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She was grace. She stood in a field of tall grass, the skirt of her cherry blossom-pink dress carried away by the wind as she stood holding a single chrysanthemum in her hand. She smiled a great and toothy smile; her eyes were closed and her summer hat sit atop the pool of silken locks that traversed all the way to her lower back. It looked like she was beholding someone she cared deeply about, or was given a most-auspicious gift and was overjoyed at the occasion.
Illuminated by the carefully-arranged lighting, the painting figuratively towered over Yushiro’s form as his hand reached outwards to it. Hundreds of years of memories found their vitality and powered through the banality of his own solitude for but an instant, submerging his soul in a warmth that felt more like a pale imitation of the real thing – a copy that he somehow knew to be so.
That painting was always his favorite. It was also his last. Upon the completion of that final masterpiece, renowned for its eerily-lifelike resemblance (even in comparison to the greater body of his work) and for its painstakingly-detailed background features, he simply disappeared. Many people wondered aloud the sudden vanishing of the mysterious artist, this Mr. Yamamoto, whose work had the impact of a meteor crashing into the Earth yet himself had the presence of a temple mouse. No one ever received their answers: Who was he? Why did he paint this woman? Who was this woman? Such questions were taken to his proverbial grave, lost to the currents of time and never to be answered.
That was just over a hundred years ago; the world had moved on and so had he, in a certain sense of the phrase. In the literal centuries that comprised his existence, he had seen countless people live out their lives, expire and leave him behind. He lived out his days even more reclusive than he had before, connections to his contemporaries were both vague and weak.
Recently, his body had transformed and degenerated back into its human condition. Yushiro was mortal again, as evidenced by his hair as black as ravens’ feathers and that general feeling of impotence one surely harbors after sampling a taste of pure strength and being robbed of it thereafter. He was alone and he was going to die, at some point at least. Maybe another sixty, seventy, eighty years, but his time was coming to an end. A literal lifetime for most, but it was the blink of an eye for someone who’d lived as long as Yushiro had.
He frowned and narrowed his eyes, then looked at the tiled floor beneath his feet. He had been alive for so long, he sometimes found it difficult to feel any sort of deep emotion, to feel any semblance of passion for anything concerning the present. As the planet kept spinning and turning and as the people around him gave way to their succeeding generations, he felt that weakly human side of him ebb more and more and more. Increasingly unable to relate to those around him, he learned to accept that there was an emptiness inside of him that could not so easily be fixed.
Yet he also felt lost in that moment. A body long lost now returned to him, a vulnerability now restored. He found himself at odds with what to do with himself, how to move forward.
As inevitable as the sun rising from the east and setting in the west, he tried to make himself feel something by thinking more about the one his mind always remembered. He thought about the person who he couldn’t bring himself to forget, even if he wanted to… but even then, very little seemed to want to surface in that moment. All he felt were echoes of the past, the echo of a dead soul – of a dead world. His world.
Yushiro constantly wondered if he had truly died in spirit all those years ago, if his long life had been an exercise in perpetuating a pointless existence. He couldn’t ever have hoped to grow old and die off with all other people, they had all left him and he was left to carry on their memory. There had been times where he entertained taking his own life – walking out into the sun and letting himself be vaporized – so that he could accelerate his inevitable fate. Yet as soon as he would think such things, another voice would scream and yell and shout at him for daring to do so. Call it stubbornness, the debt he felt or the sheer will to live, but he always prevented himself from following those thoughts through. After all, to let himself die would be to spit in the face of the one who saved him to begin with.
He had undoubtedly left a legacy behind; this place was only one of many exhibitions showing his work. But such grand gestures and statements left him feeling cold, and his stomach and chest collapsed in on themselves at the idea that it was a hollow victory. His brush and paints had connected with the hearts and minds of many, but…
Yushiro shook his head and turned around, putting his back to his last and most glorious bout of creative inspiration. For some reason, he thought it would be his final visit. He even briefly entertained the idea of speaking to the painting as if it was some representation of a disembodied spirit that he could communicate with. He thought about telling his own work about his condition, how he had reclaimed his humanity, before wishing it goodbye forever. But it all seemed so futile and pointless. As usual, he was overthinking his plight; he was alive and healthy, and had the privilege of remembering. That was all that mattered, surely.
