"a real you? What do you mean by 'the real you'? and why? i don't understand"
Thomas Maxfield has received a strange painting during his working time at a museum as an art restoration expert and a museum archivist. However,things started too change...
"....omas? Thomas? Wake up Thomas!" I heard a voice calling me as I woke up. I lifted my head and saw the worker I met before receiving the painting. "Thank God you finally awake, I literally knocked on your door multiple times and you didn't answer!"
"Wait,what the..." I was shocked and quickly ran to my mobile phone. No way, that girl literally sent me back to the day I received that cursed painting! My deduction interrupted when the worker saw me rushed to my mobile "Oi oi oi oi oi, what are you doing? You just woke up and the first thing you do is to take a look at your phone?"
"Sorry, I just want to see how long I've slept."
"Know what, nevermind. I'm sure you're already tired so perhaps you want to take a day off or something? Ah just in time he's here." The conversation cut short as the museum curator, Albert Castillo walked into my studying room. "Ah there you are, what's the matter?" "I found Thomas aslept at his workpost, not sure if he's tired or something."
"In god's name, I'll never laze around a workplace, not even during break time!" I tried to reason with both, and thankfully my boss really listened to his workers. "It's ok, Thomas. I know it's hard for you to have a job while studying at the same time." I walked to the canvas and together, me and the worker put it on the easel, with the same condition, no strong light,no high temperature, and treated it like a royalty.
"In what reason you both treat the canvas like the servants serve their master?" Asked the curator, filled with curiousity. And of course, we gave out the same answer."Oh, I forgot to tell you about that sir. But first, maybe you can try and guess what's the painting about?"
"Hmmm....a painting of a beautiful maiden of a royalty perhaps? It's no surprise you treat the canvas that way"
"Exactly!" The worker continued "From what i heard, this Painting is about a girl wearing a blue flower. She's delicate, you know..." We both smiled proudly and turned back to the covered canvas to remove the sheets "now carefully....careful...."
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But this time, it revealed a terribly damaged canvas! The whole canvas was now covered with worn out paint and is totally white, as if the whole canvas has laid out too much liquid white on it, which damages the painting's quality. "Wait....whaaaaat?!" We both shocked at what we've seen. The boss looked at the canvas and turned to us, in which we panicked "I swear what I have is a portrait of the girl! It supposed to be a portrait of a creepy girl! She had that cool, cursed look on it! Sure it's old and worn out and all but it wasn't that pure white like this when I received it!"
"Yes,yes. I understand, you two don't have to be panicked. I can still see the structure of that portrait, see?" Said Albert as he walked to the canvas and pointed out the details of that damaged portrait. "Sure it's a portrait, but I'm afraid its quality is too bad for display. It must either be restored properly or worse, repaint."
"Argh, this stinks! We could have make a killing off of this!" The worker exclaimed with annoyance. "Oh well, them's the breaks then. Sorry, but could you get rid of it for me please?" He requested me for disposal but Albert shook his head in refusal.
"No, my friend. This portrait can still be restored. But if worse, it has to be repainted or disposed." He looked at me and gave me the look of encouragement. "I'm sure you can do it, Thomas." I nodded silently and with that,both left my studying room one by one.
"Don't worry, I'll pay you once you finished restoring the painting! I promise, I can even promote your paintings too. Anyway,see ya!" The worker left first, with the curator following behind him. He gave me a pat on my shoulder while looking at me. "You should take a day off after this time, you deserve to have one." With that,he let out a quick smile and left.
I took the canvas off the painting and tried restored it in various ways. The luck, this time, is not on my side today as the damage had worsen due to the already bad quality. In the end, I have no choice but to repaint the portrait, with the help of the sketch I drawn from my memory. It took me hours to finally fixed the painting and made it looked exactly the same as what i saw before and when it's finally done, it's already half past six. The sun was also setting, which I remembered one promised. I opened the window, placed the painting facing the window and left.
"Oh my, it's so bright!"a familiar voice rang from my studying room as I closed the door. I turned and stopped to listened carefully. "*sigh* how many times do I have to tell you? Strong light is bad for the canvas!" The voice went silent for a while and continued, it was then I recognise that voice. "You're an awful painter you know that? Though.... I looked pretty nice against the sunset!"
"Hee hee, I wonder....if he's watching" now I kneeled on the floor, as a broken young man as I cried grievously with my tears flow down my cheeks like a waterfall and dripped on the floor from my chin. Not because I didn't fullfil my responsibility on my job, because I felt helpless for that poor girl, for why she deserved to face such horrible fate of being a puppet. Such tender soul received such harsh destiny is one I couldn't expressed more to that, for I couldn't able to find a way to pray that poor girl truly rest in peace...
If only, the fate gave us the second chance.... A/n: finally, after almost 7 weeks of struggling, I've finally decided to publish it after the delay since the day I finished all 3 chapters during Halloween. Anyway, I've planned an aftermath so stay tuned, it'll be a surprise to behold!
