Title: Painter

Category: Anime/Manga » Blue Exorcist/青の祓魔師

Author: Jaegershark

Language: English, Rating: Rated: T

Genre: Tragedy/Family

Published: 15-08-2014 (English Order)

Words: 4,315

I found this planning a year ago... decided to write it for real.

Yukio clicked his pen on the wooden clipboard, looking up at the painting. His eyes were caught in interest as he stepped back to admire it.

The canvas was easily twice as tall as him, in a square ratio. It was painted blue, and you could just barely see the brush strokes and blended in the purple, black, white and pink. In certain spots were just pure black, and then there were spots that were bright blue. Then there were the stars dotted along the canvas, dot by dot applied by patient hands. Some of the stars were bigger than others, as big as the size of his fingernail, and some others were just smaller than a singular atom of dust. There were constellations in big clumps, some in three or two, and some just lonely. And then in the corner just by the wooden frame was a neat signature of the painter and the date that it was painted.

What is this? Space?

Nobody really painted stars. Artists painted such things like- like fruits, sunflowers, teasets, their religion, horses, people, ships, cars, bridges, rivers, trees... but space? Stars? Galaxy? Maybe a few, but Yukio never seen anything like this before. It was life-sized and looked very real, like the frame was a portal and he was gazing into space, and if he stepped through the canvas he would be in outer space himself. It looked so real.

He peered at the signature - Okumura Rin.

Ah, his brother painted it.

His brother was an artist, but Yukio had lost contact with him when he had moved out into his own life. He never graduated nor had a job, but with little money he was given he had left on his own. Yukio never knew where he lived, and from the beginning he was a bit old school, never using any gadgets or devices. He wasn't one to talk either, he was always the very quiet one. He never seen his brother for ten years now.

"Beautiful, eh?"

There was a pink-haired man standing next to him, hands above his head like he was resting on it. He sighed, his eyes darting from one white dot of a star to the other one.

"I like this painter. He paints beautiful things." he looked at Yukio. "First time seeing?"

"Yeah. Told to do a page of the museum. The painting just catches my eye from the rest, so..."

He nodded, his eyes glancing to the clipboard Yukio was holding. He shrugged.

"This is just one of his paintings." he said again. "There's a room dedicated for his paintings. Ironically I'm the guide of the museum too - would you like to see it?"

"Sure."

The pink-haired man motioned with his hand forwards to follow him into a maze of routes and corridors until two large wooden doors were in their view. The man pushed open the door, holding it so that Yukio could go through.

"No one?"

"Sadly the painter wasn't one of the popular blokes. Everyone wanted to see flowers and apples, it's a shame, really."

Yukio looked through the dim light to the walls where the paintings were hung. Indeed the guide was right, his brother never painted flowers or fruits. He painted skies, clouds, deers, wolves, birds... but he noticed something.

"He really likes blue, doesn't he?"

"He never uses any other colours, except it was closely related to blue, yes." the guide nodded. "People thought it was bizzare to see a blue deer here and a blue leaf there. But I find it very interesting, and he is the most beautiful painter. He has a very deep imagination."

Yukio looked at the painting of rain. The blue looked very grey-ish and upsetting, the white looked like pure water drops it looked like someone had poured a bucket of water on to a canvas of grey acryllic. He never saw a trace of a brush stroke either, and it looked like as if the painter had photographed it rather than painted it.

And he noticed he only painted in square canvases, and either very very huge or very very small there was a painting of a bug just as big as his hands. There was an appealing painting in the room, just as big as the galaxy one he had seen earlier. It was the painting of the sea in the prespective inside the deep depths under the water. It was a shark and it looked very melancholy, deep gashes long its delicate body, embedded in the wound were pieces of blade, black blood seeping through the water from it. Yukio tried to interpret the meaning of the painting, but he couldn't quite grasp it. And the shark was alone in the blue ocean. And the shark... it looked fearful and upset. How could the painter possibly express a feeling through an animal that could express no feeling at all?

"The painting... Does it have a title?"

"No." the guide said sadly. "He never names them. They're all untitled. Maybe because he wanted people to decipher his painting. I never understood any of his paintings, and the shark puzzled me greatly. I thought because he loved sharks and painted them like this because they were endangered, but he might mean something else."

