The constant clicking of Chuuya's pen had ironically brought peace to my mind for the best part of a few hours, keeping me distracted from deep-thinking about Dazai's sudden distancing from me; I no longer saw him around, both lingering at dark corners or passing the halls, and his phone seemed to have become a mere decoration in his possession.
He suddenly let out a frustrated groan and pushed himself up from his seat, adjusting his fedora over the ginger locks grown from his head - a sign he was going somewhere. 'I feel like having something sweet. I don't have money. Buy me something.'
'Huh?'
He reached over for my wrist and pulled me up - not with brute force to hurt, but with just enough effort to detach me from the seat of the small armchair he'd arranged at the corner of his office for me. I wasn't allowed to object as he opened the door and gently pushed me outside, closing the door behind us and leading his way down the hall.
'I'm not following you,' I asserted, standing by the closed door as he dived deeper into the hall. He did not respond verbally but rather stopped, returned to me and tugged at my hand; I swatted it away. 'You're supposed to supervise me, not force me to -'
'I'm not forcing you to pay for anything, I have money.' He let go of my hand and shoved his own down his pockets calmly. 'There's a market nearby that sells great street food. You seem upset so I'm appeasing your mood.'
I kept the peace. He took me to said market, where we spent way more hours together than either of us, had initially planned, but this kept me distracted from my unsettling feelings of guilt. It was then too that I learnt about Chuuya's secret obsession with shopping for fashion - "I can't show up for a fight wearing the same clothes from the previous Monday, that's simply a no-no" he stated, removing from a rack a similar top he'd previously picked at the countless stores we'd been to prior the present one. His enthusiasm for street food did not fall behind either, for he guided me through the various stalls set out in the middle of the street with bright, rich-coloured and eye-catching foods and sweets made freshly on the spot.
In the end, he did pay for all the food we consumed in the market, kind enough to offer candied strawberry for dessert as we settled on a park bench to give our feet a rest.
'Don't think this will happen often; I simply had pay-day yesterday and the bar I usually go to was closed,' he claimed as I thanked him for the day, taking a bite of his own stick of candied fruit.
It was becoming clear to me now that Chuuya had his own way of caring for people, though he kept insisting this was his own way of treating himself and he simply "did not want to come alone" as people often disturbed his peace if they caught him by himself, he said. He did not claim to be carefree and merry when I remarked on these, though clearly obvious if one saw him once at work and took a quick glance at him now - plus, my ability was the most accurate in reading people even if they denied their emotions.
He was calmer than usual (the middle finger did not reach even half the amount it had done so the last time I'd read him), though I gathered he was silently troubled as his happiness did not show to be as much as I'd expected. He was fearful; maybe fear wasn't the word, but something was troubling him enough to show on my pinky. I did not have time to the inquiry on said feeling, as my speech was interrupted by a girl of about five, with a helium-gas filled balloon string attached to her wrist trotting towards us, pointing at the sweet in our hands; she wanted one and Chuuya could not resist denying her the silent request.
'I won't be long,' he said, standing up from the bench and letting the child lead him to the stall by the hand. What a softie.
For a while I sat there by myself, holding the remnants of the sweet on the now-empty stick. I stood up from the bench and directed myself towards the nearest bin, throwing the stick inside along with the various empty paper boxes served at various other stalls. On my back my attention was stolen by a small, hunchback man seated on a small foldable chair, his small, furrow eyes focused on a woman seated uniform by the stone wall of a fountain; her posture was ideal in the standards of how a lady should sit, back straight and legs naturally folded one over the other by the knee, and the smile she held was pure and genuine. She was beautiful. And his hands agreed too.
In front of him sat a small canvas he sketched on, illustrating every curve of her figure and sharp edges of her features almost like the real image had been broken down in real-time and was being restored line by line. His talent was inspiring, reminding me of when I used to do the same.
For a while (somewhere in my younger years), I remember sitting down for hours and sketching of places I wished to go to - mostly places I had seen on photographs at school or postcards at convenience stores - and aspired to one day be able to sit in those precise locations and paint the scenery by the setting sun. My aspirations did not fall short as I had also experimented the art of portraits, finding various photographs of a man (whom I speculate to have been my father) lingering around the house, and attempted to recreate these; I remember being proud of it whenever I finished one, admiring the colour complexion of each one as I analysed the folds I recreated to the man's face.
That was until my mother stole these from my grasp and threw them in the furnace outside, using my hours of dedication as fuel for dinner. Oh, that reminds me of why I stopped. Still, this skilled senior was talented enough to restore faith in my own short-lived passion.
