Oil on canvas – 10,63 x 13,78 inch – Unique work

It starts raining. It’s pretty chilly too. For the first day of her holidays after a hectic first-quarter first year at Kobe High School, Honshu Island’s metropolis, Maeko wakes up slowly, stretches, yawns and finally gets up. In the next room, she hears her little brother Azuma come and go with firm steps. She punches the wall between the two bedrooms to make him stop. He makes far too much noise for her. But nothing works. She crashes like a fury in his room and yells at him. Petrified, Azuma stops all movement at once.

Maeko turns around and goes to the kitchen for a light breakfast. When her little brother crosses the door, her ebony black eyes shoot him. He dared to invade her space during HER crucial moment of freedom! The parents went to work very early as every morning and Maeko, “big sister” as they say, is responsible for monitoring, making him eat, work … Anyway, she agrees to take care of him but not as she just got out of bed ! Moreover, today, she has an appointment …

But what are her options with a “sticky buddy”? Attach him to the radiator? No, he may scream and rouse the whole neighborhood. Give him to someone else? Why not, but to whom? The grandparents don’t live in Kobe, they live near Hakodate on the Hokkaido Island. It may be the best friend of his little brother who lives a block away and whose parents are adorable. Or, to be really reasonable, take him withn her. Well, in the meantime, she sends him to read a chapter of his favorite book in his room to have at least ten minutes of break and thinking. Her bowl of rice swallowed, Maeko opens the window, shivers and closes her eyes for a moment. She remembers her trimester and especially the discovery of singing.

Integrating the high school choir was a comforting moment for every bad note in a main subject.

Often, when she returns to high school, rather than taking the bus, Maeko returns with a confident step singing out loud the last song studied. Everyone she meets strikes her weirdly and turns around. Happiness and joie de vivre disturb …

(Extract of the book Le Rêve de Kyotaro written by Sandrine PEREZ PERICHON)