Volume 1 - CH 3.1

Now I get it.

Apparently, in order to “materialize what you have painted”, it needs a certain level of completeness.

To materialize a red cherry tomato, you need red color. Then, to materialize a green pencil, it would need to be green.

The mochi was safe because it was white. The barley tea… was probably too dark, so it was treated as black and was safe.

I wonder… if it would not materialize if the barley tea was at a normal concentration of barley tea in a white cup. I want to try it.

Now, tough luck.

Only black-and-white things can be materialized from a black-and-white drawing, it’s a lot trickier.

I don’t like mochis that much. I have positive feelings for them, and I don’t dislike them, but I like them for the memories, not as food.

My favorite food is… hmm, edamame?

Yes, edamame. Edamame. I want to eat edamame. But edamame probably doesn’t materialize unless it is painted green, I think.

…but if that’s the case, it’s an easy plan.

My immediate goal has been decided.

My immediate goal is to get… “colors”!

Anyway, it was getting late in the evening, so I decided to create a blanket.

A blanket, or rather, a large blanket. The one I had borrowed from my teacher’s house was white, so I thought I could manage to draw it, and I did. I was happy.

So today, I can sleep rather comfortably. At least I’m not cold even if I don’t curl up.

My back hurts though… so I want to make a mattress tomorrow.

It was already, morning when I woke up. Good morning. Come to think of it, I only moved a few steps yesterday. Well, that’s often the case when I’m drawing. There are days when I didn’t leave my room except to go to the bathroom.

Well, I’m going to start drawing today.

I’m going to start collecting paint today. I suddenly feel very motivated. Well, it can’t be helped that it is more fun to look for paint than to look for food and water.

What should I do? The paints I used in my original world were mainly made of minerals, right? I don’t remember much, but I think they used iron trioxide or cinnabar to make red.

And then there are flowers.

I believe they used safflower for dyeing, and safflower was also used for paints and cosmetics. I remember reading about it in a Japanese history textbook. It is amazing that such a red color can be obtained from a plant.

I don’t know if there is a flower like safflower in this world, but I think it is worth looking for.

If there are, I can eat all the cherry tomatoes I want. And maybe I can eat all the apples and strawberries I want.

…So, I decided to go out to explore, feeling much more energetic than the day before.

Before going out to explore, I made a bag. I had more tools now, like my blanket and knife.

I didn’t have the energy to paint something with a very complicated shape. …Well, for now, a paper bag. The one that came with the paints when I bought them at the art supply store. I couldn’t take it home, so I left it at my teacher’s house.

It was not that difficult to draw a simple gray paper bag. To be honest, I don’t think the drawing itself was that good, but it was good because I was able to materialize it.

I put the folded blanket, paper, pencil, a freshly made knife, and a few shiny flowers I found growing around the place and decided to leave.

Walking around with the paper bag.

…Soon, after walking, I found a red flower blooming.

“…can I use it?” (Tougo)

Since it’s a good opportunity, let’s give it a try. I crushed the petals and painted with the juice that came out.

What I painted was an apple. Not a Fuji or Orin, but a Kougyoku.

If I used the pollen from the stamen of the flower, I could have yellow. Since Kougyoku is not a yellowish apple, this would be enough.

The details were drawn in pencil. Or rather, I colored over the pencil sketch. I know how to color over pencil sketches because I have done it several times with watercolor.

…After three hours of doing so.

I had one apple.

“…That was unexpectedly difficult.” (Tougo)

It takes three hours to make a single apple, which is fine. It takes about three hours for a pencil sketch, and for me, my goal is to draw, not to draw an apple because I want to eat it. Well, it’s fun to see the picture materialize, though.

I painted this picture… but the hardest part was collecting the petals.

Only a few colors can be obtained from a single petal… It is not efficient to get many petals and paint with them.

When you think about it this way, paint was an amazing tool. Even with a small amount, the colors spread well, and the coloring makes it more beautiful.

I wish I had paints. If I had paints, I could draw more things…

…Well.

Could it be that if I draw paint, the paint will come out of it or something…?

Draw a tube of watercolor paint and color it in one spot on the label. This completes a very common tube of paint.

And as soon as it was completed, the lines swayed and trembled, coning together with a squeak and a pop… just as they did with the mochis.

A tube of paint came out.

