Red and White Plum Blossoms
Rin lolled her head back against her door, which was cold against the back of her scalp. A long white tube sock with blue stripes along the end hung from the doorknob, dangling down just far enough to graze her hair. She had been sitting there for nearly half an hour, though she hadn't been keeping time that well lately.
Legs flat on the ground, Rin lowered her head to stare at the wall across from her. Her shoes, which she had kicked off a while ago, lay strewn about at the base of the wall. Nailed to the wall above was a piece of art, one of many paintings by previous students that decorated the halls of the dorm.
Rin stared at it for a long time, trying to make sense of it. It was a series of overlapping blue squares- all turquoise, teal, and Prussian blue- jumbled together arbitrarily, like someone with square feet dipped them in paint and walked around on the canvas.
A little laminated plaque to the side of it read:
Lonely Pond
Himari Nakamura
2002
But it didn't look like a pond to Rin.
She shrank back against the door, and her head slumped forward. Her bangs, wild and scraggly, fell down over her face, and she shook her head to brush them out of the way. Her hair was longer than it used to be, and she was still getting used to it. Yumi had her own strange way of brushing it.
Rin stared at her toes for a long time. Her toenails were too long; they hadn't been cut in weeks. She'd never asked Yumi to cut them. Her parents had been doing it most recently, and before them, Emi.
Rin shivered and took a long, shaky breath. A few minutes passed in silence.
Eventually, the door opened behind her, and her head fell back again, hanging over her back so she could stare up at the figure looming in the doorway. It was Kichiro, Yumi's nice boyfriend, wearing tight-fitting clothes and looking tired and disheveled.
He looked straight down and frowned at Rin as he made eye contact with her. "Uh… hey there." With one hand, he pulled the sock from the door handle and tossed it back inside the room.
She blinked once and tilted her head down, her bangs hanging slightly over her eyes again. "Hello."
He put one foot through the doorway and leaned against the frame, looking Rin up and down. "…What are you doing, Rin?"
She looked down at herself before whipping her head up. "Nothing."
They briefly looked each other in the eye, and Kichiro watched her from his spot just in front of the door, pouting slightly.
He gestured toward her feet. "Really? Because it looks to me like you're sitting outside the door, staring at your toes."
She blinked, drooping her head down to look at her toes again. "…That
is what I'm doing."
"Then why'd you say 'nothing'?"
She stared blankly at him as he smirked to himself, unable to think of a response. Why
had she said nothing? She knew it wasn't true, but she'd said it anyway…
Briefly closing her eyes, Rin wished that she
had been doing nothing, so she wouldn't have to think about it.
After a pause, Kichiro wandered out the rest of the way into the hall, reaching the opposite wall and leaning back against it to look down at Rin. "Look, I, uh… I feel weird about putting you out like this. My roommate is seriously
never around. I swear we will use my room next time." He scratched behind his head, gaze drifting to the floor. "It's totally my fault, though; I hadn't even thought of you being there. We were just-" -he stopped himself- "-I mean, you don't need the gory details or anything, but we were just hanging out in the room, and… it was just kind of a heat of the moment thing…"
"Okay," she replied quickly, voice flat.
He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with a closed fist. "…Hey, are you hungry? Yumi and I were going to go out for a little while and grab a bite. If you want, you are more than welcome to tag along."
"I don't know."
They exchanged a brief glance, but before Kichiro could respond, he was interrupted by a cheery voice from inside the dorm room.
"What's going on out here?" Within moments, Yumi's face appeared in the doorway, and she stepped through, crossing the hallway to stand next to Kichiro and half-hugging his arm.
He gestured toward Rin with one hand. "Your roommate has just been sitting out here waiting for us so she could be let inside."
"Oh… geez." Yumi peered back at the doorway to examine the thickness of the door frame, frowning uneasily. "I, uh… hope these walls are soundproof…"
"They aren't," Rin replied immediately.
Yumi widened her eyes and gritted her teeth at that. Kichiro grinned with amusement at her reaction, his fingers slowly intertwining with hers. Rin watched intently from the floor, knotted sleeves hanging at her sides.
