Chapter Text
“What do you think about your work?”
“I… I quite like it”.
The tall man with fair skin and dark brown hair was just sitting straight on his desk in a plain white, empty classroom, along with a blue-haired boy. With only one bag left on the table, and one on the lecturer’s table accompanied by a lone laptop and lots of boxes beside it, which belongs to Zhongli and some design prototypes that students already submit to him.
Only one design is left for Mr. Zhongli to judge. Which belongs to Xingqiu, the blue-haired boy that was anxious to hear some feedback from his lecturer about his prototype design, to design a packaging.
Zhongli then lean back, smiled, and then said to the blue-haired boy, “Tell me about yourself, Xingqiu”.
Xingqiu, the blue-haired man, yelped a bit, before then he adjusted his collar, “M- Myself? Mr. Zhongli?”
“Yes. Why do you want to apply yourself to Graphic Design? For starter”.
Xingqiu then scratched his temple. Feeling confused by Mr. Zhongli's sudden interview, he play along and said, “Well, uh- I- I love to design. I love to make something from 0 and just make it… a reality. My mother taught me about Photoshop since I was a kid, and then I just thought that this is my way… to design some stuff”.
Zhongli, the lecturer, then smiled and looked back at Xingqiu’s said assignment on the table he examined earlier. The assignment was a box, plain white box made of art paper. The box was shaped like a cloth hanger, able to carry one folded cloth inside which can be seen from a transparent see-through paper.
“And do you love clothes too? Like the one you design now?”
“Uhmm, actually… I just happen to got some ideas with clothes. I guess that it is interesting to make this cute packaging, so people can be… uh- interested”.
“I see…”, Zhongli then stood straight up again, and then he held Xingqiu’s packaging prototype, “You know, Xingqiu. You have a good reason to be here… and I think you got the talent to back it up”. Zhongli then brought up the packaging eye-leveled with him, he then circled the box around, and then he looked at Xingqiu, “But you know what’s wrong with this?”
Xingqiu suddenly shivered down to his feet, he then swallowed his own mouth and said, “Huh…?”
“How to open this?”, Zhongli then gave the prototype to his owner, Xingqiu. He then looked at his own work with a confusing look.
“Well… it- it… It should be opened with a scissor”, Xingqiu then lost for words.
Zhongli then smirked, “You must be bold to presume I brought a scissor with me. Sure I am a lecturer, but what if I’m don’t have it with me?”
“I… This packaging should be opened at the house. As for… uh- people to… appreciate this”, Xingqiu himself does not know what he was saying, but he knew that he had screwed himself up.
Zhongli then took one of the prototypes beside his laptop, what seems like a simple hexagonal box with a colorful design dominated by broken white with gold color. Zhongli then inhaled his breath before he said, “You know, what you did with your ‘design’ is unique. But for me, that is not a design. That is ‘art’”.
Zhongli then gave the hexagonal box to Xingqiu and said, “This looks like a simple box. With nothing special about it. But it answers a simple problem at hand”,
Zhongli then opened up the box with a ribbon pull just below it, and it just slid up to open, easily. He then gave it to Xingqiu, and as he held it and opened the box, Xingqiu can feel the opened up like a feather, simple and easy. But then the box doesn’t fall off to the other side, it was being held by another ribbon inside that made the box open up to 90-degrees, and no more than that.
“What Albedo just done is he create a simple mechanism to solve a simple problem: Open the box wherever we want, and close it down again”, Zhongli then closed down his laptop, as he said, “Mr. Xingqiu, in graphic design, we love to make some project as our own goal. With our own idealist, we can create something that is very outstanding. But we always trapped by that, and that makes our work, ‘an art.’”
“The thin line between design and art, is that in design we have to solve a problem”, Zhongli then pointed out Albedo’s prototype design, “And that, is a great design”.
Xingqiu was left perplexed. He looked at Albedo’s design on his hand with awe but at the same time, he felt a burning sensation in his stomach as he put down the design to Zhongli’s table.
“Mr. Xingqiu, I would love to teach you about design more. But for this project, you only have a week left, unfortunately”, Zhongli then gathered the student’s prototype submissions on top of his closed laptop, along with Xingqiu’s. “I need you to pick up the pace. You have a bad history of late submission two projects before, and if you’re late on this one: I don’t think you can pass this semester”.
Again, Xingqiu felt he was out of breath, hearing that sentence. All he could do is looking at Zhongli with blank eyes as he said, “Good afternoon, and don’t forget to have lunch”, left the classroom, and disappeared into the corner.
Xingqiu came into a communal space of the college. He dropped the sketch, the pen, and his bag onto the table as he groaned and closed his eyes in defeat. He only had a week to go to finish the task, and he hasn’t even finished his sketch. He has to march through the visual, the printing, and the assembly part, all in just a week.
This left Xingqiu on the brink of panic, as he tried to compose himself by sitting down and taking a deep breath as he felt a cold air of winter to feel his heavy lungs, to feel the cold air rushes through his blood and giving him a peace of mind.
But when he opened his eyes, he saw to his right a group of people gathered at another table. As he saw Kazuha, Gorou, Kokomi, and lastly, Albedo. The group was just about to leave the table, marking that they had already gathered in that place for a long time, which Xingqiu didn’t notice their presence.
As they took their leave, Albedo looked at Xingqiu with a smile and nodded to him as they took the stairs and leave the communal space.
Xingqiu doesn’t know this, but right at that moment, he felt a desire to be better. The need to show his talent is well enough to beat a simple packaging design like that. Even Zhongli himself agreed that Xingqiu belonged here, and Xingqiu wanted justice for his art to be shown to the world, by beating everyone and achieving the highest score in the class.
THOUSANDSARROWS Present
OUT OF THE BOX