He put his hands into the pockets of his black jacket and began to walk towards the door. His mind racing with a succession of random thoughts, he almost failed to notice that there was another person admiring another painting in another corner of that gallery dedicated entirely to his craftsmanship. He turned his head to see a woman staring intently at the wall. Viewing her from the side, it took him perhaps a split-second to recognize the silhouette and the hair and the eyes and the hands that covered her mouth in an effort to muffle that gently-weeping voice.
And when he did recognize all of that, pure, physical shock broadsided his own body; his limbs visibly trembled, his heartbeat grew faster and a shiver convulsed his spine as he audibly gasped and goosebumps formed on every visible part of his skin. The echo of his dead world pulsated and writhed with life once more – those cherished memories from so long ago were born anew. Against his better judgment, for the first time in what may as well have been an eternity, Yushiro felt something. Something other than loneliness or emptiness, because that hole in his heart where love was meant to go was slowly filling up again.
Once the shock had subsided, it took him every single ounce of effort he had in him to not break down into the most intense barrage of tears in his life. Forgetting to breathe and blink and move, he stared at this woman who appeared to be something of a ghost of his past. But Yushiro was not born yesterday; he was nothing if not seasoned, because his hundreds of years of life experience manifested in his emotions being swept away as if by the morning tide. The feeling of lead in feet quickly evaporating, he slowly began to walk towards her as she trembled and tried to fight back her own tears all the while. He reached out with his hand in offering, a remarkably neutral yet warm expression on his face.
“Excuse me, miss,” he asked with a voice a few octaves higher than it normally was, “are you all right? You look upset.”
At the first syllable of that utterance, her head snapped around to meet him and he could see the mist in those pearled, purple eyes, the wrinkles in her forehead and how her own body swayed with a feeling he genuinely didn’t see often in most people. It was only for a moment, but he could see it: Yushiro knew that this woman was experiencing a deep, pronounced feeling. And not just any sort of feeling, but the sort which transcends lives and ages and time itself. This woman may not have known the true reasoning for her profound depth of emotion, but her soul certainly did.
She took her hands away from her mouth and began to wipe her eyes. Her mouth contorted into a trembling smile and she laughed, perhaps in an effort to wash away her own display of sorrow – the deep emotion that Yushiro had seen as a fleeting flash in her eyes had just as quickly disappeared.
“Yes,” her voice trembled, “I’m all right, thank you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t usually let myself get swept up like that, but… the painting…”
She used her right hand to point at the wall while the other still wiped the tears away from her cheeks, and Yushiro turned his neck to see the painting in question: A woman, whose hair was bound by a pearled hairpin, was laughing and cradling gently the crown of roses, peonies, and morning glories atop her own head. Seeing that work again made his heart skip a beat or two, and he swelled with even more emotion.
He turned back to look at his companion, her tears had been fully expelled and she simply gave a light smile.
Yushiro cleared his throat. “Yes, it’s, um… it’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“It’s so... beautiful, I’ve never seen anything like it. I was told by my friends to come here because they kept telling me I looked like the lady in this artist’s paintings. I thought they were joking at first, but it’s almost like I’m looking at a bunch of photographs of myself. But they’re all so beautiful… they all look so real.”
Sensing an opening, Yushiro began to speak. “That’s funny, because… I came here because I was told that I have the same name as this artist.”
“Oh?” Her smile broadened; the mist in her eyes completely disappeared as she looked at him, her countenance transforming into that of formal friendliness. “Your name is Yushiro, then?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“I see. Isn’t it funny? Life is so strange, so many of these peculiarities and coincidences. Or maybe something deeper, I don’t know. Oh, do forgive me, I’m thinking out loud again like I always do. My mother and sisters always berated me for that.”
“No! No, no, no,” Yushiro raised his hands and laughed – a seldom-felt warmth slowly filling his chest, “don’t apologize, I understand exactly what you mean. I find it funny myself, you know. Life is full of these happy little coincidences.”