After a few moments of awkward silence, he leaned in, raising the finger of his free hand to interject. "…Um, so, I suggested Rin come eat with us."
Yumi shot him a look and nodded affirmatively. "Yeah! Good idea." She swiveled her head around to look down at Rin, who was still planted on the ground. "You should tag along, Rin. Would be fun…!"
Rin made a face like she was considering it. "I don't know."
"Oh, right, I forgot," Yumi groaned playfully. "Rin
hates fun."
Rin sat up sharply, alarmed, and shot a glance at Yumi, who was grinning but looking somewhere else. "I don't hate fun…"
Kichiro released Yumi's arm and wandered forward a little bit, shrugging with both hands. "No pressure or anything. We were planning to go just the two of us anyway."
Yumi stuck out her tongue at him as he approached the door again, then followed him, standing over Rin with her hands on her hips. "Aw, c'mon, Rin! We're roommates; we're supposed to bond, and… like, do roommate stuff."
She kept her vibrant eyes wide, her gaze piercing Rin's own.
"Okay, then," mumbled Rin. Kichiro watched her uncertainly as she did.
"Yeah?" Yumi took her hands off her hips. "Alright, cool."
"I just want to change my clothes."
"Okay. Come on, then." Thrusting a finger in the air, Yumi turned to her boyfriend as Rin shimmied to her feet and stalked into the dorm room. "Okay, you're banished. No boys allowed."
"Alright. I'll just be out here pretending I don't exist, then."
Yumi let out a girly-sounding giggle and shut the door.
She laughed differently around Kichiro. She was always kind of nasally about it, but with him around, it was kind of squeaky, too. Like someone poked her lung with a needle every time she took a breath. Rin stood in place as she considered it, right up until Yumi slapped her hands down forcefully on Rin's shoulders.
"Okay, what are you thinking then?"
"I got paint on these." Rin looked down at herself. A very light streak of blue streaked down her clothes, trailing down the side of her shirt and staining the top of her pant leg. It was clear from the pattern that the stain had followed the edge of her apron, which was too small for her. But there was something she liked about the paint stains- maybe just that it was incidental, that there was no planning behind it.
Cupping the stained part of Rin's shirt in her hand, Yumi clenched her teeth and looked Rin in the eye again. "Yikes… may come out in the washer, right? Do you just want me to toss these in your hamper?"
"Okay."
The two exchanged a glance, and Rin dipped forward, wordlessly initiating their usual routine. Yumi grabbed her sleeves and pulled up on them, peeling Rin's shirt straight off of her and balling it up in both hands. Rin stayed seated on the bed as Yumi carried the paint-spattered shirt to the hamper.
Lips curved into a contemplative frown, she cocked her neck and looked down at her bra. For a moment, she wondered if they made lopsided bras with two different cup sizes. Yumi probably wouldn't fit into one very well, but there was something to that idea, Rin thought.
Yumi returned to her and fidgeted with the button on Rin's pants, awkwardly trying to undress her from her kneeling position below the bed.
"Okay, so, Rin. Serious question." Yumi pursed her lips a little bit as she struggled to phrase her question. "Was this… um… overstepping? Kichiro and I were just hanging out in here, and we just… I really wasn't expecting to end up monopolizing the room like we did. I feel like that was inconsiderate. I really don't want to be hard to live with…"
Rin flailed her legs like she was pedaling a bicycle, struggling to help Yumi remove her pants. "No. It's okay. I don't mind waiting."
Yumi paced across the room again and tossed the balled-up pants into the hamper. "That feels like something that you'd just say to make me feel better, even though you secretly resent me for it."
"It's not. I don't want to make you feel better."
"Oh, gee,
thanks."
"Wait. I do want you to feel better." She planted her bare feet on the floor and stood up sharply, suddenly alarmed. "Wait, I'm not- I don't know. Sorry. I don't want to fight with you."
