Chapter 134 - 133: ONE
The next journey... It began with a gust of wind.
Not the kind that blows from the lungs of gods— a cool breeze or turns pages of prophecy. No — this was real wind. Gritty. Smelling of sweat and smoke and wet soil, dragging dry leaves across cobblestones, nudging at torn posters on brick walls, stirring the smell of rust, soot, and wet linen. The distant clink of a broken lantern swinging from a rusted hook.
He stood in the middle of a forgotten street.
There were no studios here. No velvet drapes. No golden frames. Just sagging roofs and crooked chimneys. Iron shutters bent like broken limbs. The air was stale. A gray sky hovered above, neither storming nor clar, just heavy— like it was mourning something unspoken.
It looked like the kind of place color had abandoned.
He was a bit confused, due to the sudden change in environment, he looked around trying to find some clues.
And that’s when he saw him.
A man in a fraying coat — maybe yellow, once— sleeves fraying, elbows patched with mismatched cloth. Now splotched with paint and dust and rain. He sat...no—hunched on a broken stool at the corner of an alley, facing a crooked easel.. His brush danced furiously across a canvas balanced precariously on bricks.
His beard was scruffy. Hat sun-washed. Eyes tired, sunken, but blazing — blazing with something feral. Something beautifully unhinged.
Vincent van Gogh.
No matter how ignorant he was about all the painting, art and stuff, there’s no way he wouldn’t recognize him... Vincent van Gogh. Father of Expressionism. Painter of Light and Emotion. Sunflower Painter. Starry Night Painter.