Bab 14: Prelude 2 - Bright-Colored Words, Part 6
"Are you… you sure about this?" Zachary could hear the fear in his voice.
"It's completely safe," said Lauren, "I've only broken like two ribs."
"What?!!!"
"I'm joking, I'm joking. Come on, hurry it up!"
He mumbled to himself. "(I thought I told you to stop making jokes that'd make my heart stop…)"
From the outside, it was a simple lighthouse that matched the palette of all the other buildings. It stood at the top of a sandy hill; a hill which outlooked both the beach and the sea ahead. There was this unique aura of repose and odd nostalgia surrounding it.
However, on the inside, which Zachary found himself at the moment, it was an entirely different story. In terms of the interior walls, it looked as much as one would expect it to be according to its exterior.
But it was there that the feeling of tranquility disappeared.
It felt like they had stepped into an ancient tower rather than a lighthouse. There were a set of wooden stairs spiraling around the entire place up till the top. Not a single room lied in the middle. It was a straight shot through to the roof. The problem lied in the fact that the stairs were made of concrete, but most of them were broken off and replaced with wooden ones instead; that seemed to be much on the collapse as well.
「I'd like to give the guy who reconstructed this a very big "Thank you" up the ass.」
Although, the man who would have the brilliant idea of putting wooden stairs in an attempt to "fix" what was lost was probably some homeless man who lived here before. Zachary was sure they weren't the only ones who stumbled on their own to this place. Who knew how many people had ventured here in the past half a century?
Despite seeing Lauren run to the top in a carefree manner without facing any inconvenience, he was still hesitant on climbing the stairs. He could not guarantee his safety.
「But am I really going to stop now?」
Before any second thoughts came to him, he mustered up his courage and…
"Wait, I'm coming!"
…he ran up the stairs.
※※※※
When he reached the top, Zachary felt like he stumbled onto a giant attic.
There was a faint touch of light seeping in through the round window in the center, and then some on the far right that seemed to be mostly blocked by a curtain of leaves hanging from the ceiling. Like the stairs that preceded it, the flooring of the place was made of mostly concrete, with a few wooden blocks recklessly placed here and there to fill any gap.
It felt like they were doing more harm than good as anyone could simply step on the wood and fall down. Perhaps it was his overthinking nature getting the best of him, but he could not afford to be not too careful now.
Contrary to the place's dilapidated nature, there were a few dozen items and decorations placed around that seemed fairly new. They somehow brought a warm and cozy ambience to this rundown building — this room could very well pass as a treehouse.
There was still one thing that bothered Zachary.
"Um… Lauren?!" He called out.
That playful girl was nowhere in sight. He was sure that she had climbed into this place as there was nowhere else to go on the way up but here.
He took a step forward before the floor beneath him loudly creaked and he backed away quickly.
「I should probably watch where I'm stepping.」
Just as he was walking backward…
"Boo!"
A loud voice echoed in his ears.
"Woah!"
He quivered in his place for a second before frantically jumping away like a scaredy-cat. The whole process seemed almost comical and was definitely hilarious to watch… in Lauren's eyes.
She was standing next to him, barely holding onto her legs as she was endlessly laughing at his over-the-top reaction. That boy gave off the best and most waggish reactions whenever he was frightened that she could not help but keep teasing him.
"Do you get off from making people suffer?!!!" He said in his distraught state.
The question made it seem as if he finally crossed the line and decided to be as blunt as possible like he usually was before.
And Lauren's reaction was definitely an appropriate response.
There was a sudden look of shock in her eyes… before she returned back to laughing hysterically.
Instead of a look of disgust or a slap in the face, he was just met with laughter. Normally, it would bother him to see someone seeing joy at his own misery. After realizing how ridiculous his reaction must have looked, he could not help but smile from Lauren's infectious hysterics.
"Do you get off from making people suffer…," she leisurely shook her head as she recited his words while trying to ease her laughter, "Well um… a famous philosopher did once say, suffering leads to progress. So maybe that's a good thing? For you?"
Zachary was surprised for a moment by her knowledge of philosophy, she almost sounded like an old man spouting nonsense in an attempt to give advice. He drove the thought away as he tried to focus back on the subject at hand.
"That's not exactly what he said," he voiced his disagreement as he saw her walk by him, "And he was a… nihilist, you know."
She turned her head back at him with a smile, "I mean, that's on him. Why should you care? Besides, if you really wanna delve into it, I'd say he was an existentialist."
