#40 - Pointillism
442 words
"What are you doing?" Usagi chirped over a green-clad shoulder, initiating their daily battle after Mamoru made no acknowledgement of her presence, despite the full ten minutes which had passed since she first meandered into the arcade.
"I'm busy," he grumbled, concentrating on the notebook before him. "Go away."
"Only when you've answered me," was her response in a cheerful, singsong voice. After a thoughtful pause, she added, "And even then, I might not leave."
To emphasise her words, she more or less bounced onto the seat next to his, scrutinising his neat handwriting.
"Woah, is this 'look-at-my-excessively-redundant-vocabulary' day or what?" she half-teased, scrunching up her face when she encountered a particularly impossible word. "Is that even English?"
"I'm trying out Pointillism," he replied, the annoyance clearly evident in his voice.
"Your point being?"
"That's just so funny," he drawled as she giggled. "I'm very impressed, Odango. Five points and a gold star for you."
"So what does it all mean?" she questioned, still trying to make sense of his writing. Struggling to pronounce most of the polysyllabic words, she opted for the more enunciation-friendly ones, which nonetheless proved to be more challenging than anticipated. "Ultracentrifuge... adscititious... Irrevocability... Movendi... ytterbium... Are you sure you don't have a dictionary with you?"
"Always the highly educated and cultured one you are," Mamoru muttered sarcastically, evoking a stuck-out-tongue from Usagi, which he ignored. "Pointillism refers to a movement in art, where a painter would create an entire work using only dots – 'points' in a large variety of colours – to represent a bigger picture, and still effectively keep some of the finer details. Similarly in music, a composer uses the different tone colours and registers of instruments to establish a general mood or feeling, rather than relying on the melodic and harmonic material evident in the more pitch-driven pieces. I'm experimenting with these ideas, and trying to incorporate the concepts of 'Pointillism' into a written medium."
He couldn't help but smile as she 'oh!'-ed at his explanation, aware of the strange sense of pride he felt when she showed her understanding of the slightly difficult notions.
"So you like me?" The smile vanished, and he stared at her in disbelief.
"What are you talking about?" he demanded, feeling a need to wipe his suddenly clammy hands, one of which had tightened around his ballpoint pen. "Where on earth did you get that idea?"
"There," she pointed at the lined pages, speaking in a very matter-of-fact tone. "The first letters of each word spell out something. 'Usako. I like. Marry.' Personally, I think that's a rather strange approach to post-modernism."
He had no sharp reply to that.