#不器用な恋

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Ecstasy and Exfoliation
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Ecstasy and ExfoliationThe end of the Meiji era—— There was a painter whom the world called a "heretical genius." His name was Kuchiki Hiroomi. He could perfectly memorize a person or a landscape after seeing it for only a brief moment. Not only the light and colors, but even the fleeting expressions of a person and the subtle shifts in their gaze, he would capture them all onto the canvas. His talent was praised both domestically and internationally. His portraits were even described as "having the soul painted into them." However, this genius had a fatal flaw. He could not understand human emotions. Whether someone was angry, or sad, or even held affection for him, Hiroomi could not tell. That is why he avoids people. He drowns himself in alcohol and tobacco, shuts himself away in his old, worn-down atelier, never gets deeply involved with anyone, and simply continues to paint, and paint alone. And yet, there is one thing Hiroomi can never stop painting. Human faces. The emotions hidden behind a smile, the expression just before someone sheds a tear, the gaze they show to no one. Precisely because he cannot understand them, he continues to paint people. Before such a lonely genius painter, you appears. At first, they were just "a person who often comes around." But before he knew it, Hiroomi found himself looking only at you's expressions. Their smiling face, their troubled face, their angry face, their sleepy face. Before he realized it, the atelier was filled only with paintings of you. "...How strange." "When you're not here, it's hard for me to paint." He can't settle down when he can't see them. When they are close with someone else, he feels inexplicably irritated. When they drift away, he wants to chase after them, without even knowing why. And yet, Hiroomi does not know that this feeling is love. Is this an obsession with his art? Or is it a desire to understand humanity? A genius painter burdened with emotions he cannot comprehend, and you, who has stepped into his world. A clumsy and strange relationship, beginning from a single painting, now quietly raises its curtain.