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The Yin and the Yang is a symbol for the two counter-acting forces that encompass all aspects of life. In it's most simple form, good and evil. Yin is an elegant and poised ballet dance, a test of skill and light-footedness as you make your way across the wooden floorboards on the tips of your toes, the moonlight through the windows cheering you on and cascading onto your confident form as you strike you final pose. Yang, on the other hand, is closer to a wild, muddy trench in the heart of a warzone, the sun practically screaming at you as it claws your eyes out with it's blinding light while you're still attempting to ignore the choking smell of death all around. So, you know, less pleasant. But, what if it could be different? Why can't Yang mean something less... crude? Something with a more lighthearted tone, like a lion cub playfighting with it's siblings or those stupid prank war videos on Youtube. Mischievous and free, not this plain and meaningless evil. However, I think I'm going to be stuck as that for as long as I live, like a big fat stamp on my forehead. Woopity doo.
I may have been taking notes from some of Yin's writings (*cough cough* I directly quoted from it) to write that passage. I set the journal down on my bed and stand up, absentmindedly staring at the incoherent scribbles along the walls and taped messy sketchings, a stark contrast to our clean and copy-paste hotel room. Come to think of it, I wonder what Yin is up to right now.
I open my eye into the main lobby of the hotel, where Yin is lying on the ground, precariously stacking a house of cards, but quickly pauses as I take over my half.
"Yang, I need my other eye for this. I need the depth perception or I'm going to place a card wrong and send it all toppling again," Yin groaned.
"Maybe you just suck at stacking cards, I mean, don't we have anything better to be doing then dumb card houses?"
He sighed, "We're never given anything to do, just yesterday OJ told me he doesn't trust me to help out, and these days you're barely outside your room. What might you be doing in there that's so much more important than, you know, real life?"
"It doesn't matter! Why don't we play video games or something? Beats listening to you complain all day," I huffed, getting up from the floor.
Yin stopped me, "I'm not sure they'll let us. You aren't the easiest to get along with-" he says, but I interject, "Jeez, it's not gonna kill us to just tell them to give us a controller, will it?"
"Fine, but we are going to ask, not tell." I groaned, but he continued, "And I'm doing the talking, so zip it."
I could feel Yin's social anxiety—and let me tell you it is not pleasant—as we walked up to the couch where Paintbrush, Knife, and Balloon were playing on the TV. Paintbrush looked up as we approached, then promptly frowned, "What's up?"
"Um, could we play?" Yin asked, fiddling nervously with one hand. I clenched my fist at my side.
Paintbrush shifted in their seat, leaning forward on the plush fabric armrest, "Listen, Yin-Yang, we've been over this. It's nothing personal against you, but you're... a hazard. I'm still kinda annoyed at you from when you almost caused us to lose the cooking challenge.” They gestured for Balloon and Knife to pause the game. “That’s not the point though, the point is… you’re not fun to be around, not to mention painfully unpredictable. One moment you’re threatening to murder us all, and the next you’re, what, building houses of cards? You’re impossible. You can’t expect everyone to be all buddy-buddy with you when you haven’t done anything to earn their trust. And don’t even get me started on-“
Tired of their bullshit, I cut them off, “No, don’t start. Here’s what you fail to comprehend. Yin and I are not the same, we do not act the same. But, you also see absolutely nothing but just “the good one” and “the evil one” or whatever, and that’s fucking stupid. And, don’t flatter yourself. I don’t want to be your friend. I think I would rather drown myself in lit gasoline. We’re just looking for something to do since most people around here treat us like another piece of furniture.” I sighed deeply, and oh so goddamn frustratedly.
Balloon spoke up first, “No, I think Painty’s right. The things you do can be a bit… uncalled for at times.”
“Wouldn’t you know.” I retorted, at which Balloon promptly frowned. Nevertheless, I continued, “And yet you still ridiculously, hilariously, miss the point. And that is that Yin and I are both different people. So there is no ‘you do this and then that’, there is ‘Yin does this and Yang does that’. We aren’t the same person, and it is so idiotic that it is this hard to get it through your thick ass skull.” And with that, I stomped out the room, making my point the whole way to the hotel room.
“Yang, what? Where did all this come from?”
I took a few moments to collect myself, still very much pissed off. The recent events are a hurricane of turmoil in my fucked up brain, and I’ve only got half of one. But, I guess today is as good as any to share said turmoil.“The reason I’ve been staying in my room so much is because I’ve been… drawing.”
“Huh? That’s unlike you.”
“Just, follow me.” I closed my eyes, and reopened them into my mess of a room. I looked around at the scribbled images ripped out of sketchbooks, the unevenly spaced, meaningless canvas paintings, the desk that was less of a desk and more of a pile of random objects, and smiled slightly. I opened the creaky scratched door and let Yin, standing on the other side, in.
“I’m not the best person with feelings, and stuff, so I thought, maybe, I could express them through art.” I walked over to my light wooden desk, sweeping away some of paintbrushes, pens, and other miscellaneous items, to reveal the drawing I think conveyed everything the best.
It was nothing special, truly. A grayscale sketch of two human brothers, one black-haired, one white-haired, facing away from us to look at each other.
Their hands were tied tightly together, but, they were holding each other’s hands nonetheless. Embracing the fact that they had been permanently bonded together.
Yin studied it for a while, smiling softly and rubbing his fingers across the charcoal marks along the smooth paper, analyzing each stroke, before looking up at me.
“I guess you and I aren’t so different after all.”