WESTTHESUNFROMANOTHERSTAR, Chapter 14: Painting
Arthit
In the dim light inside the plane, the person next to me had already drifted off to sleep. I glanced at the sketches in the kid’s sketchbook, which I borrowed because I saw how beautifully he drew.
The sketchbook was almost full, with every page covered in drawings, leaving hardly any white space on the paper.
Flipping through the pages, one thought kept cycling through my mind; memories were coming back. I hadn’t thought about it before, but seeing him concentrate so intently on sketching with pencil in this book suddenly brought up overlapping images, and from then on, I could hardly stop thinking.
My mother also loved to draw like this.
Drawing must be something many people enjoy, including my mother. She always carried a small sketchbook and pencil with her. If she was bored with nothing to do, she’d start doodling, claiming it was just for fun, but she looked very focused.
Because of this, whenever I see someone drawing well, I often find myself stopping to watch. When I first saw this kid drawing beautifully and quickly, it caught my attention, and I watched him, even asking him to draw several scenes from the novel.
After looking through to the last drawing, I closed the sketchbook and placed it back on the lap of the person next to me to return it. Suddenly, the song playing from one earbud stopped. I didn’t know why, but I assumed it was because the battery died, so I connected his earbuds to my phone instead.
I played my own playlist since I had listened to his for hours; it was time for mine.
Not long after, the person who was sleeping woke up, slightly furrowing his brows at me.
“You don’t like my music?”
“No, it’s too rock, can’t sleep to it.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and saw that the battery was indeed dead. He grabbed a power bank to charge his phone and then lay back down again.
I changed the music to something other than rock.
As I mentioned, I only listen to old songs and rock. This time, I switched to an old song with a not-so-fast melody. I glanced out the window to see nothing but pitch black, my mind cycling through the same old thoughts. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something moving, so I turned to look.
The person who was asleep, one hand moving fingers as if playing the piano to the rhythm of the music.
“What are you doing?” I asked. The person I was talking to slowly opened his eyes to look at me, then glanced at his own hand.
“Oh…I got carried away.”
“You can play the piano too?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. I didn’t think he could play.
“Yeah.”
“You’re good at a lot of things, huh?” I said, he’s good at drawing, can play the piano, “What else can you do?”
“…That’s too broad a question.”
“Then what other instruments can you play?”
“Guitar.”
“Sing?”
“No, my voice is off.”
“What else?” I mumbled to myself, thinking, “Sports?”
“Is Taekwondo considered a sport?”
“Of course, what belt are you?”
“White.”
“Oh, but I’m black.” I said, raising my eyebrows teasingly. He didn’t show any expression as usual, “You don’t look like someone who would do Taekwondo.” “Yeah.”
“But North does boxing, so even short people can do a lot of things.” He furrowed his brows, looking at me with confusion.
“Why are you making that face?”
“No one has ever called me that. Even if it’s true that I’m short.” “Then I’ll call you that.” I said.
“…”
“Shorty.”
“…”
“Why don’t you seem bothered at all? If it were North, he’d be complaining about a storm.” Because that one can’t take even the slightest tease about his height; he’d challenge me to a duel.
“I’m not North.”
“What?” I said, sounding exasperated. Honestly, I wanted to see this cool, expressionless guy, who didn’t even flinch when cursing out Khram, lose his cool. He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes again. I, on the other hand, looked out the window, letting myself get lost in my favorite music and thoughts once more.
The plane landed in Honolulu, Hawaii. I walked off with the short guy from the room next door following. It’s not because I forgot his name like before; I just feel awkward calling a guy Dao, even though I called him that once before. I vaguely remember North saying not to mess with people’s names, so I won’t. I just won’t call him by name, I’ll stick with ‘Shorty.’ He didn’t seem to mind or show any signs of displeasure.
Before heading to the house, we stopped to eat because I was hungry. This Shorty didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, he ate very little. After eating, we headed out.
Not wanting any fuss, I told Direk I didn’t need a driver or a butler or anything like that; we’re only staying for a short while. I told him to wait here while I went to rent a car. Once I got the car, I picked him up to go to my vacation home. While I was driving, the person next to me fell asleep. I didn’t think much of it until we arrived at a house that was somewhat familiar, even though I hadn’t been there in a while. I parked and turned off the engine, calling out to wake the sleeping person who didn’t seem to know what was going on. He opened his eyes, looking drowsy and tired.
