Checkmate - Chapter 26: Chapter 26

"Congratulations, Miss Lancaster! Our judges have selected you as the most talented artist among all to represent Neos Athens Arts. Her achievement is particularly impressive since she isn't part of the Arts program and had only submitted her series a night before the deadline. For her outstanding artworks, we crown and adorn her, one of the Nine Muses' famed white knight robe and witch hat! Come up here, Miss Lancaster!"
Hana failed to hear everything else, but she knew the people gave Althea a round of applause. Althea untangled herself from Hana who refused to look at her, hurt etched across each other's face, as she hurried up towards Wafiqah and the judges.
"HURRAH ALTHEA!" Madeline and Heather cheered embarrassingly as if they were Althea's proud mom and dad.
There was a buzz of some sort like a microphone in a karaoke bar until in a distorted voice as Wafiqah announced the rest of what was written in the card. Hana took a deep breath and then doesn't understand why the relief of oxygen does not get to her. She closed her eyes and opened them again until the world is a blur but as two-dimensional, as it was before and she can't understand.
Whenever Hana was upset, she would comfort herself with the knowledge that moments are fleeting, that the day would soon pass, or that before she knew it she would be graduating and becoming a famous Photographer like Andromeda Danton. Hana always had a high threshold for physical pain because it didn't feel like her who really felt it. It was easy to give herself hope, because no matter what mistakes she made at that time, she was only a child inside, and besides, Hana didn't exist in the grand scheme of the country or world, so whatever blunders she made weren't important.
Hana wanted to become more than that. The fact she's trying so hard to leave a mark in the world was a pointer that Hana wanted to become a part of the world around her—to stop depersonalizing when things go wrong.
Her thought process continued until Hana heard someone talk to her.
"Oh no, Hana are you okay?" Fallon had asked her, her hands on Hana's shoulder and bringing her out from her train of thought. She hadn't noticed that her friends had gathered around her.
"Fallon!" Hana grabbed her Finnish friend from the sleeves, she wasn't aware that she was crying. "I didn't win any awards."
"Yeah, too bad," Liezel said. "But it's your fault; you set your bar too high."
"Liezel!" Fallon hissed at her.
It was typical for Fallon to hiss at Liezel as it was typical for Hana to take it to heart when her hard work doesn't go her way.
All her frustration and sadness began to bubble up to the surface, sliding out of her in more hot teardrops. Hana tried to not make a sound; she didn't want anyone to hear her but her throat failed her as she cried out loud. Her body shook as she cried.
"But it's still amazing what you did Hana. You managed to pass her finals although you almost flunked." Fallon said.
Hana wrapped her roommates in a hug. The tightness inside her finally relaxed, she laughed awkwardly, "Thanks to you all—and Althea."
"Aww, are you going to cry more like a baby, Hana?" Samantha bantered. Hildegard hit her elbow to the redhead's ribs, shutting her up.
"It's going to be okay, Hana." Natalya handed her some treats. "Here, have some marshmallow."
An instant grin was revealed on her face. Her friends really knew how to cheer her up. Hana accepted the sugary treat skewered on a stick and her eyes scanned the area near the fire where they bestowed the awards to the winners. A smile flirted on her face upon seeing Althea wearing the while cloak and a witch's hat. She looked so regal and beautiful there and then, Hana was upset she didn't bring her camera.
The crackling fire lit up the surrounding area with orange and crimson hues. Its smoldering heat acted as a barrier, preventing the crisp autumn air from penetrating. It was almost overwhelming. The skin of Hana's face was as charred as the marshmallow she held onto and dried her eyes to the point of tears. She struggled to find the perfect balance between temperatures.
"You did great, Hana." Her French professor arrived at the scene.
"Professor Andrea!" she jumped towards her and the rest of her friends.
The Professor was out of breath. "I've been looking all over for you and finally I spotted you all here. I managed to take a look at the judges' criterion paper and found that you had a stunning 20 points far from Miss Lancaster. You're in second place!"
A glance at a mirror would confirm Althea's suspicion that she would look like a spitting image of her mother. Althea's mother, her mother before her, and their ancestors' spirits would gather around her, equally proud of upholding the Lancaster tradition.
Professor Tosca stood beside the judges and had been animatedly talking to them. Althea patiently waited for their conversation to finish before she approached her mentor.
"Professor?"
"Why hello there Althea, how does it feel to be in the spotlight?"
"I've grown accustomed to it." She said nonchalantly.
"Does it feel lonely?" she asked, "to stand at a pinnacle with nowhere to go?"
"Forgive me, Professor but I seem to fail at controlling my thoughts in your grand scheme to try to put me and my muse against each other." Althea was deeply angry. Her younger self would cower beneath her glare. "Forgive me, but I don't feel like you at all. I am not stagnant. I have a path to trek and there are no roadblocks for me."
Her mentor paused for a moment, and Althea thought she could make out a faint smile on the woman's face. "I gather that I won at my scheme, Althea, though it's a shame, really. To see you fall for your competitor like I once did."
"W-what?"
"You might not be stagnant now, but you will find yourself falling into a chasm and find it difficult to climb back up once again."
Afraid to let silence come up between them again, Althea asked clumsily. "Professor, speak to me truthfully, what do you really think of Hana's artistry?"
