Noir is an intelligent black cat with amber eyes who lives in a warm, watercolor-like world. His favorite spot is the top of an old bookshelf in his owner's study, which serves as his private 'castle.' One afternoon, Noir's owner discovers a mysterious golden bookmark—a magical item that causes the story within a book to slightly overflow into reality. When a sudden wind carries the bookmark out the window, Noir embarks on his first adventure outside the house. Following clues through the town,
Noir the Cat and the Vanished Bookmark - Episode 23: Shadow Doppelgänger
# "The Shadow's Painter" ~The Memory of the Black Shadow~
Most humans recoil in fear at my black fur that melts into darkness and my amber eyes that glow even in the dark.
But that old man was different. The old man's world was clung to by a "shadow" far darker and colder than myself.
It was a night of heavy rain. As I trembled from hunger and cold, rubbing my body against the iron door at the back of the building, it creaked open slightly.
What appeared was a stubborn-looking old man with streaks of white hair. His hands carried the sharp smell of oil paint and turpentine.
"...What is this, a shadow painter, I thought. Just a stray cat, then."
Muttering this in a severely hoarse voice, the old man set a bowl of warm milk on the floor. While I licked it up eagerly, the old man returned to the back room, hunched his back, and faced a large rectangular wooden frame—apparently called a canvas.
That was the beginning of my relationship with "the Teacher."
The Teacher's room—his atelier—was a strange place.
Many paintings were propped against the walls. All of them were beautiful landscapes and portraits so precise they could be mistaken for photographs. Yet they carried no scent of living things. Dead color, the color of rejection. The Teacher's heart, shut away in this room while cursing the world, abandoned by human trends, had accumulated as dust in the corners of the room.
"Hey, move away from there. Your hair will get in it."
The next morning, when I nuzzled against the legs of the easel, the Teacher threatened me with a low voice.
A normal human would have fled, but I did not move. The sound of the painting knife scraping the canvas—that rhythmic "scrape, scrape"—was strangely comforting.
I curled up softly within the true "shadow" spreading at the Teacher's feet.
When black me sat within the black shadow, it was as if I had become part of the Teacher's shadow. The Teacher glared at me once, but soon seemed to give up and began moving his brush.
And so began our strange silence.
The Teacher did not speak a single word all day. He simply hurled his brush at the canvas like a curse.
I knew. I knew that the Teacher sometimes violently pressed his trembling right hand with his other hand.
I knew. I knew that the Teacher's eyes could no longer capture fine details in the distance.
One evening, the Teacher finally threw his brush to the floor.
The palette flipped with a loud crash, and bright red and blue paints scattered across the floor.
"...It is over. My hands, my eyes—they are nothing but outdated rubbish now."
The Teacher held his head and wept in a very small voice. His back was far smaller than when we first met, as if it might dissolve into the room's darkness at any moment.
I slowly crawled out from the shadow.
I walked carefully, avoiding the scattered paint, and placed my front paws on the Teacher's knees.
Then, with those amber eyes, I gazed steadily at the Teacher's wet face.
(What are you giving up on?)
(You still have work left to do in this world—to paint the most beautiful 'black'.)
I made no sound.
I only rumbled deeply in my throat and pressed my forehead against the Teacher's hand. My fur repels all light. It is a deeper, more certain jet black than the darkness the Teacher despaired over.
The Teacher gasped.
His trembling fingertips carefully caressed my head fur.
"You... Why is your black so free of impurity...?"
I did not miss the small, yet unflickering sharp light returning to the Teacher's eyes.
The old man slowly picked up the brush from the floor and set a fresh canvas on the easel.
This time, it was neither a landscape nor another person's face.
Looking directly into my eyes, the Teacher squeezed "black" paint onto his palette.
That was when our true struggle began.
For days after that, the Teacher barely slept.
Even as the sky outside brightened, the yellowed lamplight remained in the atelier. The Teacher laid out many canvases beneath it. Every single one was painted black.
Yet no two blacks were the same.
Black subdued with blue. Black hiding a warmth like rust. Black as heavy as the bottom of a rain cloud. Black holding sooty purple.
The Teacher mixed the paint, scraped it, and layered it again.
"No."
Each time the hoarse voice fell, I laid back my ears.
"Your black is not like this."
The Teacher looked at me. In his eyes was not the murky despair from before, but a hungry light.
I sat before the canvas.
I dislike staying still. There are many things that capture my attention—birds flying outside the window, small insects running across the floor. Yet I did not move.
The Teacher's fingertips trembled as they took up the brush.
The first stroke was terribly delicate.
Though it was meant to trace the outline of a black cat's back, it looked instead like a thin path descending into the depths of darkness.
The Teacher held his breath.
The brush tip followed the outline of my ears, crossed my forehead, and fell to my neck. Whenever the hand trembled greatly, the line wavered slightly. Yet the Teacher did not erase it.
The old Teacher would have scraped away even slightly warped lines with the knife.
"...It is trembling," the Teacher said with a self-deprecating laugh.
In reply, I struck my tail once against the floor.
Things that tremble are alive.
That was what I wanted to say.
That night, someone knocked on the atelier door.
Three sharp, dry knocks mixed with the sound of heavy rain.
The Teacher's shoulders stiffened.
"Teacher. You are there, aren't you?"
It was an unfamiliar young man's voice.
The Teacher did not answer. Brush in hand, he stood frozen before the canvas.