I stopped by him and watched his well-trained hands move across the surface of the canvas, having seemed to have a mind of their own as he rarely looked down at them from studying his model.
'You wish for one too, kind lady?' he asked, his matured, ancient voice startling me out of my thoughts.
'No, thank you. I was just watching; you're really talented, sir.'
The corners of his lips wrinkled into a small smile in response, though the rest of his facial features had not so much as flinched due to being so focused on the smiling woman by the fountain. For a while he did not speak again, but broke the silent admiration I provided with what he called the "philosophy behind the world of art":
'Those who do not understand art merely look at a portrait being made and look away once they figure it requires masses of effort to complete; those, however, who truly take art as part of themselves take the time to observe each detail being printed, such as you have been doing so yourself.'
I looked at him with astonishing silence, startled by the wisdom of his words - or else his senseless ramble that matched my former hobby by coincidence.
'Do you carry a pencil on your person?' he asked, and - though I did not - I touched down my jacket pockets and looked through in the small bag I carried with me. 'No, I do not need a pencil - I am using one myself,' he remarked as I searched my bag for the requested item - well done for using your brain, [Y/N].
I told him I did not draw anymore and he asked me why. I told him that had been of personal agenda and he did not seek further into the matter, but rather emphasised on his own narrative behind his freelancer artistic career; he began very young, inspired by several traditional artists of more relevance during his early years, and so developed a passion for any and every artistic movement and medium, until he found one more suited for him: 'Portraits,' he said 'of those I loved, the ones I lost and the ones I wish I had.'
He told me art became ever more symbolic after he had met his wife, a sweet maiden who had birthed two sons which he had lost a few weeks later. Before she took her own life from the sorrow her heart was filled with, they mutually fed on his portraits of the babies - an aberrant obsession, he said, which built a wall that separated them from the misfortunes of reality and comforting sweetness of their escape; then he stopped after she passed, no longer believing to have a reason to sketch anymore.
'Before I was to take my own life I looked through each and every portrait I ever completed and kept in life: my parents, my siblings who I lost to the sea, my wife when we'd met, and the little I collected of my two children. I had an epiphany then; I placed the tablets I had laid out on the table back in the cupboard and took out my art utensils again.'
He stopped drawing and placed his pencil down, indicating to the woman he was done with her portrait. She smiled widely and approached us, thanking him for his work and providing him with a sum of money which earned her the privilege of taking her own image home. For a while, he did not speak, carefully placing his used pencil back in a small wooden box, carved with what I assumed to be his family name. Then he looked back up at me.
'I found the real beauty of art that day: If it had not been for my family which never failed to encourage me to pursue it further into the college course I never completed, or my wife who - despite me confessing that being an artist would not suffice finance for the family we never had - stood by me and motivated me to abide by my passion, then I wouldn't have all the completed works I have framed at home to look back at and smile; it's not necessarily the process that holds the most symbolism once the work is done. It's the memories which the work holds, the reasons as to why it's so meaningful for an individual, and as contemporaries say,' he paused and stretched out his skinny arms with loose, blotchy skin. 'It's the thought that counts. It's also why handmade portraits are the best gifts; they show that we've dedicated our time to illustrate such an image and to the receiver of such this never goes by unnoticed, no matter how much they deny it.'
Our colloquy soon came to an end when his utensils grasped the attention of a couple passing by, requesting to have a portrait done by the fountain just as the woman had, too. I left him to his devices, thanking for his tale and tenets, and returned to the bench I had abandoned to face my superior, who had the face of someone who'd been waiting for far longer than "just a couple of minutes".
'I'm sorry,' I apologised, noticing in his hand a pebble painted pink with a tiny smile drawn on its surface with a black marker; he said the girl whom he had paid the candied fruit for had given it to him, as their "token of friendship".
'I felt bad for refusing, so now I have to stick with this. You had fun I presume,' His tone held a hint of mild irritation, but else he seemed calmed and tolerant of my delayed discussion with the elderly by the fountain. 'But now it's time to head back. Come, I'll take you home,'
'Wait, before we do that,' I erupted, making him stop to look at me in confusion. 'I'd like to go to one more place before heading back home.'
'Where is that?'
'An art supply store.'
If handmade portraits make the best gifts - showing commitment and wholeheartedness - then surely, if I completed one of these for Dazai he would forgive me for whatever I've done, or else cheer up from the guilt Oda says he possesses.
I'm going to paint him.