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Chapter 3: Fragments of Talent (2)
TL: Enuma ID
"What on earth is going on here?"
So-young started searching every corner of the place.
Under the blankets.
Between one blanket and the next.
Е ñ u m̊ ӓ. ї ď
The bottom of the bedding closet.
"Here too?"
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There was paper. Layers of it.
The bottom compartment of the wardrobe.
The edge of the floor covering.
Out of the room, under the bathroom sink.
Е̌ n umа̃. і̃d
"Here too?!"
Everywhere she opened, there was folded paper.
In the cramped room, So-young began unfolding the sheets.
They were all different sizes.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
The backs of flyers were wide; delivery slips were palm-sized. Calendar pages were thick; wrapping paper was crumpled.
Some sheets, when flipped over, showed fish price lists.
W̃е̄ b n̄ o v_e_l̀ E ň ù ma
She unfolded the first one.
A swirl.
A swirling sky drawn in crayon.
It was a drawing copied from Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night.'
It was crooked. The village was too big. The stars were all different sizes.
But the sky was turning. So-young's eyes spun along with it.
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The second sheet.
The same picture. But now there were two swirls. The village had shrunk.
The third.
A direction had emerged inside the swirl.
The fourth, the fifth, the sixth.
The same sky. The same stars.
Ӗ nu m а̀. і̌d
But every drawing was different.
The drawings had an order.
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And each one was better than the one before.
So-young's heart pounded.
She unfolded the sheets more and more slowly.
Because she was spending longer looking at each drawing.
Е n ǔm̂ã . i̇d́
After the crayon drawings came the colored pencil drawings.
The swirls had grain now. The lines grew finer, layering over one another, until a direction emerged.
Light was spreading around the stars.
"Ah..."
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Her hands began to tremble.
The next drawing. The next drawing. The next drawing.
Ӗ ǹum а̂
Repeating the same subject dozens of times, getting better sheet by sheet.
From the early crayon clumps, to the delicate grain of colored pencil, and then to the bleeding light of watercolor.
And it wasn't only the swirls.
There were alleys.
Alleys where light struck the walls.
Alleys where the sunlit side was a warm color and the shadow a cool one.
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There were aquariums.
Aquariums where light wavered through the water. Aquariums where light shattered on the scales of a fish.
There were stairs.
A narrow staircase climbing from the first floor to the second. The light coming down from above, the darkness below.
These were the things this child saw every day.
The things visible from the second floor of the Sashimi Restaurant.
Е̇ nûm а . i̊d̃
So-young's hand stopped.
A watercolor painted in a sketchbook caught her eye.
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It was an aquarium.
A fish in blue water.
The shape of the fish wasn't precise. A five-year-old had drawn it, after all.
No, maybe he's drawn the shape the way it wavers, mirrored in the water.
Ẃ е̄bnо v̌ е l Е̇ n ũm̆а
More than that, the water wasn't a single color.
The top was bright, catching the fluorescent light, and it grew darker toward the bottom.
The spots where light reflected off the fish's scales were dotted in white.
He had used the way watercolor paint bleeds. With the difference between heavily watered areas and lightly watered ones, he was rendering the depth of the water.
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A five-year-old not only understood the nature of his tools, he was applying it.
"...What is this."
Ё n u m̄ ӑ
So-young's voice shook.
So-young was a webtoon artist.
She had majored in comics in college. She worked digitally, but she knew the fundamentals of drawing.
Chiaroscuro, color sense, composition, perspective.
The things anyone who had been through the art college entrance exams learned.
Those fundamentals were in these drawings.
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Not precisely. Not systematically, either.
But he had drawn knowing. This child perceived light.
And no one had taught him.
So-young began laying the drawings out on the floor.
She arranged them in order of time.
The crayon swirls first.
Ē nũ ṁа̄.і̌ d
The colored pencil swirls next.
The watercolor swirls after that.
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The alley series. The aquarium series. The staircase series.
The drawings covered the floor of the cramped room.
Even so, she couldn't lay them all out.
So-young sat for a long while, surrounded by the drawings.
W̃.е bn̂ о̆ v̇е̄ l̃ Е ň ù m̄ а
In the corner of the room, Lee Jun was examining a new pastel set.
