Chapter 9: In A World Full of Hidden Colors (II)

The third day of suspension was supposed to be the most productive, so I hit the books like I was a wrecking ball plowing through brick walls.

Stacks of worksheets swallowed my desk. My pencil had become an extension of my hand. My brain was in a tug-of-war between math formulas and history dates, and I was already one foot into academic collapse.

From morning to afternoon, I remained still despite my stomach rumbling and eyes begging to rest. But I fought through it.

This, or a failing grade.

A failing grade, failure in study.

Failure in study, no future.

No future? A failure of existence.

I hadn’t even looked at the clock in hours when a knock sounded at the door.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating.

My first guess was the landlady. But it's impossible since I already paid rent two weeks ago.

A visitor? People don’t visit me. They don’t even know where I live.

Except for loan sharks I already paid and…

Her.

I dragged myself from my sitting position with a groan, bones cracking from stiffness, notebook still clutched in my hand.

“Coming up…”

When I opened the door, I saw golden hair and blue eyes gleaming against the afternoon light. She was wearing her Shonan High School uniform much more decently, completed buttons, jacket draping her exposed legs, and sketchpad plus two grocery bags slung over her shoulder like military cargo.

What in the conservatism has befallen this angel?

“You always show up uninvited,” I said flatly.

“I’m not uninvited. I’m inevitable.”

“…That’s worse.”

Her eyes searched mine.

"You're studying like a corpse," she remarked, gesturing below her eyes as if it had the dark rounds as mine.

"That’s probably the most accurate description of me today."

"That's all?"

Kousaka-san raised her eyebrow as if waiting for me to say something more.

Was that plain curiosity? I can't say. It's not even the romantic 'missing' someone. The most accurate deduction I could form right now is her obsession with not missing out on my dailies, and constant barging into people's houses.

"Well, sorry for the absence in the park. I have to review for term exams until I burn out."

Yep, I didn't sell dangos for two days straight.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Tch. Move."

Without waiting for permission, Kousaka-san walked past me as if she owned the apartment.

She looked around, her expression shifting into amusement on the sight.

"You cleaned." she said, stepping over the threshold like she was examining a crime scene that had recently been sanitized.

I scratched the back of my head. "Uh. Yeah. A bit."

"Your ‘bit’ includes wiping windows, reorganizing the kitchen, vacuuming the rug, and putting actual air freshener in the toilet. Tell me, are you already leading on other women in this apartment?"

"...I was just being hygienic."

"You weren’t this hygienic the last time I visited."

I kept myself shut. I can't say she was right, I know my circumstances. I know what changed in me.

She dropped the plastic bags and rolled up her sleeves. "You’re still hopeless. I’m cleaning. Let me sniff out some scent to double check."

I felt like my brain was misfiring.

"Wait, what? No, I mean, I can—"

"You’re swamped. Just keep solving for X. You focus. I clean. That’s the trade."

I wanted to say no. I wanted to say I didn’t need help. But when the most beautiful girl in the school shows up with bleach, groceries, and zero hesitation (and walking to my house with shoes still on), saying no feels like betrayal.

So I just nodded vaguely.

And that was that. Kousaka Akari, the girl who people said didn’t care about anything, started tidying up my apartment again.

She started dusting the windowsills with one hand while balancing a can of mikan jelly in the other. I turned back to my problem set.

Derivatives.

Functions.

Slopes.

All things that had nothing to do with her being here.

The atmosphere really felt light, I thought that her presence was some kind of generous blessing.

I made fewer erasures, calculated equations quickly and efficiently. I highlighted more concepts and felt like everything was being just downloaded into my mental archive.

I thought it’d stay that way—can't expect peace from the golden porcupine.

“You really live here alone?” she asked after a few minutes.

“Already told you on your first visit.”

Her hand paused over the windowsill. Just for a second.

“I had to confirm because that's too early.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your parents?”

My pen stopped right on the number 0 at the equation.

“They vanished." I huffed. "Or left. Depends who you ask.”

"And since then?"

"I figured it all out. Paying debts, maintaining the house, surviving."

"That’s not something an eleven-year-old should have to do."

"It wasn’t about should. It just happened."

She turned to the windows and wiped the grime again, soft squeaks resonating from the glass.

“Have you ever tried looking for them?”

I raised my glance just enough to see her, and looked down on my notes again.

“No.”

“…Why not?”

“There are only so many ways to say you’re not wanted. They chose theirs.”

For a while, only the sound of cloth on glass and pencil on paper filled the air.

Then, out of nowhere, another topic.

“I used to live in Marseille. Mom's French and dad's Japanese."

I looked up. Her eyes were on the sky outside, as if replaying a memory that only she could see.

"It's the kind of city that drowns you in color and noise. Where people argue in public and kiss at crosswalks.”

“Sounds chaotic.”

“It was beautiful,” she said, almost wistfully. “Japan’s colors are muted in comparison. France was too loud and full of…everything.”

“Then why come here?”

She tilted her head, golden bangs falling slightly across her brow.

