, and even then she would borrow a kind soul’s work and paraphrase her answers before submitting a thick stack of work to all her teachers. Of course they knew what she was doing, but there was nothing they could do about it, since she knew enough of her stuff in the first place, it was just that she was lazy to apply said knowledge to her work on her own. Of course she had to do it in her exams, that could not be helped, but otherwise paraphrasing was how she did her homework.

All except art of course. That she did on her own personally.

Filling the palette with some red, yellow and white, she proceeded to pull out a new sheet of paper, and instantly began to paint a tub of lasagna. It was her favourite thing to do after eating her mother’s lasagna, mostly as thanks to her mother, and also to show her parents how much she had improved since the last time she ate lasagna. Usually it was once a month, but sometimes there were more, but never none at all.

Her brush dipped into the paint, and with swiftness and accuracy honed by eons of practice, painted a rather large sea of red at the centre. Quickly washing the red off her brush and switching to a smaller brush, she proceeded to use a little black to trace large blocks in that sea, at least 15 of them fitted in, then she took some blue onto her large brush and painted in the blue tub. It was very quick, and she sat back and looked at the picture, using her brush to gently touch up the painting. It was a familiar sight seeing as she had painted the same thing over and over again for years, so much that she could paint the tub from memory without the lines to help her.

When she was finally satisfied, she hung the picture up to dry, and began working on her other pieces. Her mother, though always expecting the piece of work soon after the meal of lasagna, by and large left her alone to work while impatiently flicking through the channels and pacing the living room, which Jorryn felt was good enough proof to love her parents.

As usual, Jorryn lost track of time while working, but today, strangely, the idea of meeting him tomorrow kept pounding upon her skull, and after a while she threw down the brush and clutched her head in her hands, staring down at her worse than usual pieces of work.

I can’t concentrate…

She gritted her teeth, ran a hand through her hand and giving up on her pieces today, went off to wash up, flicking the lights off as she went.

When she crawled into bed in clean clothes, she found that though she was tired, sleep was not coming to her as easily as it usually would. She had earned a reputation for being able to fall asleep under any conditions in under 3 seconds maximum, but she was now destroying her abovementioned repute.

She felt as if something was wrenching at her stomach, and at the same time she felt somehow nervous. Was it worry? And why did she feel nervous? She turned over and yanked the blankets over herself, closing her eyes and trying to fall into the darkness of dreams awaiting her.

It was a long time before the girl’s tense body finally relaxed as its mind slipped into its subconscious state.

Flashes of light. Images. Dreams.

Then it all stopped.

She heard something

Something was calling her.

She opened her eyes blearily.

“Jack, wake up, it’s already 11!”

She slowly sat up under the eyes of her mother, who was standing beside the bed with her hands on her hips.

Rubbing her eyes, she put a hand to her forehead and finding it dry, mumbled, “A dream?”

Already everything was fading, but she remembered faintly that she was sweating in her dream.

How odd.

Though curious about the dream, from experience, the older female knew that leaving the girl in bed would have made the efforts of the past god-knows-how-long worthless, so she followed through by dragging Jorryn out of bed bodily with a “You’re getting out of bed right now!”

The girl moaned and gained balance, standing up on her own and slouching to the bathroom. Ordinarily she would have complained, but she did have something on an hour later, and now would be a good time to start preparing for it.

“I’ll be making breakfast downstairs,” her mother said, exiting the room.

When Jorryn made her way down to breakfast (5 minutes later), she was dressed in her normal outdoor attire: An overly-large yellow sleeveless shirt over a long-sleeved fishnet shirt that ended just below her chest and loose knee-length denim shorts.

Her mother noticed this, and commented, “You didn’t tell me you were going out today.”

Jorryn winced. It felt more like an accusation, and she had broken one of her mother’s rules: She had to tell her mother in advance if she was going out. She had known about it the whole week, but she kept forgetting to inform her mother.

It resulted in a half hour lecture, at the end of which Jorryn was completely cowed, and ate her cereal in silent sadness, trying to take in the fact that her mother had disallowed her to go.

Jorryn collapsed on the sofa right after breakfast and stayed motionless for the next 15 minutes with the same sad look on her face. Seeing her daughter so badly affected by this, she relented. “Fine, you can go, but just this once.”

Jorryn remained motionless.

“Jack, did you hear me?”

Still no response.

The woman walked over and shook the girl, only to find that she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. After another 15 minutes of shaking and yelling from her mother (“Just how do you fall asleep with your eyes open!? WAKE UP!!”), Jorryn was roused, and upon realizing that she was horribly late, Jorryn dashed from her house, hitting herself on the head repeatedly and scolding herself, “Idiot, idiot, idiot!”

Nevertheless, Jorryn had always been a good runner. She might have been the dimmest bulb in the lot, but she made up for it with sheer physical lower body strength. Her legs carried her so quickly around when running that all boys her age save a special few were lapped by her during the running segment of the physical fitness test. One might describe her as “some brawn and little brains”. With great speed, she made her way to the park in ten minutes, something that took her thrice the time while walking.

He was already there, dressed in a t-shirt with horizontal stripes across all the way down and pants, with a backpack slung over his back, on the same bench, waiting for her, a warm smile slowly spreading across his face as he watched her small, slim form dash towards him, her beautiful, long hair trailing behind her.

She braked in front of him almost comically, both feet stuck out in front of her, her heels making a loud screeching sound as the friction brought her to a quick stop.

Regaining her balance, she stood up, breathing rather heavily. Such dashes were not uncommon for her; because of her inability to wake up on time for any events from the morning until the late afternoon, she often had to make mad dashes like these. Though used to it, it didn’t mean such things were not tiring for her; it just took a lesser toll on her body, though not by much.

She turned to him, her hands clasped in front of her, then looked down out of embarrassment.

“Sorry.”

His short black hair waved in a sudden small breeze as his black eyes closed and his mouth opened in a laugh.

“Don’t worry, it’s alright.”

This made the girl feel even worse, pressing her head even further downwards and tightening the grip around her hands.

“Where’s your hat?”

She gasped and touched her head, but her fingers only met her lustrious blonde hair.

The young man saw her face redden, and she, on her own part, was wondering why her face was growing so hot.

“I’m used to you being late, so stop giving me that look and sit down beside me.”

She obeyed, her hands still in front of her, sitting with her legs together.

“You’re not mad at me?”

He laughed again. “Why would I be?”

“Then what about the hat…?”

“That was just to tease you, baka!” He laughed again, this time much louder than the other times. He gently placed his hand on her chin and lifted it to face him. He poked her cheek. “You’re so cute when you look like that.”

Her expression changed from embarrassment to surprise to annoyance to anger, growing considerable redder in the process.

She slapped him on the arm, yelled “You jerk!” at him, then turned away, her hands now jammed between her legs.

There was a moment of silence.

Then she turned back, her face its normal colour, and gave him a radiant smile.

He smiled back.

“Shall we go?”

She nodded.

Both of them stood up and left the park together.





As they left the theme park, Jorryn was still trembling and clutching on to Shiraishi, the late afternoon sun etching their sihoulettes in the ground. To tell the truth, they looked very much like siblings with many years between them, in height at least; Shiraishi was tall for his age, and Jorryn short for hers, making their height difference very large. Jorryn’s head was only at Shiraishi’s chest level.

“Are you still scared?” He asked her, glancing down at the girl.

“It’s all your fault…” she mumbled, not answering the question. “You dragged me onto that scary thing…”

“You’ve never taken such rides before?”

“Never.”

“I thought all children your age had…I’ve never taken all those - what do you call them? Roller cars? - before as well, but I heard from my classmate they were fun, so I decided to bring you…Actually, I guess it was rather fun.”

She looked up at him, confused. “This is your first time as well?”

“Yes.”

“Then why aren’t you scared?”

“What is there to be scared of? It’s just some car on a track, like a train, with this falling and really exciting feeling!”

“I don’t like that kind of feeling.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, and looked down at her. She turned her face towards his.

His deep black eyes met her bright, lively blue ones. She was surprised at the sudden change in her companion.

“The only thing that I’m scared of is if you were to leave this world…” He trailed off.

She kept silent.

He broke his gaze, and slung the backpack over one shoulder and opened it, removing a file from inside, “I almost forgot. There’s a picture I’ve been meaning to give you for some time, but I keep forgetting…”

He handed her the drawing block. She took it and gasped.

The picture he was giving her…Her wide eyes studied the features of the single figure, smiling out of the picture, and she could almost feel the warmth of the smile. Yet, at the same time, it was unbelievable that the figure might have managed that smile.

“This is me…”

The colours seemed to appear right there. Her long blonde hair, her smiling black eyes, her perpetually paint-stained attire, since she often handled her items with wet paint on her hands, and most importantly, her straw hat which he had given her, grasped between her hands. She always wore it whenever she was out of the house. She never wore it to school though.

She looked up at him and said, “Thank you.”

He smiled. “Express it in colour then.”

He turned away.

“See you around.”

And then he left.

Minutes later, she broke into a sprint, and arrived home in the next few minutes. Instantly she dashed up to her room and began to paint with gusto, wanting to finish painting the other drawings quickly to work on the one she had been given. She planned to show it to him today. As her brush painted quick, confident, excited strokes, she wondered what he was doing, after they parted ways.

It was evening when she was done. She took a much needed bath while letting the forces of nature dry her work, aided by a fan. The minute she was done and had gotten dressed, she shoved her straw hat on her head, grabbed her paintings and charged out of the house, leaving her mother with a frustrated frown.

“She charges in and out one day and the next day she comes in and out, wafting around like a wraith. That girl is so unpredictable,” she said, staring after her daughter’s wake before giving a heavy sigh and entering the house.

She ran to Shiraishi’s lodgings, a small room he had rented. Colours flashed before her in the evening light, black hair, strands of blonde floating around her face, a black briefcase, a green light, a yellow neon sign…

Then a harsh red stopped her at a traffic junction. She was anxious to get moving, fidgeting, and then bringing out the painting to ensure again that it looked good. Yes, it was the best she could do. The vivid colours, the smooth brush strokes…She hoped it would be good enough.

Something suddenly elbowed her in the back, and she gasped as her hold slipped over the painting. She dimly heard someone saying, “Sorry there, missy”, but her eyes were focused on the drawing.

It had flown out of her hands…

And into the path of an oncoming car, threatening to crush it beneath its wheels.

She gave a cry of dismay and dashed forward, ignoring everything else save for that precious work of art. She was about to snatch it from the ground when she realized that she was in the path of the car. Something pushed her and once again her grip slipped, and she tumbled onto pavement.

There was a honking, a loud crash and a louder scream, and red splattered onto black and white.

She sat up, dazed, her mind trying to catch up with what had happened.

“Jorryn…”

It was him.

She spun around, and the world seemed to suddenly drain with colour, slowly, the colour of the buildings, the clothes of the people around her and opposite, the colours of the cars, the traffic lights, the trail of groceries behind him, leaving only him, with his black hair and eyes, his white shirt and blue pants…

And the hideous red liquid. How dare it stain his clothes, his hair and eyes, frame his body in a stupid, irregular shape. Inconceivable how that earthly fluid dared to attempt to drown him and destroy him, the most important thing in her life.

How dare it.

Yet, there was nothing to be done. It was happening around her, and her body would not obey her, to scream, cry out, reach out and grab his hand.

She was paralysed.

Red of pain, red of agony, red of hatred, red of pure evil, all over the place, corrupting, consuming everything, seeping onto the forlorn scrap of man-made pulp on the ground. She looked down at her hands. Yes, it was on her hands too, spreading all over them. Her elbows and knees stang slightly, but it was unimportant.

He was on his last breath now.

At first, he smiled like he always did to her. But as the forces of nature commanded him to speak his last words, he did, opening his bloody mouth.

She expected him to call her a murderer, but he did not.

His voice rang loud and clear despite the noise around.

“Jorryn…I did everything for you because I love you…Not as a sibling, but as a man to his wife. I love you that much Jorryn…We’ll meet again, hopefully when you’ve lived out and cherished your life that has been given to you.”

There was another word, but he did not need to say it. He smiled once again, that familiar smile, and his eyes closed.

Instantly the reality of smell hit her, and the heavy stench hit her like a hammer blow to her head. The pain mixed with the turmoil of thoughts and emotions within her mind and her writhing insides, and she clutched her head, screaming, while the concoction forced her into the ground. Slowly her mind fell deep into darkness as everything faded: Sight, smell, sound, touch…

Everything.