Her mentor gave her a blank look before her eyes focused. "The more I look at her photographs the more I realize that it's not necessarily natural light that she likes to shoot in, but instead, it's flat or evenly lit from all sides. Not necessarily called natural light. It's just that in her case, the light comes from the sun. This type of light can occur at any place where there is a bunch of light, bouncing around and coming back from all directions. I'm not a professional photographer, but in my experience, this type of light doesn't make all face types look flattering. Lucky for a model like you, it's good! In many cases, you do need the harder directional light, when you have to create shapes on certain face types, to make them look good. And for that kind of light, you can use all types of light sources, including the sun, flashes, and continuous lights. So the fuss on here shouldn't be about 'Natural VS Artificial' light. Instead, it should be 'Flat VS Directional or Contrast' light. But even that, is a ridiculous argument to get into because you need both. Also, I asked the judges to show me the results and Miss Yoshida was an astounding second place."
Althea was prepared to listen to her mentor's thoughts about Hana but she wasn't prepared for that bitter-laced positive intricate criticism that didn't even reach an hour. It only meant one thing—Professor Tosca was impressed by Hana's photographs.
"You be careful of her, Althea." Professor Tosca warned. "If she's not an idiot, and was born privileged like you. She's definitely more worthy of to the chosen student of Professor Oakley."
"Yes she is, and for that judgment alone, I feel unworthy of the Moonlit Witch title."
"Althea, I'm afraid your fountain of knowledge merely focuses on medicine. On art, you have so much to learn."
Those words were harsh as if a huge arrow struck her deep into her heart. It stung and she was at loss for words to say as her mentor walked away.
"I have somewhere else to be Althea. Congratulations on winning the title, and please enjoy the rest of your Samhain Festival."
Althea wanted to make the last retort. She wanted to at least save her dignity, but it was too late. Professor Tosca had disappeared into the crowd. It was a low brow, for a mentor to tell her off like that. It felt like an insult. She did know everything. Next, to earning her Ph.D., Althea wanted to be an artist. She was exceptionally good at drawing, using watercolors, oil paints, and so on. She was good at most everything except her real feelings and perfectly articulate them.
She turned back to Hana who was crying so much from happiness at being second place. Most people who end up in second place are actually more depressed than third placers, but Hana was different, she was so different and Althea was drawn to it—Hana's heart.
Althea had never felt so utterly confused about a girl. Throughout her teenage years, and even her young adulthood, she had been exposed to all sorts of women, none of whom had ever been able to retain her interest for more than a couple of days, not that they could have done that to another woman—or a man, anyway. They were all shallow, albeit beautiful and charming even, some of them.
But not even one had been capable of making Althea Lancaster fall in love, and Hana hardly appeared to be like the type of girl to make any man fall in love.
She was a girl magnet, Althea knew that and sometimes girls fawning about how perfect she is could be a little too suffocating. And she wasn't used to having rivals for what she wanted and worked for. She was suddenly pushed into a battlement where she's never equipped to properly win in a fair fight.
Love...love is like... she had no idea how love felt, but it certainly didn't happen like that. Love was supposed to be like in the books she had read—or the ones Heather's Midnight books that she secretly reads. Love would happen to the perfectly matched kind of people, those who saw a mirror of themselves in the other.
Althea looked at Hana, and she already saw herself in her. Hana was Althea in her childhood—an Andromeda Danton fan. This fire burning in Hana's heart kept lighting up to part the way—Hana's way to greatness.
Among the feelings of love, Althea felt incredibly jealous of Hana too.
Hana was closer to Andromeda than she ever was.
If Althea found her past self on Hana before, she doesn't see the resemblance now. Althea grew up; the little one was gone with the wind. Althea could hardly see herself in the Japanese girl. Hana was strange, yet in an adorable sort of way. She was brave and reckless; she was basically everything Althea's not. To act in a completely corny way that she found below her range, and most certainly it referred to that certain openness towards one's feelings that she was not prone to possess any time soon.
Surely love meant wanting to say those magic three words that had never left her lips, and that was problematic for Althea indeed.
Nevertheless, admitting that maybe she liked Hana more than she initially thought, she went on walking by her side, throughout watching her clumsy gestures, like the bangs that kept falling on her forehead, disheveling from the bun, or the fluttering of her lashes when the torrid sun of that day pierced her sight or the fidgeting of her fingers.
Althea's heart had feebly but determinedly started to pound for Hanako Yoshida.
"Althea, is something wrong?" The object of her affections spoke lightly as if Althea were a nervous sighthound who might be spooked by a more serious tone. She was holding melted marshmallows in between cookies.
"No, of course not," Althea managed to say. She wasn't exactly telling the truth, but she wasn't entirely lying, either, for she did not believe that wrong was an accurate description of her feelings. Perplexed, yes; uncertain, yes; but beneath it all, something as yet unnamed was coming into focus.
"Congratulations on winning, I hope that you enjoyed yourself today." There was something in her voice that sounded the tiniest bit affronted.
Althea looked at her and said quickly, "Oh, I did I will never forget today."
Hana let out her breath in a small laugh, and she said, "I am glad."
The night was still young. About five hours before midnight. Hana was super adorable that could dangerously keep her in trouble. And as much as she wanted for Hana to enjoy her Samhain Festival with her friends, Althea allowed herself to be selfish just this once.
Althea's right hand grabbed her left elbow, holding her head up high to entrance the shorter girl and she succeeded. Hana's sole attention was focused on her neckline
"Hana, would you want to head with me back home?" she asked, trying a deep tone.
Hana's cheeks lit up, she didn't catch the question thrown at her. "What?"
Althea inched closer to her—so close that Hana could almost taste the scent of her perfume. Althea raised a hand and caressed her cheek, the area where she kissed her. "Seeing you standing there is making my creative side go wild. Pray tell say yes to come with me home tonight, I want to paint you already. Stay with me for the rest of the night, please."
Hana stopped abruptly and blushed to the roots of her hair, "Y-yes."