The picturesque rice cakes are delicious today

On the day the summer break approached, I stopped at the painting shop on my way home from school and went straight to the teacher's house. To let me put the picture material I just bought. Then, to paint.

Open the paint I bought for lunch this week and head to the canvas.

... I do oil paintings for the first time this day.

Because since I was in high school, I've been given money as lunch money, and so, finally, I've just been able to buy oil paint and other painting materials.

Ever since I was in middle school, I painted with just a pencil. I saw that and the teacher tried to buy me some painting material, but I refused because I was so sorry. You rent a room in the house, but you can't cause any more trouble.

So the only picture material I can use is a pencil that I insist on using as a writing device and one notebook that was handed out at school (i.e. my parents don't know it exists). Behind prints you don't need. Ground and tree branches. concrete floors and rainwater. That was the place.

... and I went to high school and added "as much painting material as I could buy for 2,500 yen being given as lunch for a week" to my belongings.

Never free. But that's the out-of-the-box fun.

At first it was just colored pencils and painting paper, but I started buying a set of tools for its inner watercolor.... I bought all the new watercolor paints I used in elementary school because they were thrown away. I learned for the first time that there was painting paper for watercolor painting. The picture store my teacher taught me was full of things I didn't know and I just enjoyed being there.

After I came up with buying painting materials for lunch, I got some tools. I also bought acrylic paint next to watercolor tools. I'm going to buy back the guy I used in middle school.

Then...... I'm finally working on the oil paint now.

First Ethel. Then canvas. I bought brushes and pallets, I bought oil, and then today, I bought paint.

... I've always wanted to do an oil painting. I was interested because it was painting material I had never used, and most importantly, I admired it a little when I saw people painting oil in middle school and the art department at the high school I had just enrolled in this year.

"Oh. You've finally got all the paint."

I was fighting oil paint with one hand with old art textbooks and datasets, and the teacher came.

... The teacher was a different adult from both my parents and the people at school.

'Cause even if I'm painting, I'm not mad.

Instead of being angry, he's renting me a room in the house as my place. He also pulls out the art textbooks and data sets that the teacher used to use and lend them to me. My textbooks have been thrown away, so I've been painting with reference to old textbooks borrowed from my teacher.

"Togo, did you pay for lunch again?"

"Yeah."

The teacher laughs like a shudder. This was the usual thing too. But the teacher never stops me.

"Absolutely, you'll do it inside, too. But unfortunately, a human being is a dead creature if you don't eat it."

That's what the teacher said, putting a cup of wheat tea and a plate of boiled cutlery in front of me.

"It's the rest of last New Year's Eve, but it's a fine source of energy. It's carbohydrate. If you're not committed, eat it. And contribute to the consumption of cakes in my house."

"Yeah. Thanks"

Sometimes at the teacher's house, I get an 'energy source'. I was too sorry to rent a house and let it sit, even put my stuff down, and even get food on top of that, but the cake couldn't help it. Because the teacher doesn't like cakes. Unless I eat, the cake won't disappear from this house.

And the bare noodles. When the teacher boils them with a sinister face saying, 'I've been sent again this year,' he feeds me everything. I hear the teacher doesn't like bare noodles. The doctor is drinking Mentsuyu when I'm eating bare noodles. Definitely bad for you, but I won't stop the teacher. My teacher won't stop me if I skip lunch, so even if my teacher is sipping Mentsuyu, I won't stop him. That's how we are.

"Then, eat the vitamins, too. It's a rich crop this year. Thanks to you."

Then the teacher put a plate of mini tomatoes in front of me. This mini tomato was picked in the field behind this house. I know how to take care of you.

Mini tomatoes were stacked on a plate that wasn't that big, more than ten of them.

... that, seeing a small pile of red, somehow, stopped eating.

"Oh, Togo. Aren't you going to eat? You don't hate tomatoes, do you?

"Yeah."

I put a pottery plate with mini tomatoes on the desk next to the canvas.

"Made me want to draw"

The teacher laughed. I laughed joyfully.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha. Then I won't stop. However, if you draw it, you eat it right. The staff is delicious, is an important culture"

"Yeah."

Next to me starting the draft, the teacher sat in the right chair and stared at me.

"... human beings are creatures who die if they don't eat, but on the contrary, it's also human beings who die without eating in front of food. Sometimes I do too."

And then I said that and I laughed again.

"I'm sure you're of that nature, too. Even if I was dying, I wouldn't be able to stop painting."

"Yeah."

That's the nature of it. Just like the teacher, so do I.

"I won't stop."

He said he was stopped, that he was angry, that he threw away all the tools... that it didn't do him any good, and I still draw them.

"When I die, I don't stop drawing."

Chapter One: I Don't Stop Drawing When I'm Dead

I woke up blurred. [M] I feel like I was dreaming of something, but I can't remember. I've heard that dreaming is about sorting out memories, but does forgetting that mean I've finished sorting out memories?

