Work Text:
The Taste of Creation
It had only been a couple days since Rohan had bought the last three bottles of wine, but it was already gone, so he was buying more again. It made it seem like he was an alcoholic, but he’d successfully siphoned most of it off onto Kujo, so he actually hadn’t even drunk most of it.
He debated whether to buy more wine from the same store or a different one. If it was the same cashier working as a couple days earlier, they might indeed come to the conclusion that he was alcoholic and spread the word, starting a rumor about it. He didn’t particularly care what people thought about him as a person—he cared only about his manga, and expected people to judge him by his art and not by his personality—but he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the false reputation of being an alcoholic. But buying wine from a different store might make him seem more guilty, because it would make it seem like he was trying to hide it. And since that was what he would essentially be doing, it would have pissed him off.
In the end he bought the new wines from the same store. Mostly out of spite. Let people talk and spread false rumors, but he refused to act like he was hiding anything or had any shameful secrets. He had none. People only misunderstood things.
He liked wine for the atmospheric feelings, and because some amount of alcohol helped calm his feverish mind.
He was only content when he was working on his manga—drawing, writing, brainstorming, researching. The rest of existence was irritating.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t be work on his manga all the time.
There was so much he wanted to create, but sometimes his mind felt like it was on fire and burning up. He couldn’t concentrate. He needed breaks.
He hated that he needed breaks.
He was buying wine for the atmospheric feelings.
He bought four wines this time, successfully achieving the wine discount. Sometimes out of spite he only bought three; this day his need for spite was satisfied by buying the wine from the same store as a couple days before, and he wanted more than three bottles so that he wouldn’t have make a trip to the store for hopefully at least another weak. Annoying chore that shopping was.
He didn’t like carrying more than four wines, though. The glass bottles full of liquid got heavy, and he didn’t like walking like he was carrying a burden.
Kishibe Rohan did not carry any burdens whatsoever, thank you very much.
Of course, his need to feel like he was doing things out of spite didn’t end up completely satisfied by buying the wine from the same store since it turned out there was a different cashier from a couple days before, but then he satisfied the rest of his need by spiting his own pride and buying the four wines to get the wine discount.
Kishibe Rohan was incredibly self-sufficient, thank you very much.
They were cheap wines again, although not quite as cheap as those from a couple days previous. He didn’t feel like getting pissed off like that again, but while he felt like spending time, annoyingly needing the break from his work, he was annoyed enough at needing that break that he didn’t feel like spending much money on it.
There were all sorts of ways for Rohan to spite himself.
So he’d bought the four cheap but not dirt-cheap wines, along with a few other groceries he’d needed—food was an annoying time-suck, but unfortunately just as necessary as breaks—and then carried them back in a backpack that was large enough for groceries but stylish enough to suit his aesthetic needs.
He liked walking. Partly because the exercise helped with cognitive function. Partly because, unless he was looking for inspiration for his manga in either other people or the public transportation system, he hated public transportation. He of course had a car—and a motorcycle, and a bicycle, and also a skateboard, as well as both a pair of roller-skates and a pair of roller-blades, since he liked to have all his bases covered—but they were more work to deal with. If he didn't have too far to go then walking was just easier.
If Rohan could have had his way with the world, he wouldn’t have done anything at all aside from drawing manga.
Unfortunately, he was not the god of the world. Only the god of his manga. Which was—yet again, unfortunately—not the world that he himself lived in.
So Rohan walked back to his hosue with the wine and other groceries. Then he ate a few olives, because it would help with not ending up drunk as he wine-tasted, and he didn’t want to end up drunk. He couldn’t work or think productively when he was drunk. He just wanted the atmospheric feelings from the wines. And he didn’t feel like going to the annoying effort of bothering with wine-pairings, hence: green olives. Because one couldn’t go wrong with them. They basically went with any wine, ever.
So Rohan obligatorily ate the damn olives, drank some water so as to make sure not to end up dehydrated, and then started with the wine-tasting.
He’d bought a white, a rosé, and two reds.
He started with the white. Because wine was best drunk lightest to darkest.
It was another Sauvignon Blanc. He’d thought about getting a different kind, but the last Sauvignon Blanc had been such a disappointing Sauvignon Blanc that he’d felt the need for another one. Hopefully a slightly more proper one.
He poured some into his clear wine glass, then held it up to the afternoon sunlight—afternoon was a good time of day for wine-tasting. The sunlight shone in through his windows just right.
This Sauvignon Blanc looked slightly lighter than the last one, although perhaps it just seemed that way because it lacked the greenish tint. This one was hay-gold, a shad that reminded Rohan of summertime and countryside.
He brought the glass back to him, swirled it gently and then sniffed it. He let the breath out relaxedly; this Sauvignon Blanc was undoubtedly better than the last one. This one had no traces of ocean. Its aroma was warmer, with a sense of moist, musky forest soil and verdant vegetation.
