Las Meninas

Rin decided that if she were a color, she would be brown. Not brown like chocolate, more like the light kind of brown on a piece of wood that has been sitting around for a few years and has started to lose some of its polish, but not all of it.

She leaned over the table and sipped coffee out of a stirring straw, eyes aimlessly scanning the other patrons at the coffee shop. There were at least two dozen of them, most of them too focused on something to notice Rin staring at them. Those that did stared back, but only out of curiosity at her lack of arms, which was so common that she barely noticed it. For a little while, Rin tried to guess their colors, but before too long she gave up trying. You couldn't really know a person's color if you didn't know anything about them. It was a hard enough task if you did know them.

A few weeks earlier, one of her professors had told her that the human eye could see ten million colors, which was every color she could ever see or think of. If she tried to give everyone on Earth a color, she'd have to start repeating them before she even got through everyone in Japan. That didn't seem right to her, and the thought of it made her stomach all twisted up.

Rin spent a while just sitting at her table in the back of the shop, thinking about colors. Someone's color was the shade of brown of a piece of wood whose polish had worn off just a little more than Rin's shade of brown. She wondered what that person was like, and if she would ever meet them. If she did, would she like them? This train of thought occupied her for a while.

After some time- a concept which Rin had mostly lost touch with a while ago- Rin's mother walked through the doors of the shop. She quickly set eyes on Rin and stared at her for longer than usual, making an odd squinty sort of face.

The two of them hadn't spoken in a while. Rin started to feel sick.

Mrs. Tezuka was a tall, aging woman with a soft face- if she were a color, probably a light green, or possibly a pale yellow, though Rin found it difficult to judge with her. She was rather beautiful for her age, with long red hair the color of Rin's that hung down over her shoulders. She seemed to have aged a bit since Rin had last seen her, or at least her face was sagging a bit more. But most notable was her eyes, wide and green and wrenched open like a cat's. Rin had always been told that she had her mother's eyes, a prospect she found both confusing and a little creepy.

Rin frowned and looked at the floor. She was trying not to say that kind of thing out loud anymore.

"Oh, sweetheart, you look like a twig," Mrs. Tezuka said with a sigh, pulling out a chair at the end of the table. "Please make sure you're eating enough…"

It sounded like a simple request, so Rin simply nodded in response. "Okay." She could tell that her voice was a little hoarse, and she silently wished that her mother would ignore it, unlikely as it seemed.

Mrs. Tezuka slid into her seat across from Rin, her eyes tracing over her Rin's face in that funny way like she was trying to see the skull underneath the skin. Her hair flowed down over part of her face, flaying a little at the ends. Rin didn't want to say anything, so she looked away from her mother and examined the tabletop instead.

After a while of saying nothing, Mrs. Tezuka breathed loudly and clapped her hands together. "I'm just going to lay all my cards on the table, here, Rin. I don't feel good about the way things ended between us last time we spoke." Her tone made Rin shoot her eyes up.

This sounded like a complaint. Of course, Rin didn't feel good about the way they had left things, either, but she rarely did after a conversation with her mother.

"Sorry," said Rin's mouth, with little input from her brain.

"I- huh?" Mrs. Tezuka stopped short, taken completely aback by the apology, before continuing. "No! It's not your fault. Oh, Rin…" She placed a hand on her forehead and rapped her fingers along her hairline, making a strained face like she stubbed her toe. "Look, I just wanted to say. I shouldn't have called you ungrateful. That was wrong of me, and I'm sorry. Okay? I owe you that apology." She hesitated for another moment. "I love you. Your father loves you. You know that. And… we didn't send you to Yamaku to torture you. I'm sorry that you didn't have a good experience there. We just- I want you to be able to find somewhere you feel like you belong. At Yamaku, I thought maybe you might be able to find someone… like you. You know?"

"I know." Rin's head felt kind of fuzzy, which made her want to stop listening. Her mouth kept saying things she didn't want to say, which was happening to her more and more lately.

"Are you mad at me?" Mrs. Tezuka asked with a little pout.

"No." Rin wished she actually knew the answer to that.

"It's stupid for us to fight, anyway." Mrs. Tezuka grimaced and patted her hands on the table. She kept making faces that Rin didn't understand. "I just worry about you, that's all."

"I know."

"I'm glad." Mrs. Tezuka batted her eyes and breathed loudly again. "You should know… we're so proud of you. For moving up here, and taking advantage of this opportunity, and everything. It's a very mature thing to do. You have no idea how happy I am that you wanted to do it."

