Tokyo. Wonderful, colorful, varied Tokyo. Full of life and an ever-changing people, never knowing where to draw the line when it came to quirks and trends. Individuals of all shades covered the concrete, rainbowy specks in a writhing sea of greys and blacks and browns when one observed them from above. Tokyo was a coin flip between extraordinary and just plain noisy. It was one or the other, and in the instances where the coin landed on the rim and rolled for some time, a little bit of both.
It was extraordinarily noisy not just for the clashing fashion statements or the consistent sound and light pollution that blotted out the natural world, but for the crashing and melding and separating of thoughts and ideas in the air. Emotions on the breath and in the hands blurred in the intentions of the eyes and the messages of flashing phones and so much more. Tokyo was always on the move, but not everyone was moving the same way, and not everyone even moved despite the animation of their bodies.
Funny how ideas warred in such a small, packed space, but became ultimately meaningless in the city's chaotic mindscape. Ideas could be loud all the time, but how could any of them hope to be heard if they were all on the same volume? If an idea hoped to be heard, it had to be on another level, another frequencyâbreak the mold, so to speak.
Clearly, someone was out to do that. Graffiti was not unheard of, and it was an artistic statement the urban generation could identify with, but it was possible for there to be a special kind of graffiti, a special kind of statement that no one had yet conceived on brick or plaster. Such ideas sprouted in the shadows of Shibuya, hidden among weeds and cracks and barely discernible by ordinary perception. They were scribbles of flowers, spiked collars among grass, a pair of headphones leaning on some pipes. They were humble and quiet, and perhaps that was the reason people began to notice.
Over the days, the sprouts grew and branched out. They all seemed to evolve and change at the same time, and passersby doubted that they were by the same person. But the style and sense matched up too well for it not to be the same artist. The scribbles started in Shibuya, stretched out into flourishing and complex murals, and then began to spread to the rest of Tokyo. They took on all shapes and colors and some even learned to speak. Words blossomed from pictures, bursting from their buds with an explosive resolve as they sought to be seen and heard by the people who otherwise never bothered to let their eyes stray.
The masses of Tokyo were fascinatedâthe youth especially. There were the ones who had dismissed the scribbles at first, taking interest only when the murals matured. There were the ones who kept a radar on them from the start and became near-fanatics at how the images seemed to live and breathe, just like the swarming population of Tokyo. There were the ones who simply did not care and went on with their homogenized lives. Then there were the ones who were roused from their dream-like states and cautiously gravitated to the murals, wary but enchanted. Whoever or whatever the viewer, they would talk. With admiration, with wonder, with disdain, it didn't matterâword was out that someone was hitting the streets with a bunch of paint and spraycans and was doing a bang-up job.
Initially, people learned to pass by or seek the murals out, slow down, glance sideways, perhaps chat briefly or even at length, and then move on. Then the pictures bloomed and changed, and the gossip bloomed and changed right beside them. Chatter went from cool to wonderful. That was in part due to some of the more talkative murals; they had learned to sport the words "â
á˘âá á˝Ő áłŐÉ´á áŹáĎŐá" in such a Cloud Nine quality that no one could agree if they were sincere or sarcastic. But they did all agree on one thing. Looking at the murals brought them a kind of joy they couldn't hope to express in words.
Who had honestly heard of happy graffiti? That was what it sounded like when the rumors spread of their therapeutic properties, and particularly annoyed skeptics would come around to investigate, stare accusingly at the pictures, and then move on, so rooted by minds bolted down by doubt that they could not be moved by what everyone else saw. Sure, they were pretty. But that was it. Skeptics had no patience for the river of words that neatly flowed down the walls of the subway, or for the fanning, feathery wings that flanked yet another "â
á˘âá á˝Ő áłŐÉ´á áŹáĎŐá" where everyone could see, or for the silent yet equally cryptic wolves in spiked collars leaping down the sidewalk with someone's dreams tightly clenched in their jaws.
Fans could criticize the skeptics all they wanted, but under scrutiny, it was clear that they didn't have that much time for the graffiti, either. Tokyo was stubbornly set in the idea that its blood needed to flow. Not a cell could be out of place. Passersby could only afford to slow down and look before moving on. The rare few that stopped to admire or examine the images in their full glory did not linger long, taking only enough time that they could commit the essence of the big picture to memory. No one stopped for the details. No one stopped to reach out and touch the dry paint, to try and get a feel for the artist behind each statement, to try and really understand. No one had the patience or the imagination to.
Beneath all that lay the matter of who the artist was. There was a surprising lack of testimony and witness as to who had the time to develop these murals. Perhaps they had been done in the middle of the night, but even then at least one person should have spotted someone suspicious. A couple of weeks had passed and not a single civilian could truthfully claim to have seen the perpetrator.
Admittedly, the redhead with the purple headphones was out of place. He had a vaguely militant look and a concurrently regal presence, not flagrant yet not dismissible, and his eyes seemed to search and flee all the same. He was contradictory, he was bizarre. People would swear he looked like a Shibuya boy but they had never seen them in all their lives. Of course, they wouldn't admit as much to each other. No one had any idea that not a single person in Tokyo recognized him, as such a small yet massive area surely meant that someone, somewhere, knew his name and face, and so he had to fit right in.
So no one suspected him, the nameless stranger who hardly looked the part of a delinquent.
He stood in front of his latest masterpiece, exhaustion in his wandering gaze. Two weeks of furiously and discreetly spreading his ideas through Tokyo, and still he was not satisfied with the spoils. The twenty-year-old visitor stood fixed in one spot, and his eyes ceased to travel, and he stared forward as he shifted his awareness from the material world to a world of unspoken thoughts. Behind him, the moon spilled its insides onto the mundane plaster and the beaten pavement, and words leaped from the fiery stream pouring from the mouth of its rocky face. áˇáŞáŚáŹ áŞÎáŹáł. AáłáŞáŚáŹÎ. á´ááŹáŞáŚÂ Őâá˘. Such fragments spewed across the space at his back and spread into the spirits of onlookers, but it wasn't enough.
Paralyzed by Tokyo's noise, he waited for the one who would answer the call of his ideas.