He took a sip, closing his eyes. He could feel the tenseness of his shoulders relax at the taste.
In his mind he saw a rough, gray stone wall covered in lush ivy. He felt the urge to climb it and see what was on the other side. All around him were trees with sunlight shining through their bright green leaves. He took another sip, moving the wine around his mouth with his tongue, over his smooth, hard teeth and the smooth, soft insides of his cheeks. The Sauvignon Blanc made him feel like a child again, reminding him of games of hide-and-go-seek and hide-and-go-seek-tag. Hiding, seeking, sneaking, running and laughing. More sips, and he felt leaves and sticks against his skin, felt the rough stone of the wall beneath his fingertips, saw dust floating in rays of sunlight, watched the shadows of leaves dance over the forest floor as the breeze moved through them, felt that light breeze on his skin and smelled the musky scent of soil and the green scent of foliage.
He had the urge to draw, and opened his eyes, reaching out to draw paper and pens to him.
He didn’t feel like creating or deciding on a character, so he simply drew himself. He’d always been his own model—mirrors and baby-book photos were the most convenient materials for practice—and drawing himself at any age came easily and without effort.
He drew himself as a child, playing in the woods and smiling.
He smiled a little bit himself, a little wryly, because it was rare for him to draw himself smiling. Especially not as he was drawing himself now: with genuine happiness, without either wryness or smugness.
It was a little hard, because now whenever he thought about his childhood he thought about Yoshikage Kira and how close he’d come to death, but he pushed away those thoughts; sometimes he liked mulling over them, but they had no place in the atmospheric feelings this Sauvignon Blanc was evoking in him.
He drew himself running and laughing through the forest, looking up at and brushing his hand along the ivy-covered wall—had had to look up pictures of trees and ivy to make sure he got the shapes and textures right, because it would have bothered him otherwise—but he didn’t draw himself climbing the wall or viewing what was on the other side. He could have, could have drawn it and could have imagined it, but he liked the sense of it being an unattainable mystery, so he didn’t. He drew the ivy-covered stone wall as being too tall, too long and difficult to climb.
There had never been such a wall or such a forest in his childhood, but that didn’t make him feel any less like he had experienced it; it didn’t make him feel any less like he was experiencing it.
That was one of the things that delighted him about wine: the intensity of the atmospheric feelings. Other alcohols gave him atmospheric feelings, as well, but never so intensely or vividly as wines.
Once he felt like he’d drawn everything he felt, he set the drawings aside, finished off the glass of Sauvignon Blanc, rinsed the wine glass and then his mouth out with water and reached for the Rosé.
It was from the same winery as the Sauvignon Blanc, so he expected it to be another positive-emotion wine. Wineries tended to be consistent like that.
He held the glass up to the sunlight, admiring the shade. Some rosés were incredibly pale, but this was one the more saturated ones. It was like the flesh of salmon but darker, more floral. The depth of the color in the sunlight remind him of honey, although as far as he knew honey didn’t come in such a reddened shade. He was reminded of sunsets over a horizon of desert.
Bringing the glass to him, swirling it lightly and then sniffing it, he caught deep floral and honey aromas: entirely unsurprising, given the color. The germaness of it pleased him.
Rose and honey. He wondered if rose honey existed, and if he could buy it anywhere.
He took a sip, closing his eyes. It was so deeply floral he felt like he was drinking flower petals made liquid. It was a relatively dry Rosé, but there were reminders of nectar’s sweetness, memories evoked of picking honeysuckles and and sucking the sweet nectar from their purple blooms.
In his mind were images of walking through a flower garden—one of those pristinely-manicured ones that mansions and castles tended to have—with flowers blooming vividly everywhere, their full-bodied aromas drifting on the spring/summer breeze. Over everything was warm sunlight, yellow-toned, pleasant and not too hot, making all the colors of the flowers’ petals glow: all shades of reds, pinks, oranges, yellows. The path he was walking was red brick. More sips of the Rosé and there were fountains, softly burbling and splashing, their clear water scintillating in the sunlight. The manor was there when he looked, three-stories and the color of rosewood.
Rohan felt unusually calm as he drew it all. Confidence was a feeling he was very well acquainted with; calmness was not.
More sips of the Rosé brought the feeling of silky flower petals to his fingers, the urge to make a flower-crown, to wear it and feel like a prince.
He laughed at himself slightly, lightly, drawing it—he didn’t have to show these drawings to anybody. Nobody would ever know.
If he ever needed the material, though, it now existed for him to draw from.
He set finished off the glass of Rosé and set the drawings aside, folded carefully on top of the ones from the Sauvignon Blanc. He was smiling slightly.
The red wines were from different wineries, and he wondered if they would also end up being positive-emotion wines or if he’d end up feeling pissed. He was a little excited to find out.
