La Gioconda

#13 True feelings

"By the way, I know I keep saying this, but you are really amazing. I would never have been able to understand it."

"lua, I know I keep saying this, but this is just one interpretation."

　I kept my eyes down as I said this.

　Amazing ? Am I ? No, it's not. No, lua, I am not like that.

　The words the real me that my sister had just said to me suddenly weighed heavily on my mind. I felt guilty.

　There was one thing I had not confided in my sister. That was the real reason why I hung the Mona Lisa on my wall. And that is, in a sense, a serious problem for me right now.

"The two pieces of the Mona Lisa you just printed, can I have these?"

"I don't mind, but what are you going to do with them?"

"I will put it in a frame and hang it on the wall of my room like you do. But in my case, it's something like this."

　Saying this, she moved the two pieces of the Mona Lisa slightly toward each other until the mysterious object appeared.

"I'm going to go back to my room and get the frames. I think I still have one that my father bought for me a long time ago."

　With that, she left my room. I remembered that my father had bought several picture frames for my sister, who frequently won prizes in art competitions, for her to put her award certificates in.

　I turned to the Mona Lisa hanging on the wall.

　My most serious problem is that it is very difficult for me to love. To put it more clearly, I know very little, if anything, about love.

　Aside from my relatives, I don't have the confidence, at least not now, to love those who are not good to me in the first place or who don't think well of me. Even in the case of love, the more seriously I think about the other person, the more paranoid and conflicted I become over the slightest misunderstanding, and the longer it goes on, the more painful it becomes and the more I feel helplessly alone. And so I am always exhausted and end up quitting halfway through. On the other hand, if I am put on the side of being loved, for some reason I suddenly become afraid and run away.

　I have always been half-hearted when it comes to both loving and being loved, and although I talked so much about love in front of lua, in the end, the truth is that I have no idea what love is or how wonderful it is.

　Earlier I restated to my sister about what I feel when I watch Mona Lisa as a reminder that love exists. I didn't want to tell a big lie. What I feel when I look at that painting is only a faint sense of the wonder of love, even if only a glimpse of it, as if I might someday be able to understand it.

　The real reason I hung the Mona Lisa on my wall was to remind myself that I still know very little about love.

　Again I looked at the Mona Lisa on the wall.

　I wondered how Leonardo felt about it.I wondered how Leonardo felt as he continued to paint that picture.

　He might have been filled with great and tender love and fully understood its meaning, since he painted such a magnificent picture. But if he was also troubled like I am now and continued to seek for it, ...... such thoughts wandered through my mind as if seeking for a place to stand on.