Chapter 6
1791words
That sketchbook filled with "Thank you" notes was finally gently closed by me and pushed back toward Alicia Hayes. We didn't conduct any form of "review" about this matter, neither in words nor in drawings. Everything that happened in that moment was like a massive stone thrown into a deep pool; all we could do was let it create long and complex ripples in each of our hearts, and then wait for the surface to become calm again. However, some things had indeed changed.
The invisible wall of suspicion and wariness that once stood between us was completely shattered in that harsh sound of the overturned chair. In the days that followed, the quality of silence between us underwent a subtle transformation. It was no longer the non-intrusive quietness shared by two solitary individuals in the same space; it had become a closer, warmer shared realm filled with unspoken trust.
For the first time, Qinyin felt that in this world full of mockery and misunderstanding, there was actually someone willing to stand in front of her without saying a word, using his equally fragile back to shield her from those most hurtful, smiling malice. And I also discovered for the first time that when my senses no longer needed to constantly guard against probing from the outside world, I could experience an almost luxurious, peaceful fatigue.
In the art room several days later, the atmosphere was quiet to the point of solemnity. Sunlight still slanted lazily through the high window, turning the floating dust in the air golden, as we each occupied one end of the easel, making final touches to the painting titled "Two Worlds." My headphones hung on my head as usual, but this time, I wasn't playing any white noise.
I just wear it out of physical habit. In my ears, there are only the soft sounds of Qin Yin's brush dipping into paint and rubbing against the palette, and the gentle "creak" when she occasionally moves the easel. These sounds are no longer noise that needs to be blocked out; they have become reassuring background sounds that prove our existence to each other.
Just as I was concentrating on applying the final layer of shadow to those distorted, scrutinizing eyes on the canvas, I sensed that Qin Yin had stopped her movements beside me. I turned my head to see her looking down, rapidly drawing something in her sketchbook. This wasn't a draft for our painting; her expression was unusually focused, even carrying a hint of determination, as if she were performing an extremely important and difficult ritual. The tip of her pencil made dense and urgent friction sounds against the paper, like a war without smoke.
After a long while, that sound finally stopped. She raised her head, with a trace of panic in her eyes that I was familiar with, but more than that was an exhausted calmness that comes after giving up everything. She took a deep breath, then with both hands, held out that sketchbook which was almost inseparable from her, and pushed it toward me extremely slowly.
I looked at her, then at the sketchbook lying quietly between us, and my heart began to beat faster for no reason. I had a feeling that what was recorded in this book was no longer trivial daily communications, but the secret she had always kept locked in the deepest part of her soul, never shown to anyone. I hesitated for a moment, but finally reached out and took the book that still carried the warmth of her body.
I opened the first page. It was an extremely simple four-panel comic. In the first panel, a little girl with twin pigtails was standing at a high place that looked like a podium. Her face was flushed with nervousness and shyness, and her hands were tightly clutching a sheet of paper. Below the stage was a multitude of blurry human figures drawn as black blocks, resembling a dense, dark forest.
In the second panel, the little girl's mouth was wide open. She seemed to be trying with all her might to say something, but her mouth was completely empty, with no lines or symbols representing sound. The flush had disappeared from her face, replaced by a terrified, drowning-like pallor.
In the third panel, changes began to appear in that black forest below the stage. On the faces of some figures, exaggerated and distorted smiles emerged, their mouths curving to an unnaturally wide angle, full of malicious mockery.
In the fourth frame, the entire picture is occupied by countless hands. Those hands stretch from all directions toward the center of the frame, each finger like a sharp sword, pointing directly at the little girl who has completely frozen on stage, unable to make any sound.
My breath suddenly caught. I continued to flip through the pages, one after another. Each page depicted that scene from different angles. Those mocking faces were repeatedly magnified, shown in close-ups, every detail so clear it made one nauseated. Those fingers pointing at her became increasingly dense, increasingly ferocious, as if they were about to completely tear her apart and devour her.