The woman hummed in approval before looking back at the painting. She pulled at the collar of her purple sweater and circled her neck – her hair pooling and flowing in the exact same way as it did in his final masterpiece on the other side of the gallery. After observing, admiring, appreciating the beauty of the piece in front of them for a few more moments, she began to speak again.
“You know, I was reading some of the plaques about this Yushiro Yamamoto. They said nobody knew why he spent over forty years painting this woman, this ‘Tamayo’. They say he never did a single interview and he... that he was apparently… err… very aggressive towards any member of the press that tried to probe his mind. They gave up after a while, because he would shoot his rifle at them if they got too close. Can you believe that?”
Yushiro shrugged whilst remembering the antique hunting rifle gifted to him by a very old and dear friend. “Maybe he just wanted to be left alone. Maybe he was one of those artists who wanted his work to do all the talking, and found the notion of promoting himself through overly-long and gratuitous interviews too self-indulgent and distracting from the work itself. Maybe he himself just didn’t want to become famous.”
“Maybe,” she sighed, “maybe. Not a single photograph of him exists, yet he was so prolific. I read he made over a thousand paintings… I can’t fathom how a human being could do so much – and for forty years. Most people just couldn’t be able to do something like that, and for such a huge portion of their life. Say, what do you think is the reason behind that? Do you think she was his wife? Do you think he was painting her portrait?”
He felt a tinge of pain in his stomach at those words, so innocent yet so hurtful. He found himself mourning a life that never existed except for in the fleeting imagination of this woman and in his deep yet distant dreams.
He shook his head. “I… I don’t think so. If he had a wife and was happily married, I don’t think he would’ve... spent so much time doing those paintings, right? He would've been living his life with her. In my experience, people who create lots and lots of art… they tend to be a bit lonely.”
The woman’s smile disappeared. “Hmm… that’s a good point,” she then turned to face him again, “then… who do you think this woman was to him, just a figment of his imagination? Or do you think she was real, somehow?"
Yushiro took a few steps forward and inspected the painting far closer than ever before. He paid particular attention to the shape of the lips, the flush of the cheeks and how her eyes were closed – it looked like she was about to burst into tears of joy at any moment, her face so flushed with happiness that it was agony to look at again.
“I don’t think she was a figment of his imagination. Looking at these paintings, I think she must have been real. I think she was someone extremely important to him, someone who meant the world to him – possibly even the one true love of his life. Maybe she felt the same way… or maybe not, but it probably didn’t matter to him. I think maybe… she could have been someone who he lost, and that it was a wound that never fully healed for him after all that time. I think he carried this pain with him for the rest of his life, but didn’t want to forget or let himself forget this wonderful person who meant so much to him. I think he wanted to tell everyone, in whatever way he could, how important she was to him… he wanted to let the world remember her alongside him. I think this Yushiro Yamamoto wanted to keep her alive in his heart for as long as he could and wanted to immortalize her in some way… no matter how difficult it may have been at times.”
The gallery was haunted by an uncanny silence; Yushiro, a brief moment or two after his monologue, turned around to be greeted by the sight of this woman pensively looking to the floor with her shoulders slumped. He smiled and scratched the back of his head.
“At least,” he continued, “that’s what I think. I could be wrong; I’ve never been the smartest when it comes to art and paintings… and such. We’ll never know for sure, anyway. He’s been dead for over a hundred years.”
He saw her feign a shallow smile. “True enough. But… if I were this special person, I would feel so upset that he never found it in himself to move on… to find happiness for himself. I can’t imagine spending so much time dedicating my life to someone who’s not even alive. That just seems like a really heartbreaking existence to me. Wouldn’t that have been so sad and lonely for him…?”
Yushiro’s eyes began to sting at the woman’s expression of sorrow. Not knowing what else to do, he looked over his shoulder to the painting, noted the sheer joy in her face, then embraced the wellspring of fond memories that came with it. For that was his true secret: Yushiro based every painting, even if in only some small way, on a happy memory he had of her.
He wiped his eyes with his forearm and looked back at the woman.
