Obsession 24! aka "Jirarudan Is Aspie As Fuck"
A note first--I finished this a week ago and posted it to Serebii, but my other two places had issues. I can't seem to post to Bulbagarden because I can't log in for some unknown reason, so if anybody connected with them is reading this, please alert someone. I can consistantly read the site so I know what *isn't* going on, but it doesn't accept my login information--it doesn't even reject it, just doesn't do anything at all. I've tried to send messages but haven't recieved any replies. And as for LJ, well, I just plum forgot.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! I mean, it's been over a year and all. I wish it came faster. And I have no idea what to do in the next chapter! So ideas are very welcome.
I realised, as time went by, that my perception of my surroundings changed with experience. The familiar small town of Seafoam was dull and listless, but passing through a small town where I had never been brought my mind alive, and I wondered about all the people milling about, what filled their lives. Even the routes we took through the big cities had become tiresome, those scenes that had once magnetized my attention now mapped out in detail in my brain, but to take another path to even the same location reawakened me.
One thing that I never grew weary of was the destination, because it was always art. While I would be bored to tears with the same view, the same street, the same buildings, I could stare for hours at the same paintings, the same sculptures, the same silverworks.
I muddled through my schoolworks, barely paying them any of my distracted mind. What we were taught had nothing to do with my path in life, and I almost pitied those who it did. Almost, of course, because they had every opportunity to break from their grey paths and open themselves to the full colour of the world.
How foolish, to live willingly in that place! No, my world would be far distant from theirs, although we would occupy the same space. A world apart, on the same planet. How silly to think how simple it all had been so far, and how far I'd come in just a short time.
I reflected a lot on that of late, the ease in which I'd been able to achieve what I had. Surely this was destiny! I was meant to be a collector, and the thought was quite divine. Divine, of course, in the most literal sense. Such objects filled me with a fervor, knowing that I held around me something so immortal, so far beyond the everyday sphere.
And none was the wiser. That tiny room in my father's house, outcropped over the sea, contained the works of the world. Or what little of the world I could obtain, with my comparatively limited funds. Yet even that small fragment was a spectrum of wonder far greater than anyone around me could ever concieve.
Though surrounded by dinge and fade, I had my sanctuary. Along all walls, every space filled with treasures present or distant. Those I had truly garnered fanned out along the east wall, the single window there illumininating them at the day's dawn, that image the first thing I would see upon waking. My bed lay along the south wall, a simple thing beneath the window overlooking the ocean, so I disguised there and the west wall with images snipped from magazines of the finest things in life. To dismiss those as simple pictures! Alas, I remembered from what seemed like ages ago when they were remarked on as such, and couldn't help but chuckle. Even Helen was ignorant to their true nature, as I fully intended on acquiring each one of them in the future.
The closet, tucked away next to the door, was graced with a neat row of my new, more sophisticated clothes, with those my father had foisted on me hidden on a shelf across, so that they wouldn't sully my prefered wardrobe with their unwanted touch.
Perhaps an aside is in order. I kept them for appearances, how ironic! I would gladly be rid of them in an instant were it not for my father expecting to see me in them on certain occations of exclusively his own interests. He knew the importance of dressing well to meet his clients, but there it ended! A gentleman must be at his best at all public times, yet he clung to the excuse of simply not being at his office to explain away why he continued to wear such atrocities as tank tops and ripped shorts. Those things that he wore during construction! Their purposes ended at the factory door, yet he insisted! How terribly backwards. Simply the thought of it sent my spine shuddering. And I had to don similar wear despite discomfort from all angles at the act. Ah, how funny that even something as common as cotton could rise from the coarseness of those simple garments to the softness and elegance of a fine button-down with the proper guidance.
Ah, I digress. I had a goal for the day.
I closed the closet door behind me, sitting amidst my finery on a chest that held my out of season garments. This unfortunately meant that I was facing that which I described, but I wasn't looking at it. Taking out a hand mirror--a cheap purchase at a drugstore--I began to speak.
"Ahaha! Of course, the use of white conjures the idea of cold."
"Why my dear such-and-such, you look divine! It's been ages, darling."
"Charming, charming!"
