[5:46am]
Huang Renjun’s paintings are famous. The attention to detail, the wrinkle on the fabric that wraps around your ankle, the lighting and how it caresses your skin, the love that every stroke is ingrained with. The famous painter was known to only paint one thing, and one thing only. You. The princess of the royal kingdom he worked for, the love of his long life.
There was a difference between the palace painting and the impressionistic style he painted in his free time with. The palace paintings were beautiful, yet unbearable traditional. His free-time paintings are what he is known for. They were always painted from inside his studio, the window frame visible, looking out into the vast fields below. There, in the foreground, was you. Doing different things from painting to painting, from sitting on the ground, to dancing around in the blossoming flower patches. They were always distant from you, they were painted in a way that made the observer yearn. Yearn for you, just as Renjun had yearned for your love.
Everyone knows the story of his tragic life. The unfortunate home life turned into wonderous young adulthood where he spent his time painting the royal family, painting you, then the painful heartbreak when learning of your arranged marriage. He spent his life painting you. He spent his life dedicated to your beauty. When the king had died due to tuberculosis, and you laid by his side, tearful, Renjun had begun to paint a confession of his love. It was the most beautiful painting he had ever created, the most famous, and even with half the canvas empty, there was something undeniable about the inspiration and etherealness.
It was you, in your more youthful days, smiling at Renjun the first time he met you. The memory stayed suspended in his thoughts every day and every night, waiting to be painted. And finally, he started. Nothing had ever taken so much of his time, he had never been meticulous; it needed to be perfect.
Too bad he had passed before he could finish it. There he lay, in the royal cemetery, a paintbrush gripped by his boney hands, six feet under. The words,
‘Because my love for you is higher than words, I have decided to fall silent.’
Inscribed on his stone.