"... this is the one that's never sorted out"

But it happened to me, okay.

Perhaps this is the one who hasn't finished sorting out his memories, and he's not dreaming, he's completely disappearing my memories.

'Cause I've never seen a forest like this. Where are you, here?

The forest was a forest. It was even a forest.

If you look up, the leaves of the tree are shaking with a sarcastic sound. The countless leaves on the branches permeate the sunlight and are green. Wood leakage days falling through between the leaves illuminate the fluffy soil characteristic of the forest.

... I wonder where, here.

There is no forest like this by my house. The high-rise apartment near the station is my home, so there's no such thing as a spacious forest in the neighborhood.

Does that mean someone transported you while you were sleeping? For what? Or am I a sleepwalker and I'm here on my own? But it's a strange place to come on foot. There's no such thing as walking distance.

... so... where was I before I got here in the first place? Were you really at home?

Whatever you think about this, something's wrong. Something is definitely wrong.

But... well, okay. I don't think it's obvious even when I think about it here.

Let's just walk. I think it's okay to think about it then.

I walked. So, the first step I noticed was that I normally wore shoes.

It was my shoes when I went to school. Then when I looked closely, what I was wearing was also a school uniform. White white shirt in black trousers. And a learning run. All, especially the normal one with no weird philosophy of any kind.

Well, I'm not a school uniform. I'm almost a pajama when I'm wearing clothes, so the point is, 'It was daylight before I came to this forest' means something...

... okay. In the meantime, I'm glad you're not naked.

Then, after about 100 steps on foot, I realized... plants.

"That's a lot of plants I've never seen..."

I just walked 100 steps and found a bunch of plants I didn't know about, what the hell is this all about?

This is a big case. It doesn't matter what you think.

There are strange plants growing that don't seem to be riding anywhere in the botanical atlas. If this wasn't a dream, it could be a big discovery treatment of the century.

Some fishing bell-shaped flowers, like those made of milk glass, have glowing balls like bean bulbs, like lamps. 'It's this kind of lampshade,' I'm convinced, but this, you're growing off the ground.

Some are giant mushrooms as hard as stone, like. 'It's these kinds of desks' would convince me of this again. What is this made of? Stone? At least it feels completely different than Shiitake or Eringhi......

And then a flower toy that dances out when I let you hear the sound. What is it, Flower Rock 'n' Roll? That real flower version was growing. I dance to the sound. The flowers are dancing.

... It doesn't matter what you think.

I don't know, 'I'll be where I don't know when I realize' or 'Maybe I'm sleepwalking', I don't think that's the level of weirdness.

... Could I have come to another world?

"I'm in trouble..."

In the meantime, I'm in trouble. You're in trouble.

Suddenly I came to a place I didn't know. This is the one that science can never explain. Really troubled.

And even more troubling is that I don't have a complete memory until I get here, so I don't even know how I got here.

Then, if you do the opposite when you come, you can go home, because there's no way, so I really don't have any clues to go back to where I came from.

Finally a desperate situation, though......

... well no. I don't know why you're here, but there's nothing I can do I don't know. I can't help it now that I don't know my way home.

If you don't know anything, let's do what we can now.

Otherwise... I feel shipwrecked and dead.

First, check the situation.

This is in a strange forest. Green is beautiful. The air is delicious.

Weird plants are sometimes found, but they don't look familiar.... I feel the vegetation is surprisingly appropriate. What is this?

And as far as I can see, there's only the woods. I'm not sure how far this forest goes, so should we start somewhere through the woods?

In the meantime, let's find people first. If there are people, let's ask for help. I'm not very good at talking to people, but maybe I can figure it out.

Even if people can't find it, I want food and water for now. It looks like a forest around here, and you might get about spring water and nuts.

Then, if we're going to be in a situation where we can't get through the woods by the end of the day, should we look for a place to sleep? Though I don't want to be a wild boarding house if possible.

… so the future policy is decided.

Just walk, leave the woods. Secure food and water if available. If I don't see a forest exit after going somewhat more than that, I'm ready for Nojuku. Aurai.

I walked. I walked for now.

And I couldn't find anything.

... I can't find any water or nuts. There's nothing more we can do about this.

I'm a little hungry, so I thought I'd try the dancing flowers earlier, but they said, "eagle, tavetemo oishikunaiyo," so I stopped.

... I'm the first person I've talked to in this world. I wanted to talk to a human if I could.

Well, thanks to the dancing and talking flowers, I finally found out that this is a different world, so no harvest at all. Then maybe not...

No, but I wanted a better harvest.

And then I walked around the woods and I didn't get any food. [M] And naturally, I don't see the forest exit. I think I walked in the wrong direction.

... and then I was so hungry. I often say hunger is the best spice, but it's because there's food that spices live, and even if only spices exist, they don't add up to my belly. It's just a stimulant.

... When was the last time you ate something that looked like food?

