Until Our Paint Fades

In the midst of life, everything revolved around death. — Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

You read that line once in a dog-eared tome someone left on a train seat years ago. The line lodged somewhere deep within you, like a splinter you couldn’t quite reach. Now it surfaces unbidden, eating away at you every morning when the first small thing slips away.

What is the meaning of a life when you know the exact day when every colour in your mind will fade away completely?

It's not about your heartbeat stopping.

Nor is it your body failing.

It's just the slow dissolution of everything that made you you.

Names.

Faces.

Regrets.

First kisses.

The smell of rain on concrete.

The exact weight of a spray can in your palm.

Do you seize every remaining second, splatter it across walls before it’s gone?

Or do you stand frozen, watching the pigment run like cheap ink?

You don’t decide.

You can't decide.

Or is it because you can't remember what you decided?

In any case, your body decides for you.

You open your eyes to the same ceiling you’ve stared at for years, except today the crack in the corner plaster looks unfamiliar, like it appeared overnight. You reach for your phone on the nightstand — habit, or perhaps muscle memory — and the screen lights up with notifications you don’t recognise.

You swipe to unlock the phone — no password, you can't remember anyway. A meeting reminder for 2 p.m. today. You have no memory of scheduling it. The calendar entry is in your calendar app, your email address. But the context is gone. You stare at the words until they blur, then close the app.

The day unravels in small, quiet self betrayals.

You pay for your usual black coffee which you manage to “order” despite forgetting what you usually drink, courtesy of the barista who you also forget the name of. Her name tag reads “Haewon”, but the word slides off her tongue before you can say it. You mumble your thanks and leave, cheeks burning with a shame you can’t explain.

No matter, you’ll forget about it soon enough.

You blank on the shortcut through the back alley you’ve taken every morning for three years. In the end, you find yourself circling the same block twice before muscle memory finally kicks in and turns your feet the right way.

At work you stare at a half-finished design file on your screen. It’s your own handiwork, but you feel a cold certainty that you don’t remember starting it. The layers are meticulous, the colour palette is purposeful, and the composition is balanced. Someone who knew what they were doing made this.

But you aren’t sure that person is still you.

By late afternoon the voids feel physical, like someone is slowly erasing pencil lines from the sketch of your life. You sit on the edge of your desk chair, hands flat on your thighs, breathing carefully, waiting for the next thing to disappear.

Nothing dramatic.

No shatter. No collapse.

Just absence, creeping in like fog.

You can't sustain this any longer.

Perhaps you’ll make yourself disappear from here first.

You hand in your resignation letter and leave the office early. No one asks why. You walk without direction until your feet slow near the reservoir, then turn automatically toward the district where the lights start earlier and stay brighter.

The night market district begins where the office towers give way to narrower streets. Neon signs buzz in electric reds, purples and blues. Food stalls line both sides, selling anything and everything. Vendors call out discounted prices and promotions. Students in school uniforms cluster around claw and gacha machines. Office workers loosen ties and laugh too loud after one too many beers. Buskers strum guitars or beatbox into portable speakers. The air is thick with charcoal smoke, cigarette ash, and the faint sweat of exhaustion of the day.

In the middle of it all stands a wall. The wall.

A long stretch of raw concrete between a noodle stall and a bar. It’s been painted over so many times the surface is textured and raised from layers of paint and old primer and whatever you put on it every other night. The crowds flow around it like water around a rock.

No one stops to look for long.

After all, it’s just another surface in a city that’s full of walls.

You pull the backpack off your shoulder. Inside are cans of spray paint of different colours — black, red, white and gold — and you have no idea why those colours in particular. The gloves inside are already stained. You set the bag down carefully.

You shake the black can first. The rattle is sharp, familiar and comforting.

The pattern is always the same.

Two abstract figures, intertwined at the waist, rising from a pool of bleeding red. One face is half-turned away, black features dissolving into a shadowy white. The other reaches for the disappearing, golden fingers trailing after like tears.

You never planned it. The image simply arrives each night, fully formed, demanding to exist. Sometimes you think it’s trying to tell you something. Most nights you just let it speak.

Tonight the lines come clean and sure, just like it always does. You step in close, the hiss of the nozzle steady in your hand. Outlines come first in sharp, confident curves. Crimson red pools at the bottom like deep water. Gold edges flare across from one side to another, chasing after the fading black into white.

You step back. The crowd surges past, oblivious. A young lady with long and straight bubblegum pink hair takes a selfie in front of it without even glancing at the figures.

A couple walks by, his hand protective on her rounded belly, talking quietly about blueprints. Their shadows slide across the wet paint.

All fleeting encounters that you appreciate but will be forgotten anyway.

It’s beautiful for exactly as long as it takes for the paint to set, since the painting will stay there for three full nights before the cleaning automata come at dawn on the fourth.

They are tall, brass-and-steam machines with faint glowing blue sigils etched into their chests. Everyone has seen them rumble through the streets in the dark of the night, hoses hissing jets of hot steam that lifts paint and graffiti alike without leaving a trace. They’re just part of the city. No one questions them any more than asking why the sky is blue.

By the fourth dawn it will be gone again. Blank slate. Ready for your next art night.