CHAPTER TWO

Via rolled over and decided to look at the ceiling as she believed that what she had seen will disappear soon. It even attempted to cuddle her with its grip; she felt its touch crawling onto her skin as its hug became tighter. She laid sight on her masterpieces again with the expectation that her hallucination will fade. 

However, in her great astonishment, her eyes were still in their phase of deceiving her sense of reality. The eight paintings on the wall that were deemed perfect for her sight have drastically changed as its dry paint slowly melted. The vibrant colors on the canvas vanished that not a single trace of any color is visible; it had turned to a complete whiteness - wholly empty and unpigmented. She slowly attempted to investigate the floor to see where the spilled paint fell but to no avail, for the floor remain spotless of any kind. 

She crawled back on her bed to lay her body down and noticed that vision of her younger self was no longer there. All of her nervousness has disappeared as the assurance of safety started to linger back in her mind. She laid down her body again and thought of nothing; she knows not what emotion she has at this time, only that she was aware that her heart seemed to have stopped its palpitation of terror within herself. 

She glanced at the Via's Masterpiece to have a peek if its dry paint melted too, only to have witnessed that its canvas is entirely unspotted of any color paint. She turned her eyes to the ceiling. It, then, started to form the collage of every single painting she had created in her entire lifetime. They are cartoon characters, the abstract paintings of distorted face-shaped women and men, the colored-pencil art of celebrity portraits, the oil pastel sketches of body parts such as hands, feet, and eyes, and attempted hyperrealistic paintings.

She knows not whether the right decision is to choose hysteria or to strengthen her state of mind. Her artistic creation has been her source of concentration whenever she was in her period of delusion. All of the unreal illusions she sees fade as soon as she begins to think of her talent, create an artwork, or take a look at her previous works. Surprisingly this time, both of them have emerged together. 

Left with no choice of other objects to inspect, she closed her eyes for some sleep as she had little to no rest in six months. She started to feel her surroundings with her eyes closed if there is any sensory hallucination that might occur. To her luckiness, there is no longer any. She opened her eyes immediately and stood up from the bed to find the remote for the split-type air conditioner. 

Her room was filthy with the spills of paints on some corners because she carelessly painted her Via's

Masterpiece; her paintbrushes, blank canvases, and cans of acrylic paints scattered across the floor. Yet, all of these changed to cleanliness when she set her foot on the ground. The paintbrushes are in their vase. The acrylic paint cans are in order on her desk, and the canvases are hidden orderly beneath the bed. The sudden change was due to her current period of delusion; Via could see that everything is in order. In reality, she had not cleaned the room for more than six months now. 

She observed her room once again and perceived more horror at what she noticed - all of her paintings hanging on the wall have changed to a seeming collage of her first sketches; those drawings she made when still in the second grade, the year she discovered her talent in creating good art. She was in amazement at the glimpse of gray sketches of Dora The Explorer, Doraemon,

Phineas and Ferb, Pokemon and Spongebob; the nostalgia of her childhood seemed to have returned. Then, she glanced at the canvas of where the Via's Masterpiece used to be, the pictures of her angry stares at her second-grade classmates began to form. 

She was aware that she had not yet escaped the current period of her false illusion. She grabbed the pillows and the thick and heavy blanket from her bed and brought them with her to the living room and laid down her bone-weary body on the soft-foamed couch, closed her eyes right away. She felt her surroundings to see if someone will touch her, and to her luck, there was none. The sound of the living room was peaceful and quiet. The feeling of reminiscence of her childhood began to form; the thought of it calmed her state of mind. Alone and in despair from the imprisonment by her current disease of visual, auditory, and sensory hallucination, she fell into a deep sleep. Little would she know that she thought before she went to sleep would be the painful topic of her dream that night. 

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A desirous painter since her childhood, painting became Via's source of entertainment, pastime, full-time income, motivation to continue living her life, and her peers' definition of her for the past eight years. Compliments from her relatives, friends, and educators would mostly come at her whenever she wins the first prize in art competitions outside her school. And the prize money had sustained an additional income for her extravagant expenses.

