The Blue Light

1

As we made our way down the road, a sleek black Lamborghini passed us by. The luxury car, gliding stylishly along, looked almost angry. Its rear seats were hidden behind tinted glass, so I couldn’t see who was inside, but I guessed some wealthy person had just been turned away by him. With that thought, I chuckled quietly together with my son, who was pushing my wheelchair. If this weren’t his hometown, that expensive car would never have come here.

I have a friend I’m proud of.

He is an artist of worldwide renown—especially famous as a painter.

“The Girl Within the Blue.”

You may have at least heard the title. A fantastical oil painting: in the background, a dense, black night forest smothered in fog; in front of a perfectly square blue torii gate, a small girl wearing a blue tengu mask stands motionless. Her form is almost shapeless—she could be a girl with black bird wings sprouting from her back, or a creature swaying a dull, reptilian tail behind her. Even her clothing is ambiguous. She seems to be wearing a sailor uniform… or a white T-shirt… or perhaps nothing at all. And yet, somehow it all harmonizes into one coherent image: a girl wearing a blue tengu mask. Such is the strangeness of that painting.

He was also known for his masterful use of “blue.”

His blue was called Yuya Blue.

I never thought the name sounded particularly elegant, but he used it as the star of nearly all his works. Even someone like me, who knows little of painting, could tell how extraordinary that blue was. To put it more concretely, it had a power that seized the viewer’s gaze.

A French art critic once wrote in a magazine:

“What makes his blue so wonderful is the surrounding colors. By deliberately ruining—pardon the phrasing—the colors around it with his peculiar placement, the blue gains an exceptional presence. It is not a universal technique, but his own supernatural harmony. One might even call it magic.”

Of all the explanations I’d heard, this one fit the best. Magic—that word settled comfortably in my mind.

Naturally, Yuya Blue was used in The Girl Within the Blue as well.

I had come to see that friend today.

Every summer, once a year, a few of us gather at his house in the countryside. For someone who spends his life wandering the world, it’s more like a vacation home—but it is still his one and only dwelling, and it’s where we reunite.

From the deserted station, through a residential area, up the long hill that stretched out from the rice fields, his manor finally came into view.

A long, Western-style building standing with the forest at its back. Its cream-colored walls were stained here and there, and dried vines clung to its surface. In the garden, where weeds grew carelessly, I spotted his black van. The driver’s door opened, and he stepped out.

He was a small man with messy short hair that looked as if it had been cut with scissors in a hurry. A square face, large eyes, a small nose. A worn black T-shirt and black chinos.

He was thirty-five this year, but he gave off the impression of an innocent boy.

And that boy came running toward us.

“Big sis!”

He practically leaped onto me. Worried that the wheelchair might topple over, I caught him gently.

“I’m not really at an age where you should call me that… But—how are you?”

“I’m great! As long as you don’t die, I’ll always be great.”

The boy in my arms looked up at me with a bright, beaming smile.

“Well, that’s good to hear.”

“Yes! Um, it’s getting late—may I ask you for the usual?”

“Of course. You’re always busy, aren’t you?”

“Heh, thanks to everyone. —Ah, Mr. Yamamura, I’ll take over.”

He lifted me out of my son’s hands.

My son already knew his personality well, so he simply said, “Yuya, take good care of my mother. Mom, I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” and handed me over.

The boy nodded vigorously as he watched my son head back down the hill. Then he turned to me.

“Well then, shall we?”

He guided me through the wide entrance, over a small step, and down the hallway. We passed several doors before reaching a bare, lonely room. The walls were plastered white, and through the only window one could see the forest—the mountain behind the house.

As I looked out for no particular reason, he placed a hand on my shoulder and grinned.

“I cleaned all the rooms, just so you know.”

He said it proudly, like a child boasting about helping his mother.

I patted his head and said only, “Good job.”

He narrowed his eyes and smiled, stretching the corners of his mouth—again like an innocent child.

The next thing he carried in was a white snake in a basket.

“It’s an Aodaishō. I started keeping it recently.”

He laughed with the snake coiled around his neck.

Then he brought in everything he needed for painting—an easel and canvas, a box filled with tools and paints, a chair.

The room that had been empty moments earlier became a studio.

While he prepared, I decided to play with his snake.

I held out my arm toward the snake wrapped around him. It slowly slid onto me, then coiled around my shoulders and neck. I touched it gently with my fingers.

A snake’s body is strange.

When I stroked its damp scales toward the tail, they felt smooth. But stroking against the grain made them rough—almost painfully so. As I kept petting it, warmth began to build beneath my hand. Cool to the touch, yet pulsing with the vivid warmth of a living creature.

When I reached for its rounded, triangular head, it finally recoiled, unhappy.

“This is what they call albino, right?”

Still absorbed in the sensation of its scales, I asked Yuya. His answer surprised me.

“No, big sis. This one isn’t an albino.”

“Really?” I blinked.

“Normally, an Aodaishō has yellow eyes.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“If it were albino, its eyes would be red.”

I checked the snake’s eyes. I couldn’t tell if they were yellow, but they certainly weren’t red.

“Then what is it, exactly?”

“If I had to name it… a white morph, I guess?”

“And what’s the difference from albino?”

“Hm… hard to say. Compared to albinos, they’re stronger against sunlight. But this one seems to prefer the dark.”

“Is it unhealthy? Does it have poor eyesight or anything like that? Humans with similar traits often do.”

“That might be true. Honestly, I don’t know. But I’m raising it just fine. Ugh, that explanation’s awful—this distinction is too hard.”

“So basically, it’s albino-ish, right?”

“If that’s what you want to call it, then sure. At least for now.”

“Ahahaha! ‘At least for now,’ you say? That’s hilarious. Perfect.”

Laughing, I stroked the snake’s chin.

Wrapped in the white snake, sitting in my wheelchair with the forest beyond the window behind me—I realized that he intended to use us, me and the snake, as the motif for his next painting.

After snapping a quick photo of me on his phone, he sat in his chair, placed a sketchbook on his knee, and drew the first line. Then, with a solemn expression, he said:

“Please listen to my story.”

—Here we go again.

Whenever he paints me, he always tells the same story.

“All right, I’ll listen. What is it this time?”

“This is something that happened when I was in elementary school. A story of pure, youthful stupidity.”

“Well, the opening is a little different from usual.”

I murmured. But he was already focused and didn’t hear me.

Listening to his voice, I stroked the snake once more.

The snake seemed fully prepared—it didn’t move at all, like it had frozen.

I, too, straightened my posture for his sake.