Chapter 38

A/N: Hello again! Only three chapters left and it's all done!

"I'll try to update a bit sooner," I said. "How many weeks has it been", I wondered. Never trust a writer when they say something with the word 'try', my friends. We have the best of intentions and the most unrealistic of expectations.

Akko stared out the window and counted the numbers of trees visibly when they got back to their room. Diana's sandwiches were good. It actually gave her the satisfaction similar to the times she was young and back in Japan when she was sick and her parents would prepare her favorite meal.

Now that they were about to paint with some of the art materials Diana brought with them, a series negative thoughts push against her skull so hard that it felt like her bones were cracking under their pressure.

A series of negative thoughts plundered her. What if she can't get to Diana's level? What if her art style sucks?

After she had pondered her life's universal questions, she caught Diana rummaging through Akko's luggage in search of a change of shirt. "Akko, did you draw this?"

"Oh?" she blushed when Diana stumbled upon sketches for her imagery plans for her future photography. "Oh yes. I did. I was sketching in class. I tend to do that when I'm bored and I can't wait to use my camera."

Diana fondly stared at the sketches, impressed as she flipped through the light brownish page one at a time. "You are not that bad."

"Eh?" she said, preoccupied with staring at her lover's unblemished face. "Umm thanks!"

Akko grabbed the clothes Diana momentarily forgot and changed out of her sweaty shirt and pants. "Hey Diana, What are we painting?"

"I already have something in mind." A smile crossed her features. "We might manage to go over the basics: still life, roses on a vase. Do you want to do the subject or the background?"

"I don't think I'm qualified for the background so roses it is."

"If you wish to," Diana said. She scrolled through the tunes on her phone before pressing play on a certain orchestral music.

And so they start to paint. Diana worked on the background while Akko worked on the flowers. Both of them at the same time, and it proved to be a little difficult since the canvas is quite small.

Akko gave the roses more abstract, messy style, which contrasted against the clear and linear shapes of the desk and the wall that Diana, was painting. She can't help but notice that Diana tried to make the shadows more abstract and fuzzy to complement her style.

And it worked.

Akko placed all her focus towards not making any mistakes. The lovers didn't chatter much aside from the occasional stuff of what stroke or color must be used.

The classical music Diana played on her phone earlier somehow blended in with Akko's brushstrokes and made the painting better than it probably would have been. Diana painted the roses and the vase with ease, mixed different shades of red, careful not to blend her paint with Akko's.

Akko was so preoccupied with observing Diana that she made a mistake.

She had let her mind wander. She loosened the bounds on those pesky thoughts, and before she knew it, her hand has jerked and made a streak of green across the painting, green that was supposed to be only for stem and leaves of the roses, green that is now slightly streaked across the roses to the background. Akko gasped at it. She stared at it until the green streak grew and covered up every corner of her vision.

Akko blinked. Everything was back to normal again, the green streak angry and wrong against everything else, and against everything they have painted so far. Before thinking twice about it, Akko took her finger and dabbed at the streak, trying to make it blend into the other colors.

The streak instead turned into a smudge. Her jaw clenched. This was surely bound to happen once she lost focus. This was surely bound to happen when you make an impulsive girl with no control to try to dabble herself in an art that requires patience.

Diana has stopped painting. "It's going to be fine, Akko," Her gentle voice boomed in her ears. "Everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect. You can make mistakes. It's okay."

The green smudge appeared to be mocking her with all its greenery. Akko jerked back. Her paintbrush clatters to the ground, smudging the hardwood floor with green paint.

"Akko?" Diana asked.

"I ruined it," Akko said with a low voice laced with guilt. "I-I'm sorry."

Diana blinked at the painting, formulating short sweet words to tell her. "It's fine. We can cover it up."

Akko nodded. She tried to let the sound of her lover's words soothe her, ground her. Akko picked up my brush from the floor and cleaned it. Diana didn't take the initiative to fix her mistakes as she waited for Akko to do it herself. Akko dipped her brush in white color and swiped it over the smudge.

It doesn't take long for it to dry.

"It's a good thing we have chosen to use acrylics." Diana mused.

Diana painted over the white, managing to replicate the previous colors and shapes, the shading on the rose. Akko simply watched her. Diana painted over it and tried to make it as similar to the original as possible, but the shadow of green peeking out from underneath the white is still there.

