TFOA Chapter 4

"I want to plant sunflowers."

Since she had to leave the weeds dead for a week after spraying herbicide, Niksi, whose morning schedule was forcibly free, went to Gilbert's house.

Gilbert happened to be trimming potatoes for potato sowing.

"Suddenly planting sunflowers?"

—Snip.

Gilbert cut the potato into four pieces.

Due to the aftermath of war, refugees and animals alike had dug up the ground looking for food. Therefore, it was no exaggeration to say that potato seeds had run dry.

So this spring, planting potatoes could yield great profit.

Even if it meant searching through storage sheds for every existing potato, non-existing potato, rotten potato, and dead potato...

"Sunflowers of all things... You said you wanted less work but more money. But flowers?"

"I changed my mind."

"How come?"

"Just. It seemed like it would be fun."

Niksi stacked the heaped potato pieces into a tower on the table.

"Fun? Farming is similar to gambling, Niksi. If you do it for fun, you'll lose money, time, and health."

"I have nothing more to lose anyway. You know people with nothing to lose are scary, Gil?"

Pretending to be something scary, Niksi made threatening sounds while showing her square teeth.

A potato flicked by her finger fell to the floor with a thud.

Of course, to Gilbert's eyes, Niksi just looked like a neighborhood puppy that was brave because it didn't know anything.

'She'll fall into a ditch and yelp.'

Gilbert picked up the potato that had fallen on the floor and put it in the basket, then flicked Niksi's forehead with his finger.

"You said you came to help with potato sprouting. You need to pay for the scrambled eggs you ate for breakfast."

"That's too much! I only had one spoonful to taste if it was seasoned properly!"

"Right, one ladle-full spoonful."

"Fine, I'll pay. How much is it? Will 5 euros do?"

Niksi searched her pockets. She happened to have several bills.

"Right, I paid for drinks yesterday. How much was it... Five beers, roasted vegetables, and assorted handmade sausages..."

"Ha ha. Shall we plant potatoes?"

When he mentioned the bar bill, Niksi snatched the potato basket Gilbert was holding and bolted outside.

She was spry, unlike someone who had gotten drunk and slept with her head on the table last night.

He couldn't tell if city people naturally had healthy livers or if she particularly had a good liver.

Gilbert took a hoe and headed outside.

Niksi was scattering potatoes on well-plowed field like sowing seeds.

How was that 'planting' in any way?

He felt like the summer potato harvest equivalent to what Niksi had scattered was being lost.

'I wondered why she grabbed it and ran out so excitedly.'

Gilbert called for Niksi while pressing his head. She learned for the first time that potatoes were fussy crops.

They looked stupidly grown, but if you plant them too deep in the ground, the sprouts can't grow, and if you plant them too shallow, they get exposed to sunlight and become green potatoes.

It was no ordinary fussiness.

On one hand, curious about green potatoes, Niksi planted one small potato at the far end of the field shallowly and gave it a name.

'Sola,' derived from the potato poison 'solanine.'

"Grow well and produce lots of solanine, Sola. I haven't dealt with potato poison yet."

"This is payment."

In the basket given as payment was a long bottle containing wild strawberries.

When she uncorked it, a sweet smell rose up.

"It's wild strawberry wine from the year before last. If you want to drink it sweet, freshly made is better, but there's no wine from last year, so I can't give you a taste."

"Ah, I understand. No fool would go looking for wild strawberries through artillery fire. And I don't really like sweet things anyway, so this is just right."

Niksi closed the cork with a satisfied expression.

It was decent payment for planting just 5 potatoes in such a large field.

On the way home, if she gathered some wild sugar loaf and lightly roasted it, then paired it with the sausage she received yesterday and this wine, she could have an elegant evening.

"So did you reply to the friend who sent you sunflowers?"

"No. I was actually wondering what to send as a reply."

Crops she grew herself? That would take over half a year to wait. Half a year is enough time for impatient Jackie to storm into Niksi's farm asking why she's not replying.

