Human Nature through Our Eyes
I saw him, sitting across me, during art class. His calm gaze was focused on the artwork before him. Every now and then I would peer from my canvas just to stare at those wonderful gray eyes. It reminded me of the clouds when it was about to rain and I just love the rain. I always found rain pretty when they splatter on the pavement. It was one of the many things that I’ve been fascinated with, including his eyes.
I look up again from my canvas, trying to catch a glimpse of his eyes once more. But it backfired when I saw his eyes already staring at me, as if it was piercing my soul. I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment, tinged with a light shade of pink, before I quickly whipped my focus back to my painting. Hopefully, he didn’t notice that I’ve been staring at him the whole time.
I fumbled over my paintbrushes for a bit, almost dropping my bottles of paint, before I could continue the whole painting again. I really hope he didn’t notice.
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“And for this project, you will be working in pairs. Your topic is about nature so you and your partner must sketch or paint about it and nothing else. A reminder that the nature could be about any kind of nature. That is all. Class dismissed.”
I groaned.
One of the things I didn’t like was working with another person. And it was already tiring to try to even look for a partner, especially if it wasn’t someone you didn’t know.
All of a sudden, I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around and saw him.
“Do you have a partner?”
Too starstruck to speak, I could only shake my head sideways.
“If you want, we can work together on this.”
His sheepish smile gave me goosebumps and I smiled back.
“Yeah! Sure!” My voice started to shake and was a bit higher than usual. I mentally slapped myself for acting like a fool at such a great opportunity. “Just tell me when we can start,” I said, making my voice as calm as possible.
Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice my internal breakdown. He checked his wristwatch and looked back to me (his stare still making me feel like jelly). “I have some time right now. We can start, if you’re still free.”
I nodded (while keeping my cool). “Okay. Let’s do it! It’ll be so much fun.” Then I could feel my cheeks turn red. God, the strange things that enter my head. “I mean the project. Let’s do the project.”
He gave me a strange look before giving such a sweet sounding chuckle. “Yeah. Of course the project. What else could it be?” That smile never left his face, making me feel more embarrassed about my sudden outburst.
I covered my face for a couple seconds, calming down. Then I turned around, holding tightly onto my sketchbook, and walked over to him, who was still setting up the blank canvas on the easel. The way he was posing made it seem unreal and like those perfect sculptures made by the Greeks. After admiring the scene for another few seconds, I sat on the chair next to him and set up my stuff.
At least, I have a valid excuse to look at his eyes more often now.
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Puddles of rain covered most of the street but I didn’t mind. I jumped into the puddle, not minding the water splashing on the bottom hem of my raincoat. It was a bit kiddish for my age but I didn’t care.
Suddenly, I heard someone call out my name. I turned to my right, to meet a familiar pair of gray eyes, staring at me in amusement.
He grinned. “You seem to be having a lot of fun.”
I smiled back. “Yup! Want to join me?” He nodded and jumped into the puddle too and held the umbrella, shielding both of us from the falling drops of water.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we officially talked to each other. The project was going well and through it, we were able to become good friends. I was able to learn that he likes to play the piano, works part time at Coffee Bean, aims to go to become a painter in New York, and that his favorite color is blue. And he knows how I’m part of the swimming varsity, my pure hatred for math, and the fact that I love the rain.
As we were kicking the water to each other, I took another glance at his eyes. It was the same shade as the clouds right now. Then his voice interrupted my thoughts.
“You know, you’ve been doing that a lot.”
I looked at him confused. “Huh?”
“Even before we became partners for the project, I noticed that you would always stare at me during class.”
I almost stopped in my tracks, gulped in anxiety. Was I that obvious? Worries passed through my head but I could do for now was just listen to him.
“I mean, it’s not a bad thing or anything,” he reassured me when he noticed my (probably) panicked expression. “I’m just wondering if I’m handsome or there’s always just something stuck on my face.”
Skipping through the rain made me less nervous. But I still fumbled with my fingers behind my back. Chewing on my words carefully, I told him, “Well, I guess you can say that I do stare at you a lot. It’s because your eyes are really pretty. Sorry if that freaked you out.” At that moment, I felt like shying away but then I heard that familiar sweet chuckle ringing in my ears.
“So that’s the reason why,” he gave a sigh of relief. “I thought I was the only one.”
Now I felt more confused. “What do you mean by that?”
He replied nonchalantly, “It may sound a bit creepy but I think your eyes are beautiful too. They remind me of when the storm is over and the sky shines a bright hue of blue.”
My cheeks turned a bit pink. This was the first time anybody made a comment like that about my eyes. People would just notice how it’s a bright shade of blue and that it’s definitely different from the other blue eyes they’ve seen.
“Oh really? Thanks.” My confidence started to build up before I blurted out. “For me, I like your eyes because it’s the color of the clouds that shower the rain I love.”
Then there was silence. I looked up and saw him staring in a trance. I started to worry that whatever I said might have scared him. So quickly I said, “I’m so sorry. I take back what I said if it freaked you out.” That’s when he snapped out of his thoughts.
“Huh? No, don’t worry. You didn’t.” And he meant it. “I just thought of something.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me. “Let’s go!” Then with a tug, we ran off to wherever he was thinking of going.
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“Wow. We really did a great job on this.”
“Great? Come on. You got to give yourself more credit,” he told me. “Because of our teamwork, it ended up getting us a good grade and displayed in the exhibit. It would be better to call it a masterpiece.”
Then the both of us agreed that we should go out and celebrate for this accomplishment. As we headed out, I took one last look at the painting, feeling happy this was the result of our friendship.
…
The painting showed a pair of eyes, the left was gray and the other was blue. The gray eye had tears, streaming down while the blue eye depicted some streams of light reflected. The left side was shrouded with a black background with white words like “pain”, “suffering”, and “obstacles” written around the eye. On the right side, however, was surrounded with the blank canvas with colorful words like “hope”, “dreams”, and “future” were written.
“Title: Human Nature through Our Eyes
Painted by --- and ---“
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I totally winged this prompt. I mean I was thinking of how to write it but realizing how it could end up like a multichaptered story, I made the ending was decent enough for a one-shot. The prompt was "friendship", given by a dorm mate of mine.
I'll be updating my other stories and requests so don't kill me yet. Hope you enjoyed reading this piece :)