“You’ve left me with a kaleidoscope of broken smiles and shattered dreams.”

It has been a month since you broke up with your girlfriend. Coincidentally, that is also the amount of time you’ve spent lazing around on the couch, eating nothing but cup noodles and drinking energy drinks. You can barely muster the strength to seek sustenance, but you do it nonetheless, clinging on to the faintest thread that you will see her once more.

Your doorbell rings. The sound reaches you but it doesn’t register. The visitor rang a few more times before giving up and leaving. You simply ran out of reasons to care anymore. After a while, though, you decide to labour past the doorway. Perhaps it was the boxes of noodles that you bought off of Amezon, or mail from your boss who has finally had enough and made up his mind to fire you. What does it matter, anyway? Nothing does without her.

You open the door to find a rectangular box leaning against the wall just outside. It is surprisingly thin and light for food supplies. Perhaps they adapted a new packaging. You haul the container into your apartment and slam the door behind you.

You grab your box cutter, which has lied right by the sofa for the past week, and rip the cardboard apart. A large frame, covered in wrapping paper, falls to the ground. Your stomach lurches at the very first glance you take at its contents, as you know exactly what it was and where it came from. Memories of the two of you surface, but you grit your teeth and bar your mind against the thought.

You reach towards the painting and rip apart the purple wrapper with your trembling hands. The canvas is exposed in its full glory, showing the criss-crossing of paint which came together to form a piece depicting you at your lowest low. The black and purple hues were especially vibrant, as if to embed themselves in your mind for now and ever. You stare at the composition, only to see a frighteningly life-like image of yourself twisting his features into one of despair and pain and grief and torment, with uncountable tentacles wrapped around his body, pulling him towards the void behind.

The shadows ever present in your dimly lit home feel more alive than ever. You get the uncanny sensation that you’re being watched, with hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at you among the murky darkness. You feel like your head is about to split apart. The dam in your mind broke down, and you can no longer stop the memories from flooding into your mind.

You two have not been together for very long. Nine months, give or take. The remnant of falling autumn leaves was still in the air when you and her bumped into each other on the college campus. “Wah!” she cried, as her belongings fell to the ground. As you scramble to pick up her anatomy books and art supplies, you can’t help but notice the fragrance of lavender spilling forth from her hair. As you finish collecting up the mess, you can finally get a good look at the person you bumped into.

She’s on the smaller side even with the platform boots she had on. She wore a beret hat, a mid sleeved lilac shirt, a black overall dress with frills, and royal purple stockings with markings on them. She let her dark purple hair flow freely to her knees, only concealing her bangs behind her hat, exposing her forehead. Her sideburns were somehow orange and round, but you brushed that off as gradient dying and conditioner.

Your eyes meet. Oh god, her eyes. They were puddles of colour, a mixture of the deep blue of the depths, the cosmic violet of starry nights, and the inky black of the darkest of shadows. Her curious gaze locked you in place, as you looked deeper and deeper into the endless pools in her eyes. The way that the colour seemed to swirl and mix together kept drawing you in, until her cough brought you back to reality.

You startled in surprise. That was very rude of you. You still held her stuff in your hands. How could you have forgotten? Sheepishly, you hand her back her things as you introduce yourself to her. “Call me Ina,” she replied. Her soft voice rang in your ears, long after you two went your separate ways to your respective classes.

This was obviously not the end of your encounters. Turns out the two of you shared a core class and bonded in the middle of the exceedingly boring lectures. What started out as you treating her to lunch to make up for your mishap quickly developed into you and Ina going out together. You shared a surprising amount of interests with her, and you were the only one that appreciated her puns and references.

The following months were the highlights of your life. Being with Ina opened up more doors than you could ever imagine. Before, you would get embarrassed whenever you went to fancy restaurants or amusement parks alone. Now, they became perfect dating spots for you to take her out on a date. That night when she stole a kiss from your lips under the dazzling fireworks stood out painfully clear among the ocean of memories.

The both of you loved eating seafood, and indulged in eating octopi and squid and cuttlefish and everything in between. One of your favourite activities was holding Tako Pa with just the two of you, where you would make takoyaki using store-bought ingredients in the apartment that you two shared. It was not much as the both of you are struggling to make ends meet, but that only made the food taste better and the time together more fun. She called you her little Takodachi, and you gladly accepted the little nickname she gave.

You two would also enjoy peace and quiet sometimes. Ina, being the more reserved and composed one in the relationship, would often suggest couple outings to less crowded spots. As an art student herself, she enjoyed visits to museums and theatres to search for inspiration for her next piece. You honestly did not really understand arts and culture, but seeing her getting lost in thought and gleaming eyes was enough to make you happy.