Such pithy statements! Even Asaph knew that. But small talk and meaningless comments were an art onto themselves, one that collectors were expected to master. It was like a verbal dance, with the main movement of the body being unimportant and all meaning in the hands and face.
He told me to watch my tone, as it was often flat. I would be percieved as passionless if that continued, so I practiced the ups and downs of my voice as though I was a singer or a stage performer. I may well have been a stage performer, for all the rehearsal it required, but without a script to rely on. I would have to write my own script, with a mind to the rules that the dialogue be inane.
Whatever purpose it served, it seemed to be effective, for whatever strange reason that was beyond my understanding. People seemed to respond better to me when I said such things, so I had no reason to stop.
I think it was some sort of code. By saying things that no one would normally say, I established that I spoke their secret language.
Some of my pictures were held in that tiny room as well, integrated into this process. I moved one of the repulsive shirts aside and took up a stack of photocopies. This was what the mirror was for, in whole.
On the back of one I had written "happiness". The front had the image of a young woman with her mouth curved up to where her teeth were visible, and her eyes were narrowed from the movement. I wasn't sure what indicated happiness about it, but the photograph, taken some fifty years before and held in high regard among those who collected such things, was said to be exemplary in the subject's joy. And so I mimicked her smile, though to me it looked like any other. Adjusting my face to take on these unfamiliar expressions was strange, but it too seemed to have its purposes.
How odd though. I expressed myself, and obviously at that, never trying to obscure myself. This seemed as though I was exposing too much of my heart, yet Asaph called it sublety. Did other collectors expend all their energy and observation on their pursued pieces with no room in their minds for anything else? Perhaps that was why their special code was so simplistic.
Maintaining that smile, I examined myself in the mirror and spoke again.
"The reds give such a vivid, lively feel to the otherwise boring landscape." I redid it. Collectors don't say things like "boring" when speaking to other collectors. "The reds give such a vivid, lively feel to the otherwise drab landscape." And I still wasn't sure if that was right.
Another picture, this of a frowning old man. It was what I would term a scowl, but others said that it was merely an effect of ancient photography requiring the sitter to remain still for quite a long time. Perhaps he was simply an unpleasant fellow to begin with, or perhaps it was his unfortunate resemblence to a granbull that caused the assumption.
"I think so-and-so's suits are quite overrated for the price." No, I had to do that again, we didn't mention price either. "So-and-so's suits are quite common," with "common" stressed to imply that it was beyond mere number, but rather something that the great unwashed would wear. Inflection was important as well, as it could change the meaning of a word through implication.
Changing back to the first image, I repeated her smile and closed my eyes, thinking of the position of every muscle in my face. I wouldn't always have a mirror close at hand, so I had to memorize these things from feel alone.
It was arduous work, trying to maintain this artificial facade. But I looked on it as an art in itself. To exaggerate myself to that degree was to be literally larger than life, and that was something that lent itself quite well to my desired path. I would be among so many pieces that were more than the sum of their parts, so I had to project myself accordingly.
Although that didn't prevent it from being irritatingly repetitive.
"The empty space summons up such a hollowness in the piece." Collectors, for whatever reason, loved to attribute deep meaning to white or black spaces, thinking them truly significant. While certainly they could draw the eye and could make a piece more aestheticly pleasing, surely sometimes they would simply be what was in front of the artist! Yet no one seemed to consider that basic possibility, no matter how drawn from life they recognized the piece to be.
As I grew, I became increasingly aware of the absurdity of life. Children encouraged to leave into the world and bond with animals, while adults created meaningless lives for themselves, devoid of any interest or colour. Both wedged themselves into their tight roles and refused to budge, as stubborn and listless as Ursarings in winter, and any outside the tiny scrap of the world left visible from their select view was something ignored.
I had been set on the path through that grey world once, not knowing anything else. My father had saved money for a trainer journey, and doubtless I would be settling into that life in some other world where I had not discovered art. And yet that discovery had been so simple that it was a shock as to how rare it was to live with color and spark. A brush had been drawn across my life, painting across it the finest things, while those around me remained colourblind.
And it baffled me. Nothing had stood in my way, I realised, and there had been nothing special about me. How many others would there be if they simply looked around?