"Isn't there any specialty unique to Auvers? Besides cranberries and pine wax."

"Um... the wheat fields and beach?"

"Something I can send. I can't send scenery."

Niksi complained resentfully. Gilbert thought for a moment and opened his mouth.

"There is a way to send it. You could paint it and send it."

"Painting?"

Niksi muttered.

"You're not asking me to paint, are you?"

Unfortunately, Niksi was someone whose right brain, responsible for artistic areas, had been virtually wiped out.

"Huh? No. You could ask a painter to do it."

"What? Where is there a painter in a small village..."

Ah.

Niksi naturally recalled the man drinking green alcohol last night.

His name was Benjamin Richter. The plant-like name was strangely both fitting and unfitting for the man.

The house of the village's only painter was peculiarly far from the village. Around the cliff where the sea beyond the fields was visible at a glance. It was exactly symmetrical to Niksi's house with the stream as the center.

"I thought artists starved to death and their bloodlines dried up."

Niksi, who had no artistic knowledge, muttered indifferently.

'If I clear all the weeds in the yard, I would be able to see this house from across the river. No wait. Since I sprayed herbicide, I'll be able to see this house from the yard in a week.'

The painter happened to have ordered egg whites from Gilbert.

Eggs have two colors in one shell - yolk and white - so why order only whites?

When Niksi asked, Gilbert gave the offhand answer, "He must prefer whites, since yolks are kind of dry."

The ambiguous itch of not getting the right answer stimulated Niksi's curiosity.

Eventually, Niksi learned that the painter was indeed the picky man who hated sunflowers that she met at the bar.

Right then, Niksi decided to commission a painting from that man.

That's why she was now standing in front of that painter's house. Carrying the eggs the painter had ordered.

'He seemed to hate yellow, so that's why he won't eat egg yolks.'

For that, the fence was yellow. Straw-colored yellow.

She really couldn't understand this person.

"Or maybe he just dislikes a lot of things."

Niksi stood in front of the painter's house past the fence.

It was shabby for a house where an artist lived. She hadn't expected a grand, magnificent house like the 'Lobus Museum' rebuilt after the war, but such an ordinary, run-down wooden house.

"The signboard of the general store with rose paintings is more artistic."

—Knock knock.

She knocked a couple times. But there was no sound from inside.

She peeked her head through the window. The inside of the house seemed quiet as if no one was there.

"Most artists are lazy."

Muttering this, Niksi pushed the door with her fingertip. The door was open.

Whether the hinges were old, the door opened with a noisy sound.

"Mr. Painter?"

The empty house was filled with a chill. It was as cold as when Niksi first came to her own house.

'Living in a house like this would make anyone speak so sourly.'

"Aren't you here?"

Niksi lengthened her words as she entered the room.

Whether it was really a painter's house, the floor was full of the white canvases the man had been holding, and there was an acrid oil smell.

She coughed at the irritating smell and looked around.

The floor was covered with paintings. Whether it was because the inside of the house was dark or they were originally that color, the canvases scattered on the floor were filled with nothing but low-saturation blue-toned paintings.

It looked exactly like that kind of scene. What a ray living on the deep ocean floor would see... the sea.

"...Medicine?"

Among the paintings. Unknown pills had fallen.

She picked them up.

White pills the size of a pinky nail with a fairy logo. It was medicine Niksi knew well. Pills with 'Fairy Sandypet,' known as the sleep fairy, drawn on them. Sleep-inducing medication.

She turned her head following where they had fallen.

At the end of the fairy's footprints was the house's owner.

In the dark house, the only corner of the studio where light entered. Near the north window where the wheat fields and Niksi's house were faintly visible.

Where late winter sunlight gently streamed in, the man was curled up sleeping under a blanket.

Niksi kicked aside the canvases scattered haphazardly on the floor and approached him.

She wanted to observe how he had crammed that tall height into one blanket.

His cream-colored hair reflected in the languid sunlight was dazzling. It looked like disheveled dandelion seeds that made her want to stroke them.

Niksi crouched down in front of him.