Yukio peered at the other paintings. There was a horned two tailed cat and something like a bat.

Blue.

He was a unique one indeed.

"Have you ever met the painter?" the pink-haired man asked him.

"No... Yes." Yukio sighed. "He-he's my brother."

The guide looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"Oh?"

"I never knew he was a painter, however. I lost contact with him ten years ago."

"Okumura?"

"Yes, Okumura Yukio."

"Shima Renzou. Your brother is very admirable indeed."

"Hm, thank you."

There was a long pause as Yukio walked around the room, looking at the blue paintings through his glasses. He stopped at a huge section of the wall that haven't been covered with hung paintings yet.

"The museum hadn't commissioned him again in a long while." Shima sighed. "They said it was a waste since nobody ever visited here except a few people like you and me. They laughed, see - "Why, Renzou? We don't commission a freak for our own museum guide, don't we?" And I admit a museum guide should actually never see the paintings of the museum himself when he sees them everyday, but.."

"The museum commissions him?"

"Aye." Shima nodded. "You lost touch with him, aye?"

"Yeah."

"I'll talk to my boss and get his address, see what I can do." Shima smiled. "Just a thanks for noticing such a unique painter."

Yukio returned with his clipboard a week after, in the lonely room with the melancholy shark. He saw a mop of dyed pink hair and he instantly smiled.

"Aha, Okumura! I was hoping you'd come again."

"I did. I decided to write about my brother instead of the museum - if you don't mind."

"I wanted to insist, anyway." the guide laughed. Then something came up in his head and his hand went down to search in his uniform pocket, producing a slip of paper.

"It took a bit of begging, but there. This is where he lives."

The handwriting was pretty scrawny and spidery, but Yukio could read it well enough.

The rest of the day were spent on talking about the paintings, trying to find the meanings in them and Yukio writing his ideas down in his clipboard. And then there were times where he whip up a piece of paper and the guide and the writer would try to copy one of the paintings and end up laughing - because nobody could express the emotions as much as the painter could.

Yukio's mind depthed deeper in his paintings. Why a sad shark? And there were pieces of glass embedded in its pale body and the impossible facial expressions looked that it was crying out. The ocean surrounding it were all blue and there were nobody to help him. Shima had said it was an animal existance awareness, but the painter might've meant another thing.

He noticed some things in the paintings too. They all looked sad, melancholy, lonely. The two-tailed cat looked it was going to burst into tears any moment and the bat looked like its wings were going to be torn off.

But then there was something else - the galaxy painting. It didn't show anything except stars. Rin had painted things that looked like it's torn apart - but the galaxy... Why? The painter never made any sense to him.

His brother was difficult to understand.

It was a lonely wooden building in the middle of almost nowhere. It was a field of stepped and trimmed grass. The manor looked very bare and stripped and wasn't painted and it looked more of a mansion-sized shed rather than a home. He knocked on the door because there weren't any bells to ring, and his knuckles hurt. A blonde woman answered it, peeking through the door then opening it fully.

"Mr...?"

"Okumura Yukio."

She nodded slowly, blinking.

"Cousin?" she questioned.

"Twin brother."

She nodded again, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she did so. She seemed unsurprised, her face rather weary.

"Is he in?"

She nodded, motioning him to follow after her.

The mansion was strangely all made of wood and glass. There were some servants working quietly all over the place. There were abstract paintings surrounding the place, and they were all blue.

Iconic.

There were muffled harsh coughing and wheezing noises emitting from a room. The blonde woman nodded to the door, looking at the writer.

"He's there." she said quietly. "Don't surprise him."

"I won't."

Yukio opened the door to find a very different room. Instead of wood, one side of the wall was made of glass, and the wood were painted blue and carpet furnished the floor. There was a stool in the center of the room, and a canvas that heighted almost as tall as the ceiling. Sat on the stool was a man in his mid-twenties in a hospital-looking white shirt and blue sweatpants.

He had his back to the writer and he was leaning over, coughing. Beside him was a small table with paint and brushes standing or tipping over the table. The carpet below the canvas was stained with paint. There was nothing else furnishing the room.