But it was best this way. Shining stars and all that, as we had been told. As I had been told all that time ago.
I missed her, of course, my dear mother. But with more and more to fill my days, the grief had faded.
With some sense of irony, I had to chuckle at the next photograph being marked "sorrow". Perhaps this was what I had looked like when first brought to this place, mouth turned down and corners tight, eyes squinted and watery, brows like thin wings wavering above.
I had trouble imagining this face on anybody. It seemed distant, something almost comical, contraindicitive of the specified emotion. Asaph, perhaps. Both his parents had passed, yet I couldn't picture him grieving in any such way. Lucrezia had worn a kimono that marked her as a widow, but her jolly, boisterious presentation made it impossible to imagine her otherwise. Even having seen her wrath was still seeing her in bombast, an overwhelming wind surrounding her.
Her son either, the notorious ground trainer. Following that thought, he had lost his father, and yet his smooth and even manner remained in any image I could summon.
Someone closer; Helen perhaps. I'd witnessed her in cheer, in irritation (mostly directed towards my father), in seriousness, in wonderment, but never in sorrow, not like this. I knew she experienced it, thinking back on a story she had told of a failed attempt at breeding her Ninetales that had ended in a stillborn Vulpix of a deep yellow colour. It upset her still, though this had taken place before I was born, and she had paused to wipe away tears many times. Yet that past sadness looked nothing like this image, despite the photograph's pedigree. It had been messy, with unmentionable fluids and a sickness to her, though at the time I had simply wondered, silently of course, if a Fire Stone would have still forced evolution.
Ah yes, the sciences. My studies--my own studies, far from my classes, of course--had fallen on the display cage that had shown the Omastar to all. It was remarkable, and I wondered if there was a way to alter it to display pieces in suspension. Something magnetic could be isolated to display a work in metal while not interfering with anything around it, but that would leave any works of other matter. It was a puzzlement that perplexed me, and I wondered if I could contact the engineer.
Of course, I would have to. I couldn't figure it out on my own. Even as a collector, I was beholden to those who had trod that path before, those gatherers, those artists, those merchants, those patrons. The entire of the art world would be mine, and the thought was intoxicating. I would be an intrinsic part of the very culture of everything. Ah! but that didn't matter! To be a movable part of something eternal, to know that I possessed a collection of true immortality, and to dwell amongst it for as long as I could, those were all I cared about.
Every thought led back to that far too distant future. Time flowed far too slowly, as if testing my patience and resolve to reach that grand goal. But I didn't care. I'd reach it eventually, no matter what my present situation threw at me; no matter the monochrome of my environment, I would burst into the full spectrum!
I realised at that point that I was laughing. When that had happened I wasn't sure, but I was glad that it was a soft, gentlemanly laugh. It had been a rather funny thought, I mused, though the sentiment in it was the absolute truth.
That truth must have been why, when I saw myself in the mirror, I looked nothing akin to the pictures of mirth. Which only complicated things. I felt happy, silly even, and none of that was reflected in pictures supposing to showcase those very things.
Of course, I'd seen those features on others; those shining eyes, those broad smiles, but it was so different that had it not been entirely situational, I wouldn't have seen it at all. How odd, how strange, how confusing! But that was the way of things, wasn't it?
"Of course, it's all part of the game," I chirped merrily at the mirror. But that just made me think of when I'd played chess with Asaph. It had been so long ago, and I suddenly wanted to again. I set the mirror aside and stood, tucking the pictures under the clothes again and carefully arranging things before closing the closet door behind me and heading for the phone to ring him.
I knew from experience that the telephones in his home were fancy things, modern yet in the more ornate style of old movies. There was a certain glamour element in the mystique of old Hollywood that many collectors found themselves emulating, the idea of a subtle world of grandeur all around us if we simply knew how to seek it out. Even the everyday was glamourous when captured in that unique way, and even collectors had everyday lives. Of course, that was what I sought, to have that majesty at my fingertips at all moments. So by the time it rang, I was a bit envious already.
"Asaph's residence, may I ask who calls?" That was his butler, who only came on occasionally. It was an odd arrangement, very atypical, and led to me having no idea of the man's name.
