I was sitting at my kotatsu, drinking a cup of hot chocolate. It was getting a bit too hot, so I turned off the heat, but it still retained most of its previous warmth. I was staring out the window, at the strange purple landscape beyond it. It was unmistakably like that of a small city, with tall buildings and streets full of traffic. But the sky was always purple, which radiated downward onto the sights of the city… that was at the wrong angle.
It was like my window was facing the tops of the buildings, not the sides. It gave the illusion that I was somehow floating above them. That was just from this angle, though. When I turned my head to the side, the image of the cityscape rotated as well. But it didn’t line up with mine, it was too eager to move, and overshot. My human brain was very attuned to things like physics, so this was extremely jarring even since I first arrived. Moving my eyes, then watching a distant landscape turn and spin, was an instant recipe for vertigo. I’ve mostly gotten used to it now, and honestly, I appreciate the illusion.
The city wasn’t real, or at the very least, it was some sort of low-powered pocket dimension. If there actually were any people out there, driving in those cars, they were little more than robots created for the sense of realism. A sense of place was all that it was.
My room, on the other hand, was designed with much more precision. No matter how many times I checked, I couldn’t find anything that looked non-euclidian. There were a few spots in the house that had… iffy physics, but the living room was pristine.
That’s probably because it’s where I spend most of my time. The room was a square, and was quite spacious. It wasn’t like a mansion or anything, but a proper living room. On the two walls beside me were cabinets of nice china and lavender flowers. They even got the smell right, to my surprise. There were also vines growing on the opposite wall, which I trim every few days.
In front of me, on my kotatsu, were sheets of paper, on which I did “calligraphy”. It wasn’t any actual language, I was just free-styling it. Most took a rounded shape, with several segments and variations in the lines, as well as smaller sub-shapes and artistic motifs. Oh, stroke width was important too.
When I first started, I didn’t think about stroke width at all.
It’s obvious to say, but the harder you push your pin, the more large and bold your strokes are. Pressing lightly makes them thinner. I knew that of course, I’m not quite that dumb. But I never considered it an important part of my process for a surprisingly long time. It wasn’t until I was looking back over my very first batch of 1,000 sheets that I noticed it. They were so wildly varying in their widths, but I didn’t notice it at the time. After my muscle memory was trained, strokes became more uniform.
But really, when I found those sheets with haphazard, chaotic strokes, I fell in love. How could I have not noticed something so obvious? And so, after that, I began intentionally trying to recreate that effect. I considered deeply my options for the texture of each individual line. And some of these sheets had thousands! Just as the shapes and meaning of the characters were subject to variations on theme and motif, now the lines were too. I consider this the beginning of my “Baroque” period.
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There are (currently) seven more periods that I’d love to talk about, but I’ll save them for another time. Right now, I want to go take a bath. Suddenly, an annoying guy with red hair appeared in front of me.
“So, how are you adjusting? It looks like it’s been around eight months since you arrived.”
“I dunno if I could consider this ‘adjusting’ anymore, I’ve been here forever now.”
“Trust me, you’re still adjusting. You probably will be for the next one to two hundred years.”
Hearing that made an electric shiver down my spine. My human brain wasn’t used to thinking about time in those kinds of large numbers. I’ve been living here almost as long as I had lived in my home in the mortal world—and I would continue to live here for 9,999 more years… rounded down.
A deep, thundering demon voice echoed from the portal Choronzon was standing in front of.
“HAVE YOU GIVEN HER THE PRESENT YET, M’LORD?”
“Shut up! You ALWAYS do this!”
He must have noticed my eyes perk up a bit at the sudden voices. After being in the exact same place doing the exact same things for eight months, the thought of any new stimuli was exciting.
“Present? For me?” I inquired with hesitated hope. It was probably dumb for me to not suspect some sort of horrible, ironic curse being put on me. They’re still demons at the end of the day, no matter how toothless they may seem.”
(Pretty damn toothless, for the record.)
With absolutely zero fanfare, Choronzon appeared in my room.
“Last time you did this, you arrived in a burst of fire.”
“I just wasn’t feeling it anymore, after the surprise was spoiled. Sorry…”
”No, actually, I was thanking you.”
“Nevermind the theatrics. I come bearing a gift!”
Choronzon, who seems as powerful as an archduke of all demonkind, knelt before me with a flourish (despite the theatrics he neverminded.) For a moment, that made me feel like I was his superior in some twisted way—but more than showing genuine respect, I think he was just trying to entertain himself.
“I was recently alerted by my informant that you have always had a… peculiar style of dress. I was told that a so-called ‘yellow hoodies’ is quite integral to your sense of self. At first, I refused giving it to you; for fear that it could upset the balance of your beautiful little terrarium due to too much foreign material. But, after some convincing, I feel that your good behavior deserves a reward worthy of being flexible. Taken directly taken from your old living place, I’ve moved it into your current closet. I hope you enjoy wearing it. I’ll check up on you in another year or two.”
And just like that, he was gone as unceremoniously as he had arrived.
