Am I really hallucinating?

Chapter 177 Meeting with Myself
What Lin Yilin wanted was a portrait of herself.

However, when I was younger, I was still myself as a child.

Even though there was no reference, the painter readily agreed.

He put on a new canvas and started painting again. It felt like time passed quickly, but it didn't seem like much time had passed. Zheng Fan stood beside the painter and watched a young and lovely girl, Lin Yilin, appear on the canvas.

A scar-free, cute child, but her face seemed the same as always, expressionless and lifeless... No, it even gave Zheng Fan the feeling that she looked even more lifeless than Lin Yilin now.

Excluding the possibility that the painter just drew it randomly, does that mean that Lin Yilin actually looked like this when she was very young?
It turns out that cute people are cute since childhood.

Finally, the painter put down his brush, and the painting of Shimokobayashi Ichirin on Sunset Street was completed.

"Excellent." Zheng Fan raised his eyebrows and praised.

"Thank you for the compliment. I hope this painting will satisfy the girl." The painter said, looking over the easel to where Lin Yilin was supposed to be standing.

And at that location, Lin Yilin had disappeared.

"Where did she go?" Zheng Fan just noticed Lin Yilin's disappearance, but he also realized that this was what Lin Yilin wanted.

"Into the painting," said the painter. "Paintings are our mirrors, reflecting our inner selves. Even some forgotten things may be found in them. We can occasionally get a glimpse of inspiration that transcends everything, even if we are ultimately just slaves to the pursuit of this inspiration."

"Oh ho."

"You also have your own inspiration, sir." The painter said to Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan shrugged. "Maybe, but I'm not obsessed with it. It's just a tool. But I can understand you. You have a pursuit that you devote your life to. Even if you end up being a slave who dies somewhere, it's also a kind of fulfillment."

The painter looked at Zheng Fan in surprise: "I am really surprised that in your black color, there is also a different kind of colorfulness. You symbolize another completely different world."

"I don't know. Anyway, show me the way and I'll go find her."

"With the connection between you two, you can go straight over."

"I'm not that disappointed. Distance creates beauty, even if we have a negative distance. Life should have a sense of ritual, and I still want to continue my vacation. Brother, your landscape paintings are really good." Zheng Fan finished his speech and finally praised the painter.

"Haha, what a wonderful illusion. I really hope that the real me can talk to you, but meeting you may not mean a good ending for me." The painter laughed and handed the painting to Zheng Fan. "Just follow this to find it, but the memory may be deep in this studio."

"Okay, thanks." Zheng Fan took the painting and walked to the door of a house on the street and opened it. Behind the door was not the house, but another room in the painting.

He walked in, closed the door and left.

The painter looked at Zheng Fan's back and maintained a calm smile.

After sitting on the small bench for a while, he stood up again.

Add paint, mix colors somewhat roughly, and switch to a new canvas.

The brush was stained with a thick black color and then moved closer to the white canvas.

When the brush was about to touch the canvas, the painter hesitated, but it was very short-lived. He smiled at himself and then painted the black with relief.

This may be a creation that he has never or dared to try in real life.

When he saw the endless darkness, his inspiration had already been triggered, but he also knew that this inspiration was fatal. He could not draw that existence, and this was not an excuse.

For the painter, color is not the color itself. In the literal sense, it is mainly black and white ink painting. Although the painter himself is not good at this, he has seen many amazing works of masters.

However, when it comes to the artist's super inspiration, some colors are not just pure colors. Colors will attract different worlds, and their brushstrokes are to guide power, so they must be strict with themselves and not get lost.

However, if he has such a color in front of him but does not use it, is he still a painter with this super inspiration?
Just like himself in real life, even if it is himself in the painting, he finally chose this martyrdom attempt without hesitation. After all, he himself is just one of the colors in the painting.

The pitch-black vortex stained the white canvas, and the endless black continued to spread, trying to swallow everything.

at last……

The painter was not able to finish the painting.

The brush fell on the grass, the palette fell, making a soft sound, and the painter disappeared. Even if he disappeared, he was satisfied in the end because he at least chose to try.

The moment the origin of the vortex appeared, this painting world began to collapse. For this colorful world, it was still too early to dig into the depths of the monster in human skin.

……

Lin Yilin was in a slightly old residential area.

She had been to this place before; it was her hometown.

It's a bit strange to say this, but since her memories before the earthquake were all blurred, she only recently remembered some fragments of her brief meeting with Yagui because of her encounter with Yagui, so she can only say that she has an impression of this place.

After the earthquake, her adoptive father investigated her background and brought her back to this home.

But her parents were no longer around, and both parents did not have many relatives, so she could not find anyone who could take care of her steadily. Finally, of her own choice, she followed Mr. Edelman and recognized him as her adoptive father.

Although she still keeps her old home in this community, she hasn't been here for a long time.

I have no clear memory of this place, and staying in this empty house that brings back no memories only adds to the emptiness.

She asked the painter to paint her childhood memories because she wanted to try to borrow his power to dig out the forgotten parts of her heart.

Thinking of this, she walked through the community and found the floor where her old home was based on her memory.

Looking at the door lock in front of her, she tentatively took out the key from her waist bag and inserted it into it.

Click.

The door was really opened.

"This lock really hasn't been changed in all these years." Lin Yilin murmured.

She pushed the door open and heard people talking. She could tell from the shoes at the door that the family of three was inside. The furnishings in the house were slightly different from her later memories. She glanced at the calendar on the wall and confirmed that it was about two years before the earthquake.

Hearing footsteps walking out, Lin Yilin opened the door of a storage room that was rarely opened, hid inside, and observed through the crack in the door.

A man and a woman came out.

It’s Mom and Dad…

Although she herself had no clear memory of her parents, she had actually seen photos of them and had kept the family portrait in her hometown. She didn't know if it was because of her memory abnormality or if she was forgetting instinctively.

However, as soon as she saw these two people, Lin Yilin knew that they were her parents.

They said goodbye to the person in the house, saying that they had bought a lot of new books and she could read them by herself at home.

Then they hugged the petite figure and left.

The sound of the door opening and closing proved that my parents had left home.

Now there are only her and...

The little girl stood in the living room looking at the door for a while, then went to the kitchen and came out holding a fruit knife: "Come out, stranger."

Lin Yilin:?

"I heard the door open. The hinges of our door open and close with a very distinctive sound. There was also an adult's footprint on the floor at the door that I didn't recognize. The size was similar to my mother's, but the shoe print was not any of her mother's shoes."

Lin Yilin was silent for a moment, then pushed open the door of the storage room and came face to face with the little girl.

Her childhood self, but apart from her small stature, she couldn't see the girl's face clearly. The face seemed to be covered by messy lines and graffiti, making it unclear for her to see clearly.

Is it because of my memory or some other reason?
"...Why, I can't see your face clearly...?" Unexpectedly, the little girl asked in a daze.

Lin Yilin said directly: "Why didn't you tell your parents directly when you heard someone broke in? If it's an adult, you can't handle it alone."

Little girl: "...I don't know, I just have a feeling that we need to meet alone. Now we have met, although it seems that there is no 'face'..."

"I can't see you clearly either." Lin Yilin said bluntly.

(End of this chapter)