"Huh? Fight?" Yumi pouted as she stopped to look Rin in the eye, the two of them now standing face-to-face. "You worry too much. We don't have to fight about anything. I'm just trying not to be a nuisance." Visibly amused, to Rin's dismay, Yumi took a step backwards and turned away from her. "I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but I shared a bedroom with both of my sisters growing up. I just know how irritated I would be if one of them locked me out of my room without any warning." As she spoke, Yumi made her way to Rin's clothes drawer and began digging through it with both hands. "You don't have any siblings, do you?"
Little strands of hair trailed down in front of her eyes again, and Rin shook them out of her face as she slumped quietly back down onto the mattress behind her. "No, I don't."
She looked at the wall above her bed frame, at her untitled painting that Nomiya had told her to keep. It was so dark; it felt like she'd gone through more black than any other color while working on that exhibition. She remembered falling asleep on the dusty floor of the atelier, how strange it felt to be uncomfortable lying on the floor. It was something she had always been so comfortable with before then…
"Hey! This is cute! I don't think I've ever seen you in this before." Boldly interrupting Rin's train of thought, Yumi flipped around, holding a polo shirt in front of her chest and looking down at herself. "You should wear short sleeves more often."
Rin gave half a shrug. "I think people don't like to look at my arms."
"Yeah? Well, so what? How is that anyone else's business?"
They exchanged a glance, and Rin yielded, raising the bare stumps of her arms at her sides. Yumi stuffed her into a short-sleeved shirt with a little collar. The ends of her stumps poked out of the sleeves.
"See?" Yumi smiled at the sight of her, like it made her proud. "You look sophisticated."
"Okay." Rin didn't know what she meant by that but nodded anyway.
Yumi took the following silence as an opportunity to fish out a pair of pants from the drawer. Her chest pressed against Rin's back as Rin shimmied into them, and her hair hung over Rin's face in bunches. But there was nothing Rin could do about it, so she just kept her eyes shut instead. Yumi buttoned up the trousers with one hand like an expert, then returned to the door to let her boyfriend back inside.
The collar of Rin's shirt gnawed at her neck- she'd never worn it before, and it had never been washed. Quiet and weary, she shuffled around in it for a few moments before lying back against the bed to stare at the ceiling again.
************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Yumi's squeaky laughing shook the table as Rin tried to eat, her heel digging uneasily into the wood grain. Frowning, she twiddled a red-handled fork around between her toes, not wanting to say anything. The others had paid already and were working on cleaning their plates, so everyone would have to wait on her. Rin was in no particular hurry.
The little scrap of food Rin had managed to skewer on the fork slid off and landed uselessly on her plate. She stared at it in silence.
Kichiro tapped his fingers on the table, taking long pauses in-between his sentences. "Does Tsuchiya even do watercolors?" He shot a look at Yumi in the seat next to him, head tilting down to look the shorter girl in the eye.
Yumi rolled her eyes at him. "He mostly does oil paintings. But I didn't ask him to look at them because he's an expert; I asked him because I wanted an honest opinion."
"What about Tsuchiya screams 'honest opinion' to you? He's a dick."
"Exactly! He doesn't try to protect my feelings. Unlike a certain someone."
Unable to hide his smile, Kichiro looked away a little bit and snickered at her. "Yeah, that's called masochism."
"You can't improve without honest criticism." She leaned over the table with both arms. "Some of us are hoping to make a career out of this someday, y'know."
She talked with her hands, so that every time she laughed or said something loud she flicked a little bit of food from the ends of her chopsticks.
"Yeah, yeah. Let me worry about passing my classes before I get that far." Kichiro shoveled food into his mouth and looked up from his plate, eyebrow raised. "So? What did he tell you?"
"…He said, as an Impressionist, he didn't really 'feel' my style," Yumi replied after a moment, smacking her lips.
He interrupted her with a laugh, unapologetic. "Seriously? That's what he said?"
"Yeah."
"Impressionist? Those are the words he used?"
"That's right. So what?"
"
So, he's not an Impressionist. Impressionism is, like, a historical movement. Making blurry-looking paintings doesn't make you an Impressionist."
"Well, that's the kind of thing he paints. So it's what he calls himself."
