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Ryuji didn't understand art.
Like he wasn't one of those people who hated art, calling it useless or a waste of time. Hell, he knew people would say the same about his love for running. Different folks had different passions.
But at the same time he felt like he could never really….appreciate it on the same level Yusuke did. No matter how many galleries and museums Kitagawa took him to, Ryuji just sorta stared at it. Yusuke's explanations and flowery prose always went over his head. This one was no different. A small gallery in Shibuya was opening up a new exhibition by a solo painter. Yusuke and some other Kosei students were fortunate enough to attend. With Ryuji as his plus one, he dragged the blonde across the city to visit it.
“Is there like…anything to do around there?” Ryuji sighed. Trying to keep up with his very excited boyfriend “like, i dunno, anything that’s not a gallery…?”
“There is a very nice bookstore a few shops down from the gallery. Though they mostly specialize in…academic books.”
Ryuji huffed. Jesus, at this point Yusuke might as well have called him a dumbass.
“Ugh, I’ll just stay in the gallery.”
It sucked really. Because it’s not like Ryuji actively disliked the experience. It just never really clicked. The people were fine, the art was fine, and classy music and wine glasses were fine. Yusuke fit in perfectly with these sorts of folks. Recognizing one of his classmates amidst the crowd and going up to them.
“Oh Ryuji, there are refreshments over there, if you so desire.”
Well hey, he can’t turn down free food.
It was nothing more than some little cheese cubes and grapes. Giving himself a generous portion before taking his place on a bare wall of the gallery. Propped up with a toothpick in his hand, chomping on little bits of fruit without second thought.
Across the gallery, he spotted Yusuke chatting up a woman. She was dressed head to toe in flowing white, the fabric hanging from her frame in loose, elegant layers. Silver chains and tiny metal studs caught the gallery lights whenever she moved. Her blood-red hair was the only real splash of color on her, made all the more striking by her almost ghost-like complexion. Geeze. These art folks. You never really knew what they were going to look like.
Yusuke, naturally, seemed completely absorbed in the conversation, gesturing animatedly toward one of the paintings as he explained some point Ryuji was certain he would never understand. With Yusuke thoroughly preoccupied, Ryuji decided to meander around on his own. He moved from painting to painting, trying to figure out exactly what these people were so interested in. The paintings were nice. At least, he thought they were nice. A little unsettling, though.
Most of them were enormous watercolors, far too large for any ordinary frame, depicting flowers and plants in environments Ryuji could only describe as liminal. Places that looked almost familiar until you stared at them for more than a few seconds. Then the wrongness started to creep in. The shadows never quite lined up with the objects casting them. Backgrounds were too sterile, too empty, as if the paintings had been stripped of every sound that should have existed within them. There were no birds in the trees. No insects around the flowers. No wind. Just silence. One painting showed roses bent low at the stem, their blossoms hovering over a perfectly still pool of water. Each flower seemed to be staring down into its own reflection as if contemplating something just beneath the surface. Another depicted pinecones scattered around the broken, dying stem of an evergreen. The needles were painted in shades of gray-green, brittle and desaturated, while the surrounding earth looked almost unnaturally clean.
Ryuji shuddered. Something about looking at them for too long made him feel wrong. Not scared, exactly. Just...off. Like he was standing somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. He quickly moved on.
Looking around the space, Ryuji noticed that nearly everyone else seemed to have paired off. Small clusters of people stood in front of the enormous images, discussing them in hushed voices. Some gestured toward particular details while others simply stood with their arms folded, nodding thoughtfully. Most of them were exactly what he'd expected: slightly stuffy, slightly eccentric art students and artists and people Yusuke had apparently known for years. There was one guy in a hat whom Ryuji almost overlooked entirely. Almost. He took another glance.
Then stopped dead. That face. That scruffy hair flattened beneath the baseball cap. That goatee. No way.
Ryuji squinted. “...Junpei Iori?”
The man turned around, momentarily caught off guard by the recognition. Then his expression broke into a grin.
“Oh, hey!”
Ryuji stared. The slugger of the year. The ace player himself. Junpei Iori, standing in the middle of an art gallery like he belonged there. He was dressed surprisingly casually, a plain cotton T-shirt hanging over a pair of sweatpants, with a baseball cap pulled low over his scruffy hair. Around his neck was a silver chain, and hanging from it was a small charm. A dog tag. A rose was engraved into the metal.
“Didn't expect anybody to recognize me here,” Junpei said with a laugh.
Ryuji blinked a few times before recovering. “Oh, nah, nah. I get it. My boyfriend dragged me here.” He lowered his voice and glanced across the gallery to make sure Yusuke wasn't listening. “I didn't know you were an art type, though. You like this kinda stuff?”
“Oh!” Junpei's cheeks immediately turned pink. “My wife is the artist.” Ryuji raised an eyebrow, and Junpei's grin widened. “I'm here to support her. I'm so dang proud of my Chidori.” His face flushed so red that Ryuji briefly wondered if the guy had been drinking.
“She’s the artist?” Ryuji glanced toward the paintings surrounding them. “Wow. She’s crazy talented.”
“I know.” There wasn't even a hint of hesitation in Junpei's response. He looked down at the soda can in his hand and gave it a slow little swirl. “Art's always been her way of dealing with things. She never really wanted to sell or show her art. For the longest time, she just painted because...” He shrugged. “I dunno. It was hers, I guess. But people really liked it. So she went with it.”
