My Childhood Friend And The Exhibit

According to my childhood friend:

“The value of a thing, at the end of the day, changes depending on who’s looking at it, right? When you decide you want something, how far you’re willing to reach for it… in the end, it probably comes down to how badly that person wants ‘it.’”

…Or so it goes.

Say there’s a thing called ‘A’ that you want. It doesn’t have to be something you buy with money, either; it could just as easily be something conceptual, like an honor you win by beating someone else out for it.

The things you pay money for go without saying. But take a wish like ‘I want a high rank on the exam.’ If that’s what you want, you have to study. Or ‘I want a certain person’s attention.’ If that’s what you want, you have to work out what that person likes, or reshape yourself to their taste, which is far harder work than simply buying something.

What I’m getting at is that wanting something means paying a cost of some kind, and not only in money. It might be time, or the willpower to keep making the effort, or feelings. All sorts of things, surely. Even just buying an expensive item takes time, and the means you built up to afford it.

And one of the problems with all this runs something like: ‘there is a limit to how many people can obtain it.’

Take ‘I want to place first on the exam.’ That one’s simple. First place is the top of the heap, and for me to take it, everyone else has to be pushed down to second or lower. There’s no way everyone who wants first place can have it.

Then you get things like ‘purchase limited to lottery winners,’ which you see all the time with popular products: the latest game console, or a toy shop where whoever wins at rock-paper-scissors earns the right to buy one. When the stock is limited, it tends to end up that way.

What these have in common is that not everyone who wants it gets to have it. Endless effort hardly guarantees you first place; and with the lottery, sure, if you never give up you might get your hands on one someday, but in the meantime there’s every chance you stop wanting it at all.

Hearts change, after all, and what a thing is worth to a person changes with them.

In short, what Ayu wanted to say was that even if several people want the same ‘A,’ how much value each of them finds in it, and how much cost they’re willing to pay for it, differs from person to person… I think. Some people say, ‘I’ll spare neither time nor effort until this is mine.’ Others say, ‘It’s not something I want badly enough to go that far,’ and give up, since that cost can end up spent for nothing.

Me… basically, I lean toward the latter, I suppose. I’ve never had something I’d want no matter what it took, so I’m not confident this interpretation is even right.

◆◆◆

“There’s more of a line than I expected…”
“…That’s pretty surprising.”

We’d come at the request of Yuuka, Ayu’s relative, to the venue for an exhibit by an illustrator she claims to be a fan of. The whole point of the show was to sell the paintings, so I’d pictured a crowd of adults who looked like they had money. The people lined up at reception skewed young and female instead.

“From a quick look… there are a few here who seem about our age, too.”
“Well, when I looked the artist up beforehand… I did think the pictures would land better with women than with men.”

When I heard the words ‘illustrator’s exhibit,’ the first thing I pictured was walls hung with drawings of anime girls. As it turned out, this artist’s showing seemed to center on landscape illustrations: night skies, ruins, that sort of thing. From a quick skim of a few pieces, the starry-sky ones in particular looked like a direct hit on Ayu’s tastes… hold on. Is this doubling as a recruitment pitch for Yuuka’s favorite illustrator?

“…Ah, yes, I have a reservation… Yes, thank you very muuch.”
“So that’s the catalog you get for booking ahead?”
“Looks like it.”
“Got it~ So then…”
“Let’s go home.”
“Why?!”

I mean, it’s more crowded than I expected, and expensive paintings are something we can only look at anyway. Wouldn’t it be a nuisance to the staff? We came all this way, so I’d rather hurry up and go eat something good, or wander around and see the sights.

“That’s not how it works, Ginko-chan.”
“And why’s that?”
“On top of the catalog, Yuuka-chan asked us for an art book she doesn’t have yet… and to buy her some merch within a budget, too.”
“That’s right~”
“Ugh, what a pain.”

Wait, they’ve got merch? No wonder there are girls our age in the line. We followed the crowd, and sure enough, there really was a merch corner. It was doing brisk business, and the painting exhibit apparently lay past it.

“Look, Gin-chan, they’ve even got a sign up saying ‘Only available here!’”
“Even fishier…”
“Now, now… we’ll look at that later. For the moment, shall we go see the actual paintings?”