"I'm just saying, unless he is a two-hundred-year-old Frenchman, he's not an
Impressionist. He just calls himself that because he thinks it will make people take him more seriously."
Rin looked up a little bit more from her dish, intrigued by the thought, but Kichiro didn't seem to notice.
Yumi crossed her arms. "Okay, then, big shot. Did
you like my watercolors?"
"Sure," said Kichiro noncommittally. "They looked great to me."
"Okay, but how about when you aren't just trying to kiss my ass?"
"Oh, for the love of-" Giving an exaggerated sigh, Kichiro set down his utensils on the table and turned to face his girlfriend, shrugging with both hands. "I'm not kissing your ass! They're good! But, look, if
you like them, I don't know why you even give a damn what anyone else thinks. Least of all Tsuchiya. All I'm saying."
"I'm just trying to make sure I actually get criticism on my work outside of class. You know?"
"Yumi, I spend most of my time trying to minimize the amount of criticism I get
in class."
"Well, you don't give yourself enough credit." She pursed her lips at him. "If you asked, people would tell you that you have more talent than you think you do."
Kichiro was quiet for a little while, and glanced over at the table at Rin just in time to catch her watching the two of them. As though remembering for the first time that she was sitting there, he jabbed a finger in her direction, enthusiastic. "Hey, Rin. You were working really hard on that landscape painting of the beach. How did that go over in class?"
Rin froze for a moment with surprise, but nevertheless found herself speaking before she even really had time to think about her answer. "It went okay. Chishiki said he liked it."
"Sure
sounds okay. I wish he'd say that about something
I painted."
"He says that a lot."
"Pft, are we talking about the same guy?"
Kichiro looked right into her eyes, and she diverted her gaze. The exchange didn't make much sense to her, but she tried not to draw attention to it.
"I'm talking about Chishiki." Rin spoke quietly, pursing her lips.
"Yeah, I know that. I was, uh, kidding."
"Oh."
Rin drooped her head, and he watched her with an awkward frown. Yumi cut the silence by patting her hand down on the table, and Rin jumped slightly, startled.
"Did you ever come up with a title for that beach painting, Rin?" Yumi asked loudly, turning her head in Rin's direction.
Fork hovering somewhere in front of her mouth, Rin lowered it back onto her plate, closing her eyes tiredly. "No, I didn't."
"Aw. And I gave you such good suggestions."
"I couldn't pick one."
"How hard can it be?" Kichiro gave a blank expression as he glanced between the two of them. "If it was me, I would have just called it 'The Beach' or something."
"Yeah, well, if it was
you, you would have just sketched and painted the entire thing in a weekend. You're not a good role model," Yumi scolded, shooting a cheeky smile in Rin's direction.
Rin swirled her food around with her fork, off-put.
"I'll put effort into a school assignment when they give me one worth my effort, and not a minute sooner," Kichiro replied matter-of-factly.
"You're lazy."
"No, I'm efficient. Putting in a ton of effort on little assignments like that is a waste of time. Who's ever going to look at a painting you did for 'show-and-tell'? Far as I'm concerned, half-assing it is an act of integrity."
"And how do you figure that?"
He paused and nodded once, like he had to take a moment to agree with his own argument before explaining it. "Well… you put a title on something, and you're saying, 'This is what this is'. You're saying it's a finished product- like, it's a work of art. If you don't dignify it that way, you don't have to own it. Lets you save your creative juices for the stuff you actually care about." He jabbed a chopstick in Yumi's direction pointedly. "I never sign them, either. School assignments. It's the same thing."
"You…" hummed Yumi with a smirk, "…are very good at rationalizing."
He shrugged halfheartedly. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm brilliant."
"Maybe both."
Kichiro turned to look at her, only to find that Yumi had closed the distance between her chair and his own, putting them face to face. She leaned forward to kiss him, resting a hand on his leg. As she did, he cupped one hand over her ribs and ran his hand down them, fingers rapping gently along her side like he was banging on tiny drums. She didn't seem to notice, though.
