Chapter 7
1861words
The air was filled with the aroma of takoyaki sauce, the sweet scent of cotton candy, and the excessive hormonal exhalations of teenage boys and girls. All these mingled together to create a unique atmosphere, both exhilarating and dizzying, that could only be found during this particular season. Our large classroom, temporarily requisitioned as an art exhibition area, was naturally not exempt from this.
The space that usually smelled only of turpentine and paint was now packed to capacity with people. Strange and noisy conversations buzzed around my ears like countless summer flies, persistent and impossible to drive away.
Our painting was hung on the most conspicuous part of the central wall in the exhibition hall. We had given it an incredibly simple, almost perfunctory name—"Landscape." This massive canvas was brutally divided by an invisible, distorted boundary line into two completely separate worlds.
The left side is my domain, filled with countless prying, distorted eyes full of malice and scrutiny, layered upon each other to form a suffocating, heavy darkness that almost overflows from the frame. The right side, however, belongs to Qin Yin's world, where sunlight kisses sunflowers, dandelions sway in the gentle breeze, the sky is a blue so pure it seems able to cleanse all sins, and at the horizon, a faint rainbow appears, symbolizing hope.
This painting possesses a certain unreasonable visual impact. It's like a magnet, firmly capturing the gaze of everyone who walks past it. I watch as people stop in their tracks, their expressions gradually transforming from initial indifference to surprise, confusion, and finally into deep contemplation. I wear headphones with white noise turned up to maximum volume, but this cannot completely block out those fragmentary reactions flowing into my line of sight. I can "see" their discussions, those moving lips, furrowed brows, and fingers pointing toward the canvas, all like frames of a silent film playing slowly before my eyes.
"My God, what is this painting depicting? It feels so depressing." A girl covers her mouth, whispering to her companion, her face filled with unease.
"But look at the right side, it feels so warm... isn't this contrast too strong?" Her companion pointed at that highly saturated blue sky, her eyes filled with confusion.
"The strangest part is here," a male student who looked like an upperclassman was pointing at the boundary between the two worlds, analyzing to those beside him, "Look, in that darkness, there seems... seems to be a bit of yellow leaking in from the right world. This tiny bit of color changes the entire feeling."
Their discussion precisely hit the core of our creation. That splash of goose yellow, eventually painted by Qinyin as if accidentally spilled, truly changed everything. It was like a drop of clear water falling into thick ink - though it didn't change the essence of darkness, it created ripples within it that were faint but genuinely present. It transformed this painting from a simple juxtaposition of two extreme emotions into a complex allegory about isolation and permeation, despair and salvation.
Just as I was lost in observing the crowd's reaction, the sweet and clear voice of the senior student hostess from the temporary small stage at the front of the exhibition hall broke through the barrier of my headphones, amplified by the microphone. "Fellow students and guests, thank you for supporting the works of our Art Department! In the time that follows, we will invite several artists to personally explain their creative concepts."
My heart suddenly sank, and an ominous premonition instantly seized me. I instinctively looked at Qinyin beside me, finding that her body had already stiffened, and in those eyes that were always as gentle as a deer's, the expression I was all too familiar with—one called "fear"—began to emerge.
"...Now, let's welcome our first group of creators with a warm round of applause!" The host's voice was filled with professional enthusiasm, like a Damocles sword about to fall. "Next, please welcome Jason Reed and Alicia Hayes to present their work 'Scenery'!"
The moment those words fell, I felt as if someone had maliciously stripped away the entire world's audio track. All the surrounding noises and irrelevant sounds vanished in a single second. In their place came the sharp whistling of at least a hundred gazes converging at once, tearing through the air. Like searchlights, they struck Alicia and me with unerring precision, brutally dragging us out from the shadows of the crowd and exposing us to everyone's scrutiny.
This is it. Hell has begun.
I could clearly feel Qinyin's body begin to tremble uncontrollably, not a slight shiver, but a violent, sieve-like shaking that emanated from deep within her marrow. Her breathing became rapid and chaotic, each inhalation like a struggle against some invisible force, producing faint and painful hissing sounds. I knew that her childhood nightmare—that silent podium surrounded by countless mocking faces and fingers pointing at her—was now overlapping with the present scene in an incredibly real way.
As for my own situation, it wasn't much better. My social anxiety, in this extreme environment of forced focus, was instantly magnified to an unprecedented peak. Those gazes converging on me were no longer neutral; in my eyes, they automatically decomposed and reassembled into faces filled with specific meanings. Curiosity, surprise, confusion, pity... and, hidden in the deepest part yet most glaring, that twisted smile of schadenfreude anticipating a good show. The whispers around me, even through layers of white noise barriers, were like red-hot steel needles, precisely piercing into every fold of my cerebral cortex.
