fine art ch 2 - rough draft
Jan. 9th, 2011 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaebilityChapter 2, draft 3
The bell finally rang and before Takeru even put down his pencil, I was up out of my seat and running through the door. School was over and Hikari was waiting for me. At the lockers I pulled out my cell and sent her an email, and then leaned against the wall where I had a good view of everyone. Once we met up we'd head to the art clubroom together, or maybe I'd be able to convince her to forget about it and go to the Digital World instead. Takeru would just have to sit around at a computer and wait for us to come back.
Kids were pouring out from everywhere but I didn’t see Hikari’s cute face in the crowd. I flipped my phone open and checked it again but nope, I hadn’t gotten an email back from her. Calling her went nowhere, too. I froze: What if she’d been kidnapped? Or fell down the stairs and had to go the hospital for a brain transfusion but they accidentally gave her the deformed brain of a serial killer?
“Oi, Motomiya-kun, move,” a voice said next to me. “You’re blocking my locker.”
“Huh? Sorry." I stepped to the side to let Hokuto get to his locker. He rolled his eyes but then grinned.
“You coming to practice next week?”
“Course.” I said with a snort. We’d been on the soccer team together in junior high; Hokuto was the best goalie of all time, but he sucked at every other position. Unlike me who was awesome at everything. “We gotta get to the championship this year, right? Can’t do it without me! Hey, did you see Hikari on your way here?”
“Yagami-san?” He stopped trying to unlock his locker and shook his head. “No, didn’t see her. Maybe she went to a club meeting.”
I smacked my forehead. “Yeah! Thanks!” Hikari hated being late to things, so she probably had gone right to the art club after class. Club rooms were split up by type, so all the artsy clubs shared a corridor. I passed the photography club and the fashion club and then screeched to a halt. Someone had made a little sign for the art club’s room: “Art Club” was written in English with red birds making each letter.
I quietly opened the door to look into the room: three people and none of them Hikari. Two upperclassmen, one guy and one girl, were leaning against the long table set up in the middle of the room and a vaguely familiar freshman with huge pigtails was sitting down, staring at her notebook. The table had a neat stack of paper and colored pencils arranged on it, but the walls were bare and the room basically empty. No naked marble statues, no oil paintings, so other art-related crap.
So where the hell was Hikari? I sighed and jammed a hand through my hair. If something happened to her while I was wasting time by the lockers, I’d never forgive myself. What if she’d been attacked by mutant turtles or warped into another dimension or -
"A new member!" An arm snaked through the door and latched onto my elbow. I managed to blink twice at it before I was yanked into the room.
"Ow, ow, ow! Hey, what's the big idea? And hey, that hurts! Leggo!"
The girl upperclassman completely ignored my protests and clenched my arm in a death-lock. "Welcome to the world of art!" She said, leering down at me with one of those insane expression that Yamato’s fangirls always had. "Passion, beauty, imagination... These are our... Our..." Her tirade wheezed to a stop and she tapped a long finger against her chin. "Hmm... What's the word I'm looking for..." She turned to the other upperclassman and I pulled my arm back and step away from the crazy. "Our?"
"Accouterments?" The other upperclassman supplied with a shrug. "I don't know."
"No, no.” She shook her head and hit me in the face with her long ponytail. “Accouterments are accessories."
"Well, then, how about-"
“Look, you can call them whatever the hell you want.” I said as I backed out through the door. “I gotta go. Someplace. Far away. Forever. So have a nice life." I turned around and this time managed to make it two steps into the hallway before being tackled again. "Hey, let go!”
She had me in a headlock this time, holding tight with rhinoceros-like strength. I probably had an inch and two over her and was in perfect, sexy condition due to years of soccer and saving the world, but since I didn't have a rocket launcher in my backpack, I didn't stand chance against her.