It's not like transferring between two countries with contrasting social structure was decided overnight. I knew that France often appears to live life out loud, a country where passionate discourse, boisterous cafés, and public displays of affection are commonplace. On the other hand, Japan embodies a profound sense of reserved collectivism and social harmony. One must read the air constantly, or they'll find themselves in a cultural dissonance.

“They said I needed fresh air. ‘A calmer place to think,’ they called it.”

Her voice lowered. Her mouth quirked into something between a smile and a grimace.

“That doesn’t sound like a vacation.”

Honestly, it sounds more like exile.

"It wasn't."

There was a pause—I cannot tell why, but it almost the sensation that the reasons behind it carried so much weight.

“...Maybe they just wanted to send the problem child away.”

My eyebrows furrowed in response.

Is Kousaka-san a problem child? I admit that her personality is sharp and perilous, but at least traits like that are manageable.

She doesn't even look like the someone that sought comfort in vices. No lingering scent of smoke and beer, no tattoos on skin, and doesn't hang out with lots of men for fun despite the impression of a gyaru and a delinquent.

I wanted to confirm, yet knew that expression that surfaced in her face.

It's the kind people wear when the real story is something they’ve buried deep enough to forget—until someone like me accidentally unearths it.

So I had to shut myself up before I could cross a forbidden line.

"So Shimizu, why dango?" she asked.

I laughed, much to her surprise.

“That’s not a joke.”

“Biological reaction.”

I cleared my throat and sobered myself after seeing her eyes thinning down into slits.

"Because it’s simple. People smile when they eat it. And seeing them happy makes it worth the effort. Besides, it kept me fed when I had nothing else."

She nodded slowly, like she understood more than she let on.

"And you? Why do you sketch places?"

"I draw what I don’t want to forget. Marseille feels like a dream sometimes. Drawing places makes it real again."

I turned another page in my workbook, but her words echoed.

‘Drawing to not forget.’

Have I done it before? Or was it the opposite?

She finished wiping the windows and rinsed the towel she used at the sink.

Meanwhile, I returned my attention to the five binomial factoring questions and relished the comfortable silence.

Then Kousaka-san ruined it. Of course.

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

The question, even though harmless, rang like a gunshot.

I stifled a jet of air coming from my nose, barely.

"Fff—What?”

And what's more surprising is the neutral expression she carried while asking something personal.

"You heard me. You seem so comfortable around girls and innocuous in your actions. That's why I always barge in here comfortably because you're not some sort of pervert who would attack at a moment's notice."

I blinked, realizing the logic behind her actions.

"So you're saying that you're leaving yourself defenseless intentionally?"

“Curiosity is the beginning of chaos. Temptation is a primal instinct that unmasks the true nature of our species. Remember Adam and Eve?"

The first humans. The first victims of temptation from the devil.

“Then consider me stable.”

For now, I am. I have my own temptations and triggers too, but that's for another story.

“So…yes?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I looked down at my notes and sighed.

"Poor people like me don’t get the privilege to make their own choices. Not when you’re budgeting between lunch and tuition. If I have time to fall in love, I should be studying. If I have time to text someone cute, I should be reviewing."

As if I had someone to text with…

"Huh. Sounds lonely."

"It is. But it’s the only option that doesn’t leave me hungrier. If it meant securing my future and ensuring survival, then that's the priority."

I didn’t mean it as pity bait but harsh honesty. And I'm glad that Kousaka-san didn't delve into it deeper and just nodded in understanding.

She resumed cleaning, and my cabinet became her next victim.

I kept a steady glance at her while she rummaged and wiped the corners of it.

"Be careful of the spiders inside. They're venomous."

I meant it as a joke, but deep inside, I can feel that allowing her to do that was perilous. Like a part of my soul was getting touched.

"Your closet is quite neatly arranged. I'm surprised."

I wanted her hands off it, but I'm too busy to be distracted. I'm nearing completing a full page of trinomial factoring when it happened.

She lifted the set of clothes with a groan of effort, and the light of the windows drenched the darkness I’ve concealed behind them.

“NO—DON’T—!”

The metal rods collapsed, sending my shirts, winter coats and sweaters to the floor like a fabric avalanche.

Instinct kicked in. I bolted up and rushed to arrange and cover it again, but I was a second too late.

Everything already went still.

Curiosity was the beginning of chaos.

And the worst possible outcome just happened.

"...What is this?" Kousaka-san lost all the teasing in her voice.

She was stunned at the sight of the things hidden behind the cabinet.

She found them.

And pulled the frames out.

A canvas.

Two.

Three.

I looked up. She had the piece in her hands.

She gazed at it as if it was something created by a divine entity.

They were artworks I thought I’d hidden.

Brushes I thought I’d discarded.

Palettes stained with ghosts of color.

They were mine.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

And I couldn’t breathe.

It was like someone had cracked open a coffin I had buried years ago and shined a flashlight into it.

Behind my shirts, beneath my winter coats—they spilled out like secrets that had waited too long.

Kousaka-san turned toward me slowly, holding a painting of a lakeside at dusk with colors so vivid it would be comparable to the ones in museums.

She looked at me like I was someone entirely different. Like I’d been living behind a mask this whole time.

"Shimizu," she said. "Were you painting before?"