Tangent | Soukoku; AU [✔]

70 ➳ hat painting // n.c

it's been quite a significant time ever since the tournament ended. the trophy sits nicely in a glass case at the mafia's headquarters, shining in all of its glory. who would have known that the team will make it that far despite how unplanned and rushed our scouting were in looking for a support; yet here we are now, champions for the autumn season of the league, and will be competing in south korea in about a month for the asian tournament.

coach mori has given us the entire two-and-a-half weeks of break all to ourselves, and we should be returning to our usual training regime next week. the entire team had their own agendas after the celebratory party, rendering the league group chat quiet for some time -- save for the occasional sharing of random shit in the chat.

most importantly, i don't think we'll be able to reach this far as champions without the help of xyren, the mastermind of all plans. not even the mafia's analyst could come up with those without the support's help. i used to have so much reservations regarding having a woman in the team and i have judged her so much in the beginning. despite the many times that xyren had hurt my pride both as a pro player and a man, she has earned the respect of the organization for getting us the champions that we deserve.

which reminds me, i haven't seen or heard from xyren in a long ass while. she reads the chat, reacts to some pictures and messages, but that's about it. i wonder how she's doing now.

ah, right, i remembered that she sidelines as a freelance artist in yokohama. maybe the woman's catching up with her artistic side and giving her gaming side a break. as soon as i thought of that, my brain gave me an urge to give her a visit to her art stall downtown. hold on, why am i even thinking about her? i'm pretty sure that her absence and lack of participation with the team means that she wants to get some time away from league. heck, she hasn't even been playing since the tournament ended.

but that doesn't stop me from getting up my couch, take a shower, get dressed, and walk out of my house towards the art shop -- the most unsuspecting art shop in all of this city, ren's trash. it was just a few minutes walk from where i am, and it was near that cafe where we first met. i gave the cafe a side-eye, contemplating whether to get something for us, but i ended up shrugging it off and proceeded to the art shop.

the shop had a full glass window and doors, wherein you could see various finished canvasses displayed even from a distance. upon approaching the front, there was a simple brown table at the right side of the shop where xyren continues to do her work on a big notebook which i believe is called a sketch pad. there was also an unfinished canvas next to her, and a bunch of paint and brushes on the table.

i hesitantly pushed the handle that leads me inside the store. xyren stopped drawing and looked up to greet me with her shop spiel, probably.

"welcome to my shop, valued customer," she spat those words as enthusiastically as she could, probably the most enthusiastic i've heard her say. her eyes widened upon realizing who it was standing inside her shop. "oh, it's you, nakahara. what brings you here?"

welp, we're back with the 'nakahara' script again. that time xyren called me by first name during the finals still lives in my head rent free, and i was hoping that it would continue like that for the rest of our time as teammates. then again, that's just my hopes and it will probably take a long while before she calls everyone by their first name.

"i was, um," why the fuck are you stuttering, chuuya? it's just xyren you're talking to. i had to mix and match some words before i was able to proceed. "i came for you- i mean to check on you! you haven't been active anywhere so i was wondering what you're up to."

damn it, chuuya. keep it cool.

"well, thanks i guess." xyren went back to her usual monotonous voice, the one we all know and love. "i've just been catching up on art and some revenue here in the shop, since, you know, i've closed shop for the entire duration of the tournament."

i figured out as much, but now what? what do we talk about now? cold sweats start to build up within me as i try to think of what else to talk about. i did bother myself into going here, and i bothered her time as well, now i have to think of what to do.

xyren stood up from her seat and went to the back room of her shop where she gets a blue foldable chair, offering it to me after setting it up on the other side of her desk. i politely declined and said that i'd like to look around her works for a while. i noticed that a lot of her paintings and sketches revolve around a dark and mysterious theme, almost like a reflection of her personality. they mostly have red, gray, purple, or black motifs, however it wasn't edgy or gothic. it was unexpectedly more serene and full of mixed emotions.

"i like your stuff," i tried engaging into another conversation as i continue to look around canvasses of different sizes.

"really? i'm glad you do, thank you." xyren replied with hints of bashfulness in her voice. "not everyone digs in the style, but i like doing my artworks this way."

as i reached the end of my scan, i saw a rather unusual painting from the rest of her works -- it was mostly a black-and-red painting of a stack of hats. a lot of xyren's works were either abstract or scenic, but this one was oddly specific. i pointed it to her and asked, "this work is different from the rest, what's your inspiration for it?"

her head turns to the painting on the floor and let out a small chuckle. "there's this show that one of the people in the apartment likes so much; it was a foreign twist of a beauty pageant. consecutive winners of the pageants wear a stack of crowns, but i find that painful and impractical, so i thought 'isn't a stack of hats better and lighter?'"

"i-i see," that is oddly specific, and it made me imagine what a stack of hats would feel like on me, someone who is a connoisseur of hats. i stared at the painting for another period of time and thought of buying it for some reason. "if i were to buy this, how much would it be?"

and with that sentence, xyren's entire personality switched like i've never seen before. her expressions were lit up upon the mention of buying her art. i guess it's the small joys for the artist life. 

"that particular painting would be 13,500 yen, the cheapest of all my works here. i can throw in a colleague discount if you'd buy it."

that price is particularly low for a painting of this scale, but then again it makes you wonder how much her other paintings costs if this simple hat painting is just as low as a one night stay in a supreme capsule hotel room. xyren must have lived through the money she makes in art prior to joining the organization, and considering how slow the art industry is, that must have been hard for her.

i thought of it a little harder, and eventually i decided to help her out by buying that painting. if it means getting to see a whole new side of her surface through the earth, then no matter how mundane this purchase was, i do not regret it one bit. it also proved this random trip of mine to be fruitful for the two of us. i handed xyren the cash, gave me some change to the payment, and xyren proceeded to go at her storage room again to get a package box for the painting.

ah, the figurative glitter and sparkles that i can see and feel in the shop right now.