“Jet lag?” I raised an eyebrow, guessing it must be jet lag. He nodded slightly. I got out to unload the stuff from the trunk before Shorty got out and acted like he was going to carry his own bag, “I’ll carry your stuff.”
“…”
“Look at yourself first.” I said, handing him the house keys, “Go unlock it.” “Uh-huh.” He only responded with that before walking like a soulless body behind me, who was carrying a bunch of stuff. I waited for him to unlock the door, and once he did, we went inside the house.
“That’s your room on the left.” I said because that was the guest room, and he walked into it. I put my stuff down and helped carry his into the room, placing his suitcase on the floor. I turned to see him already lying on the bed. As I was about to close the door, I remembered something, went back to turn on the air conditioner for him, then left.
Helping with the luggage and even turning on the AC, I’m pretty nice, huh? With this, Fah won’t be able to complain that I’m not taking care of his friend.
At first, I wanted him to start looking for mom quickly, but thinking about it, this was good too. It would give me some time to prepare myself. I looked around the house to find that nothing had changed since the last time I was here; everything was still in its place, untouched.
Direk must have had someone clean and prepare the place. I walked to the fridge to find there was some food in there. Of course, one thing that couldn’t be missing was canned beer. I took the whole pack of beer and walked out to the garden at the back of the house.
This spot has a pretty good view, which was Mom’s favorite. I sighed without realizing it, sat down on a folding bed, and lay back. Someone must have prepared the folding beds as usual; there were two set up side by side. I set the beer pack down, lit a cigarette, and inhaled the cool smoke down my throat.
I don’t know how much time passed as I lay there aimlessly until I dozed off. When I woke up, it was starting to get dark, the garden lights came on automatically, and the sky was turning red; the sun was about to set.
I turned when I heard footsteps; it was the short guy walking towards me, sitting on the folding bed next to mine.
“Want one?” I asked, offering him a cigarette after lighting one for myself. He shook his head slightly, “It’s good, you know.”
“Quit?”
“Yeah.”
“Quit smoking?”
“Yeah.”
“How about beer?” I offered him a beer again. Not for any particular reason, just because I’d seen him both smoke and drink beer before. He looked like he was considering it for a moment before he took the beer from my hand, opened it, and took a sip, “How is it?”
“…Good, really good.” He said. I shrugged a bit; that’s what good stuff is like, “Shall we start?” He asked, probably meaning to start looking for his mother’s spirit.
“One more smoke.” I replied, wanting to finish this cigarette first. The person next to me didn’t say anything before finishing his can of beer and setting it down. He disappeared for a while and came back with the same sketchbook. I didn’t ask anything, just noticed periodically that he was drawing the current landscape view.
The image of Hawaii as the sun was setting.
“Do you have any paints?” He asked.
“What kind of paint?”
“Watercolor, acrylic, anything will do.”
“Yes.” I answered, remembering that there should be some painting supplies in my mother’s room, “Let me check.”
He handed me the sketchbook. I took it, unconsciously furrowing my brows when I saw the drawing he had done, staring at it for a while before giving it back. It was a view my mother liked, so it wasn’t surprising that she might have painted this view before; seeing something familiar made me stare at the picture longer than I intended.
“Okay.” I said when the cigarette in my hand was nearly finished, pressing it out in an ashtray full of cigarette butts, evidence of how much I had smoked today. I stood up, and he followed, removing his bracelet and stuffing it into his pocket, as if that bracelet was some kind of power seal.
He closed his eyes as if concentrating, stood still for a long time before opening them again, shaking his head slightly, which was his answer. So, I took him on a tour around the house, going through each room.
During this time, I kept watching him, hoping for a different answer, even though I knew the chances of my mother being here were slim. I couldn’t help but hope for something other than this constant head shaking.
We ended up in front of my mother’s room last, I sighed, not knowing how many times I’d done that today, opened the door, and stood waiting for him for nearly five minutes.
And the answer was the same.
His face was as pale as before, when he tried to sense and look for the spirit. He stumbled and sat down on the chair at my mother’s desk, which was the closest. Normally, I would have scolded anyone who dared sit at my mother’s work desk, but looking at his condition, I held my tongue.
It would be too harsh to curse him now; he almost fainted after trying to help find my mother’s spirit.
“Want some water?” I asked, he nodded slightly. I went out and came back with a glass of water, placing it on the desk in front of him, then I sat on the bed, “What about other things?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last time, you said there was some warmth left at my dad’s place. What about this time?”
“…” He was silent for a moment after taking a sip of water, looking tired as if he could fall asleep any second, but he still answered me in a soft, hoarse voice, “I feel the warmth too…and right here.” “At the desk? Why?”