"You're Motomiya, right? You played soccer in junior high." Crazy upperclassman number one loosened her headlock that she had gripped me in, but still held fast. "Could it be that the rough and tumble life of a jock has left you craving more? Are you searching for meaning, but are unable to find it in the sweaty and malodorous world of sports?"
"Huh? Hey, I like soccer!"
"Maybe your sensitive soul is crying out for the... the..."
We both looked at the other upperclassman who stared blankly back at us. "How about abetment?"
"No, no, all wrong. That's for criminals. Nevermind; you're no help at all." She ignored his grumbled apology and stared down her nose at me. "Maybe you're here to impress someone? Girls love the tortured soul of an artist you know. Right, Miso-chan?"
She turned around to look at the girl and since my neck was still encased, I turned with her toward the pig-tailed girl. Miso-chan startled and colored, apparently she had zoned out during our epic battle, and nodded frantically. "Umm... yes?"
"Exactly! So, Motomiya, do you have a girl in mind?"
"What? No way! Where'd you get a stupid idea like that? I told you, I came in here by accident! Let me go!"
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." She said, leering unpleasantly at me again. I glared up at her, and she sniffed disdainfully and exhaled a loud sigh. Finally she dropped me, and I scrambled away to hide behind Miso-chan's big poofy pigtails.
"Don't know what you're talking about and don't really care," I said as I adjusted my sweater. "And now I'm leaving. I'd say it was nice meeting you, but that'd be a lie."
She took a long step sideways and blocked the door. "We're not done with you yet. Have a seat, Motomiya-san."
I pondered jumping out a window, but my legs were saved from being smashed during impact by the second upperclassman who rose from his seat and gave me an apologetic smile. "What Takahashi means, Motomiya-san, is that the art club could use some new members. Even if you came in here by accident, you should consider joining. Akane and I are graduating this year, and we'd both be disappointed if the club had to be disbanded. We've spent a lot of time with the club, but well, it's seen better days. I don’t think the club will interfere with soccer practice and –"
"Man, Hitoshi, show some dignity!" Takahashi-sempai pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. "We don't need you. It'd just be nice to have some new blood."
"I'm Inaba Hitoshi," Inaba-sempai said politely. "And this is Takahashi Akane and Miso-chan, who’s a freshman, too. Anyway, it's a pleasure to meet you."
"Yeah, you too, I guess. So it’s just you guys in here, right? No Yagami Hikari? She’s about this tall with shortish brown hair and super cute?"
The two upperclassmen looked at each other and then shook their heads. Miso tugged on one of her pigtails and then shook her head, too.
"Damn," I said under my breath. "You sure? Because I thought she said she was gonna join."
"Ah ha! I knew there was a girl involved." Takahashi had an I’m-right-and-you-know-it expression on her face. She tossed her long ponytail over her shoulder and grinned at me. "Let me guess: You were going to join along with her and impress her with your artistic talents. Join the art club - Embark on new adventures!”
"Yo, Miso-chan." I bent down to whisper at her. "She always this crazy?"
"I heard that!" Takahashi snapped. "Anyway, sit down and get ready for the embarking. Maybe your Yagami will come in later."
I sulked down into the seat next to Miso-chan, where I had a clear view of the door. Once Hikari saw me being all artistic, she’d be so impressed she’d forget Takeru forever. And that was worth putting up with two crazy seniors.
“All right. Now we’ll commence, taking our first steps on our journal toward the world of art." Takahashi waltzed around the table and I twisted in my seat so she could see the expression on my face. She ignored my grimace of horror and leaned between me and Miso-chan, dropping onto the table some paper and pencils. "Here, my young apprentices, these are your weapons with which to wage war against the banality of daily life.”
“Nice alliteration, Takahashi.”
“You like that?” She grinned across the table at Inaba-sempai. “Anyway, get ready to change your world and have your world changed. Today we begin. Today you become artists.” She stopped and took a step to the side and then, with one fluid motion, grabbed the empty chair next to me, lifted it up, and hoisted it onto the table. I made a mental note only to insult her from a distance. "Today, you draw a chair."
