The corridor in Building 3 is a long, narrow space with old wood floors and windows on one side that face the courtyard. In the mornings it fills with students moving between studios and classrooms, the sound of footsteps and conversations and the occasional burst of music from a phone. By mid-afternoon it empties. By late afternoon it is mostly empty except for the light — the long, angled light that comes through the windows and makes the floor boards visible, each one slightly different in tone, the accumulated colour of a hundred years of feet.
I am walking through the corridor on my way to the bathroom. This is not an event. This is the kind of thing that happens several times a day in the life of a studio artist — the body making its small demands, the interruption of the work by the necessity of blood and bladder and the particular tyranny of a body that does not care about the composition you are in the middle of resolving.
Shiraishi is coming from the other direction. We meet in the middle — the exact middle of the corridor, the place where the light from the courtyard window falls most evenly, the place where, if you were to stop and look around, you would be visible from both ends and nowhere to hide.
"Kiryu-senpai," she says.
She says this the way she says most things — lightly, with a slight upward inflection that makes it sound like a question even when it is not. She has a way of using the honorific that is slightly teasing, slightly formal, a small acknowledgment of the hierarchy between us that she deploys selectively, depending on the day and the company and the effect she wants to produce. Today she says it plainly, without the teasing lilt, which means she is being serious about something or preparing to be.
"Shiraishi," I say.
She is carrying a portfolio under her arm — a large one, the kind used for final work, for submissions, for the things that require protection. I have seen her carry this portfolio before. I have never asked what is in it, which is the correct thing to do, because asking would be an intrusion and because the correct distance between studio neighbours is the distance that permits curiosity without requiring an answer.
I am going to say something — "excuse me" or "see you later" or the minimal thing that permits passage without committing to a conversation — when she speaks.
"Hasumi-senpai didn't come to the studio today."
She says this looking at me. Not at the portfolio, not at the window, not at the floor. At me. Her eyes are the same colour they always are — a dark, warm brown that is closer to black in certain light and lighter, almost golden, in the afternoon, and which I have been looking at long enough to have noticed this variation and not long enough to have understood why I noticed it.
The corridor is empty. I am aware of this — the specific emptiness of a space that was recently full and is now, suddenly, only the two of us, standing in the middle of the light, and the light is the quality of light that makes everything look deliberate, arranged, like a composition, which is a dangerous quality of light for real things to be lit by.
"He usually comes on Wednesdays," Shiraishi continues. "I've noticed. He's consistent." She says this without emphasis, as a fact, the way she says most facts, which makes them sound like they have been observed and filed rather than noticed and kept, which is a distinction I have been thinking about since she said my painting looked lonely, which was the first time she said something to me that I could not immediately categorise and have been unable to stop thinking about.
I do not know what to say. I have not seen Hasumi today — I was in the studio all morning with the covered canvas and the bathroom breaks and the small movements of a body that was trying not to think about what was under the cloth. I did not go to the printmaking building. I did not know that Wednesdays were the day he came to Building 3. I do not know how Shiraishi knows this.
"You've been to his studio," she says.
It is not a question. This is the thing about Shiraishi — she does not ask questions she does not already know the answer to. She asks, when she asks, which is not often, which is the asking that opens a door rather than closes one, the asking that invites a response rather than demanding one. The things she says are not questions even when they have the grammar of questions. The things she says are observations dressed as enquiries, which is a way of being polite about what is actually a form of precision.
I am standing in the corridor. The light is falling across the floor. The portfolio is under her arm. Her face is the face she always wears — open, attentive, a little younger than she is, a little less serious than she means to be, which is a costume she puts on and takes off depending on what the situation requires and which I have been watching her wear for two years and which I am no longer sure is a costume at all.
"How do you know that?" I ask.
She tilts her head. This is her gesture — the tilt, the way her hair falls slightly to one side, the way she looks at you from an angle that is different from the angle she was looking from a moment ago, which is a way of re-framing the conversation without changing the subject.
"I see what I see," she says. "It's a professional hazard. We're painters."
She is not looking at me now. She is looking past me, at the window, at the courtyard, at the cherry trees that are still blooming, barely, the petals thinning, the colour fading, the particular April phenomenon of flowers that are finishing and do not know how to let go. I look where she is looking. For a moment we are both looking at the same thing — the courtyard, the trees, the light — and in the looking we are not looking at each other and the not-looking is a relief.
"You can tell me I'm wrong," she says. "If I'm wrong."
I am silent. The question is not what she asked — she did not ask whether I have been to Hasumi's studio, she stated it, and the statement is not something I can correct because the statement is true. I have been to Hasumi's studio. I have been twice. I went the first time because I was curious and the curiosity was the beginning of something I did not expect and I went the second time because I could not stay away and the not-staying-away is the thing I have been not admitting.
