|Author's Note| Without the Author's Note, this fic is exactly 1,116 words.
Dedicated to everyone in the AoGA.
Pre-May Madness. I don't know if there is such a syndrome, but May Madness had been too early to take its toll on me.
To the readers, please don't skip paragraphs and focus on every detail. You never know if a certain dialogue or description will be important in the concluding parts of the story.
And by the way, nope. This is not femme-slash, if that's what you first thought. 8D
The Seer
buttercupbella
Under the morning light, angry, black splotches of paint were thrown into the smooth canvas. The all-white background had now been tainted - pigments of different colors continued to invade the surface. I didn't understand anything - why Mikan Sakura was constantly dirtying her canvas with colors that didn't seem to mix well, and why in the end, I perfectly understood what her painting looked like.
Mikan wiped the sweat off her forehead and smiled at me. She had invited me to her home two days earlier, and since my schedule agreed with her offer, I turned up at her bungalow. I'd always expected her to be like this since we were children - a cheerful woman with her own garden and pastry shop, perhaps selling a few artworks to support her business.
What I didn't expect were her paintings which seemed to duplicate all of the photos framed on her wall, but in different angles. Take for example, Koko and Sumire's marriage. The framed picture showed Sumire walking elegantly to the aisle, while Mikan's painting portrayed Sumire in the perspective of someone in the back of the audience. The two somewhat similar images hung side by side above the console table.
Another one was a painting of Hotaru cradling a bouquet of white roses while staring aimlessly at the distance. Her expression was just as it was when we were in elementary - violet eyes radiating a sense of intelligence, lips forming an indistinguishable shape (neither a straight line nor a curve). Ruka Nogi, one of our friends, had been madly in love with her back then, but I didn't hear of what eventually happened to his admiration.
Below the painting was a photograph of the white roses laid on a table, next to Hotaru's phone. It seemed as if Hotaru's conversation with a certain someone had ended when the picture was taken.
I took a sip of my milk tea while observing Mikan's every movement - dirty the canvas, run the rough ends of the brush across the smooth surface, mix in some hues, and create bizarre scenes. Her painting looked like it was an abstract one, but when I finished my drink, I realized what it was.
The hazel-eyed woman sat down next to me. Perhaps she watched me while I stared endlessly at her artwork, wondering why she drew me standing in front of a tombstone. The atmosphere in her living room suddenly turned chilly.
"W-wow, you captured my hair perfectly," I commented. Although I was speaking out of paranoia, it was true - I'd dyed my hair pink when I was about fourteen years old, and she managed to weave every detail of every strand of my hair without even touching it. The black knee-length dress I was wearing in her artwork was adorned with a few diamond studs on the neckline. Mikan nodded almost absentmindedly. "I don't remember wearing that type of black dress, though, and so far I've never been to a cemetery."
Placing her "colorful" hand over mine, Mikan said, "Oh, you'll wear that. See that picture of Koko and Permy over there?"
"Well, what about it?"
Mikan's eyebrows wrinkled a bit. "I drew that two years before their wedding."
I pursed my lips. After a few minutes of silence, I tried to withdraw my hand from Mikan's loose hold - there was something very wrong with the woman sitting next to me. She seemed to be happy...but never happy enough, like she was in our teenage years. Her books were stacked neatly on the desk, her kitchenware hidden in the cupboards, the dirt eliminated from every inch of her home.
Mikan Sakura appeared to be expecting me for quite a long time now.
"Mikan, you're trying to tell me that you...can see the future?" I laughed, hoping to ease the tension. She merely shrugged and smiled with those perfect pearly white teeth of hers.
"Oh, no, no," she waved her hand dismissively. "All I'm saying is, sometimes we can get glimpses of the future. Koko and Permy settling down together was expected, that's for sure."
"And the tombstone? Whose is it?"
The cookies on the table vanished, and Mikan began to munch. "It's unlucky of us to not see that specific detail in the glimpse that we are provided with." She shook the crumbs off her hands and picked her tools up, admiring her latest masterpiece.
I didn't know it was her last one.
True enough, her painting came true on one stormy day, when winds blew through fig trees and everyone huddled together in their black coats. I, however, didn't wear any thick clothing, but a simple black dress accentuated by silver jewelry. Some attendees cried and dabbed on their tears with handkerchiefs. Natsume Hyuuga, one of the most brilliant students in our Academy back then, was stoically gazing at the carving on the dark tombstone. With his briefcase in his hand, he murmured some condolences and headed to his car.
Hotaru Imai, Mikan's supposed best friend, did the same. While she was on the phone (I assumed she was in a business call), she placed some white roses on the ground and turned back. Kokoro Yome and Sumire Shouda-Yome also exchanged kind words and went back home to take care of their children. Mochiage was on an international flight and couldn't come; Yuu Tobita, Nonoko Ogasawara, Kitsuneme, and Ruka Nogi were unheard of; and Wakako Usami had obviously declined to grace the funeral.
That is, Mikan's funeral.
Only I had stayed behind, picturing myself in Mikan's painting - a woman, clad in black, with a set of pink curls. Although the gray skies, the green grass, the black umbrellas, and my brightly colored hair didn't mix together well, those details made the same picture, the one which was painted by Mikan years ago and was hung, like any other artwork of hers, on her wall.
She told me, in subtext, that she expected it - her death. But nobody cared even until now.
All of us had been unfortunate to not see that specific detail in the glimpse Mikan gave us.
Rather, we had been unlucky to not pay attention to the artwork that mattered the most, only because we were too busy with our own lives that we forgot that she even existed.
Still, it gave me the chills to remember Mikan's exact words when she invited me to her home.
"Oh, you'll wear that."
I looked down at the diamond studs on my neckline.
.
end
Constructive criticism is very much welcome! I'd appreciate it if you understood the whole fic 8D