"Seriously?" I asked. Even Miso-chan looked disappointed. "Even I can draw a chair. Square for the seat and four lines for legs. Boom, I'm done. If Hikari comes around, tell her I'm already the greatest artist in the world, ok?"
Takahashi shook her head. "It's not that easy, you know, Motomiya. Here, look again." She leaned over and grabbed the back of the chair. "See the way the metal bends to support the seat? And the seat's not square, is it? It has rounded corners. And this one tilts a bit to the left, see? So the legs aren't exactly even; in fact, this one bends inward."
Inaba-sempai and Miso-chan were nodding, but I shrugged. "So?"
"So this is about drawing what you see, not what you think you see," Inaba explained. "Just give it a shot."
They all started drawing, even the seniors. Miso made a tiny line and then furiously erased it. Takahashi was scribbling so fast I could barely see her pencil and beside her Inaba was drawing so slowly his was barely moving. I sighed. And scratched behind my ear. And then balanced the pencil above my lip. Finally I propped my legs up on the table and drew a square with rounded corners balancing atop of three straight lines and a bent one.
Soccer was way more interesting. If they thought I'd drop soccer to be a full-time, beret-wearing, chair-obsessed artist, they had another thing coming. Besides, since Ken had dropped it, it was my duty to win the championship for him and the rest of the Chosen Children. I scribbled over the drawing and started again out of boredom. Instead of following Hikari, I should have joined the same kind of clubs as Ken. At least then we could meet up for chess matches or kendo contest or genius conventions or whatever. Ken would never join an art club. he'd probably say it wasn't academic enough or wasn't a big enough accomplishment. Those were two words he loved to throw around, "academic" and "accomplishment." He loved those and "potential" and "expectations" and "achieve." My favorite words were "ramen," "soccer," and "the school got blown up so now it's vacation forever." I added a pair of eyes to the chair's back like it was Digimon of some sort and paused to look at my masterpiece.
They kind of looked like Ken's, the eyes did. I erased the rectangle around them and drew an oval there, then tried adding angles to make his chin. He'd let his hair grow out a little, but it didn't look shaggy. It looked even more elegant, somehow, even when he pulled it back into a ponytail. When it was first getting long, I stuck my hands in it and asked him if he got a new girlfriend who he was getting all sexy for. He'd sputtered for a second, then yanked himself away, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Miyako and Iori and ignoring me.
I tried adding in his hair, but it didn't look nearly as good on paper as it did in real life. I couldn't manage to make it look like it was water falling or like silk or anything - It was too much poof and the length was wrong. I erased it and tried again, but it still wasn't Ken. It was weird, having a floating Ken head, so I added a neck and a line for his shoulders. It was hard trying to get him body to line up with the chair I'd already drawn and I had to erase almost every part of Ken.
I always hunched when I sat, but Ken kept his spine straight, his shoulders back. My pencil scraped and smudged around where his chest should have been, and then I couldn't get his legs to bend right. I stopped drawing and looked down at the paper. A total mess, like someone had vomited graphite up onto it.
"You've been working pretty intensely, Motomiya. Let's see what've you done so far," Takahashi said suddenly. Before I could crumble up the paper she reached over and grabbed it. "Hmm."
She managed to fit a lot of meaning into that "Hmm."
"Hey, that's mine!" I stood up so fast that I knocked over my chair. Even the one up on the desks quivered, sort of like it had something to say to me, too. The clattering was louder than fireworks and everyone looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Which I might have. What was I thinking? I should have stuck just to soccer and left the clubs to Hikari, Takeru, and Ken. "I gotta go."
"Wait, Motomiya. I want to talk about-"
"Nope. Leaving. Later!" I grabbed my bag and dodged through and out the door as Takahashi struggled to her feet. Down the hall, down the stairs, down the long path to the front gate, where I finally stopped and flopped to the ground. The big breath I took hurt my lungs and I stared up at the sky as my heart slowed back down to normal.