"Yes, this is Jirarudan. May I speak with the master of the house?"
There was a shuffling of papers, and I suspected he was turning pages in a notebook. "Master Asaph is unavailable."
I thought as much. He was still refusing my calls, after the impromptu jaunt through the city. "Ah, very well. Thank you."
"However, he does have a message for you."
"Oh?" That was surprising. I didn't expect that he would want to have any sort of communication with me until later. Though in honesty, I felt he was vastly overreacting.
"Master Asaph wishes to inform you of his representation in the upcoming exhibit of collectors of the Kanto region in Fuschia City."
Ah, so that was why he had spent so much time in Mr. Higuchi's company. Such fortune being minted at that party! It was beautiful, how everything came together like that, my star shining amidst the light of his. "Thank you for informing me."
"Have you anything further?"
I had the suspicion that at an earlier, uneducated point in my life I would have simply hung up at that. "Tell him I await hearing from him. Thank you."
After ending the call, I rested the phone on my bedside table and leaned back on my bed. Such a beautiful thing it must be to lend to an exhibit! To have so many view that which you'd brought together!
But how many of them would understand it? How many would see it and move on without any impact? I frowned. That simply wouldn't do. It was a distressing thought, but I did trust his judgement. I'd have to ask him the next time we spoke.
"Master Asaph wishes to inform you--" I repeated. Something had unsettled me in that when it was said, but I wasn't sure what until I heard it in my own voice. Why, it was a benefit that I hadn't caught it at the time, else I'd have thought he was dismissing me! To do so without a word would be inexcusibly rude, after all. I was grateful that it hadn't been the case, but how strange that I would worry of it after nothing of the sort was said.
I sighed as I reached over to pull the shade closed, taking a look at the sky as I did. A storm was coming, and in those months it would bring with it some bitter cold far removed from the season. I wondered briefly what Articuno did on its rumored nearby island in that weather, where it took shelter. Though the cold was meaningless to an ice type, and nothing compared to what would come in a scant few months, the wind and rain were sure to drive at its land.
And they did me no favours either. Such weather only reminded me of my position overlooking the ocean, already no doubt heavy with thick-capped waves and grey swells. Someday I would overlook it all, the stormy grey of the world never touching me, but for the time, I burrowed under my blankets in anticipation.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! I mean, it's been over a year and all. I wish it came faster. And I have no idea what to do in the next chapter! So ideas are very welcome.
I realised, as time went by, that my perception of my surroundings changed with experience. The familiar small town of Seafoam was dull and listless, but passing through a small town where I had never been brought my mind alive, and I wondered about all the people milling about, what filled their lives. Even the routes we took through the big cities had become tiresome, those scenes that had once magnetized my attention now mapped out in detail in my brain, but to take another path to even the same location reawakened me.
One thing that I never grew weary of was the destination, because it was always art. While I would be bored to tears with the same view, the same street, the same buildings, I could stare for hours at the same paintings, the same sculptures, the same silverworks.
I muddled through my schoolworks, barely paying them any of my distracted mind. What we were taught had nothing to do with my path in life, and I almost pitied those who it did. Almost, of course, because they had every opportunity to break from their grey paths and open themselves to the full colour of the world.
How foolish, to live willingly in that place! No, my world would be far distant from theirs, although we would occupy the same space. A world apart, on the same planet. How silly to think how simple it all had been so far, and how far I'd come in just a short time.
I reflected a lot on that of late, the ease in which I'd been able to achieve what I had. Surely this was destiny! I was meant to be a collector, and the thought was quite divine. Divine, of course, in the most literal sense. Such objects filled me with a fervor, knowing that I held around me something so immortal, so far beyond the everyday sphere.
And none was the wiser. That tiny room in my father's house, outcropped over the sea, contained the works of the world. Or what little of the world I could obtain, with my comparatively limited funds. Yet even that small fragment was a spectrum of wonder far greater than anyone around me could ever concieve.
