The Versatile Master Artist

“Explode in silence or perish in silence.” — Brother Xun.

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This kiss from Koizumi Katsuko was calm and prolonged.

She sat while Gu Weijing lay down.

The girl knelt on the lawn, Gu Weijing lay softly on the ground, his forehead resting on Koizumi Katsuko’s legs, with his wet hair sticking to his forehead in strands.

His entire outfit was soaked, wetting Koizumi Katsuko’s clothing as well.

The boy on Shengzi’s lap didn’t look handsome at all.

At this moment, his disheveled and desolate appearance made it seem like Miss Sakai had just jumped into the nearby lake to pull him out.

This scene was entirely unromantic, nothing like the kind that would appear in a Korean idol drama to stir a young girl’s heart and offer her first kiss.

At this moment, from deep inside, Gu Weijing felt that his performance was just like that of a complete loser.

What excellent girl would want to kiss a defeated loser?

However,

Koizumi Katsuko still leaned down for this kiss.

She didn’t kiss Gu Weijing on the lips, but on his forehead, like a compassionate nun.

Or rather,

This was a motherly kiss.

Gu Weijing’s pupils slightly trembled, his breath halting for a moment, and even time seemed to pause the instant the girl’s soft lips touched him.

Beside the fountain, the winged forest nymph silently watched this noisy and ungrateful world with her broken marble head.

As if she’s held this pose for a thousand years.

On the lawn beneath the statue.

The wind blew against the wind, and water met water.

A girl on earth kissed the forehead of the boy on her knees, their skins gently touching.

At this moment, all was silent.

Gu Weijing couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed this way.

Mona and his sense of distance was well-maintained.

She would take the initiative to hold his hand, would link arms with his while walking along the boardwalk by the sea.

Mona had embraced him, and Gu Weijing once thought their relationship was very close.

Except for the kiss.

In the open environment of an international school, they never kissed.

Gu Weijing was afraid, and Mona probably didn’t wish to.

Miss Chairman wasn’t willing to easily cross the small boundary between being perfect friends and slightly-more-than-friends.

Sometimes,

A little boundary crossing might occur under her guidance and control, with some small hints of desire and ambiguity.

But to kiss… to kiss would go too far beyond the line.

Possibly, the last woman to kiss him was his mother.

But that’s a very distant memory, so distant that he couldn’t recall if it had really happened.

Gu Weijing was the one abandoned by his parents.

He vaguely understood.

His father wasn’t the poor artist his grandfather said he was. In the chaotic times in Yangon back then, art wasn’t exactly a promising career.

So his father hated art, hated their family’s art gallery, hated the poverty and chaos here, hated Gu Tongxiang’s insistence that he pick up the brush and inherit the family legacy, and desperately wanted to change his life.

And never come back again.

Gu Weijing even knew.

When he was three, his father got a promotion at a French bank to work at the headquarters, and insisted on taking Gu Weijing with him.

He wanted his son not to experience anything of this country, not experience the pain he went through.

To obtain French nationality, study in French schools, become a citizen of a developed country.

Become those sitting in “carriages” in Southeast Asia, not the one carrying the “carriages.”

To someday become a doctor or a lawyer, or study finance to be a Golden Boy, that was the life he envisioned for his son.

Not continuing the generations-old family art gallery at the suffocating Yangon Riverfront.

It was Gu Tongxiang who stopped this.

The old man slammed the table and shouted at his son, “We are a family of artists; my father passed the art gallery to me, and it’s my duty to pass it down.”

“You ran away like a coward; your son must shoulder this responsibility.”

“This is your choice!”

The kind and gentle-looking old Gu Tongxiang threatened back then that if the ancestral craft was severed in his generation, he would jump into the Yangon River the next day.

In some sense, this was Gu Tongxiang’s fault.

His behavior resembled those of classic authoritarian parents discussed on the Dongxia Douban forum “Parents Are Harmful.”

At his core, Gu Tongxiang had the temperament of an authoritarian East Asian patriarch.

But on the other hand, Gu Weijing didn’t resent him.

Because his grandfather truly treated him well.

Even Gu Weijing had to admit.

Between him and his cousin Gu Lin, the old man’s heart was biased, and no one could blame his aunt for bearing a grudge.

Gu Tongxiang probably always felt guilty for not letting his grandson have a “better life,” so he always tried to compensate him doubly.

But.

All this left Gu Weijing without parental love from a young age.

His parents, after moving to France, separated a few years later. They were doing well but had never returned.