The bell finally rang and before Takeru even put down his pencil, I was up out of my seat and running through the door. School was over and Hikari was waiting for me. At the lockers I pulled out my cell and sent her an email, and then leaned against the wall where I had a good view of everyone. Once we met up we'd head to the art clubroom together, or maybe I'd be able to convince her to forget about it and go to the Digital World instead. Takeru would just have to sit around at a computer and wait for us to come back.
Kids were pouring out from everywhere but I didn’t see Hikari’s cute face in the crowd. I flipped my phone open and checked it again but nope, I hadn’t gotten an email back from her. Calling her went nowhere, too. I froze: What if she’d been kidnapped? Or fell down the stairs and had to go the hospital for a brain transfusion but they accidentally gave her the deformed brain of a serial killer?
“Oi, Motomiya-kun, move,” a voice said next to me. “You’re blocking my locker.”
“Huh? Sorry." I stepped to the side to let Hokuto get to his locker. He rolled his eyes but then grinned.
“You coming to practice next week?”
“Course.” I said with a snort. We’d been on the soccer team together in junior high; Hokuto was the best goalie of all time, but he sucked at every other position. Unlike me who was awesome at everything. “We gotta get to the championship this year, right? Can’t do it without me! Hey, did you see Hikari on your way here?”
“Yagami-san?” He stopped trying to unlock his locker and shook his head. “No, didn’t see her. Maybe she went to a club meeting.”
I smacked my forehead. “Yeah! Thanks!” Hikari hated being late to things, so she probably had gone right to the art club after class. Club rooms were split up by type, so all the artsy clubs shared a corridor. I passed the photography club and the fashion club and then screeched to a halt. Someone had made a little sign for the art club’s room: “Art Club” was written in English with red birds making each letter.
I quietly opened the door to look into the room: three people and none of them Hikari. Two upperclassmen, one guy and one girl, were leaning against the long table set up in the middle of the room and a vaguely familiar freshman with huge pigtails was sitting down, staring at her notebook. The table had a neat stack of paper and colored pencils arranged on it, but the walls were bare and the room basically empty. No naked marble statues, no oil paintings, so other art-related crap.
So where the hell was Hikari? I sighed and jammed a hand through my hair. If something happened to her while I was wasting time by the lockers, I’d never forgive myself. What if she’d been attacked by mutant turtles or warped into another dimension or -
"A new member!" An arm snaked through the door and latched onto my elbow. I managed to blink twice at it before I was yanked into the room.
"Ow, ow, ow! Hey, what's the big idea? And hey, that hurts! Leggo!"
The girl upperclassman completely ignored my protests and clenched my arm in a death-lock. "Welcome to the world of art!" She said, leering down at me with one of those insane expression that Yamato’s fangirls always had. "Passion, beauty, imagination... These are our... Our..." Her tirade wheezed to a stop and she tapped a long finger against her chin. "Hmm... What's the word I'm looking for..." She turned to the other upperclassman and I pulled my arm back and step away from the crazy. "Our?"
"Accouterments?" The other upperclassman supplied with a shrug. "I don't know."
"No, no.” She shook her head and hit me in the face with her long ponytail. “Accouterments are accessories."
"Well, then, how about-"
“Look, you can call them whatever the hell you want.” I said as I backed out through the door. “I gotta go. Someplace. Far away. Forever. So have a nice life." I turned around and this time managed to make it two steps into the hallway before being tackled again. "Hey, let go!”
She had me in a headlock this time, holding tight with rhinoceros-like strength. I probably had an inch and two over her and was in perfect, sexy condition due to years of soccer and saving the world, but since I didn't have a rocket launcher in my backpack, I didn't stand chance against her.
"You're Motomiya, right? You played soccer in junior high." Crazy upperclassman number one loosened her headlock that she had gripped me in, but still held fast. "Could it be that the rough and tumble life of a jock has left you craving more? Are you searching for meaning, but are unable to find it in the sweaty and malodorous world of sports?"