Though surrounded by dinge and fade, I had my sanctuary. Along all walls, every space filled with treasures present or distant. Those I had truly garnered fanned out along the east wall, the single window there illumininating them at the day's dawn, that image the first thing I would see upon waking. My bed lay along the south wall, a simple thing beneath the window overlooking the ocean, so I disguised there and the west wall with images snipped from magazines of the finest things in life. To dismiss those as simple pictures! Alas, I remembered from what seemed like ages ago when they were remarked on as such, and couldn't help but chuckle. Even Helen was ignorant to their true nature, as I fully intended on acquiring each one of them in the future.
The closet, tucked away next to the door, was graced with a neat row of my new, more sophisticated clothes, with those my father had foisted on me hidden on a shelf across, so that they wouldn't sully my prefered wardrobe with their unwanted touch.
Perhaps an aside is in order. I kept them for appearances, how ironic! I would gladly be rid of them in an instant were it not for my father expecting to see me in them on certain occations of exclusively his own interests. He knew the importance of dressing well to meet his clients, but there it ended! A gentleman must be at his best at all public times, yet he clung to the excuse of simply not being at his office to explain away why he continued to wear such atrocities as tank tops and ripped shorts. Those things that he wore during construction! Their purposes ended at the factory door, yet he insisted! How terribly backwards. Simply the thought of it sent my spine shuddering. And I had to don similar wear despite discomfort from all angles at the act. Ah, how funny that even something as common as cotton could rise from the coarseness of those simple garments to the softness and elegance of a fine button-down with the proper guidance.
Ah, I digress. I had a goal for the day.
I closed the closet door behind me, sitting amidst my finery on a chest that held my out of season garments. This unfortunately meant that I was facing that which I described, but I wasn't looking at it. Taking out a hand mirror--a cheap purchase at a drugstore--I began to speak.
"Ahaha! Of course, the use of white conjures the idea of cold."
"Why my dear such-and-such, you look divine! It's been ages, darling."
"Charming, charming!"
Such pithy statements! Even Asaph knew that. But small talk and meaningless comments were an art onto themselves, one that collectors were expected to master. It was like a verbal dance, with the main movement of the body being unimportant and all meaning in the hands and face.
He told me to watch my tone, as it was often flat. I would be percieved as passionless if that continued, so I practiced the ups and downs of my voice as though I was a singer or a stage performer. I may well have been a stage performer, for all the rehearsal it required, but without a script to rely on. I would have to write my own script, with a mind to the rules that the dialogue be inane.
Whatever purpose it served, it seemed to be effective, for whatever strange reason that was beyond my understanding. People seemed to respond better to me when I said such things, so I had no reason to stop.
I think it was some sort of code. By saying things that no one would normally say, I established that I spoke their secret language.
Some of my pictures were held in that tiny room as well, integrated into this process. I moved one of the repulsive shirts aside and took up a stack of photocopies. This was what the mirror was for, in whole.
On the back of one I had written "happiness". The front had the image of a young woman with her mouth curved up to where her teeth were visible, and her eyes were narrowed from the movement. I wasn't sure what indicated happiness about it, but the photograph, taken some fifty years before and held in high regard among those who collected such things, was said to be exemplary in the subject's joy. And so I mimicked her smile, though to me it looked like any other. Adjusting my face to take on these unfamiliar expressions was strange, but it too seemed to have its purposes.
How odd though. I expressed myself, and obviously at that, never trying to obscure myself. This seemed as though I was exposing too much of my heart, yet Asaph called it sublety. Did other collectors expend all their energy and observation on their pursued pieces with no room in their minds for anything else? Perhaps that was why their special code was so simplistic.
Maintaining that smile, I examined myself in the mirror and spoke again.
"The reds give such a vivid, lively feel to the otherwise boring landscape." I redid it. Collectors don't say things like "boring" when speaking to other collectors. "The reds give such a vivid, lively feel to the otherwise drab landscape." And I still wasn't sure if that was right.
Another picture, this of a frowning old man. It was what I would term a scowl, but others said that it was merely an effect of ancient photography requiring the sitter to remain still for quite a long time. Perhaps he was simply an unpleasant fellow to begin with, or perhaps it was his unfortunate resemblence to a granbull that caused the assumption.