It's all distorted, not like the original, all ugly and smudgy and wrong. The paint felt too chalky. It slipped beneath the hairs on the brush.

It's not the same.

All the colors are there, everything they did before, but it's wrong.

Akko thought of taking the canvas and tearing through it with her fist. She thought of sending it clattering to the floor, dousing it in gasoline and burning it until the green smudge turns into nothing but ash. She thought of getting scissors and cutting it into a ton of little pieces until she didn't have to look at it anymore. She thought of slathering her paintbrush with more white paint and violently painting over everything, making dozens of streaks, dots, ruining the reality, ruining the perfection, making it a complete mess because it's already unfixable anyway.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Diana placed her hands on my shoulders. She dragged Akko away from the painting, looked at her with a familiar concern. The green smudge leaped off the painting from underneath all the layers of paint and dug around in her chest.

"What's the matter, Akko?"

"I ruined it," Akko whispered, and the more she stared at it, the more it mocked her, the more she wanted to destroy it. The more she needed to.

Akko stepped forward, ready to attack it, ready to paint all over it with her brush, ready to dig her fingernails into the canvas and see if it tears through.

Diana's hands move from her shoulders, all the way down Akko's arms. Down until they wrap around her wrists.

"Let me go."

The taller girl shook her head.

"I ruined your painting, Diana."

"It's our painting, Akko."

"But I still ruined it!"

"We fixed it, Akko. It's fine."

"It isn't. I need to—let me go." She attempted to wrench herself out of Diana's hold on her, but her lover wrapped her hands around her instead for a better grip.

Akko never knew Diana had it in her to hold her down like that. She thought she was more muscular in terms of strength but as her knees hit the edge of her bed, she fell. It made Diana let go of her.

She got up from the bed, ready, to attack, but Diana was faster than she can blink. Diana pushed her onto the bed; her hands wrapped around Akko's wrists and climbed onto the bed, placed each of her knees on either side of Akko's body and hovered.

"If you think I will let you make a clandestine move to destroy what we created together! You have never been wrong in your entire life. You are not going to ruin our painting."

Akko stared up at her, her red eyes meeting the furious blue ones.

"It was just a tiny mistake, and we have fixed it. You cannot expect it to be perfect on the first try! Quantity over quality in terms of creativity, Akko, the more you practice, the more you get better."

Akko's thoughts have become muddled by the scent of Diana's perfume, by her body in such close proximity to hers. Akko quickly stopped fighting Diana's hold on her. So she just stayed there on the bed as the dizzying image gripped her like an iron clasp. Then the scene became clearer like a camera was finally coming into focus.

"I'm sorry, I overreacted."

"Oh Akko, you are allowed to make many mistakes here, many mistakes with me. We are here to learn."

"Yes," Akko wrapped her arms around Diana and pulled her closer to her. "Thank you for reminding me."

"What made you think this way, Akko?" Diana asked with her voice hoarse. "Please, you can tell me what seems to be troubling your beautiful mind."

"When I was young, Chariot inspired me to become a photographer. I remember being six and I will imagine all this beautiful colors and blur and lights that I would capture in a single photograph. All of a sudden, the lights and objects stopped moving. They sort of... condensed into smaller things. They stopped and became two-dimensional and turned into photographs, my photographs, dozens of them, with my style and everything. Like a metaphor for all that I wouldn't be able to accomplish now. But now, everything changed."

Akko paused to make sure Diana was listening. She was. All the words that have been held inside for so long come out all at once.

"I've been feeling all this pressure just to figure it out, you know. I've always felt like I'm..."

"Complacent?" Diana offered.

"Yeah, with my head in the clouds, but since last time, during that photography competition... I know that if I just stay strong I can make it and try harder but now all I'm feeling is nothing but emptiness. I don't even remember what the photos from my dreams looked like, though, isn't that so stupid? Everything is so hazy. It kills me that I don't remember. Sometimes I feel as if they're somehow the photos I have to capture to be a success, and all the photos I shot now will never match up to that level of perfection. And I try, of course, but I know that they're not the same. They just aren't. And I can't die before making them. I just can't. Chariot photographed all her masterpieces, but I still had mine. I know that I have my whole life ahead of me, but I don't think that'll be enough for me to figure out how the hell I'm actually supposed to be that great, do what I'm supposed to do."