He was slightly appalled by her behavior but ultimately took it as a simple joke like everything she had done so far.
"Here," she walked over to the corner in the room with the wall covered by leaves, "Come over here and take a look!"
Treading the floor carefully, he made sure not to step on any wooden palette that was in or out of his sight. He noticed some of the furniture and things that were placed in that corner.
A few starfish necklaces nestled on top of a wooden nightstand. Beside the nightstand was a reasonably-sized worktable filled with tools, some old blueprints, what looked like a map placed at the front, and a couple of coins bundled together at the far edge of the table.
"Are you sure your dad's the only one into engineering or…?"
Remembering when she mentioned helping her father with his work, Zachary randomly held a tool up to emphasize his point. He thought that perhaps the father's work had passed down to the daughter. Although, if that were the case, it would strangely contradict her desire to be an author.
"Oh no, those were up here when I first came to this place." She elaborated, "Same as the furniture. I cleaned them all up and they made for some pretty comfy atmosphere for the place. The lighthouse keeper or whoever was in here before must have had a pretty acquired taste."
If there was any era to describe the type of furniture present in that room, it would definitely be the Roaring Twenties. That brown color that painted every aspect of them was just too comforting for the eyes.
"But we're not here for these…," she raised her finger like she had one more thing to show off, and judging from her words and the look of exhilaration in her eyes, it seemed to be most certainly true.
Lauren leaned and reached out her hand to grab a pole that was a little out of her reach. She brushed off the leaves that were blocking the light and used all her might to completely push them out of sight with the pole. Behind where the leaves originally were, was a torn-up wall that perfectly overlooked the sea and the islands in the distance.
It was a wondrous view — at least to Lauren.
"Look at this, it's beautiful!" She gaped at the scenery with awe, "We came at the perfect time, don't ya think?"
However, Zachary did not think much of it. To him, it was just a view like any other. There was nothing of interest or special in it.
Lauren noticed that look of monotone in his eyes and could not help but sigh.
Without any warning, she grabbed onto his shoulders and pushed him directly in front of the scenery she was bewildered by.
"Tell me," she giggled from anticipation, "What do you see?"
"Uh…," he didn't understand the question, "It looks like a bunch of islands to me? I think?"
"Noooo, look at the scenery. Open your eyes!"
He wrinkled his eyebrows, "W-What do you mean "open my eyes"? They're wide open!"
"That's not looking."
"Are you listening to yourself?" He turned his head in her direction.
These nonsensical words of hers painted her as one trying to indoctrinate him into a cult. As if the secret to happiness was within that cult. They'd tell you to just solve this one riddle and then make you doze off from their insanity till you force others to join through the same process.
It did not make an ounce of sense.
"You wanna get ahead in life?" She started speaking like a life coach.
"Um… I don't know?"
"Tsk," she shook her head, "You wanna be an author?"
"Uh… yeah?"
"Do you want to see a bright-colored world?"
"Yes!" His answers were affirmative.
"Then listen to me, close your eyes, clear your mind, open 'em, and then look at the scenery!"
There was no choice but to follow along with her mystical scheme or whatever she had in mind.
And so, Zachary closed his eyes.
"That's it…," she uttered, "Now think about what you saw before. What was in the scenery?"
"I… I don't exactly remember. I didn't focus that much."
"It's alright. Even if it's all vague, just try to picture something in your mind. A word, at least."
All he thought of was the one word that described it. It was: nightfall.
"You got it?"
"I think…"
"Okay, now open 'em."
Zachary opened his eyes. The scenery was still the same as ever, grim and completely devoid of color. Nothing had changed.
"This is stupid," He sighed and turned his head down in disappointment.
"Hey hey, we're not finished yet." She put her hand under his chin and raised his head back up to face the view again, "Last step was looking at the scenery itself. Look at what's in it. The details, everything that you can grasp. And then describe it to yourself."
"What are you—"
"Just listen to me, pretty please."
A bit of that begging from her quickly refuted his urge to refuse.
Without any further delay, he turned his attention back to the view before him, staring only at the scenery, and solely that scenery. He tried to picture the right words to describe it whilst keeping his eyes open.
"You're allowed to blink, you know." Lauren chuckled.
Ignoring the feeling of embarrassment, he blinked and looked at the scenery once again.
It was a still scene of great islands in the ocean.
No matter how he went around through it, there was nothing more of note to it. If this was a matter of simply sightseeing to her, then he believed it was not the right one to fix his problem. Then again, he never did take the time to understand the purpose of sightseeing. His opinion on them was half-baked at best.