"Good."

"How have you been doing so far?"

"Fine."

"Have you made any friends?"

"Sort of."

Mrs. Tezuka wrinkled her nose and hesitated to speak again. "Are there any boys you like?" Rin flinched at the interruption to the silence.

"Yumi's boyfriend is nice." Rin was surprised to hear her mouth say this.

"Oh, well, that's good! Not exactly what I meant… but all the same, I'm really glad you and Yumi get along."

"She talks a lot."

"Your dad told me after he dropped you off that it seemed like the two of you would be friends. I mean, Emi was a real chatterbox, and you were friends with her, right? So…"

"Yes." Rin closed her eyes and tried not to think about it.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm okay."

"You're not saying much."

Rin thought for a long time about how to respond to that before muttering, "I don't have much to say."

"You're just not really acting like yourself."

Rin opened her eyes just in time to see her mother shuffling her hands around like she had an itch.

…So, Rin wasn't acting like Rin. "I know that," she said quietly.

Mrs. Tezuka rolled her eyes, playing with her hair with one finger. "You're going to make me worried about you…"

"Don't worry about me." Rin's mouth mumbled that last bit. After she spotted her mother's concerned frown, it repeated itself more loudly. "There is nothing for you to worry about."

Tapping on the table with two fingers, Mrs. Tezuka sucked in her breath before responding to that. "Okay, listen. I know you don't want to see a therapist, so I'm not going to ask. Just… hear me out. I got you something." Holding out one finger in the air, she reached into her jacket pocket and retrieved something pebble-shaped that fit in the palm of her hand. Looking Rin in the eye, she set it down on the table and lifted her hand from it dramatically, revealing it to be a small cell phone. "It's prepaid through to next year. It's really important to me that you have this. I know you won't use it much, but please, promise me… if you're struggling with anything… please call me. I'm here for you. Really. I will always be here to listen if you want to talk. About anything."

Rin stared at the phone, stone-faced. It was yet another request from her mother, but this time not such a simple one. Rin couldn't think of anything to say, but her mouth spoke up again anyway. "Okay. I'll call you."

Her mother always had so many requests. Rin thought that was something funny about her, how she constantly asked for things like she knew exactly what she wanted.

"Thank you. Thank you." Mrs. Tezuka nodded twice, her eyes closed. She looked sad, but Rin couldn't understand why. "You said you've been getting along with Yumi… so she can help you with it if you want to use it. But even if she's not around, you can just dial with your toes and put it on speaker phone, right? I've seen you do more complicated tasks than that."

"I can do it."

Of course, Rin didn't want to do it, but she knew that it didn't matter what she wanted, and that it would be pointless to talk about it anyway. Besides, Rin never really knew what she wanted anymore.

"I know we're not always on the same wavelength. And I know you're not going to believe me when I tell you this. But I know what you're going through, I really do. I was your age once. You've got a world of pressure on you, and no direction." Mrs. Tezuka traced her hands above her head in an arc like she was drawing a rainbow, or possibly a fat snake. "You're doing the right thing. I am so proud of you for taking the initiative with the scholarship here. If you keep it up, I promise things will only get easier. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Promise me you're okay?"

"I promise."

"I love you."

Rin hesitated again at that. Her head was still kind of fuzzy, and the feeling spread to her ears, like invisible gnats were buzzing in them.

"Do you want to see where I live?" asked Rin's mouth.

She wondered how much time had passed while her mother had been waiting for her to say something.

"Really? Yes, of course!" Mrs. Tezuka shook her head, mouth gaping slightly in shock. "I really thought I'd have to beg and plead you to get you to say that… it really… that means a lot, Rin…"

Mrs. Tezuka crinkled her face like a squirrel, putting her hand to her mouth. After a brief pause to suck in her breath, she stood and stepped around the table, bending down a little to meet Rin's eyes. Lips curled into a weird, sad smile, she wrapped her long arms around Rin's neck and hugged her daughter closely. Her long hair tickled Rin's nose, which made her want to sneeze.

Rin stared at the table. She was terrible at hugging. That was the only thing she could think about.

Some time later, though Rin really didn't know how long it had been, Rin's mother led her through the halls of her dormitory with her hands cupped at her chest. Rin's long sleeves dangled at her sides, tapping rhythmically on the sides of her legs. Rin had dressed herself that morning.

"What's the number again? 308?"

"308," replied Rin's mouth.