“She must have liked this spot.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m going to rest.” He said before trying to get up and walk out of the room, leaving me lying on the bed, closing my eyes.
Mom isn’t here…
Or maybe she’s not anywhere anymore.
…Honestly, more than half of me feels that mom is no longer in this world, just like what I and Direk have believed all along, but what can we do…This search is so we can come to terms with it, isn’t it?
It took nearly twenty minutes for me to feel better. As everyone knows, I can heal myself, I just need some time. Now I’ve accepted that mom isn’t here. I walked over to sit at the same old desk.
Mom liked this place, huh…
I reached into the drawer to find Mom’s drawing tools neatly arranged, with sheets of paper for sketching beside them. I had expected these to still be here because if they weren’t really important belongings of Mom’s, like her treasures, neither I nor Direk would have touched them.
It’s better to leave them where they were.
I picked up Mom’s drawings one by one. Some were just pencil sketches, others were fully colored, and there were several that were colored but not finished. All of them used watercolors because Mom loved them. My hand stopped at a picture of the view from the back of the house; I immediately picked it up to look at it.
It looked like what the short guy was drawing…
This was the picture I said looked familiar, of course, drawn from the same perspective, they would be similar, and coincidentally, Mom also drew it during sunset.
I noticed at the corner of the paper there was some color, this must be another one she didn’t finish coloring, she always liked to color bit by bit like this.
Not finished coloring…?
The short guy asked for colors, indicating he was going to color his drawing.
Then…I could ask him to help finish coloring Mom’s picture.
…
Daotok
I woke up again, drowsy, this being the second time today I was so tired I fell asleep; the first time was due to jet lag from the time zone change, the second from helping to search for the spirit of the guy from next door’s mother. I found out I had slept for nearly two hours. When I walked out, I saw the guy from next door sitting on the sofa.
“You’re awake?” He asked. I slumped down onto the small sofa, exhausted, “Did you already sleep?”
“Is there anything to eat?” I asked in turn, my fatigue had improved significantly. Now it was more about hunger. I have no problem with not eating, but my stomach condition doesn’t allow me to overlook meals.
“Can you cook?”
“No.”
“I thought you could do anything.”
“Cooking, I can’t.” I answered. It’s known that I like to try a lot of things. Of course, cooking was one of them. Initially, I asked my grandmother to teach me, but I didn’t succeed; then my aunt tried to teach me, no success there either; trying on my own also didn’t work. I don’t know why, I can cook, but it’s not tasty. Eating out is better for both physical and mental health.
“Try.”
“…”
“Otherwise, there’ll be nothing to eat tonight.” He said. I got up and opened the fridge to find there were some fresh ingredients.
“Why don’t you cook?”
“I might burn the house down.”
“I cook, but it’s not tasty.”
“Is it edible though?”
“It’s edible, just not tasty.”
“Then it’s better than blowing up the kitchen, you cook.” He said, as if passing the duty to me, since there was no other choice, and I couldn’t skip a meal. I stood looking at the fridge for a while but didn’t know what to make. The simplest menu would be fried eggs; since there was no rice, I decided to toast some bread. Even if it’s more like breakfast, it should be fine.
I took out a pan and placed it on the stove, carefully turning on the gas while toasting the bread, cracked eggs into a bowl, and beat them before pouring them into the pan.
I forgot something…
…Oh, right, oil.
Smoke rose with a burnt smell. I was a bit startled before grabbing the oil to pour in, but it seemed too late. While I was worried about the weird thing in the pan, the toast maker beeped. I was about to leave the pan to check the toast, but the burning smell from the pan got worse, so I turned back to scrape out the eggs before they stuck completely. By the time I realized it, the bread was already burnt.
“…”
On the table was an egg, half burnt, half uncooked and still dripping with oil.
Next to it, there was some burnt bread.
“Hmm, I believe you can’t cook.”
“Yeah.” I nodded in response before taking a picture to send to North. I should have asked North how to do it from the start. The response I got was a long string of fives along with a message explaining where I went wrong, simply, I was wrong from the moment I added oil after.
“I just wanted a simple fried egg, and you can’t even manage that?” the person sitting opposite me muttered with a sigh at the sight on the table, “Is there any jam in the fridge?”
“There is.”
“Then jam with bread?”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
In the end, we had to throw away the oily fried egg because it was inedible. I didn’t dare eat it either. Our dinner was bread with jam and chocolate. If I had thought of it sooner, we wouldn’t have wasted energy trying to fry eggs; bread with jam would have been enough.