"I think so-and-so's suits are quite overrated for the price." No, I had to do that again, we didn't mention price either. "So-and-so's suits are quite common," with "common" stressed to imply that it was beyond mere number, but rather something that the great unwashed would wear. Inflection was important as well, as it could change the meaning of a word through implication.
Changing back to the first image, I repeated her smile and closed my eyes, thinking of the position of every muscle in my face. I wouldn't always have a mirror close at hand, so I had to memorize these things from feel alone.
It was arduous work, trying to maintain this artificial facade. But I looked on it as an art in itself. To exaggerate myself to that degree was to be literally larger than life, and that was something that lent itself quite well to my desired path. I would be among so many pieces that were more than the sum of their parts, so I had to project myself accordingly.
Although that didn't prevent it from being irritatingly repetitive.
"The empty space summons up such a hollowness in the piece." Collectors, for whatever reason, loved to attribute deep meaning to white or black spaces, thinking them truly significant. While certainly they could draw the eye and could make a piece more aestheticly pleasing, surely sometimes they would simply be what was in front of the artist! Yet no one seemed to consider that basic possibility, no matter how drawn from life they recognized the piece to be.
As I grew, I became increasingly aware of the absurdity of life. Children encouraged to leave into the world and bond with animals, while adults created meaningless lives for themselves, devoid of any interest or colour. Both wedged themselves into their tight roles and refused to budge, as stubborn and listless as Ursarings in winter, and any outside the tiny scrap of the world left visible from their select view was something ignored.
I had been set on the path through that grey world once, not knowing anything else. My father had saved money for a trainer journey, and doubtless I would be settling into that life in some other world where I had not discovered art. And yet that discovery had been so simple that it was a shock as to how rare it was to live with color and spark. A brush had been drawn across my life, painting across it the finest things, while those around me remained colourblind.
And it baffled me. Nothing had stood in my way, I realised, and there had been nothing special about me. How many others would there be if they simply looked around?
But it was best this way. Shining stars and all that, as we had been told. As I had been told all that time ago.
I missed her, of course, my dear mother. But with more and more to fill my days, the grief had faded.
With some sense of irony, I had to chuckle at the next photograph being marked "sorrow". Perhaps this was what I had looked like when first brought to this place, mouth turned down and corners tight, eyes squinted and watery, brows like thin wings wavering above.
I had trouble imagining this face on anybody. It seemed distant, something almost comical, contraindicitive of the specified emotion. Asaph, perhaps. Both his parents had passed, yet I couldn't picture him grieving in any such way. Lucrezia had worn a kimono that marked her as a widow, but her jolly, boisterious presentation made it impossible to imagine her otherwise. Even having seen her wrath was still seeing her in bombast, an overwhelming wind surrounding her.
Her son either, the notorious ground trainer. Following that thought, he had lost his father, and yet his smooth and even manner remained in any image I could summon.
Someone closer; Helen perhaps. I'd witnessed her in cheer, in irritation (mostly directed towards my father), in seriousness, in wonderment, but never in sorrow, not like this. I knew she experienced it, thinking back on a story she had told of a failed attempt at breeding her Ninetales that had ended in a stillborn Vulpix of a deep yellow colour. It upset her still, though this had taken place before I was born, and she had paused to wipe away tears many times. Yet that past sadness looked nothing like this image, despite the photograph's pedigree. It had been messy, with unmentionable fluids and a sickness to her, though at the time I had simply wondered, silently of course, if a Fire Stone would have still forced evolution.
Ah yes, the sciences. My studies--my own studies, far from my classes, of course--had fallen on the display cage that had shown the Omastar to all. It was remarkable, and I wondered if there was a way to alter it to display pieces in suspension. Something magnetic could be isolated to display a work in metal while not interfering with anything around it, but that would leave any works of other matter. It was a puzzlement that perplexed me, and I wondered if I could contact the engineer.
Of course, I would have to. I couldn't figure it out on my own. Even as a collector, I was beholden to those who had trod that path before, those gatherers, those artists, those merchants, those patrons. The entire of the art world would be mine, and the thought was intoxicating. I would be an intrinsic part of the very culture of everything. Ah! but that didn't matter! To be a movable part of something eternal, to know that I possessed a collection of true immortality, and to dwell amongst it for as long as I could, those were all I cared about.