「Alright, shut up and let me look. It's just describing what I'm looking at. How hard can it be? I'm a writer. I've written several stories. I can do this.」
He tried to scrutinize it with care.
There was the amber luminescence of the sunset seeping through a plethora of gigantic clouds, which almost covered up the whole sky from above. The sunset sky was basking with twilight, radiating its light directly in the eyes of the onlooker. Looking at it at that moment, Zachary shut his eyes to shield himself from the light.
「Ugh… This is too hard.」
To be fair, staring directly in the face of the sun with one's eyes open was incredibly obnoxious. That'd be the case had it been the scorching sun of the morning. But this was simply the warm light of nightfall, and, as he realized behind his closed eyes, it barely brought any heat. He slowly opened his eyes back up and looked at the scene again. There was nothing wrong, he was still fine.
「Stop worrying and start looking.」
Other than the tree-filled islands in the distance, there was something that came to light the moment the ray of the sunset was recognized. There were mountains, several of them, way into the background. With the last hour of twilight on the horizon, the sun leisurely descended, shielding half of its appearance behind the farthest mountain, and illuminating it with an aura of romance. And with that same light, it shimmered down onto the ocean, posing a reflection that turned back onto the clouds.
And there it was.
"...?" Zachary tilted his head in confusion.
On the far left to the clouds, right above the giant burnt tree that almost blocked the view in the corner of his eye, was a strange illuminating shape of what looked like a bird.
It was the course of the moving clouds. They painted the illusion of a dove with great wings flying off in the distance, up to the free and boundless sky.
「But what's the point?」
This was nothing more than the beauty of nature and the wilderness during nightfall.
This was when he was hit with the answer.
"Twilight in the wilderness…" He uttered these words under his breath as he gaped in astonishment over the revelation he came to.
Before he knew it, he had described nearly half of what the scenery before him had to offer. Most importantly of all, however, was that he cracked the secret to what it was all about.
A scene "unhuman."
A simple scene of sublime nature.
「Serenity…」
But this— this wasn't the only thing that had changed in his perspective.
The scenery — the ocean, the mountain, and the light of sunset — were starting to shine brightly in his eyes. There was color in them.
It was as if a black and white image had transformed to one with selective color at a specific object of interest. A world deprived of color finally had a colored piece. It wasn't the whole world, that much was true, but it was still something.
In its own twisted way, it was beautiful, offering quite the mesmerizing scene.
"Earth to Mr. Ashworth!" A voice suddenly ringed in his ears. "Earth to Mr. Ashworth, are you there?"
It was Lauren. She was calling out to him this entire time yet he couldn't hear a single thing. Entering this world of more color seemed to have taken quite the time off reality.
Zachary looked at her with the shock still in his eyes and then looked back at the painting. Its light and color were still there.
When he woke up from that trance, he was still in this… new world.
This wasn't something temporary, it was the next step to his dream, taken right at that moment. He couldn't help but laugh after all this. All of this time he was searching for a part of an answer, and it was as simple as coming to appreciate a moment stopped in time.
That was the secret to the first path of an author: grasping the smaller picture.
With that knowledge, he figured out why Myung was the key to the full answer. Her stories were all about the bigger picture, with hidden meanings within. She understood it, but most of all (to do that), she understood the smaller picture first.
"This is amazing!"
"It's breathtaking!" Lauren replied genuinely with similar joy, "Imagine what it would be like if we saw the whole world like that. If we came to appreciate all of it."
Zachary came to understand her a little better with that discovery. She was astounded by this place because of all these varying objects of color within. It truly was a museum of art to her.
To test this newfound "ability" of his, he looked around for any visible color within the room. Sure enough, there were certain objects individually painted in vibrant colors. These were colors that were previously believed to be unimaginable in his eyes.
"So this is why…," Zachary chuckled, "This is why you run around like a child."
"Who are you calling a child?" Lauren pouted.
She crossed her arms and looked the other way in displeasure.
It didn't take another second before she spoke again, "By the way, being a child is not so bad. Children have the widest imagination, as they say. And we need plenty of it right now."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night."
"Wow… okay," she felt a sense of defeat knowing that he had gained the upper hand on her for once, "Anyway, come on, it's time to move onto the next step."
She walked farther into the room.
"There's more?"
"You bet there is—" She held her tongue for a second before she counted a set amount of numbers on her fingers, "Well, it's only this last part."
Her smile widened, turning into something mischievous.
This was the moment she was waiting for the most.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone