Technical Difficulties (Brother's Conflict)

Chapter 9!

some might call it filler, i call it ~pizazz~

Mei had rushed out of the room, officially classifying herself as an idiot as she moved an an awkwardly fast walk through the gates of the school in the opposite direction of the house. She knew that if Ema even worked up the courage to chase after the girl, she wouldn't have known where to look as Mei easily let herself get lost in the streets and paths she followed. Tears were brimming in his mismatched eyes but she didn't let them fall. She continually rubbed at them however, adding a rim of red to her already tired looking eyes.

She eventually found herself in a park, coated in seasonal flowers and couples of lovers. Mei grimace as she watched one in particular kissing a bit too passionately for her taste. She moved along swiftly, getting deep enough into the gardens that she must have walked close to a mile, with only the occasional jogger taking a break now in her line of sight. She heaved a sigh, though her stamina hadn't much depleted from the fact she did regular exercise in between all of her work. She sat on a bench that was up against the side of a small arched bridge that went over a brook running through the thick garden foliage. 

She took in the garble of the water as the world seemed to pass her by in odd levels of clarity and blurriness. She found herself taking out the special sketchbook in her bag, followed by a small but thick white box that had paint stains on it. She set up her things, a palette of watercolors, along with the water bottle and paintbrushes she kept for these occasions, and a medium sized watercolor sketchbook. Mei looked ahead at the way the steam cut through the colorful bridges and how she could see the structure of the path she had come from in the distance, taking in the irony for having run off for not wanting to paint and now sitting down to do just that. 

She let out a shaky breath that she hadn't meant to hold, letting the desire to paint that had been ingrained into her very blood simply take over her senses. Her careful eyes constantly moved to and from her piece to the scenery around her. To most, this side of Mei that was calculated and focused would seem very different than what they saw of the girl almost to the point of claiming this to be a different person. For some points, those people would be right in the fact that even Mei realized that she became a person foreign to even herself as her art seemed to swallow her whole.

Mei had painted for a while before being interrupted, although the small painting wouldn't have usually taken more than an hour to complete in the first place. She turned her head up to look up at a jogger whom she definitely didn't recognize, but had asked her something while she was still so out of it. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

Mei would have pat herself on the back for her own politeness if she could do it in a way where he wouldn't notice. "I was just asking if it was alright for me to have this end of the bench for a couple minutes..?"

"Go ahead, I didn't need all the space to begin with." It was true, all of her things were directly next to her in one corner of the bench, which left ample room for them to comfortably sit apart. The man nodded deftly, taking a slightly heavy seat on the other end of the bench while letting out a sigh of relief. From the dampness of his orange hair and green t-shirt, she was sure he had been pushing his muscles to the breaking  point for reasons of his own. After all, someone as toned as the handsome male most likely wouldn't have tired easily. 

She noticed that he opened his eyes again after those few moments of rest, so she quickly got back to work on her painting while he stretched out his stiff legs with a few winces. Though, like a sixth sense, she could tell he had peeked at her quite a few times out of the corner of his eye during his whole process and more than likely wanted to see what she had painted just out of genuine human curiosity. Feeling bolder than she had for almost all of her life, Mei spoke first, if only to get an end to the hidden glances even if that meant full on looks. "Sorry to bother you when you look a bit worn out, but do you think you could give me a second opinion on this painting...I feel like it's missing something and you're the only one who has a good look at the scenery..."

She trailed off at the end, though Mei's voice and eyes rang with the true innocence behind her request, she honestly just wanted someone who had nothing to do with her to tell her what was wrong with her and he didn't seem like an artsy type who could see the beauty in anything either. He had a look in his purple eyes as he considered her words for a few moments, as if challenging her teenage self consciousness to flare up, displaying he would not sugarcoat his opinion for the sake of a stranger. Mei still offered the sketchbook to him, which he took with a sigh from his nose although his expression wasn't all that troubled.

He took on a manner of shock at first, his eyes dashing between the river's path and the heavenly portrayal she had scrawled onto the page. He was able to mostly hide the shock of finding a high school girl with such talent, who made it seem as though her painting was much more alive and 3D than the actual place in front of him. He studied the painting a bit longer though, since she was indeed right that something seemed deeply off within its contents like something was incomplete. 

"It definitely is a beautiful picture, but you're right that something about it seems off...I'm no expert but I think it's because there's no feeling behind it, like if you took the words straight from someone's heart and embellished them with better grammar and diction, but losing the emotions in those embellishments...if that makes sense?" He looked over at the girl, who looked shocked with her mouth the slightest bit parted, he found himself lost in her heterochromatic gaze for a few moments before she averted her eyes from his purple hues.

She claimed the sketchbook back, ignoring the slight brush of their hands as she smiled down at the small landscape with a new itch to scratch with that paintbrush of her's. "Thank you, I think I know exactly what needs to be done."

She took up her brush again, making the pale silhouette of what seemed to be a female ghost, lingering with a few flowers laid in front of her on the edge of the banister of the bridge. The almost translucent figure that he had caught sight of reminded him of the pale and tired looking girl sitting next to him, who obviously had a rough day from just the rim of red around her eyes. He decided it was about time for him to go, before his two housemates got fed up with him.

He stood which attracted her attention, but she only glanced at him for a moment before smiling again. "Thanks again, mysterious jogging guy."

He cracked a smile at her teasingly harsh words. "Glad I could help, odd high school artist."

With that they went their separate ways, with Mei eventually packing up her supplies and heading back to the Sunrise Residence although she avoided quite a few people for the night, pretending the fiasco at the teacher's conference hadn't happened at all by morning.