Diana's silence told Akko that she had said too much. Diana forced herself to look her in the eye, and the expression Akko met made her want to simultaneously float up into the air and disappear into the ground.

They spend a long time like that. Diana's hands on her shoulders, knees touching, bodies somehow coming closer and closer together by some unseen force.

"Okay," Diana finally said. "I understand everything now, Akko. You dreamed about all the masterpieces you needed to do when you were young in a hopeful state; however you woke up with a harsh reality. You failed to remember them. You have to spend your whole life chasing after some perfect photos you created in your dreams that you do not even recall. You have to stop this, Akko. Giving yourself high standards to work with every day is detrimental to your physical and emotional health. You have set yourself into a reasonable standard. How are you going to compare your works to some imaginary ideal of perfection that's impossible to reach? You are on the right track, Akko. I know it. You are the best photographer I have come across all days of my life. I swear you are."

Akko let out a laugh, something warm bloomed in her chest. She didn't know what to say. She wanted to take her lover's words and turn them into writing on a paper Akko can keep in my pocket to read whenever. Akko wanted to take Diana's expression, her tone of voice, and somehow imprint it on this hypothetical paper as well. Akko wanted to play over the past few moments and live in them until she's able to put all those sorts of thoughts on mute. But she can't do any of that, so she just ended up saying.

"Thank you."

She goes tense and pushes me away from her immediately, laughing a breathy, unsteady laugh.

"Never attempt to do any of that ever again."

"Sorry."

She ignored what Akko said and stood up with a smile. "Come Akko, I still want to make more beautiful work of arts with you."

"So?" Chariot asked, expectantly, as she rode the car at the driver's seat. "How was it?"

Croix dipped her chin. "I thought about insulting her just so that we can start to fight again. But part of me likes the silence. These two parts pull against each other in a game of tug of war in which the rope is a slippery coil of my own brain." She slowly nodded in an afterthought. "Thank you, Chariot. You helped me gain peace within myself and peace with Professor Woodward." She held Chariot by the hand, gently and eyes boring into her lovingly. "And as long as I live, Char, I will never hurt you like that again. I swear it."

"Croix," Chariot reached out to take one of the taller woman's hands. She squeezed it reassuringly. "I don't blame you for what happened, you know that, right?"

Croix looked away.

"You were trying to protect me by staying away, I get that. You don't want to continue resenting me and feeling bad so you had to stay away. So please don't think it was your fault." Chariot said in earnest.

Croix bit her cheek. Chariot had been through a frozen hell, studying hard to perfect her craft, losing it all at once, almost dying in the process, and here she was, convinced Croix had done nothing to harm her. Croix didn't deserve her.

"I don't deserve you," the thought slipped out without her realizing.

Chariot blinked and then laughed. Croix looked up in surprise. "Yeah you do, silly. You helped me during my internship, remember? That was how we met Marjolaine!"

The utter ridiculousness of the comment lifted Croix's mood instantly. How was it that Chariot could drag her from every dark place her mind went to with a single sentence?

She chuckled along with her. "Fine, fine, if you say so."

But Chariot didn't reply or even hear her. Instead, she just sat with a giddy smile on her face, for once in her life completely oblivious to her surroundings, focusing solely on her Croix.

Chariot let out a sigh of relief. She patted Croix's hand with a grateful smile and then started the car. The engine purred softly to life.

"Do you reckon the kids will truly be alright?" Chariot inquired.

Croix was staring out the passenger's window before staring back at her, droning. "Painting and photography are two of art's major mediums and are typically perceived as entirely independent practices. Not uncommon for an artist to dabble in both brushwork and camerawork separately. Diana certainly has camera practice and knowledge. What about Miss K—Akko?

"Does doodling count?"

"They will be fine." She rested a hand on the driver's thigh, reassuring her worries.

As the shadows fell onto the earth, Akko got better and Professor Woodward wasted no more minutes and resumed her training. Tonight was all about night sky photography.

The moon kindly accompanied them even if they had a few lanterns which they carried.

From the distance, Diana could see a massive pale grey rock sitting on the edge of a clear lotus pond. A small stream flowed through the creek on a hillside. The trees surrounding the area swayed in the flower-scented breeze. They walked further to where soft green grass carpeted the surrounding meadows.