Every thought led back to that far too distant future. Time flowed far too slowly, as if testing my patience and resolve to reach that grand goal. But I didn't care. I'd reach it eventually, no matter what my present situation threw at me; no matter the monochrome of my environment, I would burst into the full spectrum!
I realised at that point that I was laughing. When that had happened I wasn't sure, but I was glad that it was a soft, gentlemanly laugh. It had been a rather funny thought, I mused, though the sentiment in it was the absolute truth.
That truth must have been why, when I saw myself in the mirror, I looked nothing akin to the pictures of mirth. Which only complicated things. I felt happy, silly even, and none of that was reflected in pictures supposing to showcase those very things.
Of course, I'd seen those features on others; those shining eyes, those broad smiles, but it was so different that had it not been entirely situational, I wouldn't have seen it at all. How odd, how strange, how confusing! But that was the way of things, wasn't it?
"Of course, it's all part of the game," I chirped merrily at the mirror. But that just made me think of when I'd played chess with Asaph. It had been so long ago, and I suddenly wanted to again. I set the mirror aside and stood, tucking the pictures under the clothes again and carefully arranging things before closing the closet door behind me and heading for the phone to ring him.
I knew from experience that the telephones in his home were fancy things, modern yet in the more ornate style of old movies. There was a certain glamour element in the mystique of old Hollywood that many collectors found themselves emulating, the idea of a subtle world of grandeur all around us if we simply knew how to seek it out. Even the everyday was glamourous when captured in that unique way, and even collectors had everyday lives. Of course, that was what I sought, to have that majesty at my fingertips at all moments. So by the time it rang, I was a bit envious already.
"Asaph's residence, may I ask who calls?" That was his butler, who only came on occasionally. It was an odd arrangement, very atypical, and led to me having no idea of the man's name.
"Yes, this is Jirarudan. May I speak with the master of the house?"
There was a shuffling of papers, and I suspected he was turning pages in a notebook. "Master Asaph is unavailable."
I thought as much. He was still refusing my calls, after the impromptu jaunt through the city. "Ah, very well. Thank you."
"However, he does have a message for you."
"Oh?" That was surprising. I didn't expect that he would want to have any sort of communication with me until later. Though in honesty, I felt he was vastly overreacting.
"Master Asaph wishes to inform you of his representation in the upcoming exhibit of collectors of the Kanto region in Fuschia City."
Ah, so that was why he had spent so much time in Mr. Higuchi's company. Such fortune being minted at that party! It was beautiful, how everything came together like that, my star shining amidst the light of his. "Thank you for informing me."
"Have you anything further?"
I had the suspicion that at an earlier, uneducated point in my life I would have simply hung up at that. "Tell him I await hearing from him. Thank you."
After ending the call, I rested the phone on my bedside table and leaned back on my bed. Such a beautiful thing it must be to lend to an exhibit! To have so many view that which you'd brought together!
But how many of them would understand it? How many would see it and move on without any impact? I frowned. That simply wouldn't do. It was a distressing thought, but I did trust his judgement. I'd have to ask him the next time we spoke.
"Master Asaph wishes to inform you--" I repeated. Something had unsettled me in that when it was said, but I wasn't sure what until I heard it in my own voice. Why, it was a benefit that I hadn't caught it at the time, else I'd have thought he was dismissing me! To do so without a word would be inexcusibly rude, after all. I was grateful that it hadn't been the case, but how strange that I would worry of it after nothing of the sort was said.
I sighed as I reached over to pull the shade closed, taking a look at the sky as I did. A storm was coming, and in those months it would bring with it some bitter cold far removed from the season. I wondered briefly what Articuno did on its rumored nearby island in that weather, where it took shelter. Though the cold was meaningless to an ice type, and nothing compared to what would come in a scant few months, the wind and rain were sure to drive at its land.
And they did me no favours either. Such weather only reminded me of my position overlooking the ocean, already no doubt heavy with thick-capped waves and grey swells. Someday I would overlook it all, the stormy grey of the world never touching me, but for the time, I burrowed under my blankets in anticipation.