The Nameless One, [BL on note]

I participated in the project hosted by Nami-san.
This is my first time participating. Thank you for having me.

Main text below (3814 characters)

Suddenly, I turned around, and he wasn't there.
I thought I heard laughter. Because I almost tripped.
With both hands shoved into my outer pockets, I was looking up at the blue sky of Seaglass, where out-of-season snow danced like feathers, a sky like a mud painting by an unknown artist, so I caught my toe on the sidewalk tiles where someone had splashed something.

Clack.

It felt like a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle was wrong, and suddenly I was the only one pulled out, and the world shifted. For a moment, I scanned the station-front street, lined only with shutters and no other pedestrians, from right to left. The strange sensation faded rapidly. A wind, cold enough to tear at my ears, blew, and I shuddered once, hunched my back, and resumed walking.

The snow is melting quite early this year. Lumps of dirty, frozen snow, like grudges, lie in the shadows of the utility poles.
There are too many ramen shops in this town, but the one I always go to is the salt ramen shop in front of the station. It's a dirty place with only a counter, possessing a dignity that suggests it hasn't changed in a hundred years.
I ducked under the red noren curtain and opened the glass door; my usual seat by the entrance was empty. I sat down in silence.

"Welcome!"

Nire, who had lifted the kitchen curtain and peeked out, withdrew immediately upon realizing the customer was me. My order is always the salt ramen with a seasoned egg, so there's no need to ask. Nire is a junior from high school who failed to get into art college on his first try and is attending prep school while working part-time at the ramen shop.
It was just past eleven o'clock. The time before the shop gets truly crowded. Even a place like this has a line around noon.
I went to get self-serve water and tilted my head, having brought two glasses in my hands. Since I'm alone, I don't need two glasses of water. I couldn't put one back, so I pushed one glass against the wall on the left. I shifted my chair to the right, creating a space as if someone were there. The salaryman in the next seat glanced at me for suddenly closing the distance, but he said nothing. He didn't look like he could do his job.

"Senior, thanks for waiting."

The blonde-haired Nire looks good in the ramen shop bandana style. The vibe of a delinquent's errand boy oozes from him.
The ramen placed in front of me was piled so high with white scallions that the noodles were invisible.

"Nire, that's a lot of scallions. Is this on the house?"
"Huh? Aren't you always getting the large serving of scallions?"
"That's a subtle way to harass me. I don't hate scallions that much, but I don't really like them either. They're vegetables, after all."
"What are you talking about, Senior? You have to eat them because you've been told to, right?"
"Who told me that? My mom?"
"Who, you ask..."

Nire glanced at my left side, then made a pathetic face, like someone who had found a stray cat they couldn't take in.

"...I don't know."
"Huh?"
"Today's scallions are on the house."
"Huh?"

Nire was called away by a customer paying the bill and didn't say anything else; after taking orders from customers who came in one after another, he retreated into the kitchen. There were even two people waiting outside the shop. I couldn't call Nire out in the crowded shop, so I finished the ramen piled high with scallions, broth and all.

"Senior, please go see Kenjo."

Nire, who handled my payment, kept his face down, placed fifty yen in my palm, and said.

"If you go to Kenjo's, you'll understand the secret of the scallions."

If you're going to pull a prank, at least look like you're having fun. This is too nonsensical.

Nire, Kenjo, and I were all in the same high school art club. Unlike me, who failed my entrance exams and became a lowly factory worker, Kenjo passed into the local art university on his first try and commutes an hour each way from his parents' house every day. Kenjo's family is wealthy, and there is an unused garage on their large property that he can use as he pleases for his art production.
I decided to go to Kenjo's house. It's hard to imagine, given Kenjo's personality, that he and Nire would conspire to pull a prank, but the whole situation just doesn't sit right.

If I'm wasting my precious day off on some stupid punchline, I'm flicking both of them on the forehead.

Ten minutes of walking from the ramen shop, I greeted the familiar housekeeper at the entrance with the grand gate and headed to the garage where Kenjo was. I crouched and slipped under the half-open garage shutter. The unique smell of animal glue stimulated my nostrils. I let out two loud sneezes.

"Yo, Kenjo."

Kenjo didn't turn around. He was facing a 150-size panel placed on the floor. Kenjo's profile as he moved his brush felt almost divine, like a page from a religious painting. I wonder if this guy would die if he couldn't paint. I never saw them, but maybe Kenjo can see gods.
I went behind the messy-haired Kenjo and peeked at the painting in progress.

It was a blue painting. Rectangular frames of blue in various shades were layered over each other in a spiral. It looked like stairs, and it also looked like windows or holes. The background was a deep blue that looked a lot like black.
I thought it was a painting of the abyss.

"Is that how it looks to you?"