I don't know where my memory is disappearing from, but the last time I ate it...

... I can't remember. No, really, when and what did I eat? If I suck, I may not have eaten anything for more than a day. No, I feel that way. Maybe that's what this hungry kanji is.

I have been told to buy weekday lunches and sometimes Saturday and Sunday meals, so the money for that... naturally, I use it to buy painting materials. Not if you're buying food. It's expensive, like brushes and paint. Whatever paper. So two meals a day is normal, and I'm used to it. If I had always spent as much time as I had lost my memory, maybe I would have skipped the meal just as appropriately.

Maybe in the meantime, I gave my teacher cakes, bare noodles and udon and I ate them... well, I don't remember, so I don't know if I ate them. I mean, I eat about a cake, but I digest it right away, so I get hungry right away. Because that's like chewed rice......

At times like this, water alone can be quite deluded. That's what I do at school. But... unfortunately, the faucet isn't there either.

I have no choice but to look for some more.

Water at least. Food if possible. Could it have fallen somewhere?

It was night, with no water or food to find.

I've picked glowing flowers and tried walking instead of lights, but in the end I'll only be able to see about my feet, so I've already given up exploring and decided to go wild on the spot.

Under the tree, when I put down the glowing flowers and secured the light for just a moment, I remembered when I was always on my way to my desk in my room and calmed down a bit.

... If it was always me, by now, I'd just finish my studies not complaining, and then pretend I was studying... I'd have opened a sketchbook replacement notebook, I think. So I guess I was doing a pencil dessert or something.

That makes me feel weird.

Every day, every day, I didn't stop painting. [M] My parents didn't look good at me painting, but whether angry or stopped, I kept hiding and painting. Even after the painting material was discarded, I drew it only on paper and pencil. After I went to high school, I shredded my lunch money and bought painting materials. When I couldn't draw at home, I went to the doctor and drew.

I've been drawing. I was drawing because I wanted to. I was drawing, hungry, thirsty, tired, sleepy.

Now I'm hungry. [M] I'm thirsty. Tired. Sleepy.

... but before you fill them up. Whatever, even if they can't fill.

I have something to do.

If you looked in the inner pocket of the school run, you thought of doing some graffiti later, or it contained a few folded copies of paper. In addition, there is a pencil stabbed in the chest pocket. There was also one eraser in the chest pocket.

And there's a big stone falling on the ground that's just fine and likely to be on your desk.

... the rest is easy. I started painting.

Then I even drew. [M] I can't sleep in this situation anyway, and I don't feel like resting, so I even drew it.

... I blew all my hunger and thirst while I was drawing. I can just immerse myself in drawing.

Copy paper and pencil were never good picture material, but still good. Enough to focus your consciousness.

I wondered what to draw, and the first thing I came up with was... I ate when, cake and barley tea.

I miss the food I got at the teacher's house, which tastes irrelevant and doesn't matter.

For a while, I was obsessed with drawing. I've been portraying the food I once ate that was worth more than the food.

Paint a picture of food in a situation where there is no food. It's some kind of funny joke, but now all I needed was a picture of food, more than food.

That's how the painting was finished.

Just a pencil, I wrote it on a copy sheet, which, well, made it quite satisfactory.

I looked at the painting I could, I forgot about my hunger and my current situation, I just tasted the accomplishment and joy of the painting being completed.

... that was then.

The line on the paper looked like it had moved.

That, my eyes are getting darker, and as I gaze, the lines are like creatures, sifting and trembling... and.

Kiku, and I thought it had shrunk to a point, Pong, and.

... Outside the paper, it came out.

...... yeah. The cake came out.

It was abrupt. It's too abrupt, I don't know anything... but for some reason, before my eyes, on paper, under my hand with a pencil, a cake came out.

Yeah. Cake.

The cake came out.

What was in front of me was a cake. It's like coming out of a teacher's house someday, just boiled (or heated in a range with water), that kind of guy.

"... the picturesque cake turned into a cake"

But above all, the problem is that what I just painted is coming out in front of me as an entity. Why did the picturesque cake turn into a cake?

Is it a hallucination? The teacher said, 'Humans, you see one or two of your hallucinations when you get to the extreme,' so maybe that's what I am too? Yay. I've never seen hallucinations before.

... No, this has finally gone crazy, right? Yeah.

It went crazy, but I didn't hesitate. That's about it, I was hungry. Besides, after all, humans are creatures that die if they don't eat.

I ate a cake.

"It's a cake..."

It was a cake. It was a regular cake. It was just a cake.

The picturesque cake turned into a cake. A cake. A real cake.

... it was such a mysterious phenomenon that understanding didn't keep up with one thing... but for now, the picturesque cake was delicious.

Hungry is certainly the best spice. There were no seasonings, just cakes, but they were delicious.

... but what the hell is this?

I kept eating mysterious cakes, thinking, "Hallucinations are delicious."