Imitating the illustration of her favorite cartoon character was her hobby when she was around eight years old. It started when she witnessed her classmate named Angela received admiration from the other classmates for her well-drawn anime characters. The teachers would ask her to illustrate on the board for the class or draw something for a test paper. It was back in 2007 when their school did not have the TV projectors yet. And teachers had to use manila paper to represent an illustration on the board and manually draw an object for a test paper. It made Angela become close friends with the teachers and every student in their class section.

Via had observed Angela played with the colored chalks to draw something on the board with her group of friends during recess. She would pull off a good drawing of her anime characters and talk about them to her fellow friends who watched the Anime series as their interest. As Via observed the admiration of her other classmates towards Angela's talent, she contemplated her first drawings alike to the anime characters she had familiarized from Angela's sketchbook in the belief that she will begin to captive the attention of her classmates.

For her first attempt, she used her pencils branded Monggol No. 2, considered a regular kind of pencil for kindergarten, first until the fourth-grade students. The Monggol pencils are lack quality when it comes to shading, its thickness, and the blackness of the lead. It can only form a gray color on the paper, a pencil used to only write texts that need erasures, not necessarily for sketching. It even is not good to be sharpened for the poor quality of wood used. But it was the only pencil in her possession, and the same goes for all her other classmates. The lack of papers available for practice was her issue. That is why she used the back of her school notebook for her first drawing, which is paper made of cheap quality makes a pencil shade hard to be erased. The pencil shade tends to leave a darker area when erased.

With the only materials available to her, she began to form the curve lines and sketched the details that her memory allowed. Although unknown to her the name of the anime character that she had seen from Angela's notebook, she was in capability to imitate its facial emotions, the kind of dress the character wore, the hairstyle, and their appearance in general.

It took her at least thirty minutes. Within its thirty minutes, she had finished the sketch. However, the erasures on such paper make the drawing filthy and unclear. She repeated the work on the next page. When it produced the same result, she went on to continue her first practice.

She practiced the rest of the evening at their home until she noticed that she had almost filled up her school notebook. The school notebook comes in nine pieces for nine different subjects in one set when bought from the school. They have a school's logo printed on its front and back cover and intended for school works only as their answers for recitation quizzes, networks, and homework. If the student submits a different notebook apart from what was authorized, there will be no recorded score. The school notebook only contains at least fifty sheets of paper. 

When Via had almost filled up the school's notebook, she discerned fear that she would run out of all the papers available to her. She began her practice on the 1/2 intermediate pad paper that was EasyWrite. The thin layer of EasyWrite paper makes it a bit transparent that the trace of writing on the front page would make the words on the back unreadable. The intermediate pad paper was a scratch for mathematical computations. Because they only have to submit the final answers in their school notebook in Mathematics and only contain at least eighty sheets of paper.

Longing to be admired by the public, she kept practicing her drawings on the intermediate pad paper at her home during her free time for several weeks until she achieved satisfaction in the final output. It was in November 2007. She finally presented her drawings to her close friend during that time, Erika.

Erika, a genuine friend, complimented her drawings and even requested a tutorial on how she successfully copied the anime drawings of Angela. Her friend proudly shared her friend's talent with the whole class; the classmates were happy to see a new talent inside the classroom. Every single of them praised her works, including Angela and her friends. Happiness and pride grew in Via. That was the time that Via first experienced admiration from a group of people. She enjoyed every minute - those praises towards her capability were what she longed for in several years.

"Do you watch anime too?" Angela asked her as she laid sight on the copy of Via's work.

"No. But I saw your drawings. Copied them at home from my memory." Via nodded.

She expected Angela to be envious and insecure because she believed her work to be better. She thought if she were in Angela's position, she would be disappointed that someone can be equal to her. She waited for her to be unhappy, doubtful whether it was her who did it, and question her ability.

"This is more impressive." Via heard her whispered it to her friends as she held the copy of the similar anime drawings.

"She is talented. I bet she only practiced for a few seconds - a real artist. I can only copy animes when the copy is in front of me, but here, she copied it from her memory."Angela was delighted to know that there is someone with whom she can share the same interest. "We tend to draw during recess time; maybe you and Erika can join us. Who knows maybe, the group of us can join art competitions together, help each other, my sister used to..." She started to murmur that her words began to be indistinct to Via.

The invitation of Angela to join her friends' group was genuine. However, Via took it as a sign of envy from her.