"About the exhibition. The deadline has already passed. I cannot wait any longer."
The voice beyond the door was oddly bright.
"What are you painting now? It is probably the same old pictures as before, isn't it?"
At those words, the shadows in the atelier seemed to stir. The black extending from the Teacher's feet sank deeper and colder than usual.
I stood up.
I walked to the door, rounded my back. My fur stood on end, and a low growl leaked from my throat.
"You have even started keeping a cat now?"
The man on the other side laughed through his nose.
At that moment, the Teacher lifted his face for the first time.
"Leave."
His voice was hoarse.
But it was not the discouraged voice from before.
"This is not a painting to show to the likes of you."
The voice beyond the door fell silent.
The Teacher touched my back with a trembling hand.
"The darkness where this child exists—I have yet to understand it."
After a long silence, footsteps echoed away.
Only the sound of rain remained.
I looked up at the Teacher.
The Teacher stared at the door for a while, then released a small breath.
"You got in the way."
Saying this, he stroked my head.
His hand still trembled. But now that trembling no longer appeared to be the mark of defeat.
The Teacher returned to the canvas.
And upon the black, he placed the barest hint of amber.
Two eyes opened in the darkness.
It was still incomplete.
But I knew.
The Teacher was no longer the one to be swallowed by shadow. He was about to paint forth what lay within the shadow's depths.
The true struggle had only just received its first stroke.
From that season onward, I simply remained beside the easel.
With each movement of the Teacher's brush, the "black" upon the canvas gained life.
The Teacher's breath grew shallower day by day, and the trembling in his fingertips would not cease. Yet only in the moment the brush touched the canvas did a terrible silence dominate the atelier.
I knew.
I knew that the Teacher was scraping away his own life and mixing it into the paint. I knew that my fur was shining brilliantly in exchange for stealing the Teacher's vision.
Yet I did not stop him. I did not wish to stop him. For we were two travelers swimming through a single darkness together.
It was a bitterly cold morning in winter. The window glass of the atelier was frosted white, and no sound from outside could be heard. The Teacher slowly lowered the brush he had dragged through the entire night. With a dry sound, it rolled across the floor.
"...It is done."
The Teacher's voice was fainter than a whisper of wind. I slowly stood, pressing my cold feet against the floor, and walked to the Teacher's feet. I looked up at the canvas.
What was there was unmistakably "me."
Not merely a lump of black fur. A jet black that absorbed all light, yet held within it warm, living blood. And in the center of that darkness, two amber eyes that shone with unwavering brilliance, as if seeing through everything in the world. It was a living black, the very opposite of the "dead color" that had once tormented the Teacher.
"Thank you, my shadow painter..."
The Teacher smiled with satisfaction and leaned back against the chair. His open right hand gently touched my head. That hand no longer trembled. An astonishingly quiet, peaceful calm enveloped the Teacher.
I leaped onto the Teacher's lap and buried my face in his chest. The heartbeat of the one who had always rejected me, feared me, and finally loved me beat slower, slower, and ever more faintly.
I rumbled in my throat. With the deepest sound, like the bottom of night. To illuminate the path for the Teacher's soul so it would not lose its way in the cold atelier's darkness. Soon, that heartbeat ceased entirely.
How long I remained like that, I cannot say clearly. The frozen atelier door was struck violently once more by someone.
The flustered voice of that young man from before. Soon the door was thrust open roughly, and several people stepped into the room.
Seeing the Teacher sitting in the chair as if asleep, they let out short cries. But in the next moment, all of them were captivated by the canvas on the easel and lost for words. Gasps, the sound of tears.
"Unbelievable..."
"This is what that old man...?"
Trembling whispers filled the room.
The Teacher had won.
The pathetic crowd of humans had finally completely bowed before the true darkness the Teacher had painted.
As the humans moved about noisily, I quietly descended from the Teacher's lap. My role was over. I sat before the canvas and gazed at the "me" depicted there. The me in the painting would forever remain in this atelier and throughout the world, living on as the "perfect black" the Teacher had grasped with his life.
I pressed my body against the Teacher's feet one final time, remembering the lingering warmth.
Then I walked into the deepest shadow in the corner of the atelier. My fur repels all light with its jet black. I, dissolving into the room's darkness, was no longer visible to any eye. I slowly closed my eyes and became part of the shadow at the Teacher's feet. That place, filled with the scent of paint, was very quiet and very warm.
How much time has passed since then?
For me, who has no sense of time, it seems like but a moment, and yet like an eternity.
On that day, the humans gently carried the Teacher away and tidied the scattered atelier. The sharp scent of paint and the sound of the knife scraping canvas disappeared, leaving only cold silence in their place.
But that one painting on the easel remains in this room still. The abandoned canvas was given the name "Shadow Painter" and caused great upheaval in the art world, it seems.
That young man who once laughed at the Teacher for being outdated now tends to this room with hands as though touching something sacred.
The room had become like a small memorial museum celebrating the Teacher's legacy. During the day, many humans come with hushed footsteps. They all stop before the single painting displayed in the center of the room and catch their breath.
A deep, deep, living black that seems to absorb all light. And from within that darkness, two burning amber eyes gazing steadily back.
"It seems as though it might move at any moment."
"Looking at it, one feels drawn in."
I always listen quietly to such whispers from the humans, from within the densest shadow in the corner of the room.
None of the huma
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