Konoha High School: Junior Year (A Naruto Fan Fiction)

Part IX

Part IX

~Sai~

There is not much that can be said to make one truly understand the importance of physical touch from another person. It is something I most certainly took advantage of while I had it, and ached when I didn't.

Part of me is worrying I'm hugging her too tightly and I'm harming her, but the other part is selfishly pulling her in even closer. She's so perfect, just the way I remember her.

But at the same time, so much has changed. There are so many things I need to talk about with her.

"Let's go home," I say to her. Home. Where I live in Konoha is an empty apartment with a plain twin bed and some household basics. Home is anywhere with her. I know that now.

"Okay," she sniffles.

We walk home and she asks me a myriad of basic questions: how was it? How were the teachers? Did I make friends? Did I enjoy it? All of these I had touched upon in the letters, but even in person I have difficulty divulging into the experience that was Oto High. Things were so different, I'm not sure I know how to describe how things were run there.

One of the school's philosophies is their belief that true inspiration comes from within. Desire, imagination, lust, longing, complex inner workings like that are what that school claimed made "true and captivating art". In order to make the students accomplish this, the only place an artist was allowed to express was the canvas or the clay or whatever other medium provided. The school thought that by suppressing outside stimulus, it would kick an artist's own mind into overdrive.

Everything in that school felt diluted. Every wall was a varying shade of gray. Every student wore the same gray uniforms, the walls were varying shades of gray, the desks and chairs were gray. Soon enough I could feel my own thoughts returning to their previous monochromatic state.

Create, they ordered. Create from the deepest parts in you. I would close my eyes. The only thing that used to inspire me to create the way that got me to that school was my friends. If I spent time with Naruto, I would create messy and unplanned paintings. Sakura would inspire strong colors and unapologetic strokes. Sasuke would spark nuanced works that you have to look at three, four, five times to notice the immense detail hidden. Hinata brought out soft colors and impressionistic lines that had a surprising strength in the strokes.

And Ino, oh, Ino.

Her infinitely complex wonder would inspire my best works. The ones that would get recognition, the ones I submitted with my application to the school, the ones that are my personal favorites. She brought life to the inanimate in a way I never thought possible before knowing her. My art was ink on paper, but with her in my life, it transformed into a living breathing thing, too wild to contain.

Without her around, the slow draining of life from my art was evident. I held tight to the memories I had, but memories are such fickle references, always moving and blurring. I thought hard every night to keep the edges sharp but they still became a blur of color and emotions. My art started with life and then reverted back to the uninspired action to keep my hands busy and my thoughts regimented. My academic classes remained sharp, as that was always easy to me, but not having Ino around was a serious blow to the quality and enjoyability of what I was there to do.

To recover from this rapid decline, I threw myself into my work, creating piece after uninspired piece and hating every second of it, so frustrated at myself for losing my abilities so quickly. I didn't want to eat or sleep until I could create something I didn't hate. It was as if my hands abandoned me. Then I realized how much of my life that made me happy I had abandoned.