“Hey.” He called out while spreading jam on his fourth slice of bread. I hadn’t even finished my first slice. I had noticed at the airport how much he could eat, maybe even more than Ter, “Can you do watercolor?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you do some watercolor for me?”
Without waiting for me to ask anything, he got up, fetched an A3-sized piece of paper, and placed it in front of me. It was a picture of the view from the backyard, similar to what I had just sketched in my own sketchbook, with color only at one corner of the paper, “Just finish coloring it.”
“Why?”
“It’s a picture my mom drew but didn’t finish coloring.”
“Would it be okay for me to color it?” I furrowed my brows slightly, asking since it was a picture drawn by his mother, would it be right for me to color it? “Yeah, I think if someone helps to color it beautifully, to complete the picture, my mom would be happy.” He said with a slight shrug, sitting back down to continue eating his jam bread. I wiped my hands to make sure they wouldn’t smudge the paper, then picked it up to examine the drawing in detail.
If this drawing could be completed, it would be nice, wouldn’t it?
“Oh, okay.”
“How much, for your fee?”
“I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
“Okay.” He replied, “Actually, there are a lot more drawings that haven’t been colored.”
“Why just color this one then?”
“Are you going to color all the drawings in one night? We have to go to LA tomorrow morning.”
“We can take them with us to do.” I said, the person who was busy spreading chocolate on another slice of bread turned to look at me, surprised.
“That’s too much trouble.”
“No, it’s not. If you color this one, the others will feel left out.” I reasoned. Because when it comes to drawings, I never overlook them and always take them seriously. If we color this one, we should color the others to completion too; it wouldn’t be fair to the rest.
“Then I’ll leave it to you, color them all, I’ll pay you all at once.”
“Uh-huh.”
I spent nearly an hour carefully looking at how my neighbor’s mother had colored her paintings, since this job was to complete these drawings, to finish the work the artist couldn’t come back to. If possible, I wanted to use the same colors and techniques she had, so the entire set would look cohesive. No drawing or part should stand out or differ from the others.
Then, I ask for your permission. I’ll try my best to make these drawings as perfect as they can be in your style, to make them as beautiful as they should have been from the start.
I woke up in the middle of the night because I needed to use the bathroom, drowsily left my bedroom to head there. After finishing, as I was about to return to my room, I noticed light seeping from under the guest bedroom door. It’s this late, and that shorty still isn’t asleep? Maybe because he slept all day, or he might just be sleeping with the light on.
I turned back to my room without paying much attention.
The next morning, when we were supposed to travel to LA, I came out of my room with my bag, finding Shorty already sitting on the sofa, waiting. He looked at me and immediately handed me a large piece of paper.
I took it, confused, looking at the paper he handed over; it was one of my mother’s paintings, now fully colored. I had expected it to be beautifully colored since he drew well, but seeing it, it was even better than I thought.
It was damn beautiful.
“Beautiful.” I praised. He got up from the sofa and handed me another drawing, “You’ve colored two already?” I asked without looking at the second one. “No, this one was already colored before.” He said. I took it to look and saw it was a painting his mother had already colored.
“And why did you show this to me?”
“Are they the same?”
“Huh?”
“Are they the same, the way I colored it compared to how your mom colored it?” “…” I didn’t respond.
I looked back and forth between the two pictures, eyes widening slightly in surprise when I saw how similar they were. The colors the short guy used were exactly the same as those Mom used, it was as if both pictures were colored by Mom herself. At first, I didn’t expect this much; I just wanted him to help finish the watercolor.
“Damn, how did you do that? It’s like Mom colored it herself.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it hard?”
“Hard, mixing the colors was very difficult, it took a lot of time.”
“Oh, so you didn’t sleep last night because you were busy getting the colors right?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, “But how did you know I didn’t sleep?”
I didn’t answer his question, my eyes fixed on the freshly colored picture. Every detail, no matter how small, was perfect, as if Mom’s picture had truly been completed. I thought if Mom had imagined how this picture would look once colored, this is exactly how it would be now.
I handed the paper back to him because I thought it would be better if he kept it.
If I carried it while traveling, it would probably get crumpled beyond repair.
I looked at the person who had just taken the paper from my hand.
So, he didn’t sleep last night because of this, huh? He must love and be very serious about drawing, dedicating himself this much without me even asking. And he agreed to help this time too, putting so much effort into it that he was almost exhausted.
You…
You’re really something.
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