"I first saw one of The Shadow's pictures when I was playing street ball with some of my middle school teammates," said Takao as they walked up the stairs to his family's apartment. "I made a comment about how I thought it was cool. And someone walking by heard what I said."
"And he didn't think you were a young hooligan in the making for appreciating vandalism?"
"Nope," said Takao, with his usual playful smirk. "He had come to that park for the sole purpose of taking a picture of that mural. See, that's something you do when you follow a street artist's work. Like, you know how if you're a fan of some yuppie artist, you go to their shows whenever they're in a gallery or a museum? Well, when you're a fan of a street artist, you go to the site of their artwork."
"And how exactly does one know where to find those?" Midorima wondered out loud.
"Internet. Duh," said Takao. "There are lots of sites on street art, many just for specific cities. There are tons for Tokyo alone, some even just for certain districts. When you find a new piece of graffiti by one of your favorite artists, you take a picture and post it online, with the location. That's how other people know where to find it. But anywayz, the guy who'd come to take a picture of The Shadow's mural at the park where I was playing took the time to tell me a few things about The Shadow and how awesome he is. Hi Mom! I'm home!"
Takao's mother smiled at her son. "Welcome home, Kazunari. And hello again, Midorima-kun."
"Sorry for intruding," Midorima said politely before following Takao to his room.
The first time Midorima had seen Takao's room, he had been surprised. Given what he knew about Takao, he'd expected it to look like a disaster zone. Instead, everything was surprisingly neat and ordered, if a little cluttered. Now Takao jumped up on his bed and pulled a photo album off the shelf above it. The motion jarred several of his other albums, sending them tumbling down onto his bed.
"Oops!"
Midorima picked up one labeled "Middle School, Year 3," and opened it. A condescending smirk crossed his face at the sight of not just photographs, but pieces of construction paper cut into wild shapes, and brightly colored words penned in ink and markers between the pictures.
"You scrapbook?"
"Shut up," said Takao, snatching the album back quickly and replacing it on his shelf with the others.
Another album caught Midorima's eye. One labeled "Shuutoku Basketball Team: First Year." He picked that one up off the bed and started to open it to the first page, only to have it quickly snatched away.
"That is not the one we're here for," said Takao, shoving another album into Midorima's hands. "This is. Most of the pictures I've got of The Shadow's art are in here."
"Most?" asked Midorima.
"Yeah. One of them's in another album," said Takao.
"Why?" Midorima asked.
"Because reasons," said Takao. "Now stop stalling and take a looksie! Behold the glory that is The Shadow's street art!"
Midorima opened the album to the first page. He studied the picture, then looked back up at Takao, nonplussed. "Am I supposed to be impressed by this?"
Takao dropped down to sit on his bed and scowled at Midorima. "That, I will have you know, is the piece of art that first made The Shadow famous."
"It's a simplistic bird," Midorima said. "The kind any child could draw. There's nothing special about it."
"What's special about it is where it's painted," explained Takao. "See, that building is right in front of a police station. And trying to tag that building is like . . . well, like a dare, I guess. But it's hard as heck to do, because the police are constantly watching it. Until The Shadow, no one managed to spray paint anything complete on it. Not even on the sides or the back of the building. But one day out of the blue, The Shadow tagged the front of the building, right in full view of the police station's front windows, in broad daylight, with that huge blue bird, with that speech bubble saying 'I'm Shadow.' No one knows how he did it. The bird was at least a meter tall, and the full picture was several meters wide if you count the speech bubble.
"But after that he was instantly famous," Takao continued. "The police got the picture down as quickly as they could. They scrubbed it off by noon the next day, but enough pictures had been taken of it to immortalize it. And after that, The Shadow was famous. You know something's his work because he always uses that bird as his signature. Turn the page."
Midorima gave him a look that let him know what he thought of being ordered around, but in the end, he really didn't have any reason not to listen to that order. He did need to see what was on the next page eventually. So he turned the page.
The next picture was of a crowd of stick figures, topped with bright yellow smiley faces or light grey frowny faces. Midorima immediately saw that the grey frowny faced stick figures formed a pattern, spelling out the word "ALONE." And in the center of the O, the only place left empty in the whole painting, was the same blue bird from the first picture – The Shadow's signature.
"That one's called 'Alone In The Crowd,' or sometimes just 'Alone,'" Takao informed him. "It's one of the few pieces of his older work that's still around, probably because it would be a lot of trouble to get down. It's painted on the wall of a subway, behind the train tracks, pretty high off the ground. He would have needed a ladder to get as high as he painted it. Or some kind of complicated ceiling rig, like they'd use in a spy movie. But one's just as likely as the other. I don't know how you get a ladder through the subway without anyone stopping you."
"Perhaps he went at night, when no one was around," suggested Midorima.
"Not according to other street art fans. They say that one appeared in the middle of the day, allegedly in the early afternoon," Takao said. "Not that I was keeping track of it at the time. I wasn't one of his fans until like a year after his first happy phase started, so I wasn't following his art back then."
"First happy phase?"
"Yeah. You'll see what I mean soon," said Takao. "Check out the next one."
Midorima turned the page again. This time the canvas was another brick wall, and most of the picture was made up of randomly sprayed blotches of brightly colored paint. In the center of the picture, however, devoid of paint and outlined in light blue, was the silhouette of a child. And written above it, in letters that were a little on the hard side to read, was the word "iNViSiBLE." For some reason, all the letters were capitalized except for the I's. Midorima wasn't sure why, but found himself agreeing with the artist's decision to do that. It fit, somehow.
And as much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to see where Takao was coming from in his endorsement of street art. Or at least this particular street artist.
Midorima knew what it was like to be lonely. There were only a few times in his life that he'd ever fit in anywhere. Most of his childhood had been spent alone because of his . . . unusual interests and tendencies. So, the artist's decision to use the silhouette of a child struck a chord with him, and fostered a sense of familiarity.
The next picture made Midorima feel an even greater appreciation of The Shadow's work. Not that he would admit it to Takao. But if the way Takao was smirking about how Midorima had turned the page without being prompted was anything to go by, Takao knew anyway.
"That one, as you can probably guess, is called 'No One Sees What's Inside.' 'No One Sees' for short. Like it, Shin-chan?"
Midorima stared down at the picture, drinking in the details. This piece of The Shadow's street art was painted on a cement wall that had been subjected to many taggers. Fragments of the other artists' works were caught in the photograph of The Shadow's art, which Midorima thought was his best one yet. The words "No One Sees" were arced over a picture of a blue eye, while underneath the words "What's Inside" were curled in a reverse arc, mirroring the layout of the text from the top. And inside the eye was The Shadow's signature.
"It's not completely horrible," said Midorima grudgingly.
"Hey Mikey, he likes it!"
"What are you babbling about now?"
"Nothing," Takao said. "But you do like it, don't you?"
"I never said any such thing."
"You didn't have to. I can tell."
"Hmph. "
"Those four pictures are what people refer to as his Alone Phase," said Takao. "After 'No One Sees' something happened that changed The Shadow's life forever."
Midorima raised an eyebrow in question.
"Turn the page and see for yourself," Takao said. "You know what they say. A picture's worth a thousand words."
I forgot to mention it last chapter, but this fic is set in the same universe as my oneshot "Kuroko no Graffiti Artist" from my oneshot collection "A Different Side Of Me."
Don't forget to check out the art side of this story on yellowoctopus333's DeviantArt page. She's doing a great job telling a story just in pictures, plus that's the only place you can read the microfics about Kuroko actually creating each piece of street art and what he was going through at the time. She just uploaded the fourth picture, "No One Sees What's Inside" yesterday!