"It appears this place seemed so different at night," Diana said as they walked in the pale blue light casting over the treetop.

At the center of this beautiful Eden-like garden, the moonlight reflected off the night dews on the ground like sparkling stars.

Diana zoned out as Professor Woodward started her lesson with Akko: a quick lecture about constellations, tutorial about the camera manual settings before sending her off.

Then Diana strolled towards the big rock and climbed on it. After she reached the top, she placed her lantern beside her and sat down and stared at the meadows below her.

The moon was getting brighter and Diana could make out all those groves of purple anemones, which were as numerous as the stars in heaven. In this seemingly garden of delight, Diana pulled out her drawing pad and started to sketch a picture of a maiden sailing across the sky with a broom. Her hand kept brushing the coaled tip of her pencil over that velvety hair and long coursing tails of the broom's wake.

Everyone was aware Diana cannot draw anatomy, but ever since she met Akko, she was getting better acquainted. One could discern she would draw people better from memories and real events. But here she is now, sketching Akko flying on a broom like a witch.

Diana hadn't mentioned it to Akko, but the two of them, sitting against a tree a few hours back made Diana feel like they have walked into one of her mother's paintings; the trees are hers, the cold air forming a wispy fog at the surroundings.

She brushed off the thought the way she brushed off the eraser residue from her pad. Soon she will paint this personal project on a real canvas, making it her first attempt of fantastical surreal painting and gather the courage to show to it to Akko. She was thinking along the lines of the sky made up of navy blue strokes and carefully dotted white painted stars.

After a while, she finished the sketch, but when she looked up from her pad, her breath hitched in her throat. Never had her heart started to pound in her chest.

Professor Woodward stood beside her, watching her stroke the paper for a while. Diana screamed as she closed her drawing pad away from the professor's prying eyes.

"Why are you embarrassed?"

Diana chastised herself for ever thinking Professor Woodward would know why she reacted that way. "Have you no decency, professor?"

"You are like your mother in that regard."

"What?"

"Your mom liked to paint forests and women, didn't she?" Professor Woodward asked. "And now I see you like to paint your lover and stars. It seems mother-and-daughter are fond of witches or any of its aesthetics."

"Yes," Diana said, and it was as if her words triggered an influx of thoughts into her brain: thoughts about her mother, her signature way of painting.

She shook her head, halting her thoughts. Diana focused on the stars, the sparse pinpricks of light that she is so used to. She counted them, attempting to stop her thoughts from wandering towards her mother. She tried not to think about her mother and how she hasn't been the same. Her fingernails dug into her knees.

It was useless. Diana needed to walk it out of her system. So she grabbed her lantern and ambled away, strolling into the purple anemones.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Akko asked, carefully holding her camera. Diana hadn't realized she had gone near her.

"Professor Woodward and I had been reminiscing about painting." Diana provided.

"Oh right! Your mom was a student of Professor Woodward before! How was she like?" Akko asked, conversantly.

All of a sudden, a cold wind made Diana's bare calves freeze. She stared at the sea of trees in front of them. It was eerie, almost. The wind flew up to her clothing and lined her veins with a coat of not only frost but the deepest brand of dread.

A frown was visible on Akko's face. "Still a touchy subject?"

Diana dropped her lantern from a slippery grasped and wrapped her arms around herself. Realizing her mother's death still aggrieved her, even if the events of that day were just a horrible memory, one that she would never manage to estrange from the back of her mind. It accompanied her everywhere she went to, sometimes ailing and staining her happiness, but most of the time it was bringing along gratefulness and a deep sense of esteem for all those who had perished. It was part of her and she didn't wish to wipe it away—as grievous as it was—because by merely bereaving of such feeling she rescinded her entire existence.

"D-Diana?"

"You know, I had this painting of hers that was exactly like this place." All the painful memories came rushing in.

"What happened to it?"

"My aunt sold it." Her throat stung; her brain overflew with a flood of thoughts, images, and colors.

Akko stared at her as if she's a pile of puzzle pieces she's assembling in her head. "Oh."

"I can pay for it back if the current owners would sell it to me a reasonable price, which seems unlikely." Her knees stopped being able to hold the rest of her up, tears brimming in her eyes, years of pent-up thoughts and refusals to cry were surfacing again.