In particular, she would invite you to the countryside to appreciate the scenery. You helped her carry the canvas and brushes and tubes of paint, until she settled on a suitable spot. You then watched her paint, and the process never ceased to amaze you. The mixing of colour on the palette to find just the perfect shade, the layers of acrylic transforming the blank cloth into a replica of the environment, and the way she concentrated and got excited was just absolutely adorable. You would’ve carried the world for her as much as she liked if it meant making her happy like that.

Of course, the two of you were not without arguments. It broke your heart when you saw her struggle to come up with ideas and when she could not find enact her vision onto the canvas. During those times, you tried to comfort and support her, but there was only so much you could do without interfering with her work. As a result, you would wake up to her working tirelessly through the night, the coffee you made for her left cold and untouched. She just seemed so painfully distant at times, seeming unreachable even if she was in the room across the corridor.

After each conflict, she would always make up for it as much as she could, either by drawing you a portrait or by brewing you cups of coffee. You knew that she was not the best with words, and this was her way of showing gratitude and regret. Without fail, you would always forgive her. You knew the troubles and stress she shouldered. If you could not shoulder half of it, the least you could do was to endure and support her.

She was your world, you were her takodachi, and you would not trade her for everything else in the world.

The beginning of the end was honestly quite sudden. You knew that her obsession with her project had been getting progressively worse, but you just assumed that everything was fine and would return to normal once she finished her piece. It was not uncommon for her to become stressed. What you did not expect was for her to end your relationship so abruptly, without giving you time for thought or negotiations.

You still remember that night. How could you ever forget? She was staring at her nails while picking at her food absentmindedly. Her pointy, elf-like ears were twitching, which you took to note as a bad sign. She took a deep breath, and said that you two needed to talk.

You were not against the idea of talking things out. Her actions and routine have been concerning lately, and you even prepared a long talk about the importance of maintaining a regular sleep schedule and healthy diets. But the speech came crashing down when the words, “I think we should take a break from each other,” came out of her mouth. She spoke in her usual soothing demeanour, so how could such a small sentence be so loud in your head?

You did not really catch the rest of her speech. The ringing and echoing was too distracting. “You deserve better… it’s not you… this isn’t easy for me too…” What did it matter? You just sat there, stunned, unable to think or say anything. It was only when she got up to leave that you stretched your arm towards her, but it was far too late and your fingers grasped nothing but air. You knew that once she set her mind on something, there was no talking her out of it.

Still, that did not stop you from trying to get her back, even if you knew it was fruitless. No matter how much you cried and begged, she still refused to change her decision. She would not even glance at you from the corner of her eye as she packed her belongings. The once comfy and soft girl was no longer, and her heart was replaced with ice. She promptly blocked you on every single way you could find her.

You started to look for her in the campus, but it was as if she never existed. "Ninomae?" her classmates asked, "that's a weird surname. I'd definitely know if someone like that were in my class." Every trace of her existence is gone, except for the stabbing hurt and the wound she left behind.

You never knew how spacious the apartment was without her. You were so used to the smell of acrylic in the air, the tight passageways formed by the continuous torrent of canvases and paper, and it was just so cold without her warmth beside you.

Since then, you turned into a recluse, neglecting both academics and work. Your bills are left unpaid, and you are most likely about to get evicted in a month’s time. You could not have cared less. Not like living on the streets is much worse than being holed up in this house filled with her scent and haunted by ghosts of the past anyway.

A shiver runs along your spine. The shadows have eyes, and their stare chills you to your core. You turn on the lights in an attempt to calm yourself down, yet the uneasiness and discomfort did not cease one bit. It is only then did you notice the yellow post-it note stuck on the wrapping paper. Do you look at it? You don’t want to, but you have to. Not like you had much of a choice in the matter. You want to crumble it and throw it into the garbage, but even her handwriting has magic, just like each and every part of her. You cannot stop your eyes from panning over the note.

“I’m sorry.
I know that this is not fair to you, but please know that I had no say in the matter.
They told me all I needed was to offer you as a sacrifice.
I was forced to put you and my art on a scale, and I’m sure you can understand why I did what I did.
-Ina”

You didn’t understand. Who were they? What sort of sacrifice was she talking about? Nothing she said made sense. Or are you just going completely mad now?

You looked at the painting again. Through the kaleidoscope of broken hearts and shattered dreams, for the first time in ten months you finally share her vision. Perhaps the two of you were never as close as you thought, and it was just mirrors and mirages. Happiness, hatred, regret, all of your pent up emotions join the whirlpool in your heart. Empty. It is all churned into nothingness. If you were nothing to her, then you did not need the world either.

You surrender yourself to the appendages emerging from the wall. You feel yourself being pulled into a place far, far away, but you do nothing to stop it. You take one last look at the painting.

You close your eyes, and sink into the black seas of infinity.