I must have said it out loud. Kenjo, with his dorky black-rimmed glasses, was looking up at me.

"Kenjo, you've got pigment on your glasses. Can you even see through that?"

Kenjo, who must have been in the same position for a long time, stood up with a clatter, bumping his knee against the palette, and splattered dark blue pigment onto the knees of his jersey. He started walking in a hunched posture like an old man, pulled a sketchbook from a shelf by the wall, and caused an avalanche of art books and crumpled piles of paper to spill onto the floor. This guy is hopeless at everything except painting.

"Hey, Kenjo."

Kenjo flipped through the sketchbook he had taken out, only to throw it onto the avalanche, and opened a small refrigerator installed next to the shelf. For some reason, there was a sketchbook inside.

"Why?"
"I stored it with the glue."
"Isn't it getting worse every year? You."

Kenjo silently pressed the sketchbook against my chest.

"Here."

Perhaps seeing a question mark over my head as I received the sketchbook in the flow of things, Kenjo continued, sounding annoyed.

"I received a message from Nire. It's the answer key."

His tone was blunt, but Kenjo didn't mean any harm. He just hates talking to people, no matter who they are.

"Your sketchbook, Senior."

When I thought I heard a ridiculously loud sound in my ears, it was my own heartbeat.
The hand holding the sketchbook was shaking in a way that was almost funny.

"...That's a joke that isn't funny. I quit painting. You know that, right?"
"You said you couldn't paint at home, so you left your sketchbook here and came to paint every week. Since last October... You really don't remember, do you?"
"That's a lie. There's no way I could paint."
"How trivial. What does it mean to be unable to paint just because you failed your entrance exams?"
"I'm not like you!"
"Yes. I don't understand the feelings of someone who can paint but doesn't."
"You, seriously..."

What's with saying that to your senior? Kenjo's audacity is in the realm of respect.

"But, in the end, you painted again, didn't you, Senior?"

Kenjo's hangnail-ridden finger pointed at the sketchbook I was holding.

"The ghost that was possessing you, Senior."
"...That's not funny."
"Whether it's funny or not, you should look before you say. Are you scared?"
"Haha, you're damn cheeky."

It's not that I'm scared. This is nothing. I put my finger on the cover of the sketchbook. The right-slanting cursive was definitely my handwriting and my name. But I don't remember it at all.

"Since it's something that wasn't there to begin with, it seems that when a ghost attains nirvana, it takes its memories with it."
"Whose hearsay is that?"
"If you're scared, you can stop."

Kenjo is unusually combative today. With his attitude of completely looking down on me, my hand reflexively opened the sketchbook.

He was a man in his late twenties with no particular distinguishing features. A moss-green sweater, a beige shirt, and brownish hair that was slightly long in the front—it was probably his natural hair. His profile, oozing tension, looked as if he wanted to say something, or as if he were trying to say nothing at all. There was a small mole at the corner of his right eye.
An awkward face from the front, like a passport photo. His gaze was swimming.
His posture from behind was unusually good, but the hem of his shirt was half-tucked out.
The next page shows the man watching a cat napping on the ground. The fingertips of his hand, reaching out toward the cat's tail, are transparent.
The ramen shop counter. He smiles, touching a glass of water he cannot touch, and a dimple appears on his right cheek.
Tears welled up in the corners of the eyes of the man who was laughing with his mouth wide open, clapping his hands at something funny.
Another smile. The softly relaxed eyes—the person those eyes are looking straight at is me.
It couldn't be anyone but me.

Something snapped in my head, and in an instant, it cracked and sparkled like particles of light, like snowflakes. The last smile of his that remained overlapped with the sketch and vanished.

"Senior."

Kenjo bit his lip and threw a towel at me.
Liquid fell onto the sketchbook with a patter. My vision blurred. It was as if my eyeballs were melting and flowing down my cheeks. When I buried my face in the towel, which was soaked with the smell of pigment and glue, my eyes stung so much I couldn't keep them open.

Even though I felt a sense of loss I hadn't felt even when I put down the Japanese painting brush I had been so obsessed with, I didn't know who he was. It's Yasuo Kazuki's "Blue Sun." There is a hole in the center of my pitch-black self. It's a beautiful blue sky where stars twinkle. I want to reach out, but I can't reach it.

Don't mess with me.
Don't appear as you please and disappear as you please. I had intended to never paint again, so don't make me paint so easily.
To meet you, I have no choice but to paint, don't I? What are you going to do about this?

I opened my mouth, let out a breath, and closed it again.
Because I didn't even know his name.

End

Thank you for reading.

*I tried to push the boundaries of the prompt "no past flashbacks or regression" and "remembering a little through dialogue or the flow of the story is okay" as much as possible. Was it okay?