3- Lifelike

Minori didn’t realise it, the way the brush felt against her grip, and the way she was holding it so possessively before the brush stared back at her. But then again, brushes weren’t supposed to stare, no? She shrugged.

Sleep deprivation.

She stared back.

All she wanted was to unpack and go down to eat; she did. A quick one, no words, no conversation, the usual. Akagi didn’t pry. She was perceptive. She knew Minori’s mind was somewhere else.

Her mother?

Her predicament?

University?

Something else?

In any case, her feet moved on their own, and she ended up back in her room. Hana was sleeping, took after her in a bad way, she supposed. Didn’t matter. What mattered was something else.

And before she knew it, the white of a canvas made her question her life choices. The weird-as-hell brush that was too hypnotic was. The metal handle felt warm, as if something else was holding onto it. But the sleep-deprived, messy-haired, stone-faced girl was sure that no one snuck into her room, grabbed the brush, looked at her panties on the bed instead of the laundry bag, and gagged.

“Weird,” she muttered.

Before she knew it, she rummaged through her suitcase and found her set of Nakagawa Gofun paint she’d bought out of necessity. She immediately dipped the brush in the fresh paint and drew a line, just a line, as if testing the waters…no pun intended.

The line looked cleaner than it should have been.

Not straight, just clean.

Perfection is overrated.

And in creativity, it was suspicious.

She tried again, again and again for good measure, until she was in between being convinced and not convinced that she wasn’t going insane. The lines were too clean, too cooperative. It stuck to the canvas like a clingy couple on Valentine's Day.

“Pretentious little–”

She exhaled. There she was again, talking to her work like it were a person.

She switched angles, pressed harder, still the same. So she sighed, leaning back and looking around the room. The paint wasn’t the only clingy thing. The dust stuck to the room and the shelves, too, even covering the old canvases, which held completed or half-finished but signed paintings. They were her mother's, signed with red paint— Kirishima Miyako.

“I wonder if the paint got your stubbornness, mama.”

Fine. If this thing wanted to act special, she’d treat it like normal and bring it out of its fantasy.

She’d test it like normal.

An apple sat on the table to the side, one that Akagi had forced into her hands, saying she should eat healthy. It didn’t move; it was still.

A perfect model.

She sketched the outline lightly in pencil first. Habit. Even if the brush was supposedly magical—or just weird—it didn’t mean she’d skip the fundamentals.

Then she started painting.

The curve came first. Then the dip at the top. The shadow underneath where the apple touched the table. The brush moved lightly, barely needing pressure.

Minori paused halfway through and leaned forward.

The apple looked… convincing.

Too convincing.

It wasn’t perfect. The prodigy had enough humility to say that it wasn’t.

Or was it insecurity?

Probably sluggish from the tiredness.

But it looked like it could roll out of the canvas if she just picked it up and tilted it ever so slightly. She had to make sure the apple on the table was still there. When she glanced through the corner of her eye, it was.

“Good,” she muttered. The brush rolled to her side, touching her hand, as if urging her to keep going.

“Alright, alright…” she groaned, “so fussy…”

In the background, Shibuya changed: the sky turned blue, the neon lights came on, and the noise grew slightly louder as people started to head home from their jobs. Inside, a bit of shuffling from the other room as Hana began crying. Akagi’s voice could be heard, kinda like soft music.

Minori ignored it, even though her eyes were drooping like a sloth, and her posture shifted to a gargoyle’s and her neck hurt like she was seventy.

She leaned back, her back cracked.

“How long…?” she breathed. The clock struck midnight, small beeps interrupting her.

“Stupid clock…” she rubbed her bloodshot eyes.

“... Huh?”

She looked at the brush as if it were a responsive human. She dipped it again.

This time, she didn’t care for what she was painting. She stroked once, then again, and again. A curve, then another.

“That’s not an apple…”

Despite the red flags and her sudden obsession with apples, she kept going.

The curves became blonde locks, loose strands falling over a forehead, a fair-skinned, an almost-smile, waiting for a chance to laugh at a good joke. Eyes formed, then a cocky-looking nose, then the mouth was done, looking like it’d answer if Minori asked her her name.

Minori paused.

She looked at the face.

It stared back.

She hadn’t meant to paint a person.

She shrugged, and the brush moved again. Shoulders, a collarbone extending to just above her chest, not showing it. For a second, Minori thought the picture had smirked teasingly. She rubbed her aching eyes again. The girl looked young. Around her age, maybe. Not someone Minori recognised, which was strange considering she usually painted faces based on people she knew. Did she have some core memory mid-painting?

Minori leaned in. The girl looked like she wanted to say hello.

“Too annoying…” Minori yawned. “Should sleep…”

The girl on the canvas continued looking at her.

Minori stood up slowly, stretching her arms over her head until her back cracked again. The room felt smaller now, warmer, like the air had thickened while she wasn’t paying attention.

She turned off the lamp.

Darkness settled over the room, broken only by the dim city glow slipping through the window.

Minori walked to the bed without looking back.

She lay down.

Closed her eyes.

Within minutes, sleep took her.

And the painting became the only thing staring out of the window.