"Look, it's that 'headphone guy' and his partner who can't speak."
"It's them? They painted this picture?"
"Let them explain? What a joke, one is autistic, the other is mute, how are they supposed to present?"
"This should be interesting to watch..."
We had to walk onto that stage. That short distance of less than ten meters seemed like an endless road of exile, filled with thorns and traps. With each step, I felt like I was treading on red-hot irons, the floor beneath my feet seemingly turning into soft marshland, threatening to swallow me whole. I don't know how we managed to complete that journey; I only remember that when I finally stood under those blinding spotlights, the entire world dissolved into a dizzying expanse of white.
The spotlight was like a giant, scorching cage, isolating us from the world of whispers below the stage. Qinyin clutched tightly at the hem of her clothes, her knuckles showing a sickly pallor from the excessive force. She hung her head low, her chestnut-colored long hair falling down to completely cover her face, and I could only see her shoulders continuously rising and falling, indicating that she was desperately suppressing something. She couldn't utter a single word, not even manage to lift her head. Her entire body was expressing refusal and protest in the most intense way possible.
I painfully tore my gaze away from her and directed it toward the audience below. In the crowd, I easily spotted Vanessa Mitchell and her group of friends. They were giggling with their heads close together, wearing smiles I knew all too well. Those weren't happy smiles, but rather the kind that emerge when witnessing an anticipated, amusing failure—smiles tinged with a hint of cruel satisfaction. Then, my eyes continued scanning the entire venue, seeing more and more faces. Those expressions were equally familiar to me. Pity, sympathy, resignation mixed with a sense of superiority, and pure curiosity waiting to see how we would embarrass ourselves. These expressions were like a massive web woven over sixteen years, filled with sticky spider silk, trapping me firmly within it since the moment I was born. For sixteen years, I had fought against them every day, trying desperately to escape.
A strong, almost instinctual impulse seized me. My right hand rose uncontrollably, reaching for the headphones on my head. Put them on, no, take them off, then put them back on properly, let the avalanche of white noise completely drown out everything. Run away, just like you've done every time in the past sixteen years. Hide in that safe shell that belongs only to you. There is no scrutiny there, no mockery, no pity. There is nothing there.
My hand stopped in mid-air, my fingertips almost touching the cool outer shell of the headphones.
I saw the pained expression on Qinyin's face. I saw her hair, soaked with cold sweat, clinging tightly to her forehead. I saw her breath, as feeble as a candle in the wind, that could extinguish at any moment. Then, I recalled several days ago, in that quiet art room, the sketchbook full of nightmares that she handed to me. I remembered her eyes looking at me, filled with panic and trust. I remembered the "put on headphones" gesture I made to her. I remembered that first tear sliding down her face.
At that moment, I truly understood that we were the same. We were both flawed monsters, injured by this world full of noise. She chose to close her mouth, while I chose to plug my ears. In our own ways, we were barely surviving in the same hell.
And now, she's right beside me, within my reach, all alone, struggling and sinking in her deepest, darkest nightmare.
If I put my headphones on now, if I turn and run away, then what was everything I did before worth? That hand I extended, that silent promise I gave, was it just another hypocritical, self-satisfying performance?
My hand, in mid-air, changed direction.
I didn't adjust the volume of my headphones, nor did I put them back on properly. In a deathly still silence full of expectation, with a determination that surprised even myself, I completely removed those headphones that had accompanied me through countless days and nights, that had become like a part of my body, from my head.
"Buzz——"
In an instant, the entire noisy world, like a bursting flood, rushed into my ear canals without reservation and with ferocity. Those whispers, coughs, impatient sighs, and the friction sounds of moving chairs that had been filtered and weakened countless times by white noise, now penetrated my brain in their most primitive, naked, and sharp forms. My temples throbbed violently, and a long-forgotten, intense dizziness swept over me, leaving me almost unable to stand steady.
But I didn't fall. I forced myself to stand straight, and then, I made a gesture that even I had not anticipated. I forcefully stuffed those black headphones, which represented my entire world, into the pocket of my school uniform.
After doing all of this, I turned around, using my back to completely block out the hundreds of gazes filled with various emotions from below the stage, to shield myself entirely from this noisy world full of malice. Then, I looked at her. In this spinning, disorienting world, I only looked at Alicia Hayes.