"Huh? Hey, I like soccer!"
"Maybe your sensitive soul is crying out for the... the..."
We both looked at the other upperclassman who stared blankly back at us. "How about abetment?"
"No, no, all wrong. That's for criminals. Nevermind; you're no help at all." She ignored his grumbled apology and stared down her nose at me. "Maybe you're here to impress someone? Girls love the tortured soul of an artist you know. Right, Miso-chan?"
She turned around to look at the girl and since my neck was still encased, I turned with her toward the pig-tailed girl. Miso-chan startled and colored, apparently she had zoned out during our epic battle, and nodded frantically. "Umm... yes?"
"Exactly! So, Motomiya, do you have a girl in mind?"
"What? No way! Where'd you get a stupid idea like that? I told you, I came in here by accident! Let me go!"
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." She said, leering unpleasantly at me again. I glared up at her, and she sniffed disdainfully and exhaled a loud sigh. Finally she dropped me, and I scrambled away to hide behind Miso-chan's big poofy pigtails.
"Don't know what you're talking about and don't really care," I said as I adjusted my sweater. "And now I'm leaving. I'd say it was nice meeting you, but that'd be a lie."
She took a long step sideways and blocked the door. "We're not done with you yet. Have a seat, Motomiya-san."
I pondered jumping out a window, but my legs were saved from being smashed during impact by the second upperclassman who rose from his seat and gave me an apologetic smile. "What Takahashi means, Motomiya-san, is that the art club could use some new members. Even if you came in here by accident, you should consider joining. Akane and I are graduating this year, and we'd both be disappointed if the club had to be disbanded. We've spent a lot of time with the club, but well, it's seen better days. I don’t think the club will interfere with soccer practice and –"
"Man, Hitoshi, show some dignity!" Takahashi-sempai pouted and crossed her arms over her chest. "We don't need you. It'd just be nice to have some new blood."
"I'm Inaba Hitoshi," Inaba-sempai said politely. "And this is Takahashi Akane and Miso-chan, who’s a freshman, too. Anyway, it's a pleasure to meet you."
"Yeah, you too, I guess. So it’s just you guys in here, right? No Yagami Hikari? She’s about this tall with shortish brown hair and super cute?"
The two upperclassmen looked at each other and then shook their heads. Miso tugged on one of her pigtails and then shook her head, too.
"Damn," I said under my breath. "You sure? Because I thought she said she was gonna join."
"Ah ha! I knew there was a girl involved." Takahashi had an I’m-right-and-you-know-it expression on her face. She tossed her long ponytail over her shoulder and grinned at me. "Let me guess: You were going to join along with her and impress her with your artistic talents. Join the art club - Embark on new adventures!”
"Yo, Miso-chan." I bent down to whisper at her. "She always this crazy?"
"I heard that!" Takahashi snapped. "Anyway, sit down and get ready for the embarking. Maybe your Yagami will come in later."
I sulked down into the seat next to Miso-chan, where I had a clear view of the door. Once Hikari saw me being all artistic, she’d be so impressed she’d forget Takeru forever. And that was worth putting up with two crazy seniors.
“All right. Now we’ll commence, taking our first steps on our journal toward the world of art." Takahashi waltzed around the table and I twisted in my seat so she could see the expression on my face. She ignored my grimace of horror and leaned between me and Miso-chan, dropping onto the table some paper and pencils. "Here, my young apprentices, these are your weapons with which to wage war against the banality of daily life.”
“Nice alliteration, Takahashi.”
“You like that?” She grinned across the table at Inaba-sempai. “Anyway, get ready to change your world and have your world changed. Today we begin. Today you become artists.” She stopped and took a step to the side and then, with one fluid motion, grabbed the empty chair next to me, lifted it up, and hoisted it onto the table. I made a mental note only to insult her from a distance. "Today, you draw a chair."
