I Help You. (Sakusa Kiyoomi)

43. Rid of the Dust

Wednesday, December 8, Day 24/30

Should I be happy?

Excited?

Grateful I won't be affected by these people anymore?

I just can't fake my emotions anymore, it seems, after I met Sakusa for the first time. He awakened something in me that I repeatedly express in my paintings. In fact, before my mother gave me the big news a moment ago she asked me about my work.

I told her nothing.

She wouldn't understand.

I breathed aloud obnoxiously, suddenly desiring a good whiff of fresh air. As I laced up my browning shoes my imagination couldn't help but glimpse into a fantasy where I go on a walk and Sakusa shows up out of nowhere. Literally nowhere, and he tells me...

Well, he tells me he misses me. 
But that is completely stupid and unfathomable.  Anyways, a gentle handwave and fleeting smile led me to the street. I walked along the curb and filled my lungs until they were cleared out. Rid of the dust named Sakusa. Rid of the dust named wealth. Rid of the dust named Kip and the dust named Itachiyama. Rid of the dust named people.

"Huh. " I spoke out loud unbothered, most everyone else is at school right now. " Rid of the dust named people. What a good name for a book."

I wasn't just going for a walk, by the way, or just wandering around. I was aimed toward quite the special spot that never failed to remind me why I live the way I do. It was only past the back road in the neighborhood and two streams straight into the forest.

When I made it, that familiar scent of transparency chilled my head. The crumbling boulders on the opposite cliffside happily opened my ears and I took my seat on the pillowing grass and finally relaxed.

Today the wind was rather dormant when it usually billows and pulls at my loose clothes. Bringing my knees to my chin I finally felt decent enough to reflect on myself. 

Sakusa, a person who I feel never truly leaves my mind. He lingers deep in the recess and listens to my thoughts without judgment.

"Does that make me obsessed? My better judgment as a pre-psych student says yes, but I'll deny it for my own sake."

A week later and I'm still thinking about me and Kip's argument and the entire Sakusa family as a whole. Well, maybe except for the father-- he was actually quite kind to me anytime we crossed paths in the house. One time, he even let me draw in his office while he worked because Mrs. Sakusa was supposedly using every possible room to 'decontaminate'.

I laughed thinking about his face when he saw the nude figure I was drawing right in front of his desk.

 At least I had one friend...even if he was a fifty-year-old man. 

Rrrrrrr

That sound was closer than comfortable, but when I turned all I saw was a small, black bundle. "Cat?"

Huh, I'd only been here for less than ten minutes. How did I not notice him sleeping here?

The cat sensed my staring eyes and lifted his head from the curl of his body. He blinked at me and I blinked back-- this was a sign of trust. Once he was sure I wasn't a sociopath he took the liberty of seating himself in my lap. He even used his paw to lower my legs from my chest so he could sit.