Muses (Rin)

Late in the day, an hour after all classes had ended, a teacher and student sat by the windows of their classroom. The student stared at her easel; and the teacher stared at her student. The only colour on the paper was the orange from the sky outside. This identical scene took place almost every day for the first two weeks since the semester had started - the two both focused on blank pages.

"Look, Tezuka..." the woman began. "I need to go home. I know it's difficult, but please just try."

"I can't paint at home. Hisao asks too many questions. And looks at the pictures before they're finished, even though he tries not to. He can't help it."

"Those are just excuses. Also, they don't explain why you rarely paint here either."

Rin's eyes narrowed a bit. "I get this feeling... that the paper is disappointed. You know, when I make it into a picture." She peered into the sheet like a microscope - focused closely on the un-flatness of the surface. There were veins visible across all of it. She saw reluctance on it, too. Seeing a brush threateningly hovering near your unpainted face must be frightening. A thought struck her that all her painting was really attacking innocent, harmless pages.

She tried to continue, "What's so wrong about being an empty paper? Isn't it fine the way it is? It feels like trying to change it is... cruel."

"Paper doesn't think, Tezuka. It won't be sad, because..." The teacher paused, feeling silly explaining something so strange. She tried to think of a different approach. "Are you telling me that you'll never paint again?" Rin looked away to the window to consider this for a moment, so the woman continued.

"Even if it could think, wouldn't an empty page regret being so similar to the others that nobody would ever admire it? I would long for someone to help me be something unique, to be proud of."

Rin looked back to the paper with slightly arched eyebrows, as if asking it if this were true.

"Don't you see them more like they're children? Helpless to grow without a parent? Look at each empty page and imagine how it wants to look, what it wants to be, and help it to reach that desire."

Rin looked back out at the sky. It seemed much flatter than the paper. Her stomach groaned audibly.

"....I'll try painting at home."

"Thank you. That's a good idea."

Sighing with releif and exhaustion, she began to pack Rin's bag for her. Despite the girl obviously being capable enough to do it herself, being in a hurry to finally leave work made it best to do it with hands.


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Hisao leaned against the counter, looking through his day's notes and waiting for his noodles to cook. There wasn't anything to worry about so far in his courses, just as his last teacher had told him. It was clear that the university science courses shouldn't be difficult for him, but now that he was attending, there was no point in getting overconfident and blowing it.

He looked up from his book when the apartment door clicked. Rin nudged the door open, and closed it softly behind her with her foot.

"Hey. How was it today? Get any painting done?"

She looked over with a plain expression. "I'm going to do it here tonight. Please don't look at them."

Hisao glanced evasively sidewards, a little embarrassed. It was an old rule of theirs, that he never watch her paint or look at unfinished pictures. He knew, though, that she hadn't been working much in her classes - and not being able to see what she was doing was aggravating when it was apparent that she needed help.

Meddling had made things tense between them in the past, but had he kept himself totally removed, it was clear that she would have been in a serious situation. She acted on her own a lot, but like everyone else, needed some kind of support and a friendly presence to keep her pointed in the right direction.

"Hisao?"

"Hmm?"

"Thanks. For before."

Hisao just smiled, not quite understanding what she meant, and knowing better than to try investigating. He was relieved by her tone, at least. "I'll bring you some dinner in a couple minutes, then let you get to work."

Rin nodded very slightly, but was noticeably more comfortable right now than she had normally been since starting school. Her and that instructor normally spoke after school, and it seemed like there was some kind of small breakthrough today. He turned to pull out another pack of noodles from the cupboard.


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Despite there being painting tools all over the apartment anyways, most of Rin's work was done in the spare room. The extra cost for a two-bedroom had seemed like a wise idea to Hisao, considering how she lived and worked. He probably imagined keeping all of the art-related mess in one enclosed space, which worked for about a week.

They normally ate together, but with Rin so close to finally producing something, they both understood that it was best to keep her acting as independantly as possible tonight. However, after a couple of mouthfuls to quiet her stomach, she was again sitting in front of an empty page.

She wondered briefly if it would actually show her how it wanted to look. She looked over its face for clues. Maybe one corner could seem a little bluer...

Her expression of concentration slowly melted into a frown over a few minutes, with no hints of what to do with this paper. Instead, her mind and eyes wandered. She looked across all of her paints, still bottled, or mixed into each other to make special colours. Colours that went onto paper that never became anything and was all thrown out. How horrifying that must have been.

Her gaze finally fixed on a slightly paled green mix. As she watched it, a weak breeze came from the window. The green. And the wind. Rin recalled a walk she took one day, with Hisao. She had gone to the woods to think, and the stopped beneath her Worry Tree.

There were lots of trees in that small forest, with birds. She couldn't remember if it was bright out, but she felt like it was. It also may not have been windy, but she felt like it was. The tree was... big. Because it was supposed to take people's worries. Or maybe just her worries.

That day, she'd felt like she was underwater. Or under a lot of something-or-other. Thinking made it hard to breathe, so it may have been something other than water. It was hard to remember, very dim and shadowy. Remembering a specific feeling was more difficult than remembering a tree.

Except one feeling. She had a feeling of openness. Outside, in an open field. The openness of the sky, watching the grass and flowers circle in the wind, being able to see everything miles around. Those things made her feel like she was free to do anything that she could. She remembered being confused for a long time, but then feeling happy there.


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Hisao alternated between re-reading the same paragraph, and pacing from the sofa to the kitchen. He argued with himself about leaving Rin on her own in that room to do... possibly nothing. Bursting in on her unexpectably had made her angry in the past when she was working in the studio, but that wound up alright, didn't it? They were living well now, and following their dreams.

He heard the sound of her fork hitting her plate through the door, and decided that if she was eating, he probably wouldn't interrupt if he just knocked to see how she was doing.

"You can come in."

He entered to see her beaming at him with a single noodle still hanging out of her mouth. There wasn't a single unpainted space on the easel in front of her.

"I'm done. It's a self-portrait." She looked over at the picture, a brilliant collage of three scenes - a tree in the upper-left, an deep blue ocean beneath it, and an expansive field taking up the entire right side and most of the top.

"That's...unbelievable. You made that so quickly, I've barely done anything out there!" He scanned it more closely for a few seconds. "Rin, you're not in this picture."

Still looking at it, she didn't respond right away.

"That's what I look like, though. I just saw myself."

She smiled in Hisao's direction again.

"You're in it, too."


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