As I Lay Drawing
There was nothing wrong with the chocolates Hiro-nii brought over that day, only they left a sort of funny aftertaste in your mouth. And the more you ate of them, the less you were bothered thinking about it - or anything at all, really. They had a way of melting in your mouth and going straight to your head.
"This is…" Handa-sensei paused for a very long moment, well past the point of saturation assuming he had been going for the dramatic effect. He hiccoughed and wheezed. "Scrumptious," he finished, then hiccoughed again.
Up until that point, the amount of attention Miwa and Tama had been paying to the esteemed sensei was minimal, but the sudden noise brought them to attention. They stared in blank surprise.
"Sensei, what are you doing?" they asked in unison as Sensei began rummaging the desk.
"I am looking for my brush," Sensei announced as he took another bite of the chocolate. The chocolate had something of a strong smell to it. "I can feel my masterpiece inside me," he went on somberly. "Swirling within me, waiting to emerge from my brush. Oh yes, I can just see it in my mind's eye. It will be absolutely spectacular, marvelous, a dazzling sight that will change the world forever."
"Sensei, are you drunk?" asked Miwa.
"Drunk?" Sensei repeated her with a laugh. "Oh yes, you might say I am drunk in a metaphorical sense."
"He's drunk," Miwa confirmed.
"Just from eating alcoholic chocolates?" Hiro said incredulously.
"It seems so," Tama said, blinking, as Sensei triumphantly fished out his brush from somewhere and dipped the wrong end into the ink pot.
It was probably a good thing Naru was out collecting insects with Kenta and the other boys today. It was hard not to snicker at Sensei as he muttered incomprehensible words to himself and attempted to write calligraphy on the floorboards. He seemed awfully happy with himself.
"Behold!" he declared, making wild gesticulations. "This is true calligraphy!"
Miwa, Tama and Hiro watched this scene in silence for a moment.
Then Tama said, "I'm kind of disappointed."
"I thought you were supposed to see a different side to a person when they're drunk," said Miwa.
"They say what comes out is your true nature," Hiro remarked.
"Are you insulting my calligraphy skills?!" roared a red-faced Sensei. "I'll have you know my works are some of the very best in the country. No, the world, perhaps, for Japanese calligraphy is unrivalled outside Japan. You foolish plebeians have no understanding of the soul of calligraphy. You have never seen the calligraphy god, as I am seeing him right now. Can't you see? He is right within my fingertips. I am seeing the light! The light!" he added for emphasis.
Sensei, please. Get your ego under control.
The same thought occurred concurrently to the three spectating teenagers. They could have been psychic.
Sensei twirled his brush around on his fingertips. This would have looked kind of cool if he had not been so uncoordinated. As he picked up the brush that had fallen to the floor, he looked back at the teenagers and pouted. His cheeks puffed out and everything.
"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" he demanded. "You wretches!"
"I think you need some sleep, Sensei," Hiro said kindly.
"No!"
"Sensei, don't be so stub-"
"You understand nothing," Sensei snarled as he dipped his brush into the ink pot once more, this time the right way up. "Listen, I am very inspired right now and I would love to write freely and express the deep emotions within my heart. So please leave."
Miwa and Tama looked at each other.
"Have you ever been drunk before?" they asked curiously. After all, who got drunk on alcoholic chocolates anyway? That kind of thing doesn't happen outside the realm of manga.
Sensei sniffed. "I do not get drunk. Alcohol is disgusting. I'll never understand why Kawafuji drinks it so much. But that is quite beside the point. The point is that talking is distracting me from the purpose of true art."
And from then on, he refused to answer any of them, no matter what they said to him. His vision had narrowed into a small tunnel and something white-hot was pulsating at the back of his head, causing feverish shivers to spill down his body. The world had become something small enough to grasp in his hands, but it was also much greater.
The brush was an extension of his arm. Oh no, not a mere extension by any means - the brush wasa distillation of everything that was and would always be. Senseiwas the brush and the brush was Sensei. With a firm hand, Sensei brought the brush down to paper.
Feeling as if they had become quite secondary to this drama, the three teenagers could only watch, perplexed. Sensei's tightly scrunched expression had loosened into an airy light sort of calmness. It was like watching the Buddha write his holy scriptures, only a manic light gleamed in his eyes and he hiccoughed deliriously every half minute or so.