Stoic, Rin remained seated in her chair, dropping her fork on her plate and sliding her leg off the edge of the table. As she watched them, Yumi's pants vibrated from the back pocket, and she stared out of curiosity for a few moments before loudly interrupting them.
"Your pants are buzzing," Rin observed flatly.
Without a second thought, Yumi reached into her back pocket to tap a button on her phone, looking over her shoulder and smirking. "Yeah. Thanks, Rin."
"You're welcome."
Yumi slumped back into her own chair, and Kichiro took a second glance at Rin before turning his head to his girlfriend again. "What are you doing on Saturday?"
She brushed a little bit of hair behind her ear with one hand and looked at the table. "Not much besides class. I thought I might get some schoolwork out of the way in the afternoon."
"I can probably get rid of my roommate."
"'Kay."
"Should I?"
"Sure."
"I don't want to spend too much time hogging your room; we already shut Rin out today."
"Yeah. I'm with you."
"Who called you?"
"Doesn't matter. I'll call them back. I don't want to hold you guys up."
"What if it's your mom?"
"She can wait."
"You're going to feel bad if you don't call her back until we get back to your dorm."
"It's not my mom."
"What if it is?"
With narrowed eyes, she shot him a look, then reached into her pocket again and pulled out her cell phone, opening it and reading for a moment.
Getting no response from her, Kichiro widened his eyes. "It was your mom, wasn't it?"
Yumi paused before responding, closing the phone again. "…Can you guys wait up for a few minutes?"
"Yeah, no problem." Smiling to himself, he stood from his chair, gesturing towards the door at the lobby of the restaurant. "I'm gonna go have a smoke."
Yumi scrunched her face, making a motherly, disapproving sort of expression. "Gross."
Rin craned her neck up to keep her eyes fixed on him as he stood. The opportunity struck her suddenly, and she looked at him pleadingly.
For a few moments, her mouth stopped speaking for her. "I'm finished eating. Can I have one?"
"What? Rin, you don't smoke!" Yumi narrowed her eyes as she said that, shooting a glance in Rin's direction. "…I mean… do you?"
Rin lowered her head. "Sometimes I do."
Yumi scratched her chin a little bit as she thought about that.
"It's cool, Rin. C'mon." Kichiro waved Rin forward as he stepped away from the table, and Yumi rolled her eyes at him.
Moving slowly, Rin followed him. Behind them, Yumi started speaking loudly from her seat at the table.
Kichiro flung open the doors at the entrance to the restaurant and held one of them open so that Rin could step through alongside him. Foot traffic bustled on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant's front patio, and cars on the road in front of that. The streets didn't quiet down much in the city, a fact which Rin still hadn't decided whether she liked or not.
Kichiro leaned his back heavily against the wall as he fumbled with a cigarette, glancing over at Rin as she shimmied toward him along the wall.
"Pft, alright. Here," he said quietly, amused by her hopeful expression.
With two fingers, he held a fresh one to Rin's face, and she scooped it awkwardly out of his hand with her mouth. Trying not to drop it, she pushed it forward with her tongue and lolled her head back, allowing Kichiro to light it.
Tucking the lighter into his back pocket, Kichiro took a drag on his cigarette and shot a glance at Rin, snickering at the sight of her.
"You can do it without hands." He released his cigarette with one hand to demonstrate, flicking it in his mouth and puffing smoke into the air in front of him. "It kind of takes some practice, though."
Rin flicked her own cigarette a little bit with her tongue, and the smoke trailed straight into her face, burning her nostrils. She winced a little bit, but she didn't want to say anything, so she simply closed her eyes instead.
Kichiro groaned at that. Reaching over again, he grabbed it out of her mouth, and she exhaled loudly, breathing smoke straight onto his hand. Kichiro chuckled at her as he placed the cigarette back into her mouth.
"Does helping you do this make me a bad friend?" he asked with a snicker.
Rin opened her mouth just a little, trying to speak without dropping the cigarette out of her mouth. "No, it doesn't."
Though the word 'friend' didn't sit right with her in the first place.
Kichiro sized her up with a glance. "Tsch."