"308, 308…" Mrs. Tezuka repeated the number again for no reason as she counted the doors in the hall. Spotting the small room at the other end, she stopped herself from knocking on the door to 308, evidently distracted. "So that's the kitchen for your hall? Do you ever use it?"

"No. Yumi does sometimes."

"Oh." Mrs. Tezuka nodded with a little pout, then turned and knocked twice on the door. "How do you open the door when there's nobody home?"

"I use the stool. I open it with my foot."

"…Oh."

Rin and her mother both went quiet. On the other side of the door, bare-footed footsteps slapped on the ground until a girl's shadow appeared under the door.

"Right here, Rin!" shouted Yumi as the door swung open. Momentarily surprised, Yumi blinked and looked back and forth between the two of them before settling on the elder of them for a greeting. "Oh, hey! What's up? You must be Rin's mom!"

Mrs. Tezuka laughed quietly. "The one and only."

"I'm Yumi Ono, Rin's roommate… obviously! So good to meet you!" Yumi leaned on the door to look at Rin, who returned the gesture by staring vaguely in Yumi's direction. Puffing out her cheeks, Yumi added, "…You guys gonna come in, or what?"

"That was the plan," declared Mrs. Tezuka, stepping past Yumi to take a look around the dorm room.

Yumi giggled a little bit and made a dramatic bow, allowing her to step inside, but Rin didn't follow. She had gotten distracted, and stopped in the doorway to look at Yumi instead.

She was nice to look at, Rin thought, with long hair and stormy eyes and one breast that was just the littlest bit bigger than the other.

Rin hadn't painted people in a while. She had been painting the beach; her teacher told her to paint an environment. So she painted the beach, for no particular reason.

"Wow, this place is huge!" Mrs. Tezuka said loudly, walking around in circles. "Way nicer than the dorm I stayed in during my freshman year back in college."

"Yeah, no kidding. It's super nice having all this room to paint in," said Yumi.

Eventually Rin wandered into the dorm room, closing the door behind her with her foot. The room looked nice, too, but room-nice. Not people-nice. The walls were all covered in paintings, mostly Yumi's and a little bit of Rin's. Right above her bed, Yumi had hung up that famous sketch of the man with four arms and four legs but only one head and only one penis.

"Wow, is that yours?" asked Mrs. Tezuka, looking at one of Yumi's paintings on the wall. "Gorgeous!"

Yumi smiled from ear to ear. "Thanks so much! It's one of my favorites, that's why it's up there."

Above Rin's bed was a painting she did for the exhibition at Yamaku. Nomiya had told her to keep it. She didn't like looking at it, but Yumi said it was nice, so she hung it up. At the time that seemed like the thing she should do.

"Omigod, just wait till you see this." Yumi bounced on her heels, scurrying over to the closet door and swinging it open dramatically. "Walk-in closet! How cool is that?"

Mrs. Tezuka scoffed with disbelief. "Man… I have to say, you guys have it way better than I ever did…" She stepped into the closet and disappeared from view.

Rin lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling had a funny pattern, with little grooves that trailed off in different directions like veins.

"What are these?" called out Mrs. Tezuka from inside the closet.

Yumi's voice came from the same place. "They're my watercolors! I've been experimenting with these lately. What do you think?"

"They're so pretty! You capture so much detail… I guess I had kind of thought that watercolor painting was supposed to be all blurry and abstract."

"No, not really, unless that's what you're going for. It takes a lot of time to get it right though. At least for me…" Yumi hummed loudly in-between sentences. "…But I'm really happy with the way those ones turned out. With all this space in the closet that Rin said she wouldn't use, I figured it was a good spot to let them dry up."

Rin wondered if the trailing veiny lines in the ceiling were intentional. The walls didn't have any funny designs of their own. They were blank white, like they were supposed to be a great big canvas.

"Hey, Rin?"

All of a sudden, Rin decided that she wanted to paint on the walls. Just to capture the thought. She fantasized about being able to get out of bed in a year and see a pattern on the wall, a thought she had had just now…

"Rin?"

But she wasn't going to paint on the walls. She had to finish painting the beach first. That was what she was supposed to paint. Why she was here.

Rin thought about getting out of bed in a year and looking at her beach painting. She wanted to throw up.

"Rin, are you still with us?" Mrs. Tezuka put one hand on Rin's bed, looking over her sternly.

Startled, Rin sat up suddenly, her ears buzzing with the invisible gnats again.

"I'm still with you," said Rin's mouth.