While his aunt tore through the room, he never once tried to stop her.
[...Finally.]
The Shadow whispered.
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[Finally. She's seen them.]
So-young looked at Lee Jun.
Ё n̄ ūm̌а. і̄ d
Lee Jun was still inspecting the pastels.
"Jun."
Lee Jun didn't lift his head.
"You drew all of these, didn't you?"
"..."
"Why did you hide them?"
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It wasn't an angry voice.
Lee Jun picked up one of the pastels.
Cobalt Blue.
Blue powder smudged his small hand.
"Because they're no good."
So-young looked down at the hundreds of drawings spread across the floor.
Ёṅ ù m̌a
She looked at Lee Jun again.
A five-year-old was gripping a blue pastel with a serious face.
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Telling her these were drawings that were no good.
So-young started to say something, then closed her mouth.
Instead she picked up one of the drawings. The watercolor of the aquarium.
"This, you split the depth of the water by color, right?"
Ẽ ǹ um̀.а̄
For the first time, Lee Jun looked at So-young.
"The top being bright and the bottom dark, you did that on purpose, right?"
Lee Jun gave the faintest nod.
"The white dots on the fish's scales too? That's light hitting them?"
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He nodded again.
So-young set the drawing down.
Ë n ũmа́. і d̃
Her hands were trembling.
"You did well. You drew it well."
Lee Jun's expression changed. Very faintly.
It was a puzzled face. Not the face of a child caught hiding his drawings, but the face of someone who'd heard something unexpected.
"Really, you drew it well."
Lee Jun looked at So-young, then lowered his eyes.
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He fiddled with the blue pastel in his hand.
[See! She said you drew it well! I told you so!]
The Shadow was dancing beside him.
It was the moment the Shadow's lifelong wish came true.
"...They're still no good. Not yet."
Even so, Lee Jun's stubbornness held.
Ѐ ñ ú m̌ ā.. ìd
So-young said nothing more.
Instead she left the room and went to the kitchen.
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Her older sister was plating jeon.
"Sis."
"What?"
So-young's voice was different from usual.
W̆ е b̂ n̊ õvе ĺ Е n u̇m а
"Come to Jun's room for a sec."
When the mother came into the room, drawings were spread across the floor.
More than a hundred of them, at that.
"Wh-what? What is all this?"
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"Jun drew them."
The mother looked around at the drawings on the floor.
Е̇ n̆ u.m̄ӓ
Colorful papers covered the floor.
"Where did they come from? This many?"
"Under the dresser, under the bedding closet, under the wardrobe, under the bathroom sink... he'd hidden them all."
The mother looked at her son.
In the corner of the room, Lee Jun was drawing something with a pastel. As if he had no interest in the conversation between his mother and his aunt.
"Hid them? Why?"
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"Says they're no good."
The mother picked up one of the drawings off the floor.
A swirl drawn in crayon.
"This... Jun drew this?"
"Yeah."
The mother set it down and picked up another. The colored pencil alley.
W̄е̃ bńӧ.v е l̇ _Еňu mà_
"This too?"
"Yeah."
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"..."
The mother knew nothing about art.
She couldn't even judge whether the drawings were good or bad.
But one thing she could tell.
Е n ûḿ a
That this isn't ordinary.
That a four- or five-year-old had drawn this much.
That he'd hidden all of it.
And that he was still drawing in the corner of the room.
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Jun was not ordinary.
"Sis, there's something I need to tell you."
Ŵѐb̂ n̊ ӧ v̆ е̇l Ӗ ñ u m̃ а̄
So-young's expression was serious.
To her sister, in an apron that smelled of the oil from frying jeon, So-young said it straight.
"This child, we can't leave him like this."
"...What are you talking about?"
"Jun needs a proper education. An art education. Not just any cram school, but with someone who can teach him the real thing. He needs to learn real art."
"Art...?"
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The mother's expression hardened.
Art. She might not know much, but it's a subject that costs a fortune.
It had been the same with So-young. How her little sister So-young, dead set on studying art, had fought with their mother.
In the end that stubbornness couldn't be broken. Their father went into debt to put his younger daughter through art school.
The money that went into So-young's art education was several times what an ordinary exam student cost.
