LEO
I was in the art room. Everybody was busy working on their own piece. I finished the picture of Mario and Erdville the day before, so I had to think about something new to draw today. I had some ideas, including a few dreams and a few ’wishes,’ but now that I’d been told we were going to exhibit our pictures, it made me feel like I should make something more impressive for everyone who would come to see.
And what better way than to learn from the seniors!
I first went over to Fabian, who wasn’t sculpting a person—which he normally did—this time.
"What are you making?" I asked him.
"A nine-headed dragon," he said, not stopping his movements as he chipped away at the marble.
"Eh...? Are they even real?"
"Who knows—and who cares? Haha. It’s something I’ve always wanted to make. It’s a little weird, I know, but Blanche said we can make anything," he said.
"I can’t quite see the shape of it yet," I said.
"It will come out well in the end. I can feel it," he said, sounding quite confident.
"Why a dragon, though?"
"You’ve never heard of the legend about the nine-headed dragon?" He stopped working and looked at me in surprise.
"Oh boy... where do I start...? Well, in short, it’s an ancient mythical creature that terrorized our continent thousands of years ago. It was destroying everything, and nobody could defeat it," he said.
"Sounds scary!"
"Then a hero emerged. In a vicious battle, he managed to cut off one of its heads, only to find that it grew back immediately."
"Oh no, so what did he do?"
"He cut off all nine heads in one swing."
"Wow."
"What’s interesting is the story that follows. The nine heads all rolled in different directions, and when they landed, each transformed into a person. The legend is that each person managed to keep their true selves hidden from others and continued to live and adapt to human life."
"To this day?!"
"Yup."
"So there are monsters among us?"
"Yup."
"That is... both scary and cool..."
"I know, right?"
It was a great story, and I thought that if I ever managed to finish that book given to me by Mathias, maybe I would read up on it someday.
Then I went over to Liesel. She was sketching for an oil painting, which I’d never seen her do before because she had been practising charcoal drawing recently. But the sketch looked great.
"Can you tell what it is?" Liesel asked, smiling.
"Yeah! It’s starting to look like a Royal Knight!"
"Yes, that’s what it is."
"I guess it’s really fitting for the festival at the Academy," I said.
"Yeah, that’s what I thought. But it’s turning out to be a lot harder than I expected."
"Eh? But it’s already starting to look great."
"That’s not enough. I want to draw a ’perfect knight.’ A portrait that can hang in the Academy for a long, long time and inspire all the students who are trying their best."
"That’s easy!"
"What do you mean?"
"Draw Mario then!"
Liesel laughed at first, then calmed down and half-jokingly told me,
"I might actually do that, if you could convince him to be a model."
"I’m sure he’d be glad to help, heh."
With that, Liesel went back to her sketching.
I then walked over to Blanche, who had also chosen to do an oil painting, but judging by what she was sketching, this was going to be anything but a beautiful picture. Yet... somehow, it was so captivating.
"What is this, Blanche? Weren’t you painting something already?"
"A dream I had yesterday. I’m putting that painting aside for a while. If I have time before the festival, maybe I’ll go back to it. But I wanted to use this for the festival."
I studied the sketch carefully and found it increasingly creepier the more I looked at it.
"Why is she standing—or walking—on people?"
"I have no idea."
"And her head looks so big. It’s, like, bigger than her body."
"I have no idea."
"Was it you, maybe? I mean, like, you had a dream where you were a winged bicorn, heh."
"Nah, I’m here," she said and pointed at one of the figures being stepped on.
"Ouch, that’s not nice."
"Yeah, it wasn’t nice at all."
"The picture looks a little creepy..."
"It was a creepy dream."
I didn’t quite understand the picture or know what more to say, so I returned to my seat.
Everyone had a clear idea, and everyone was working so hard on their piece, and there I was, feeling lost again.
After I sat there just thinking and thinking for a few minutes, someone surprised me by shouting into my ear from behind,
"Boo!"
"Yeek!"
It was Blanche.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
"I don’t know what to draw..."
"Hm, you don’t want to draw a dream or an imagination?"
"I feel like I want to try something else."
"That’s good."
"I also feel like I need to make something great. Mario said this was going to be for an exhibition. I have to impress people, right?"
Blanche then folded her arms in front of her chest, gave me a stare, and said,
"What for?"
"Eh? Isn’t that the whole point of displaying pictures for other people?"
"That is precisely what I said we won’t do. We are doing it for ourselves, Leo."
"Oh..."
"If you want to impress anyone, impress yourself, Leo."
Something... something to impress myself...
There were so many things that impressed me. The sea turtle I saw with my Mom and Dad, a deer with great horns I once saw in the forest, the biggest fish ever that I caught with Davi and Abe, the Grand Salvani Circus I watched with everyone just a while ago...
Then I thought about the magician.
Did he—was he the one who got arrested and taken away?
I never asked, so I never knew.
That was ’impressive’ in the worst way I could imagine.
I had never seen a person treated like that before in my life.
That image had been bothering me for a while now...
"Blanche—is it okay to draw something that’s ’impressive’ in a bad way?"
She broke into a smile and patted me on the head.
"Now we are talking. Go for it, Leo."
I didn’t know if this was going to be the actual picture I’d exhibit, but once I reached this point, I knew I had to put it on paper.
"I will try. Thanks, Blanche."
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