He wheezed and coughed again as he put the brush he was holding to the table and put his hand over his mouth. When his coughing stopped he breathed out, picking up the brush again, holding it towards the canvas.

It was an almost-finished painting of some kind of blue fabric with white netting. It seemed real in his eyes, like a flowing curtain. Yukio approached him closer until he was standing behind him to his right, and he was coughing again.

Yukio could see tubes embedded in through his nose and wired down his body, an oxygen tank by his side. He put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, and he stopped coughing and looked at him.

"Y-Yukio." he croaked, hacking again, this time there was some kind of gagging noises in his throat. He took a big gulp of air, harsh and forced.

He put a hand over his mouth, trying to reduce the paining sounds of the cough. Yukio leaned his head so that it rested on his shoulder, hugging his brother at the same time.

"You found me." he wheezed.

"I did."

"Pointless." he coughed out.

"It's been ten yea-"

"Yukio, I'm dying." he coughed, smiling sadly. "I'm dying."

He pointed to the tubes that failed to help him breathe, that he relied on.

"You'll only break your heart for the second time."

"I will."

"Forget it."

He coughed again, shivering. Yukio pulled him close, breathing in scent, his hands in his night-black locks.

This was the painter.

His dying brother.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes I did."

"How was he?"

Yukio smiled sadly, shaking his head.

"Moriyama." he croaked, his voice raspy. He was half-leaning on the stair banister, weary and tired, and looked like he was going to fall and tumble down the cases any moment. He sat down on the steps, leaning against the wall and curling up to hug his legs. His chest felt like it was being hammered down by a nail. Like drowning and trying to gasp for air; but could never, ever will.

"You have to go back to bed." the blonde woman said.

"No. No. I'm sick and tired of that."

"But you are sick, you need rest."

"No. I need to go down. I have to."

"Sir, you have to..."

"Please!" he cried out.

Normally it was the other way round. The servant begging to cut some slack while the master treated them like dirt. But for his case - the servant wanted to work and the master was pleading for her not to. It was unusual - very rare.

He was ill. Ill, ill, ill. Diseased, and he had a disease for being sick of that disease. COPD was the thing he most hated, yet his body had put up a white flag and accepted it. He despised the condition. It made him feel tired, like twenty-four seven he was carrying a huge boulder on his back, even when he was lying down. All pointless trying to rest. He felt useless. He didn't want to be useless. See, normal healthy people were lucky, yet you and I slack off at doing something people normally do. And yet people with illness, they wanted to work. To be useful. Instead of lying around doing nothing.

He coughed, his body trembling. He was incredibly thin - you could make out his bones poking out of his skin like he was going to be stabbed from the inside by his own body. It was rare to develop a four-staged disease at the age of twenty-five, and he never do such things as smoking either. That's why he hated it. Because he done nothing. Nothing. And yet the disease looked for him.

"Help me, Moriyama." he wheezed. "Please."

The woman sighed. She lifted up the tank while her other arm supported him to stand; he felt lightweight. She helped him climb down the stairs, worried when he looked like he was about to slip and fall or whimper when the pain came again to knock his soul about. They reached down the stairs, and by then, the painter was gasping, his face ghostly white, his face sweaty with agony and fear.

"Rin?"

His brother's voice echoed throughout the manor. The painter looked at the approaching figure with tired eyes, the blonde woman looking at him too. A purple-haired woman stood beside him.

"Okay?" she said, motioning to Yukio.

"It's alright." the blonde woman nodded. The purple-headed woman was dismissed.

"Is he okay?" Yukio asked, concerned.

"I'm trying to beg him to rest." she said tiredly. "I tried. He insisted. We've just got him down the stairs..."

Yukio looked at him. His breaths were shallow and ragged as if there were nails stuck to his throat, and he was gasping like someone ducked his head underwater. He was shaking and trembling and he was sweating, and his skin was oddly white shaded grey.

"Brother, you must rest..."

"I can't! I won't!" he said stubbornly like an angry child, tears in the corner of his eyes. "What if I die!?"

The sentence slapped both the woman and Yukio himself. It made him angry, scared, confused, pained. Then it was all panic when he fell down on all fours, gasping. He clenched his shirt, he looked like he wanted to rip out his lungs and end his suffering. His eyes widened as if he saw something - a death hollow?