◆◆◆

“They’re beautiful~”
“They are… I mean, they are, but…”

In format it was the same as an art museum. Paintings hung along the walls, viewed in order on a set route. The difference was that every one of them was for sale, and that away from the walls stood chairs paired with stands to hold a painting, where customers sat talking things over with the staff across a propped-up piece.

“…Well, I know what you want to say, Gin-chan. Want me to guess?”
“Then shall we say it together?”
“Nice. All right, then… ‘ready, and—’”
“Sooo expensive…”

Expensive. Seriously expensive. Hundreds of thousands of yen for a single piece was the baseline, and some of them ran into the millions.

…Um. I’m fairly sure some of the people sitting in those chairs in the middle of the hall are discussing an actual purchase… wait, can people seriously afford these?

“Whoaaa…”
“Ayu’s already-weird way of talking is getting even weirder…”
“Looks like she’s torn between being moved by the art and reeling from the prices she didn’t see coming.”

Of course she’s torn.

Sure, it isn’t only paintings. Brand-name goods, jewels, furnishings of this sort all run high, and I do accept that that’s simply how it is. But standing in front of the real thing and being shown a price tag that steep, in a ‘this item is for sale at this price’ sort of way, is enough to rattle anyone.

They’re beautiful, sure. Beautiful, but…

“Really? I’d say this is about par for the course.”
“You’re so calm about it, Hotaru-chan~”
“Well, I do think it’s a pricey purchase… but there’s expensive furniture and the like at my relatives’ houses, so maybe I’m just used to it.”

What is going on with this senpai’s family line? I’d rather like to see that house.

“Never mind that, look at this. Apparently it’s the number-one best-selling piece.”
“Even for a showing meant to sell, that’s got no atmosphere whatsoever.”
“A starry sky and a windmill… this is the top one? Then I’d say the ruins piece we saw earlier was better.”
“What a thing to say, Hotaru-chan.”

I mean, I can’t say I don’t get it. I thought the one from earlier that blended a starry sky with a sunset was better myself.

Carried along with the crowd, Hotaru-senpai at the head, we worked our way through the paintings in order. Some special printing must have gone into them; parts of each picture caught the light with a glitter, and the gradients looked strikingly vivid.

“You two, take a look up ahead.”
“Hmm~?”
“What is it this time?”
“That older man’s been cornered by one of the female staff and is having a painting explained to him. It’s fine if he’s already decided to buy… but that’s apparently what tends to happen when you come alone, so let’s be careful.”
“You’ve been awful this whole time, Hotaru-chan.”

◆◆◆

“This is…”
“What are you looking at, Gin-chan? …Oh, this is—”
“A painting of cherry blossoms.”

A painting had caught my eye for no particular reason and stopped me where I stood. The illustration looked up at a cherry tree from below, a starry sky spread out behind it.

“Ooh… a cherry-blossom painting… which means, my painting!”
“Well, your family name is Sakura, Ayu-chan.”
“Dad joke.”
“I’d rather you called it clever wordplay!”

Setting aside Ayu and her groan-worthy joke, I took another look at the painting. …Yeah. The dreamlike feel of the blossoms against the night sky, the soft, pale atmosphere of the whole thing. I might like this quite a bit.

“Hmm… well, I’d say it’s pretty decent.”
“Heh. You’re makin’ me blush.”
“Wasn’t talking to you.”
“It really is a good painting, though.”

The price… yeah, it was, well, that. The kind of number I probably wouldn’t pay even once I had a job, more of a ‘maybe if I won the lottery?’ sort of price. Still, if I’d found the one piece I liked, then there was some meaning in having come here today.

“I got a quick look at the merch corner earlier… and I think there was merchandise of this illustration.”
“Huh… I’ll take a look later.”
“In that case… ah, I knew it, here it is! Hey, hey, Gin-chan, this one’s a painting of wisteria!”
“Huh.”