Up close, it was quite a sight.

'How can you fall asleep on an undried painting?'

He was curled up sleeping on top of a painting used as a bed, holding a brush in his hand. Rather than sleeping, it was closer to being unconscious.

'Did he take this medicine? It was strong. It was medicine you could only get prescribed during wartime situations...'

"Hey. If you sleep here, you'll freeze to death."

Niksi kicked the man's side with her foot.

The paint from the canvas was stuck to the man's face like a decalcomania print. And smeared on the man's lightly swaying hair too.

Though it looked quite comical, the man didn't stir at all.

Losing interest, Niksi shoved the man's upper body backward as she lay sideways next to him.

His ambiguously bent hand fell limply.

Sticky, viscous paint fell from the palm holding the brush to the floor with a thud.

It was like.

"...Is he dead?"

The man opened his eyes then.

For a moment, her pupils, as vivid as the red paint that had fallen to the floor, and the man's dilated pupils locked onto each other.

He lurched up as if convulsing and shoved Niksi's shoulder backward, sending her tumbling.

The canvases that had been precariously standing sideways collapsed with a crashing sound.

Niksi picked up a paint knife that had fallen to the floor before her shoulder hit the ground.

—Crash!

Having not slept for three days straight, he had taken more medicine than usual.

Insomnia was like a sudden epidemic - always unpredictable and contracted helplessly before you could prepare for it.

Auvers nights when everyone was asleep were darker and quieter than anywhere else.

Without streetlights or artificial light, he lay awake through the night relying only on the sound of waves.

He didn't even light a lamp. During wartime, they didn't use lamps except for urgent matters, and this had hardened into habit.

On such soundless nights, he always hid himself more in darkness.

Otherwise, it felt like someone would find him. Like someone would devour him.

He could hear the sound of waves. He felt like he would sink deep and die.

Benjamin squinted his eyes due to the suddenly rushing sunlight.

He stared at the hair spilled across the floor in an unsteady state, still intoxicated with sleep.

Vivid yellow. Such intense saturation that couldn't be found in the deep night.

The round, small shoulder caught in his palm felt surreal.

Whether this was still a dream or still the past.

His swaying head slumped toward the warmth trapped in his embrace.

Then he felt a sharp sting in his neck. The vivid sensation just before metal breaks through skin.

He came to his senses with a start.

—Thump... thump...

His heart beat frantically like a fish thrown out of water.

It was loud enough for her to hear, lying there with her back on the ground and her shoulder pinned by him.

'I thought he'd kill me immediately.'

Niksi stared intently at the unstable man's pupils.

Whether he hadn't regained his senses yet, the man's expression was frozen like a young soldier looking at an enemy who had come to kill him.

She stared at the hand trembling while holding a brush.

How could he think of killing someone with something so blunt and flimsy, gripping it like it was some mighty weapon that could save his life?

'His participation in battle wasn't a lie, but... his skills are so pathetic it's a wonder he survived this long.'

He wasn't skilled enough to be a threat.

Then, a red droplet fell on her cheek. It was a drop of blood from a wound cut by the well-sharpened knife.

Niksi withdrew the paint knife she had aimed at his neck.

"Hey, Mr. Painter. You're heavy."

She spoke in the calm silence.

At the same time, Benjamin, who had come to his senses, let out a short sigh and furrowed his brow.

He stepped back while pressing his forehead. Niksi also wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and got up.

"How many of those did you take?"

"..."

"It's not good medicine to take often. If you take more than four, you need your stomach pumped. You know?"

He was completely unfamiliar with her face. Or rather, it was closer to a 'so what?' expression.

"Looking at you still being alive, stomach pumping doesn't seem necessary."

"..."

"Your hair too... excuse me."

Niksi swept his disheveled hair back.

"Phew. Seeing your scalp intact, you haven't been taking it for long, have you?"

Benjamin swatted her hand away.

"...What."

"Oh, this? This medicine's side effect is hair loss. I was checking if you were addicted."

He sighed quietly and spoke.

"Get out."