My page-turning motion became slower and slower, heavier and heavier, as if each sheet of paper weighed a thousand pounds. I could feel my expression gradually becoming more solemn, blood seemingly rushing to my brain, and a sharp, continuous buzzing beginning to sound in my ears. What I saw was not just a series of comics recording trauma; what I saw was Qinyin's nightmare, a silent hell where she had been imprisoned for countless days and nights. And the scene of that hell was, to me, so... familiar.
Finally, I turned to the last page. There was no new content on the drawing paper, only a bottomless blackness created by pencil repeatedly rubbed until the paper was almost torn through. That was the color of despair. I silently gazed at that blackness for a long time before slowly closing the sketchbook. The room was terrifyingly quiet; I could even hear my own labored breathing from excessive restraint. Qin Yin sat directly across from me, watching me without moving, her eyes like those of a frightened deer, full of uncertainty and fear of judgment. She was waiting for my response. She was waiting for me to make an assessment of her bloody, dissected soul.
What should I draw? A warm embrace? A pair of hands wiping away her tears? No, any comforting illustration would seem hypocritical and cheap in the face of such raw and profound pain. My mind went blank, all my drawing techniques, all my artistic concepts, became completely ineffective in this moment. What I could give her wasn't sympathy, wasn't comfort, but something else. Something only I could give her.
In a suffocating silence, I slowly raised my hand. I didn't reach for my brush, nor did I open my own sketchbook. I just extended one index finger and gently tapped on the cover of her sketchbook that belonged to her and had just been closed. Then, my finger slowly lifted, pointing toward my eyes. Qinyin's body trembled almost imperceptibly, and she looked at me with confusion.
Finally, I raised my hands to either side of my head, performing an extremely slow and clear gesture—the motion of putting an invisible pair of headphones on my head.
It was this simple, wordless pantomime. The moment my hands stopped at the sides of my ears, I saw something shatter instantly in those eyes of Alicia Hayes that were always filled with mist. Her pupils contracted sharply, then rapidly dilated, as if completing a violent earthquake in the span of a mere second. She opened and closed her mouth, as though finally understanding something extremely important, yet extremely cruel.
She understood why I always avoided others' gazes. She understood why I always isolated myself from the world with headphones. She understood that the world I saw was the same one she had drawn in that comic book. A world filled with mocking, distorted faces, a world filled with malicious judgment and cold stares.
I wasn't indifferent, I wasn't antisocial, I just... saw too clearly. Those monsters she drew on paper, which left her speechless, were precisely the visualized nightmares I battled every day. I chose to close my ears, not to reject the entire world, but to gain a moment's respite from that endless "visual noise" full of negative emotions.
"Plop." A crystal-clear droplet, without any warning, slid from Qinyin's eye socket and landed on the cover of her sketchbook, quickly spreading into a small dark water stain. Following this, more tears, like pearls falling from a broken string, silently rolled down one after another from her pale cheeks. She didn't sob aloud, nor did she wipe them away with her hand; she simply allowed that warm liquid to hold a belated, silent mourning for her wounds that had been buried for many years.
She cried for a long time, and I just quietly watched her cry for a long time. Until the sunlight outside the window changed from the blazing intensity of noon to something softer, she finally sniffled and messily wiped her face with the back of her hand. Then, she picked up my sketchbook and turned to a blank page. This time, she didn't draw those painful, struggling things anymore. With extremely gentle strokes, as if afraid of disturbing something, she drew a pair of eyes on the paper. In those eyes, there was no terror, no sadness, only a pure, exhausted emptiness.
Then, she drew a pair of hands, slender and warm hands, reaching in from both sides of the picture, gently and tenderly covering those eyes. Not to cover them up, not to prevent them from seeing, but as if saying: "It's okay, it's okay not to see. I'll shield them for you, take a rest now."
At that moment, I felt something quietly changing on the enormous canvas that we were creating together. On the left side of the canvas, my oppressive black world made up of countless malicious eyes, and on the right side, her bright blue sky filled with sunshine and hope, were no longer clearly separated as before, like the boundary between the Chu and Han kingdoms.
A warm goose-yellow hue from the sky, like paint accidentally spilled, crossed that invisible boundary line and gently, tentatively, dripped into my thick, impenetrable darkness. It didn't immediately illuminate anything, but it was there, like a distant yet real star quietly lit in the eternal night.