It shook the family to its roots.
Еnu m̈ а. і d̀
It had affected her too.
When she married, there was no money from home to help. She'd had to start married life the hard way.
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She didn't hold a grudge, but it's true she'd felt let down by her parents.
And the preconception that art was a difficult, expensive subject had been etched deep into her as well.
And So-young, seeing her sister's face, understood what she was thinking.
So-young pointed at the drawings on the floor.
Wе̇ b n ö v̈ еl̂ Èň ūmá
"This isn't just a kid scribbling. This is..."
So-young was choosing her words.
She was someone who made her living as a webtoon artist.
She had plenty of good artists around her. Art college graduates, illustrators, animators.
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She'd seen plenty of people who drew well.
But this wasn't at the level of 'drawing well'.
W̄е b́ n о̄ v еl Е́ n ū_m а
This child was seeing.
Things others couldn't see.
The way color changed when light struck a wall.
The way light shifted with depth underwater.
The fact that within the swirls of the sky there were several currents.
The things no one figures out unless someone professionally trained takes them through it one piece at a time, Jun was grasping on his own.
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He knew them, though no one had taught him.
And he was drawing them.
For two years. Alone. Every day. In secret.
Right now So-young felt as if she'd opened Da Vinci's secret drawer.
"This is... this is talent, Sis. Talent not just anyone can have. Talent some people long for their whole lives and never get."
The mother didn't answer.
W еb̀ nо̌ v ӗl̂ Еn_um a.
A sound of oil spitting came from the kitchen. The jeon was burning.
The mother ran for the kitchen.
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So-young stayed in the room.
Lee Jun was drawing something with a pastel.
The Cobalt Blue pastel was leaving soft powder across the paper.
A swirl.
Е́ n̆u.m̀ а . і́ d̄
Another swirl.
Lee Jun drew.
Whether his aunt was watching or not.
So-young took out her phone and began photographing the drawings spread across the floor.
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One by one. In order of time.
These drawings needed someone to look at them.
Ĕ.ň umå
Not her, but someone who could see them properly. Someone who knew art.
A cram school teacher. College classmates. Senior colleagues. Established webtoon artists. An art college professor.
A whole string of people passed through her head.
So-young landed on one of them.
A professor whose special lecture she'd sat in on once, back in her university days.
He was famous among the students as an oddball. Sharp, cynical, and foul-mouthed.
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But that man's paintings were the real thing.
One study he'd shown for a moment during that lecture had stayed in So-young's memory.
In his youth, they said, he'd been a genius painter who took on the world. He would even talk, half-mocking himself, about his lot now, reduced to giving the odd special lecture at an art college.
Someone who knew real painting.
As she took the photos, So-young thought.
That this child needed someone like that. Not a fake like herself, called an artist off some paltry knack. This child needed someone who could show him real painting.
Ё numа̌ .i.d
From the corner of the room came the sound of Lee Jun's pastel sliding across the paper.
Scritch, scritch.
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The sensation the pastel gave was wondrous.
The feeling of it crumbling in his hand and the color sinking into the sketchbook.
The sense of drawing it himself, by his own hand, was even stronger than with crayon.
[Your aunt is taking pictures.]
Е n u mȧ .i d̊
The Shadow whispered.
[She's going to show them to someone.]
Lee Jun didn't answer.
The hand holding the pastel didn't stop.
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The excited Shadow babbled on without pause.
[Finally!
W̄.ӗbn ōv̊е̌ ĺ Е nú ṁ à
Finally there's going to be someone who recognizes you!
And maybe they'll recognize me too.
Ah! What do I do?
What if they dissect me alive? Aaagh!]
For just an instant, Lee Jun's hand stopped.
Then it moved again.
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The swirl turned on the paper.
Pastel powder scattered between Lee Jun's fingers.
Cobalt Blue.
It was the blue closest to the sky in the magazine painting.
It still wasn't enough.
But whether his aunt took pictures or not, whether she showed them to someone or not.
Wëbnо̀ v̂ еl Е̌ n ú m̆а̀
That wasn't what mattered to Lee Jun.
'This time I can draw it better.'
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The sense of being able to do anything that a new tool gives.
Joy was welling up in the small hand that gripped the pastel.
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