"Seriously?" I asked. Even Miso-chan looked disappointed. "Even I can draw a chair. Square for the seat and four lines for legs. Boom, I'm done. If Hikari comes around, tell her I'm already the greatest artist in the world, ok?"
Takahashi shook her head. "It's not that easy, you know, Motomiya. Here, look again." She leaned over and grabbed the back of the chair. "See the way the metal bends to support the seat? And the seat's not square, is it? It has rounded corners. And this one tilts a bit to the left, see? So the legs aren't exactly even; in fact, this one bends inward."
Inaba-sempai and Miso-chan were nodding, but I shrugged. "So?"
"So this is about drawing what you see, not what you think you see," Inaba explained. "Just give it a shot."
They all started drawing, even the seniors. Miso made a tiny line and then furiously erased it. Takahashi was scribbling so fast I could barely see her pencil and beside her Inaba was drawing so slowly his was barely moving. I sighed. And scratched behind my ear. And then balanced the pencil above my lip. Finally I propped my legs up on the table and drew a square with rounded corners balancing atop of three straight lines and a bent one.
Soccer was way more interesting. If they thought I'd drop soccer to be a full-time, beret-wearing, chair-obsessed artist, they had another thing coming. Besides, since Ken had dropped it, it was my duty to win the championship for him and the rest of the Chosen Children. I scribbled over the drawing and started again out of boredom. Instead of following Hikari, I should have joined the same kind of clubs as Ken. At least then we could meet up for chess matches or kendo contest or genius conventions or whatever. Ken would never join an art club. he'd probably say it wasn't academic enough or wasn't a big enough accomplishment. Those were two words he loved to throw around, "academic" and "accomplishment." He loved those and "potential" and "expectations" and "achieve." My favorite words were "ramen," "soccer," and "the school got blown up so now it's vacation forever." I added a pair of eyes to the chair's back like it was Digimon of some sort and paused to look at my masterpiece.
They kind of looked like Ken's, the eyes did. I erased the rectangle around them and drew an oval there, then tried adding angles to make his chin. He'd let his hair grow out a little, but it didn't look shaggy. It looked even more elegant, somehow, even when he pulled it back into a ponytail. When it was first getting long, I stuck my hands in it and asked him if he got a new girlfriend who he was getting all sexy for. He'd sputtered for a second, then yanked himself away, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Miyako and Iori and ignoring me.
I tried adding in his hair, but it didn't look nearly as good on paper as it did in real life. I couldn't manage to make it look like it was water falling or like silk or anything - It was too much poof and the length was wrong. I erased it and tried again, but it still wasn't Ken. It was weird, having a floating Ken head, so I added a neck and a line for his shoulders. It was hard trying to get him body to line up with the chair I'd already drawn and I had to erase almost every part of Ken.
I always hunched when I sat, but Ken kept his spine straight, his shoulders back. My pencil scraped and smudged around where his chest should have been, and then I couldn't get his legs to bend right. I stopped drawing and looked down at the paper. A total mess, like someone had vomited graphite up onto it.
"You've been working pretty intensely, Motomiya. Let's see what've you done so far," Takahashi said suddenly. Before I could crumble up the paper she reached over and grabbed it. "Hmm."
She managed to fit a lot of meaning into that "Hmm."
"Hey, that's mine!" I stood up so fast that I knocked over my chair. Even the one up on the desks quivered, sort of like it had something to say to me, too. The clattering was louder than fireworks and everyone looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Which I might have. What was I thinking? I should have stuck just to soccer and left the clubs to Hikari, Takeru, and Ken. "I gotta go."
"Wait, Motomiya. I want to talk about-"
"Nope. Leaving. Later!" I grabbed my bag and dodged through and out the door as Takahashi struggled to her feet. Down the hall, down the stairs, down the long path to the front gate, where I finally stopped and flopped to the ground. The big breath I took hurt my lungs and I stared up at the sky as my heart slowed back down to normal.