She waits. She has a patience that is different from other people's patience — it is not the patience of someone who is waiting for a result but the patience of someone who is willing to let something take the time it takes, which is a quality I associate more with the studio than with people, the willingness to let the paint dry, to let the work reveal itself, to not force the thing into being before it is ready.
"I'm not going to tell you that," I say.
"No," she says. She is still looking at the courtyard. "I didn't think you would."
She shifts the portfolio to her other arm. The movement is small — a redistribution of weight, a minor adjustment — but I see it because I am watching her and she is someone who is worth watching, which is a thing I have been noticing about Shiraishi for two years and have been not saying, the way I have been not saying things about most people, which is the pattern I have been living and which is, I am beginning to understand, the thing that is wrong with my painting and maybe with my life.
"He's worth painting," she says.
She says this quietly. She is not looking at me. She is looking at the trees. She is holding the portfolio and she is looking at the trees and she has said something that I do not know how to interpret, which is: worth painting. Not worth visiting. Not worth knowing. Worth painting. The distinction matters. The distinction is the distinction I have been making, consciously or not, in my own practice — between the people who are worth painting and the people who are merely worth knowing, between the subjects that require the honesty and the subjects that permit the safety, and Hasumi, she has just told me, is the first kind.
"I know," I say.
The words come out before I have decided to say them. This is happening more and more — the things coming out before the decision, the mouth acting independently of the part of the brain that evaluates and edits and controls, which is the part that has been in charge of my speech for twenty-one years and which is, increasingly, losing ground to the other part, the part that says things, the part that admits things, the part that is beginning to override the silence I have been maintaining and which is the structure of my life.
Shiraishi looks at me now. She is not smiling. Her face is the face of someone who has heard something they expected to hear and are not surprised by and are also, in a way I cannot name, sad about, which is an expression I have not seen on her before and which makes her look, for a moment, older than twenty, older than the costume she wears, closer to the person underneath.
"I know you know," she says. "I knew you knew before you did."
She moves past me. Her shoulder brushes mine — lightly, accidentally, the kind of contact that happens in corridors between people who are walking in opposite directions, which is what we are doing now, she going toward whatever she was going toward and I going back to the studio and the covered canvas and the tenth version of Kanade that is no more honest than the first nine.
She stops. She does not turn around. She is three steps away, in the part of the corridor where the light is less even, where the floor boards are older, where the shadows begin.
"The viewing," she says. "When you're ready."
She does not wait for a response. She walks on. I watch her go — the portfolio under her arm, the tilt of her head, the particular way she moves through space that is both light and deliberate, like someone who has decided where she is going and is not in a hurry because the deciding was the hard part and the going is the easy part.
I stand in the corridor. The light is the same light. The cherry blossoms are the same blossoms. The thing that has changed is the thing I know now, which is that Shiraishi knows. She knows I have been to Hasumi's studio. She knows I am thinking about him. She knows I have been painting something — someone — that I have not been able to finish. She knows, and she has told me that she knows, and she has not asked me to explain, and she has left the door open, which is the way she leaves doors open, which is the way I have been leaving doors open for fourteen years without knowing it.
I go back to the studio. I sit in front of the covered canvas. I do not lift the cloth.
She knew before I did. The thought arrives and stays, takes up residence in the part of my mind where things lodge when they are important, when they are things I will return to, things I will turn over in the hours when I am supposed to be painting and am instead thinking about what Shiraishi said and the way she said it and the way she looked at me when she said she knew before I did.
She has been watching. She has been watching me and watching Hasumi and watching the thing that is happening in the space between us, which is not a space I have chosen to occupy but which I am occupying nonetheless, which is the definition of where I am and who I have been and what I have been making without knowing what I was making.
I sit in the studio. The cloth is on the canvas. The cherry blossoms are outside the window.
Tomorrow she will be at her easel, near the window, painting her landscape with the dark red smear in the lower left corner, the smear I have been not asking about, the smear that is none of my business and which is, I am increasingly sure, something I would understand if I asked and which I am not yet ready to ask.
She knew before I did. The knowing is a kind of intimacy and also a kind of distance — she knows about me and Hasumi before I know about me and Hasumi, which means she has been seeing something I have been blind to, which is the definition of the position she occupies and which is the definition of the position I have been occupying in relation to Kanade, which is: the one who sees, the one who knows, the one who is carrying the thing and not saying it.
Tomorrow I will lift the cloth. Tomorrow I will look at the tenth version. Tomorrow I will decide whether to continue or to stop.
Tonight I sit in the studio and I think about what she said and the way she said it and the particular quality of sadness that crossed her face for a moment when she said she knew before I did, which is the same quality of sadness I have been feeling for reasons I am only beginning to understand and which is, I think, the sadness of knowing something about someone else that they do not yet know about themselves, which is the loneliest kind of knowing there is.
The light outside the window shifted. The evening was coming.