Ryuji nodded, though he wasn't entirely sure what to say. The two of them stood quietly for a moment before Ryuji's attention settled on another painting. It was smaller than the others, easily overlooked among the enormous canvases surrounding it, but it carried the same strange energy. A single plum blossom branch stood upright beneath a glass cloche. Its thin stem bent slightly beneath the weight of the blossoms, the delicate petals painted in pale pinks and whites. They looked like they were struggling to breathe. Around the base of the cloche lay wilted lotus flowers, each one rendered in a different stage of decay. Some had only begun to brown at the edges. Others had collapsed entirely, their petals curling inward and sinking toward the ground.
Ryuji frowned. “...I'll admit, man, I've never understood art.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Like, my boyfriend's so passionate about it and I just...” He sighed. “I never really got it.”
Junpei was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed. “Honestly? I felt kinda the same way. Until I actually saw her makin' this stuff.”
Ryuji looked at him. Something changed in Junpei's expression as his eyes settled on the plum blossom. The easy smile disappeared. His shoulders lowered, and before Ryuji could figure out what was happening, Junpei's eyes began to glisten.
“...I remember her painting this one.” He swallowed. “It was the first night she could go back home after having our baby. She was born early. Really early.” His voice had gone quieter. “She was struggling. Anemia. Respiratory stuff. All kinds of things. Just...a lot.” He gave a humorless little laugh. “You don't know how much it hurts to see your baby go through that.”
Ryuji didn't interrupt.
“...We only went home to get some decent sleep. Both of us hadn't slept properly the whole week.” His fingers tightened around the can. “I stayed up late tossing and turning. Couldn't shut my brain off. Kept thinking about her. Wondering if she was okay. And Chidori...” He gestured toward the painting. “...she made this.”
Ryuji stared at it. Really stared. He stepped closer. For the first time since he'd entered the gallery, he wasn't looking at the painting because he was trying to understand what made it good. He was looking because Junpei had told him what it meant, and suddenly, he could see everything. The grain of the paper. The layering of the watercolors. The places where the pigment had settled heavily into the fibers and the places where it had thinned into almost nothing. He noticed the faint variations in color, the careful washes layered over one another to create shadows that weren't really shadows.
Then he noticed something else. Tiny, pale circles scattered across the background. Ryuji leaned closer. They weren't part of the painting. They were barely visible beneath the layers of blue and gray.
Teardrops that had fallen onto the paper while the artist worked.
Ryuji's eyes widened. He slowly straightened.
“Our daughter's name is Umeko,” Junpei said.
Ryuji glanced at him.
“Plum blossom.” Junpei smiled faintly. “My wife picked that one out. One of the nurses joked that she looked like a little sour plum, so we just kinda went with it. Not like we had any names prepared before she was born. Didint have time to.”
Ryuji looked back at the painting, and suddenly, it was like someone had turned on a light in a room he'd been standing in all night. Everything he'd been seeing was still there: the cloche, the flowers, the decay, the strange, sterile darkness. But now he understood it.
The plum blossom wasn't dying. It was struggling to bloom.
It was trapped beneath the glass, unable to breathe, but the glass was also protecting it. Keeping it separate from the wilted, rotting flowers surrounding it. The background wasn't simply dark. It was blue. A particular kind of blue. Cold. Sterile. The unmistakable blue of a hospital room beneath fluorescent yellow lights.
The lotus flowers weren't merely dead. And the glass cloche...It wasn't a prison. Not entirely.
It was protection. A barrier between something impossibly delicate and a world that could hurt it. The plum blossoms were pale, but they weren't gone. They were alive. Still fighting. Still trying to open. He could imagine their baby, their plum blossom.
Ryuji stared at the tiny tear stains scattered across the paper. For once, he didn't feel like he was missing something. He didn't need to understand the technique. Didn't need to know the right words to describe the composition or the use of negative space or whatever the hell Yusuke would have called it.
He understood this…A mother had been terrified. Her baby had been sick. And she'd sat down in the middle of the night, unable to do anything else, and poured every bit of that fear and love onto a sheet of paper.
Ryuji's throat tightened “...Man.”
Junpei gave a quiet laugh through his nose. “Yeah.”
Ryuji looked at him. “That's what you meant?”
Junpei nodded. “That's what I meant.” He looked back at the plum blossom. “After I saw her painting it, I finally understood. Didn't matter if I understood art.” He tapped the soda can against his palm. “I understood her.”
“…is she ok?”
“Hm?”
Ryuji looked to Junpei “Umeko, did she end up alright?”
Junpei laughed “ah she’s doing great now. She’s at a park down the street” he smiled “a little firecracker just like her ma.”
Speak of the devil, Chidori herself appeared besides him. Smiling before leaning in for a kiss. Junpei looked like he was going to explode from sheer affection.
“Enjoy the rest of the night man, if you ever come to a game sometime, I’ll make sure to give you a wave.” Junpei left with a wink and a smile, walking in tow with his wife. Leaving Ryuji in front of the painting.
He didn't dare move until Yusuke approached him. A cold hand trailing up his back as the bluenette looked into the painting.
“Hm, I see you’ve finally found a piece that speaks to you” he said “is someone finally acquiring an understanding for the arts?”
“….i guess so.”