Again he washed the wine glass and his mouth out with water, and then poured himself one of the reds.
He’d been a little uncertain which red to try first; he liked to go lightest to darkest, and one was a Pinot Noir, which was one of the lightest red wines, but the other red he’d purchased didn’t say what kind of grape variety it was. The only information it gave was that it was from France, was supposed to be a beautiful red color with purple highlights and have a lot of freshness, with rich and spicy red and black fruit aromas (blackberry, black currant) and have a beautifully balanced palate with crunchy, silky tannins and a long, aromatic finish.
Those kinds of descriptions meant absolutely nothing to Rohan.
He supposed it was probably darker in shade and flavor than the Pinot Noir, but ended up going with the French red first, because it had a screw-off cap like the white and the rosé had. He’d leave the Pinot Noir with its cork for last.
He’d spent a while drawing, and the afternoon was nearing evening. He wondered if the lighting would be still be any good when he finally got to the Pinot Noir.
He decided not to care and poured himself the French red. French wines tended to be good, even when they were relatively cheap. Rohan held the glass up to the windows, but the sun had already passed its peak position, and the wine just came off as near-black. He couldn’t decide whether the red-shade was more ruby or garnet, and decided he didn’t feel like doing the research that would have been necessary to make the decision properly.
Swirling it and sniffing it gave him a sense of ripe berries and the dark hours of night; both of those feelings were relatively common of reds.
Rohan took a sip and moved the wine around his mouth. Reds definitely had a thicker and more leathery feeling than whites or rosés, and the transition took a moment for him to accustom himself to before he could properly get a feeling of the red.
It was serendipitously another positive-emotion wine; he was struck by the sense of taking a walk on a summer night, warm and balmy, down a stone path in a relaxing atmosphere of quiet and the silky smooth feeling the night hours took on once most most people had fallen asleep. Rohan had always enjoyed those night hours, and this French red seemed to embody that feeling: being comfortably, contentedly, confidently alone in the warmth and closeness of the dark.
When he drew the images in his mind, the room was permeated by the scent of ink from how much he was coloring black. He’d thought of using white marker on black paper, but that wouldn’t have evoked the correct feeling—white ink on black paper was for horror and cold.
So Rohan took the time to color white paper black with ink, relaxing at the familiar and comforting aroma.
If his souls actually existed and his soul had a scent, Rohan felt sure that it would have been that of ink.
More sips of the French red, and Rohan thought that the night was still, absent of wind but decorated in the sound of chirping of crickets and the reverberating ribbits of frogs. Embellished with those sounds like the night sky was embellished with stars and moon-illuminated, shadow-defined clouds that filled the heavens with the immensity and power of giants. And yet Rohan walking along the stone path felt powerful even beneath them.
He set his drawings aside, away from the others so that all the black ink could properly dry, finished off the French red, washed his glass and mouth out with water and reached for the Pinot Noir.
Pinot Noirs tended to evoke feelings of rawness, like bones stripped of all their flesh; he wondered if this Pinot Noir would live up to that or defy it.
The bottle had a cork, and he had to retrieve his wine-opener, kneeling on the ground and holding the bottle between his knees as he screwed the wine-opener in, gripping the neck of the bottle with his right hand while pulling up with his left.
It took a little effort, but the cork slid out with exceptional ease; most corks, no matter how easy the came out, would leave the wine bottle with a distinct “pop”; this cork did not. It slid from the glass bottle near silently, emitting only the slightest, quietest and softest of whining squeaks, almost a squelch except not so wet.
It made Rohan grin a little, thinking of a small animal like a mouse dying resignedly, having accepted being caught in a cat’s claws.
It was always villainous feelings that made Rohan feel the most delighted. Whatever that said about his personality. He didn’t really care.
He held the glass up to the waning light of oncoming evening, yet again barely able to make out anything more than black. From what of the red he could see, though, he thought that the Pinot Noir was more translucent and less opaque than the French red had been, with the sense of redness being more evenly distributed rather than concentrated on the edges with blackness concentrated in the center.
Swirling and sniffing the wine brought feelings of night but also of wet paint.
Sipping the Pinot Noir and tasting it he almost laughed; perhaps the color was actually lighter than the French red, but it tasted distinctly purple, like the color that shaded the area beneath sleepless eyes. Another sip and he was reminded deeply of all those nights of insomnia when he couldn’t sleep and he didn’t even mind, too caught up and delighted in drawing his manga, the panels manifesting beneath his fingers with the rightness of breath and the beating of his heart. As if they were simply meant to exist, and became what they were meant to be with eager, ebullient ease.
He didn’t know what scenes to draw for the Pinot Noir; it simply made him want to work on his manga.
So he did, with the bone-bright, flesh-stripped rawness of creation melting darkly and sweetly behind his teeth.