Fool's Love

It was as if I couldn't maintain myself just by standing in front of him.

I am a little sorry for the teacher who prepared the lesson seriously - I almost slept through the next morning's class.

I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, and woke up early the next day, as if I had no energy left.I dreamed that I had passed the boring and lethargic class time, and I was sitting in the club room.

Masumi showed me the manga she drew.It seemed to be an excellent cartoon that was very different from the impression I had drawn of him before. When I woke up, I only had a faint impression in my mind, and I couldn't remember the content of the cartoon.

But in the final analysis, the perception of things in dreams and reality are often reversed.The truth dreamed in a dream, even if you remember it when you wake up, may be just an ordinary sentence without any meaning.So I put the dream behind me.

Anxious, the day passed at a hundred times slower speed than before.After finally going through the long study time, I went to the club activity room with the mentality of someone who suddenly saw an oasis without drinking water for many days, but I didn't see Masumi.The failure of expectations is bound to be accompanied by disappointment, and my enthusiasm was quenched in an instant.

Or maybe it's because I'm here too early—at least for now, there's no one in the room.

I was so sleepy that I could barely keep my eyes open, so I fell asleep on the table.I was a light sleeper, and I heard people keep coming into the room.

After waking up completely due to the sound of surrounding noises, Masumi sat across from me, looking at me with an interested smile.

It was as if I had been struck by lightning on the top of my skull, and my embarrassment surged up in an instant.

"good afternoon."

There was a lighthearted smile in Masumi's voice.He meant no harm, but I couldn't help but feel helpless in his presence, as if I couldn't keep up with myself just by standing in his presence.

"Next, good afternoon." I finally choked out a sentence, "How long have I been asleep?"

Masumi raised her hand to her eyes.A smooth wrist reminiscent of moonlight protruded from his well-washed, unwrinkled shirt cuff, surrounded by a metal watch.

"It's been about twenty or ten minutes since I came in?"

Thinking of facing Masumi with this sleepy face for at least 10 minutes, I felt ashamed again.

Masumi didn't seem to care, he used his fingers to stir the hair on the sideburns, the hair was slightly curled, reminiscent of the glistening filaments of sugar pumped by a cotton candy machine.

"I brought the things mentioned earlier."

"The former comics you drew?"

"It's actually a storyboard." Masumi explained, "I also hope that it is a manga, but calling it a manga is far from enough-even though I have tried my best to draw it."

As Masumi said that, she began to flip through her backpack.He took out a stack of papers held in a file folder and gently placed them on the table. I leaned my head over to see what was on them.

Masumi did not say it out of humility.In fact, even if these paintings are regarded as storyboards, they are still not ready, and the division of strokes and grids are at the level of beginners.

To put it bluntly, it's not as good as the current Miami, but I think it's similar to the Miami when I first proposed to cooperate with me in manga.

But that's not the point.What is the most important thing about comics?

painter?Storyboard?No, "interesting" is.Let's put aside the prejudice against painters and focus on the story itself——

Thinking this way, I took the stack of paper and read it carefully one by one.Fortunately, Masumi has a good handwriting, and it is very smooth to read the words.

On the contrary, when he designed his lines, he used a lot of uncommon and obscure words that we don't seem to be used by people of this age.

——Leaving all this aside for the time being, just ask me what I think of this rough storyboard with a total of only ten pages, and my answer is "amazingly interesting".

This is a short story related to time. The first half and the second half of the storyboard are completely reversed. The whole comic forms a palindrome structure from the screen, and the text is used as the protagonist’s confession, telling him that he is trapped in a time loop. in the story.

This is an experimental short story, and it can be seen that Masumi has worked hard when considering the storyboard.The title of the short story is written in the upper left-hand corner of the opening sheet - Ouroboros.

I read it again, and my attitude was serious enough.However, due to reasons such as the pictures and the words used in the lines, I felt that I did not fully understand it, so I went back to the beginning and read it twice.

Masumi is not good at drawing, but he still tries to bury a few ingenious little easter eggs in the picture, which need to be seen carefully to understand. It is my pleasure to find the details in his pictures.

"How about it?"

With a long sigh of relief at the end of my third cover-to-cover reading, Masumi asked me tentatively in a low voice.

"Pretty good." I replied truthfully, "Is this really your first painting?"

"Yes. But in terms of the plot, I have referred to a movie made by a Czech director in the last century - he completed the whole movie in reverse, achieving a sense of absurdity and lightness that is logical but hallucinatory.

So I thought, can I make one story become two by manipulating time like this?This is the answer I handed over. "

"The storyboard is not well designed, is it?"

"You feel it?" Masumi gave a wry smile, "It's pretty terrible. I revised it many times, and I also read a lot of manga artists' works during the period. However, the total amount of practice is not enough. I tried my best, but I still can't do it. Now I'm doing it again. Looking back, the effect of the whole work is still so green that it makes people blush."

It's nothing, I said to myself.I want to tell him that as long as comics are interesting, the flaws on the screen are not a problem.

Now there are many comics created by the original writer and the painter, and this short story more or less reflects Masumi's talent in creating plots.

——I began to think about whether to create comics with him.Unlike Mimi-san, Masumi and I are of the same age, so we may be able to cooperate in a more relaxed way.

What's more, compared to BL manga, I want to draw something more domineering.However, the top priority is to draw the fanfic that I collaborated with Mei Hai.

"But the content is really interesting. Have you thought about other stories? If you have free time, you can draw them like this."

I also took out the sketchbook from my schoolbag—the sketches of Masumi that I had drawn on it had already been torn off by me, and they were placed in a book on the bookshelf in my room.

I started teaching Masumi how to draw storyboards.In fact, there is no need to teach this. Everyone has their own way. At best, I just remind him not to stick to the picture (as far as Masumi's painting level is concerned, this is really unnecessary), and use words to remind the key points of the picture with details.

Masumi moved the chair to my side, and he sat upright, staring at my hand, accompanied by occasional echoes.

I was explaining to him, and after a while I felt dry mouth and tongue, as if I was riding down the spring water and galloping into the dark green summer.