“I mean, there were probably loads of times where he felt a little bit lonely, but he did it for forty years. I think it truly made him happy, even if he had to live with some sadness. Look at the brushstrokes, the details he put into every part of her face – he poured his soul into this. That woman must have been very special to him, he must have cherished the memory of her and used them to make such beautiful art for everyone else to enjoy. I don’t think he would have regretted it for a single moment. There was love in every single piece he did, I can feel it.”
He noticed her putting both of her hands over her chest, the palms of her hands flattening against the purple sweater. She then intently gazed at the painting, at that mysterious woman with her crown of flowers and joy-laced expression as if she recognized it in some way. She then took a few steps back, raised her eyebrows and beamed.
“Your version of the story is so sad, but… there’s some comfort in there, somewhere. Don’t you agree? Love is strange. You can feel so much sorrow that someone you care about has passed away, but you’ll never truly be alone if you keep them in your memory forever. The unconditional love he held for her… he must have felt very privileged to know her. If you’re right, I’d like to think they’ll see each other again in the next life, if there is one. And maybe they can become close.”
Yushiro blinked and let out an amused grunt, barely able to conceal the great sense of irony he felt.
“I’m sure they will... even if they won’t know it.”
She smiled and nodded – a veritable facsimile of one of his paintings. But then her lips went into a soft o-shape at her social faux pas.
“Oh! Please forgive my lack of manners. I’m Junko, I run a florist not too far from here. It’s nice to meet you, Yushiro.”
Perhaps getting a bit ahead of himself, Yushiro gave a little bow – for the first time in many, many years, he harbored the feeling of excitement. “The pleasure’s mine, Junko.”
He reached forward and was about to offer to shake her hand, but a rather pronounced rumbling of his own stomach made him withdraw, and then his face went ghostly-white. He made an expression like he’d been forced to eat a thousand sour limes and lowered his head in shame.
“I’m so sorry…” Yushiro whispered.
Junko giggled and extended out her arm to pat him on the shoulder – the physical contact, a rare occurrence for him, made him flinch at first.
“You’re hungry? I don’t blame you, it’s already past 6:00 p.m.”
“Yeah,” he grinned to himself and nodded, “I guess I am kind of hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
As he looked up at her smiling face, Junko tapped his hand and used her eyes to gesture to the exit. “Say, I know a good ramen place somewhere nearby. My dad always says that a hearty bowl of that stuff can help you feel better no matter what, and I don’t have it in me to cook at the moment. Want to come with me? I’ll pay.”
“Uh, s-sure! And uhh…”
Junko raised her eyebrow as Yushiro scratched the back of his head. “Yes?”
“I… I was just thinking,” he looked away from her for just a moment and blushed, until he mustered up the courage to continue with a loud inflection, “to show my thanks, I-I-I was wondering if… after we’re done, you’d uh…. maybe like to come back to my place with me for coffee and cake? You see, uh, I’ve been trying my hand at baking recently and I have some apple and almond cake at home! Y-you can meet my cat, too! I’m sure he’d appreciate the company!”
“Okay, then. I’d like that.” Junko’s smile widened, and she walked in front of him as if to show him the way. Silently ecstatic, Yushiro followed suit.
But then he was suddenly overcome with a sense of bittersweetness, like his old self had died and been reborn as well. The fear that he was leaving the memory of one behind in favor of another intruded upon his thoughts. He couldn’t tell if he was ready to walk away from the memory of the one he had kept in his heart for so long, only to get to know her all over again like they were starting anew.
As they headed to the exit, Yushiro looked over his shoulder one last time to the collective display of his decades of effort and talent. Every single painting smiled at him in a way which to his mind felt like a culmination – like his life and endeavors had all been leading to that exact moment in time where he walked away from that scene with this Junko woman, whom he had just met but seemed to singlehandedly get time moving for him again. His bittersweetness left him completely as he looked forward and walked.
Yushiro finally recalled a memory that he had blocked out from his mind until that very moment. He remembered what she said as she pushed a certain pearled hairpin right into his hand all those years ago, it all came rushing back to him like spring after a bitter winter.
I’ll always be with you.