Diana hadn't realized she began crying until she felt the tears drip onto her lap. Akko swiped it under her eye with a single finger. Diana stared at the glistening tear to make sure she wasn't only dreaming.

She was crying. It doesn't feel normal. It was as if it had been someone else doing the crying instead of her.

"Diana?" Akko grabbed onto her shoulders hard.

Diana welcomed her touch, fearing she will melt into the night if she someone doesn't anchor her to shore. She merely stared at the blades of grass between their knees, unresponsive. Not even to wipe away the tears.

"Are you crying because of your mom? I mean, I totally get that, I'm just—I'm sorry I brought it up."

Diana looked up to meet her eyes. "Do you know how she died?"

Akko shook her head.

"Mother had always loved helping other people before herself." Diana started with a voice of clarity, for she knew that such aching could not be benighted by a self-assured tone of voice. It hurt and it would always burden her soul, for the memory of that night could not be erased, no matter how many years would eventually pass.

"She always gives everything to a person in need. She loved everyone so much, including those who betrayed her. She loved me that enough she would let me fiddle with a camera in secrecy despite the unkind remarks of the rest of the family. It is because of her kindhearted and stubbornness nature that led her to diminish her good health. Despite all that, she always found time to spend time with me and tell me stories and teach me how to paint. She wanted more than anything that I would create a new future for art and the Cavendish family. I died then. When she did. I blinked, and when my eyes opened, all I saw was darkness. All I could think about was the painting I was working on that I would never be able to finish. The painting my mother and I were working on together. There was nothing apart from this darkness. Then it exploded into color. Into so many different colors I hadn't even realized existed. And the colors filled everything up and surrounded me. They choked me. Like they wanted me to be even dead than I already was."

Akko listened to her sad recollection of her mother whom Akko hadn't known but towards whom she felt grateful, because on account of her sacrifice. Akko didn't understand her loss, because nobody from her family had been afflicted by an early death, but she knew it had taken quite a toll on Diana. Akko could still see the pain shadowing the sparkle in her blue eyes, no matter how much she tried to cover it.

Diana took another moment to gather her thoughts.

"I knew my mother was not meant to die early. She was meant to paint all those paintings with all those colors. They were so beautiful, I can't even tell you like they were something that transcended even the world's existence."

"I'm sorry," Akko concluded upon hearing her story. "I've never watched a person die."

"It's truly tragic," she spoke conversantly, with a certain bitterness wavering in her voice. "But you learn to value life more after witnessing such events."

Akko gazed at her. Diana made yet another of her confidences. She was open about all the horrific things she had been through in life, acknowledging her pain and sturdiness to fight against it.

"It hurt me profoundly to see that she can never reach her dream. I began thinking, what if I am meant to be like her too? What if I was taken before my time? And what if I am to die now? What would have been left of me but a few dozen paintings, perhaps a few articles in the newspaper, some family members and friends around my coffin as it lowered to the ground with their eyes dry? What would have been of my name but simply a thing signed onto the corners of some paintings, uttered many times in the few weeks after my death and then only once or twice a year at most? Diana Cavendish, a talented art prodigy died too young. Diana Cavendish, daughter, niece, painter. Diana Cavendish, 21 and rotting six feet underground. My mother had bigger dreams for me. She had bigger dreams to herself too. What if we share the same fate?"

She went quiet. The night air hummed around them. "I knew it wouldn't be. You always appeared so casual and defined. If Professor Woodward hadn't mentioned a single thing about your mother, I wouldn't even know."

"It's not something I tell people about."

Akko's grip tightened around her shoulders. Her lover's voice was closer, their knees nearly touching now. "You are a fighter, Diana. It's not often that I encounter people with that much determination to live despite her loss. You are a survivor. It defines you; it made you who you are today—you are that someone for whose parents had died."

"I was only six," she replied, absentmindedly. "Do you reckon we will see some shooting stars tonight?"

Diana had changed the subject and that could only bring some relief to Akko because she had never been the type to comfort people in such situations. She could hardly find her words to sooth Lotte when her favorite plant died, so she knew that finding the proper manner of addressing someone who had lost so much would not come easily either.

"I hope we do," she replied. "That would be a good photo."