Chapter 29s: Acknowledgement

Best. Birthday. Ever.

There is no other way to put it; even a week later I'm still feeling all the positive vibes. I saw Nii-san again, and we talked about lots of things!

He is just as amazing as he always was. That teacher of his even mentioned that he is very talented and is going to go to the theater for lessons. How amazing is that?!

It is a bit unfair though that he is still taller than me. I thought I'd finally be able to look him in the eye, but his chin still bumps against my forehead. How is that even remotely fair?

OW!

My forehead got flicked, and I look angrily towards the perpetrator, Cassandra.

"What are you daydreaming about? You were going to teach me, weren't you?"

She laughs in an conspirational tone, and I smile awkwardly. We're sitting at the table where Timothy is usually fussing about, but he's always happy to make room to let the evil and occult forces make some headway through the pact between me and Cassandra.

"But I taught you, didn't I? Fold that one forwards, turn the paper around, then pull back the earlier fold so it opens up and collapse it again on the other folds you prepared all the way at the start."

I grin back at her to cover for my distracted thoughts. She smiles and does as I say, and after a few more folds, there's a crane sitting on the table in front of each of us.

"Can you do it alone now?"

I can't help but feel like an adult, teaching her like this and telling her to try for herself. She laughs in a very amicable manner.

"Oh, I'm not the one that gets distracted all the time."

Ouch. Stupid succubus.

"So then my part is done, yes?"

She's not distracting me of the truth this time. A few days ago she made me teach her twice what we agreed upon, merely because Nii-san was on my mind. Evil succubus.

Cassandra nods and smiles. "That is the agreement, is it not?"

I beam as I try to push my crane to her - I'm not going to need it anymore. She shakes her head and gives me a pencil as she pushes both of the cranes back to me.

"Show me."

Damnit, why'd she have to do that? From teacher to student with only two words; my pride is being stepped upon by this woman.

Nevertheless, I give a forceful nod and begin to demonstrate what I have learned previously. The last couple of weeks, she's had me drawing one thing, and one thing only.

Eyes.

I always thought eyes where just circles in circles, maybe with some lines. But she has turned it into this deep study that is a hundred times more difficult than geography at school.

'The eyes are the windows to the soul.'

That is what she told me during my first drawing lesson. And she also told me that any drawing of a person or animal will never appeal if the eyes cannot convince. It sounded a bit vague, but it makes sense. Part of me thinks it was a plot to make me stare into her eyes. Sneaky Succubus, the temptress of mortal souls.

Mind you, I can't really draw anything else, so now I've got these weird faces and bodies with oddly out-of-place eyes littering my drawings at home.

It feels stupid, and Jenny ridiculed me a few times already. But Cassandra is the teacher; she told me to just end our pact if I didn't want to abide by the terms. Sly succubus.

This first crane, I'm giving angry eyes. She is the one who folded it, and it is a bit bulky and imprecise, so I imagine it to be a male crane. I borrowed a book about animals from the library the other day, and now I sort of know what bird eyes look like. Beady. Super-aware. And in this case, pissed off.

My own little crane I'm giving more gentle eyes. What if she were courting the other swan? That's what I'm thinking. It isn't really realistic, but I make the eyes a bit bigger so I can show a bit of light reflecting in the eyes. It isn't very naturey.. but these are paper cranes to begin with, dangit.

I have had a lot of practice in this, so despite the tiny scale of the birds, I've gotten handy with it. The first times I did eyes on origami animals like these, I thought she was messing with me. But she's just been teaching me that I don't need a lot of lines to draw something with a soul.

"That's good. I can see the love coming out of this one. And the other one looks like he is going to defend his soulmate from the crows that might try to steal her eggs."

Wow. Praise? That I hadn't expected. She's always been complaining.

'That frog looks silly.'

'That monkey might as well not have eyes.'

Stuff like that. So it probably doesn't surprise her that I'm grinning like an idiot. Who cares; nobody I care about can see anyway.

"Thank you. So does that mean I can start drawing big eyes now? With colours? And the people they belong to?"

I've really been waiting for this. I want to draw Nii-san's eyes. His warm expression. His flustered appearance when he ran in.

However, she shakes her head resolutely.

"You can't even draw an ant yet. Why do you want to draw people?"

Sweet and honeyed as her voice and smile may be, the meaning is pretty blunt and I pout, causing her to laugh.

"Don't give me that look. You want to know how to draw. I am teaching you, aren't I? But there are a lot of basic things to learn. Van Gogh did not paint his famous Starry Night when he started out; he was thirty-five by the time he made that masterpiece. And that was just a sky and some grass!"

I roll my eyes for a moment, not having a clue what she is speaking about. Forunately though, they have one of those bulky computers sitting here, so she uses that to find a picture of the painting instead.

And it is really weird. Very pretty. Hypnotic almost. But still really weird.

"See? He captured the essence of reality. He saw in ways you and I don't. But he understood how to give it soul. So if you want to draw beautiful things, you need to learn like he did."

She rambles on a bit, but I think I grasp what she is saying.

"The beauty lies in the details, and then to take out their very essence. An ant is small. An eye is small. But a person is large. Can you take out the essence of a person?"

How would you do that even?

"You'd have to draw people every day. All the time. Fat people. Boys. Girls. Babies. Elderly. Clowns. Even diseased people. Is that what you want? To draw people?"

I purse my lips, thinking hard about it before shaking my head. Even when I ignore the diseased people and the clowns, it seems like the biggest bore.

"No. I want to draw beautiful things."

She smiles an intoxicating smile. I AM NOT A MAN YOU SUCCUBUS.

"Then we'll be studying ants next. They are beautiful creatures."

And with that announcement, she pushes the keyboard away and begins to sketch on an empty piece of paper, explaining what she is doing and why she is placing the lines where she is putting them.

Does Nii-san like ants? My mind cannot help but drift a little.