I squeezed the materialized tube a little, and to my surprise, the paint of the color I had painted on the label came out. The color of the petals. Red. Though it looks pinkish because it was thinned when I painted it on the paper.

But this is… it’s so convenient!

Then I made many, many more paints. I painted more paint than food. People don’t change that much, it seems. It’s the same as when I used to spend all my lunch money on art supplies.

There are many different kinds of red.

Red from flower petals is different from red from berries. When I tried rubbing reddish soil into the paint drawing, I was able to create a paint of that color.

But there is a limit to what that can do.

“Too pale.” (Tougo)

The colors are quite pale.

…The color coming out of bright red petals is not bright red.

No matter what I do, the color will always be pale. And it will also become dull. So, if I paint a picture using red petals as paint… I will inevitably end up with a slightly dull, pale red paint.

So, I thought that I should paint with the color from the petals, let it dry, and then paint over it again to make the color darker, but this didn’t work either.

…because once the “tube of light red paint” picture was done, the tube of paint materialized.

It seems that if I take it too slow at the coloring stage, it can materialize immediately. In that case, I thought that it would be better to paint the color first and then complete the picture of the paint tube later. It was the same, and it was still a dull color.

Now, let’s see.

The color that came out the deepest and brightest so far was the color of the clay.

The reddish-brown color I made by painting on reddish soil is the most beautiful color so far, but …… is not enough for me.

I wonder if there are any bright reds out there. Like apple peel, like sunset, like vermillion, like the belly of an American white-tailed chick [T/N: I can’t find it.], like blood. I wonder if there is such a red color somewhere.

…Oh, “Like blood”…

“I did it!” (Tougo)

It’s done. I made a very red paint. I am very satisfied with it.

By the way, I had to cut my arm a little in exchange for the red paint, but that can’t be helped. I could do with a little injury for the sake of the paint. I put a bandage on it, so it will probably be fine.

Now, let’s see. Once I get red, I want yellow next. I also want blue.

If I have red, yellow, and blue, I can make almost any color. The three primary colors are no joke.

…But aside from yellow, I wonder where I can get blue. Blue is a color that is very rare in nature, so I think it would be difficult to make it.

Oh well. For now, I will just get what I can.

Yellow was surprisingly easy to get. There was a large lily that was so big I could sleep in it, and I was given the tip of a stamen attached to it and used the pollen from it as paint.

The pollen from the flower was an amazing color. It turned bright yellow. More importantly, the finished paint, also my hands.

I wanted to wash my hands… so I created some water. I could paint a picture of a glass cup filled with water in black and white, so I did.

“Speaking of which, I need water.” (Tougo)

Then I remembered.

I want water. I need water. Even if there is no food, I need water. More than for drinking, watercolors are watercolors, so I can’t use them without water.

I can paint directly with them, but if possible… I need water.

If possible, I would like an environment where I can get water without having to paint every time. I don’t want to say that I have the luxury of a faucet or a water supply, but I do want clean water.

However, I have not found any water sources up to this point.

I think there is water in the ground. Because plants are growing.

However, there was no place where it seemed to be gushing out, and not even a single stream had been found.

It would be really nice to have something like that.

.But because there is none.

I will have to draw some. Let’s draw water

For now, if I can create a huge amount of water in a very large container, it will save me a lot of trouble.

So, I decided to paint a large quantity of water using the paints I had on hand.

To do this, I first searched for a piece of land that looked just right.

As a result, I found a reasonably open place, with no rocks or fallen trees, and a basin that looked like it had once been a spring but had dried up, so I decided to use it.

So, here we are.

I sat down on the ground and started sketching a very large container with a very large amount of water in it.

I was going to draw stones, soil, and dead grass. Then there was the “nonexistent surface of the water. “

I add the non-existent water to the scenery as how I as see it. …In short, I draw an “extremely large amount of water” in an “extremely large container” called the remains of a spring.

The way the surface of the water reflects the light, the way the water shimmers at the water’s edge, the ripples created by the gushing water, light reflected on the ripples.

In short, it seems as if I am painting water, but I am also painting light. And if I am painting light, I can get by with just black and white. …If I have red, yellow, and brown paints to make the colors of dead grass and soil, I can paint something well. I thought about making some fish swimming but decided against it because it looked like it would be too complicated. I just kept on painting “a lot of water in a big container”.

……I kept at it, and in the evening, I went to bed at night, and in the morning, I continued again… Finally, I finished it.