The sound ripped the air with a hack, and blood escaped his lips.

Yukio remembered that he had curled up into a ball on the cold marble floor, coughing up what he had inside him. He tried to make him drink. He refused. He refused everything. He didn't want anything. He just wanted not to be useless.

He cried. He cried tears, and it pained Yukio to see it.

And it ended up with Rin falling asleep in the crook of his neck, having being calmed down that he was in fact, not useless. He knew no one would care about him - that he wasn't self-pitying but it was a fact. Yukio told him that he loved him. He loved him. He loved his paintings; so did the pink-haired museum guide, wholeheartedly. His anxiety died out and he stopped trembling. He fell asleep in his arms.

If he hadn't left... maybe things would be better.

Yukio had soothed him, like taming an angered dragon because it was driven by despair. In the end it gave up to him, it gave up. Rin didn't give up, however. He calmed down and he slept. Yukio could hear his soft, irregular breathing, ragged with harsh throaty sounds.

"You done well, better than I could've done." the woman said. "He never slept like that."

"How long has it been?"

"Long years. Long, long years."

Yukio caressed his wet cheeks, stroking his sweat-stained hair. When he was sure he was asleep he asked the woman where his bedroom was. Yukio carefully carried him upstairs bridal-style with his limbs dangling limply, tubes from his nose, the woman carrying the tank and opening the door for him.

Yukio laid him carefully on the blue-sheeted bed, Rin still in foetal position, curled up into a ball like a hedgehog in fear, his oxygen tank by his side under the bed. But when Yukio left the room he whimpered, he begged him not to go.

He ended up sleeping by his side, Rin's head tucked under his brother's chin, sleeping peacufully for the first time in years.

With his brother.

There was another painting to fill the empty side of the wall. It was the blue velvet with the white netting. It seemed to hung loosely off a rounded side of a table. What it meant, Yukio never knew because he never asked. But his clipboard were full of papers, he just had so much to write.

Came the pink-haired guide again.

"New painting, eh? Must be moved in today, it got a fresh smell." Shima sniffed. "How is he?"

"Better."

"Good stuff, good stuff."

The guide gazed at the new paining, dazzled by its real eyefeel of smoothness and silkiness of the velvet painting. The white netting was given a decoration like a fruit in a tree, so small and slight yet so detailed with pattern. And all thise done with backpains and wheezing and coughing.

His brother is a wonderful one.

"Has he started a new one yet?" Shima asked. "I know he's ill - but I couldn't help it. I get really excited when he starts a really big project. Like the shark and the galaxy."

"I haven't seen him do so. He couldn't move."

"Ah."

The rest of the afternoon was filled with pen scratching on the paper. And Yukio said his goodbye to the museum guide and left.

He tumbled down the stairs today.

Apart from a little bruise and bump, he was fine. Just a bit shocked. Lucky the tank hadn't rolled off first and dragged the tube from his nose.

"Alright?"

"I'm okay." he said hoarsely. "I'm okay."

Yukio helped him to his working room, where there was a wall of glass one one side of the room. He helped him to sit on the stool and arrange his tubes so that it wouldn't get in the way.

"There's canvases at the back cupboard." he wheezed. "Pick a large one."

Now that Yukio noticed, there was a large cupboard at the back of the room. He slid it open easily, and the canvases were aligned like books in a shelf, from largest to smallest. Yukio picked out the largest on at the end, carrying it carefully and setting it down in front of Rin, putting it in the frame.

Rin started without sketching anything. He started to dip his brush in some cream-coloured paint and drew small circles in the canvas.

"Rin?"

"Mm."

"You've-you've painted another colour. It's not blue."

"I know." he said softly, giving a small cough. "It's not blue."

Yukio carefully watched him as he painted very abstract shapes in different colours.

...Silence.

"Your friend." Rin said suddenly. Although his voice was quiet and soft, Yukio almost jumped at the sudden noise.

"Which one?"

"The museum one."

"Ah. What about him?"

"He likes my paintings?"

"He spends his time looking at them."

"Had he worked out the shark yet?"

"He guessed that it was about animal existence awareness because sharks are being hunted."

Rin's eyes widened. "Good point."

He coughed.