I looked where Ayu was pointing, and sure enough, there was a painting with wisteria blossoms in it. True, my family name is Fujino, and the ‘fuji’ in it is literally the word for wisteria, so I suppose that’s a closer match than Sakura and cherry blossoms, but…

“Hmm, this one, not really.”
“So haaarsh…”
“And just so we’re clear, me liking that cherry-blossom one has nothing to do with you, all right?”

◆◆◆

“Let’s see… doesn’t look like she has this art book.”
“…Right, and now we have to pick out some other merch within the budget. Ayu-chan, why don’t you choose?”
“Huh, me? I feel like you’ve got better taste, Hotaru-chan…”
“I think Yuuka-chan would be happier that way, too.”
“Hmm~… all right, I’ll just grab something…”

We’d gone through all the paintings on display, so the merch corner was next. There was a fair crowd, which made searching awkward, but that cherry-blossom painting from before… ah, there was a clear file of it.

“How much of a budget did Yuuka set, anyway?”
“Five thousand yen.”
“She’s shelling out a fair bit, that girl…”
“For reference, the art book’s about three thousand.”
“…All right, that puts us a little over forty-five hundred! Hotaru-chan, is there anything you’re buying?”
“Me… I think this postcard set will do.”
“Then could you ring up Yuuka-chan’s things while you’re at it? I want to take my time choosing what I’m buying, so you two go get in line first!”
“Sure thing.”

We got into line and paid without dawdling. Judging by the look of Ayu, her deliberating was going to take a while, and the moment Hotaru-senpai and I finished at the register, a line began to form before our very eyes.

Looked like she’d be waiting a good while.

“Still… they were expensive. The paintings.”
“Well, that’s what art is like. Although… paintings of this kind are a little special.”
“…Meaning?”
“Sales like this one… have a really bad reputation.”
“Ehh…”

I mean, I’d thought it was fishy myself, but saying so right beside the venue is a bit too blunt, isn’t it?

“Apparently a lot of companies used to do some pretty vicious hard-selling, so if you look it up online, plenty of people are wary of it. …Ah, I’m not declaring that this company is one of them, mind? I don’t know the details either.”
“Huh… so is that why Yuuka asked you to come along with Ayu, Senpai?”
“Probably. Well, these days a vicious hard sell would be all over the internet the moment it happened, and we’re students to begin with, and Ayu-chan is surprisingly the type to turn people down flat — so I think it’s needless worry.”
“That said, I still think it’s better not to come alone.”

…my senpai added. Even if you think it’ll be fine, whether you’d actually let someone go alone is a separate question, I suppose. Well, I understand the feeling.

“In fact, in terms of scarcity, there seem to be people who think they aren’t worth that price. They’re prints, when it comes down to it.”
“Well… the value of art does lean particularly hard on scarcity, doesn’t it.”
“These days they’ll attach a serial number and such to give it scarcity.”

I watched the people heading out of the venue with bags of merch in their arms, and wondered whether, among them, there was anyone who had actually bought a painting and not just merchandise.

“In the end, a transaction only comes together because both sides think it’s worth that much. If the buyer is satisfied with it, I don’t think it’s for outsiders to carp about.”
“…For what it’s worth, Hotaru-senpai, would you buy one if you could?”
“Me? …Hmm, borderline, I’d say…”
“Well, they’re expensive.”
“I could probably manage it if I pulled out all the stops… but it’d take arranging things and it’d be tiring, and I’m not that interested. As long as there’s something else I want, I’d rather put my efforts into that.”
“…That so.”

So she could buy one if she felt like it. …But then, what could it be, the thing my senpai wants badly enough to pull out all the stops for, when those same stops could buy her something as expensive as one of these? Is it something of immense value? Or is it, like those paintings, a thing that an outsider wouldn’t see much value in at all?

“Sorry to keep you waiting~”
“Ayu-chan!”
“Took you long enough.”
“Sorry, sorry, seems there was some trouble at the register.”

And as we were talking about that, the one among us with the strangest sense of value came back. If this girl really is a reincarnator, then the things she wants, and the value she finds in them, must be different from an ordinary person like me, and different from a special person like Hotaru-senpai, too.

“How much did you spend?”
“…Sixty-five hundred yen!”

…Then again, maybe not. I mean, she spent more than Yuuka, the girl who started this whole thing.