#vcnanami

the travails of a potter has many to do with the nature of clay, that which is affected by complexities like the placement of planets and suns in the shimmering void, to the simplicities of a blazing hearth warming a nondescript kiln. it is precisely for this reason that yongtae spends many a golden morning with strong fingers marred by wet clay, for there is something so profoundly soothing in the ability to pacify, with his bare hands, that which is so volatile in nature.

what he means to say is this: too often does he find himself desperately reaching to catch what has already long fallen.

see, family always comes first, he hears mother’s words through the hollow of her silk-coated chest before he hears her voice echo in the cold air. incidentally, he also notes that family requires the most care, and he scribbles the rational correlation within the blue-lined papers of his adolescent mind.

so it is for family that he finds himself once again stationed in japan, a convincing mouthpiece for his kin. in this instance, the excursion is brief, but before he leaves, he thieves for himself a midsummer night’s dream in a quaint teahouse embellished with strawberry red lanterns. as usual, he is guided to the largest room and seated at the front, and he awaits with sweaty palms and shifting postures for the one who feels like home.

from where she emerges follows rays of ethereal light to banish all that is dark, and with it, the rest of the audience that begs for a sliver of her splendour. see, there was once a time amidst a flurry of tangled limbs and pale-white sheets that he had confessed, in a shy whisper, her ability to make him feel so nervously yet blissfully like he is the only one in the room. and here in this room, he devours the sight of her, from the graceful rhythm of her slender arm’s movements, to the coquettish flutters of her butterfly lashes. like a beggar seated by a queen’s feast, he ensures he misses nary a drop.

but too soon does the performance end, and with it, so does she withdraw the illusion of privacy. he means to wait patiently in his seat for the rabble to leave, recognises that it is the course of action that mother would plead for him to take. and perhaps he would have succeeded had he not spotted, from the corner of his eye, an intoxicated man steering clumsily towards the direction of the madam of the house.

( why, is that not the man who had spoken so crassly about the geiko that he had paid to watch? the same man who had exited from the room in which his beloved had graced with her polished song? )

here begins a tale of polished black oxfords against scuffed derby shoes, the stature of a chiselled frame as an infallible barrier between the drunkard and the madame. it is one that mother knows too well, one that would leave her scurrying as she holds her skirt between her index and thumb, an incessant lecture beginning on her pointed tongue.

that is to say here is a boy, standing menacingly in a sandbox with blackened eyes screaming—

mine, mine, mine.

“turn around.”