小説/Novel "Transparent Statue" Chapter 2

This time, I wrote my post in English. Please help yourself reading this work. This is a challenge for me as a writer.
訳: 今回は英語で投稿しました。 ぜひ、この作品を読んでください。これは私にとって作家としての挑戦です。

Chapter two - In Tokyo

1
At first his parents disagreed to his choice when he told them where to learn art. But as you can learn economics in any universities in any countries, if you don’t have a particular interest in a really narrow realm of a subject, art is one of such subjects you can choose as an university major in any countries. He had thought so. Or better said, he hadn’t any idea about in which country to learn art. Which is why, one day, when he visited the museum near his house and happened to encounter the work, which was a picture created by a Japanese artist, his heart got vibrated. What moved his mind was not only the adroit artistic techniques used in the work, but the stuff itself woven into the work and the aura radiated from it. It was an emotion he felt, which is similar to fear or awe to something dark, darker than even the darkness colored in the blackest color.
“Keeping up the Pureness”
That was the title of the work, which pushed him to decide to study Japanese art.

When he told his parents about his plan, which is to enter a Japanese university of art and live in such a far country having unique culture different from where he had grown up, they frowned, as he had expected, telling him
“Why you chose that country? It’s good to major art in this country.”.
However, the Japanese work created by the artist, whose name, he found after, was “Fuyuko Matsui”, raised a firm decision nobody could budge. Thanks to the far east country being a developed country with services of high quality, they succumbed to his decision.
Which was how, how he could go to one of the largest city all over the world.

2
His life in an university in Tokyo looked like, of course superficially, that of what is called playboy rather than an artist striving to create the historically greatest artworks even sacrificing his own life. He didn’t intend to become such a playboy-like student, but his handsome looking, being tall, having sky-blue eyes, almost white blond hair always trimmed short, and thin face, with masculine body with well trained muscles, drew attentions from peers. Most of them were hot radiations from girls regardless of inside the university or outside. Dating girls was easier for him than finding where to go in Japan by reading signs written in the unique Asiatic language. No more than a month had passed when he got a girlfriend, named Jennifer Nanami Murakami. He met her at a welcome party for the students of first year. Just after the entrance to the university, many club activities had such parties and the one where both of them met was one of them.
“Where’re you from?”
Asked her. And he just said his country.
“I’m local, but my father is from Los Angeles, the United States.”
The initiation of their conversation was such a kind of terse stuff, but his eyes, like the lakes of grassland in Switzerland reflecting sunny sky were, in addition to his thin lips and relatively small chin, dragged her eyesight and occupied her whole focus. He didn’t have any idea to date her, but it was her who got seduced by his eyes and cute face crowning short blonde hair.
“Not so bad.”
That was the first impression he got from her.

3
As he got credits of lectures in universities, advancing his studying and following his pursuit of artistic beauty he can create, he became a fourth year. Unlike his cuteness and many temptations from a bunch of university girls much more attractive comparing with other peers of ordinary level, he had stuck with Jennifer during the four-year course of his university life. And at the beginning of the last year as an university student, he faced the final task called “graduation project”. That was assigned to each student; they had to create masterpieces, which should be the results from their efforts through the university lives and their talents as artists. What he had conceived then in his mind was “something transparent” to express what he believes was beautiful in terms of art. This was when he decided to create the masterpiece, which was displayed in the living room of his mansion now.

“I’ve grew old. Don’t you think so, Nikolai?”
Said Jennifer one day.
“You’re so cute as always. You’ve been, and you will.”
Said he, wondering why she said such stuff. Long sleek black hair with flawless white skin were the attractive features girls feel jealous of her. What he loved of her, limiting the subject only to her physical appearance, was her gray eyes, deep enough to make him feel worry about the true thoughts she would have in her mind. Since then, he came to want to protect the beauty she had inherently owned.

That was after he drew concept pictures for the graduation project many times when a glow speared his mind. Enlightened, which is what he recognized. What was found mind boggling turned out to be a solvable problem. Perhaps, much easier way than he had expected.
While he created piles of concept pictures, he realized, at first, intuitively, and some piles later, visually, that the ideal image suitable for “something transparent” in his mind was getting closer to his girlfriend Jennifer. As he created draft pictures for severing, carving and trimming the concept, which was still something obscure and floating, of his final work in his university days, he could visualize, or much better to say “see” to explain the sense he experienced, that what he should create was the statue alike to her. The figure gradually looming out of something floating began to clarify its own outline dividing itself from the darkness. And as the look of the figure grew clearer, his sense that it was her which was to become the most suitable model for the project he had to accomplish, not only just for the graduation but also for the rest of his career as an greatest artist.
An idea was invoked into his mind.

4
“This is the greatest masterpiece in the history of this university.”
“It’s alive more than even living creatures. Much more than the models of taxidermy.”
“Even the word ‘genius’ doesn’t fit you. Your creation is beyond the field mankind can reach.”
A torrent of surprises, praises and respects fell onto him. Everybody having a glimpse of the statue got stunned, suffocated, and striven to find suitable words to express the awes which cropped up in their minds. What the statue got was such an immense stature in the university.
For a period, works produced by the graduation projects were displayed in the university, and the exhibition for those works was open to general public. Even the people having the slightest talent and knowledge of art could understand that the statue he created exceeded the rest of the works at the year. Various kinds and a bunch of expressions flew fro and to about the masterpiece he created as the consequence of his university life. People said different stuff each other, even some of them lost most of their words. However, all of those praises had a common point.
“This is living.” said everybody. Of course it would have been an illusion if some of the guests had seen or noticed pulses of the statue. Statue is statue. There is nothing working as the living. In terms of biology. But taking a close look at it, perhaps, one in a million, you might be able to notice that the statue was alive in a past.

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