"Close one, though."

"So what does it mean?"

Rin laughed softly. "Sharks, like lone wolves." he said. "When they hurt, when they cry out - no one's there for them. What's the difference with humans? Their childishness, they see a small kid on the streets with no parent. He needs to shout for anyone to notice. No fish helps the shark when they are shot by the hunters. No people person helps the kid when he's troubled. But..."

"I don't paint people. I'm disappointed of humanity. Even though gifted with a great, wonderful mind... sometimes I think a dog could act better than humans. And that is the reason so I do not paint the faces of people. Because I am disgusted."

He coughed a few times.

"A bug, see. When not crushed under humanity's foot, their existence will be longer than humans. They help each other and take better care of their young. A bat - however bad their eyesights are, still they hunt, still they avoid their predators. A cat will take care of her young no matter how much injured she will protect her kits from danger, at all costs. A brave shark will live on his own despite his condition in this cursed world. The trees will keep continue growing with the sun and the water. And until even the stars fade to nothing, I will still think humans are lower than dirt - until they help the poor kid on the street without any need of telling."

Yukio's eyes widened - his paintings, they were linked all to one opinion. He thought they were individual, singular feelings, but they were like a constellation, so different yet the same thing, repeated again and again, on a different canvas, in a different shape, in a different size, in a different shade. He never thought a shark would do anything in a galaxy - it did. A lonely animal in this curse universe.

"The reason I left - because I was disgusted with myself." Rin gritted his teeth. "Such a lowly creature should never existed in the first place. Yukio - I admired you. You deserved the right to exist. I was overcome with jealousy. And when I found the chance to gain the right myself..."

He laughed, shaking his head. He pointed to his tubes.

"This takes it away."

Yukio never knew his brother had such deep feelings and opinions.

And he was shocked.

"No."

Rin looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"You deserved it from the beginning." Yukio said. "Because you helped the child in the streets - you were disgusted because you thought were never good enough for him."

"Rin!"

"No, please! You musn't, it's dangerous!"

He retched and coughed, blood spilling on the cold marble floor down below the steps, breathing heavily, curled up.

He tried to sit up but he fell back down on the floor again, the whimper in his throat were like birds' cries and they were no longer human - it was pitched and helpless.

"I... I must..."

"Rin! Stay still! Oh God, please... Please, obey for just one more time! Rin!"

There was a ripping sound growling in his throat and he threw up everything he had inside him, and his body fell on his own pool of crimson liquid.

And Yukio held his hand all the way through the short journey to the hospital.

"Why the sad face, brother?" Rin laughed, tears streaming down his bloodied cheeks. "Smile... I want you to smile. Yes, I would like that picture to be the last thing I will ever see. Smile, Yukio."

He wiped the tears from his eyes. He carefully pulled away at the tubes, removing them from him. He stroked his hair.

And his blue eyes...

"Cheese." Rin joked tearfully. "You never smile for your photos, Yukio."

Yukio found the museum guide sitting on the bench. In his favorite place. Reading some sort of book.

Yukio sat down next to him.

"Hi."

"Hello." Shima smiled sadly. "I'm really sorry."

"It's not your fault." Yukio sighed.

"I've read the book he published shortly after his death." Shima said, waving the book he had in his hands. "I didn't know he wrote, too - but this was the only book he had ever written."

"It was his diary - I took a naughty peek." Yukio laughed. "But it wasn't much of a diary... Shortly after his death I decided to contact my boss about it. She cried after reading it so."

"I've reread it couple of times and it never failed to make me cry." Shima chuckled. "Your brother is very admirable indeed."

Yukio nodded.

"Yes." he smiled. "Yes he is."

He looked up to the large canvas in front of him. It was a lonely child very much resembling of himself, and there was his companion sitting beside him. And instead of the sky, it was painted the ocean with stars, with the healed shark, with the growing tree, with the brave cat, with the surviving bug, with the ferocious bat.

And hey, the room wasn't empty this time.

I did some research on COPD. Its like Cancer. Coughing/vomiting blood is pretty rare in the case.

This is based on my feelings itself - I do believe some humans are as disgusting as dirt.

I hope you put up with my bad grammar in spelling mistakes eh.

- Jaegershark