“And for a group of total amateurs who like to fancy themselves as introspective and avant-garde, they sure are lacking in basic human decency. You should see the way their eyes light up at the slightest whiff of any juicy gossip about one of their contemporaries. They’re all bottom-feeders who love to feast on the fetid corpses of their fallen comrades—an invasive species of parasites to the art world that need to be exterminated before they infect every last painting circle with even a shred of ingenuity.”
“Gotcha…”
There was no topic on which Uncle Kurehiko didn’t have something negative to say. Be it politics, recent films, fine art, the weather, foreign celebrities, or his next-door neighbors, anything and everyone was subject to his indiscriminate scorn. Most of the time, there wasn’t even any real substance to his criticism—he just seemed to bear a grudge against most things in life, even though I knew he’d never hurt a fly.
And yet…
“What’s the matter with you, boy? Can’t you muster anything more than a half-hearted one-word response? At least learn to act interested in what other people are saying to you. You’ll never make it in the real world if you can’t even do that.”
“Look, I’m tired, okay…? I need to go to bed. I’ve got school in the morning…”
“Hmph. You don’t ‘need’ to do anything. A high school education’s not compulsory, you know. You’d be much better served spending your time sitting at home watching films by all the greatest directors in history. Familiarize yourself with some of the classics, for heaven’s sake. See, this is what I mean when I say you young folks don’t have—”
For whatever reason, Uncle Kurehiko seemed to have taken a liking to me—and there was something weirdly comforting about being accepted by someone who seemed otherwise so impartial in his hate. Another thing I found reassuring about my uncle was that, despite being a relatively well-respected artist, he was still a social outcast and a failure in society’s eyes—just like me. And while I knew it was a fairly condescending thing to say, the thought that people like him could find their niche and get by in the world somehow gave me just a little bit of hope for my own future as well.
Even if he’d still died young and alone in the end.
“Besides, do you even want to go to school?”
“Huh?”
“Pay attention, boy. I asked if you actually want to go to school or not.”
Through the tiny speaker, I could hear the sound of my uncle glugging down some sort of beverage. Alcoholic, presumably. This was a regular occurrence.
“Well…it’s not like I really have a choice in the matter. Especially when my parents are the ones paying my tuition. Plus, you only get one chance to go to high school, and it’s good life experience, so…”
“But is that what you want for yourself?”
“I mean…” I trailed off, unable to give him an answer.
“Hmph. You really do need to grow a backbone, boy. Learn to speak your mind. Being a man of few words will only get you taken advantage of by everyone else around you. Take it from me: In this day and age, all of our political and social systems have been explicitly designed to form one giant monster of a bureaucracy that’ll gladly gobble up anyone who can’t run away fast enough. And if it ever gets you in its sights, all you’ll have to rely on are your own words and actions to stand against it.”
“…Can I please go to bed soon?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Uncle, it’s already one in the morning.”
“Oh, what a farce. Don’t let yourself be a slave to the hands of time. It’s just an illusion, you know. The past, present, and future—nothing more than momentary freeze frames in the ever-changing picture we call fate: a multi-layered, multi-dimensional work of art we can only ever see from a single angle at any given time.”
I could tell that my uncle was completely hammered by this point, but I still stayed up a bit longer listening to his semi-coherent drunken musings. Once it got to be past two o’clock in the morning, I officially gave up on waking up at my usual time the next day. This was, in truth, the only reason I hadn’t already hung up the phone. It was not out of the goodness of my heart but because I wanted an excuse to sleep in and stay home. While I’d held back on saying so earlier, I definitely did not want to go to school.
I didn’t remember much of our conversation from that point onward. I was getting pretty tired and his ramblings were becoming more and more incoherent, so most of what he was trying to tell me went in one ear and out the other.
Aside from the very last part of the call, that is.
“I call it ‘The World in Amber,’” my uncle had said. I didn’t remember the context leading up to that point, but that lone phrase stood out to me as so vivid and distinct that it piqued my curiosity and brought my mind right back into the conversation.
“Amber?”
“Correct. It’s a type of fossilized tree resin in which you can often find tiny organisms frozen in time, beautifully preserved for tens of thousands of years. And I am telling you I have witnessed this entire world preserved in amber, as though it were plucked out of time.”
“Is this your vision for a new painting or something?”
“Pah. So even you doubt me, eh? But fine, so be it. I know it’s preposterous. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know what I experienced, and it was not some faulty product of a delusional, drug-addled mind. There was…a starkness to it. An undeniable realism.”
“To what? I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore…”
“It won’t be long now. I should be able to unravel the laws that govern it soon enough. I can sense it. Next time, I’ll find a way to leave irrefutable evidence behind. Then they’ll all have no choice but to believe me. You’ll understand it too someday, Kayato—I know you will. Surely a sharp, untainted boy like you would be able to grasp just how magnificent, how…how…”
Silence.
“Uncle?” I said. “You there?”
The only response I received was a snore. He’d finally passed out. I hung up the phone and buried my head in my pillow.