"Should we stop him?" Hiro whispered to the girls.
"I think he's fine for now," said Tama. "We're watching over him, aren't we?"
"It's not like he has to leave the house, anyway," Miwa pointed out. "So he won't get busted for drink driving for anything."
"Does Sensei even drive?" asked Tama.
"I… can't imagine him driving," said Miwa. "At all."
Other things Miwa couldn't imagine Sensei doing included: paying his own rent, cooking his own food, working at a part-time job, having a girlfriend.
But as she observed Sensei's hunched-up figure, drawing frantically and muttering wildly under his breath, Miwa didn't feel the slightest bit sorry for him. He was definitely bonkers, though.
"Yeah," she said. "Let's leave him to his art."
So they did, pulling themselves up in the corner to watch Sensei pour himself into his calligraphy, just in case he caused an accident and hurt himself.
Sensei continued for about twenty minutes before eventually he closed his eyes and rested his head against the table. The afternoon breeze came in through the open door and rustled his jet black hair, the same colour as the ink he spilled all over his hands and face. He didn't stir for hours, not even as evening approached. He was smiling as he rested.
"I'm glad he got that out of his system," Hiro remarked. Then he said, "I better tell mum not to make this kind of chocolate for him anymore. She meant it as a reward, you know, for working so hard lately."
He laughed sheepishly and smiled. The two girls smiled with him. They all knew Hiro's mother meant well.
Ignorant of this conversation, Sensei didn't stir from his sleep. He was at peace.
It was a moment that could have lasted forever, maybe, and nobody would have minded terribly.
That was also the moment Naru to burst into the room, clutching a live, wriggling beetle in her hands. "Sensei! Sensei! Guess what! I found something cool to show you!"
She poked him. He didn't wake up. So Naru put the beetle down on his face, as if supposing that in sleep Sensei would approve of her insect-catching skills just as much as he would awake.
It did, at least, wake Sensei up. He let out a high-pitched scream. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" he demanded. "GET THAT OFF ME! AND WHY DOES MY HEAD HURT?!"
"You were making your masterpiece," Tama explained.
For a moment, it seemed Sensei hadn't heard her. He was too busy waving the beetle away and cringing from a distance. But her words seemed to have clicked because a puzzled expression came over his face. "I… was?"
"Yeah," said Hiro. Then he said, "Maybe drinking really does inspire creativity."
"Th-that doesn't sound like a family friendly moral!" Miwa pointed out.
"I never drink," said Sensei, looking even more confused than before. Hiro was hiding the container of chocolates behind his back, lest Naru dip her hands into what was left. "But curse it, my head hurts," Sensei went on blithely. "And what is this masterpiece you're talking about?"
"It's right there on the table," said Tama.
The sheet was turned upside down. It seemed this was the last thing Sensei had done before he had gone to sleep. Even in his drunkenness, Sensei seemed to grasp intuitively that the full impact of his work could only be appreciated if unveiled in dramatic fashion.
He had, at the time, seemed very inspired. Even now, bleary eyed and suffering from a hangover, some remnant of his grandiosity from several hours ago remained. Every one of his movements seemed exaggerated for effect.
"Lemme see!" Naru insisted brightly, but Sensei hugged the sheet close to his chest, the sweat dripping off his face.
When it came to his calligraphy, Sensei's first audience was himself.
"Go outside, all of you!" he barked. "I'm looking at it myself first."
"Don't be like that," said Miwa. "We were watching you draw it the whole time."
Sensei blinked. "You were?"
"Not me," Naru said glumly. "I want to see Sensei draw his masterpiece too."
"I-I see." Sensei looked touched. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well then."
The three teenagers plus Naru leaned against his shoulder as he pulled the paper away from his chest. Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned the sheet face up so that he could see what was written on it.
Sensei's purpose of living. His statement of artistic expression. His soul at the moment when he was most - and least - like himself.
All of it was inscribed on that paper.
Everyone gasped, shocked into silence by the sight before them.
No one said anything for a moment. There wasn't much to be said, until Sensei uttered the words himself.
"It's total crap."
Then he threw it in the bin.
"Damn my headache."
Author's note: The title is a reference to As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, a brilliant writer and an alcoholic.