He held his own cigarette with two fingers again, posed coolly against the wall. The two of them stood in silence for a couple of minutes.
After a stretch of silence, one which felt to Rin like a very long time, Kichiro reached over to take Rin's cigarette again so she could exhale. "So… how are you doing, Rin? I'm definitely not supposed to bring this up, but Yumi said she was worried about you."
Rin narrowed her eyes. He placed the cigarette in her mouth again, and she tried to smoke on her own. "I'm okay."
"Alright. I know it's none of my business; it's just that I hate to see Yumi worry like that. She gets really caught up in other peoples' business sometimes, but it comes from a good place. Remember that, if she happens to bother you about it."
"Okay."
He rapped two fingers of his free hand on his opposite wrist, lips pursed. "…You're not from the city, right? Are you settling in? How do you like it here?"
Shuffling a little, Rin turned toward him so that her stump pressed into the wall through the end of her sleeve. "It's okay. It… smells like smoke."
"No kidding." He shrugged half-heartedly. "I've never liked the city, to be completely honest. I have family in Osaka, so I'd had my fill long before coming to live in Tokyo. So many people, and so much noise, and everything. I just think it gets hard to think sometimes."
"Then why did you come here?"
He smirked at that. "Because I got into the school. Talent or dumb luck, or something; knowing me, probably the second one. My dad is a neurosurgeon, which is the reason I can afford to go here in the first place. He wanted me to do the same thing as him, but since that wasn't going to happen, he at least wanted me to go somewhere he could brag about at parties." He chuckled and leaned his head back against the wall. "But the reason I go to art school in general? Fewer tests."
She studied him as he smirked to himself. He was so self-assured, and Rin found it fascinating.
After a moment, he turned his head to the side and made sudden eye contact with Rin, startling her. "How about you? You following your dream, or what? What are
you doing here?"
Her mouth almost spoke for her, but something stopped her. Rin relaxed, just for a moment, and drooped her head down to look at the ground. Her bangs fell over her eyes again. "I just… needed something to be different."
"Yeah." Kichiro pursed his lips and took another drag on his cigarette, contemplative. "I understand how you feel."
Rin froze at the words. Hair dangled in her eyes. For a moment, she forgot about it.
Thinking nothing of the exchange, Kichiro stared off absentmindedly in the distance as he finished his cigarette. But Rin had her eyes fixed on him. They were both very quiet again, but the kind of quiet that made your ears ring, like after a bomb went off.
Yumi appeared in the doorway, and Kichiro's lips twitched into a tiny smile when he spotted her.
"There she is." Kichiro flicked his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out with his foot. "Everything good with your mom?"
"Yeah. Everything's good. She's trying to sort out tuition bills. Needed some stuff from me."
"So it could have waited, then."
"Yeah, probably. But thanks for waiting, anyway."
Pursing his lips, he leaned in toward her with an arm outstretched. "How about a kiss?"
"How about a breath mint? Or a nicotine patch…" Yumi rolled her eyes at him and turned away, arms crossed. "You all good, Rin?"
Rin opened her mouth, and the butt of her cigarette landed on her shoe. Nearly silent, she gave the faintest nod without stepping away from the wall.
"Cool." Yumi pointed her head toward the sidewalk. "Can we get going, then?"
"I'm ready," said Kichiro.
Yumi turned toward Rin, who drooped her head absentmindedly. "Rin? Ready?"
Rin nodded vaguely, and Yumi smiled in turn, taking a step away from the entrance. Kichiro took her hand as they moved onto the sidewalk. Without saying anything else, Rin finally stepped away from the wall, trailing behind the two of them with heavy feet.
She blinked twice and shook her head, her long bangs in her eyes.
///
Red and White Plum Blossoms, Ogata Kōrin, early 18th century
Chishiki seems like a nice person so far. sounds like a man who wants to see his students become better artist, but so did nomiya. Time will tell if he is similar or different than the red tilted art teacher. Also wonder if Aoki is going to come back, or just a one off. Either way, looking forward to the next chap. Keep it up.
