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"Why can't you become a Doctor or Engineer like your distant cousin?" Xing Fei closed her ears with her fair, slender palms to stop the voice reaching her. The words are re vibrating every single time she took a deep breath or touched a paint brush to pursue her passion.

"Arts is for looser." Her family believed it and want her to be the same. Just because everyone in her family are doctor or Engineer or some professional doesn't mean she needs to follow the same. She is her own person and she has every right to pursue her dreams.

With that in her mind she picked up the paint brush, dipped it in the paint pallet and pressed against the canvas. She has to prove her family that her painting is worth it. Painting makes her happy.

The drab air accompanying the night fell still and silence reigned for a moment. In that moment of silence, the young woman with long, dark brown curls, realized it wasn't what she wanted. The silence in itself only seemed to make things worse. It seemed to bring everything going wrong into focus and quite frankly, it felt like she was being judged.

With her light brown eyes fixated on the window and her sight cast past the presence of her room, she dared not look around. she wouldn't dare take a sneak peak at the ground, or the table before her, talk less about herself and the failure she had been struggling with for some hours now. Glaring into the darkness outside her window felt better.

It felt better for a whole lot of reasons.

Slowly, the accustomed chirps of the midnight crickets began to air once again. One by one, they burst to life, before culminating in the wholesome to grant her the much needed impression that she wasn't alone. Yet she was alone. She was by herself and in need of something else other than loneliness. Something was missing for the past few hours and while her hand hovered in the air. She bit her lower lip and clamped her eyes shut.

It was the umpteenth time she would slam her eyes shut, but with good reason. It was an action bearing a great degree of hope. It was an act sheltering an immense level of personal tiredness mixed with the desire not to give up anytime soon.

"Please, I have to finish this painting and prove myself", she whispered as though she was speaking to someone in the room.

Her voice echoed through the empty room and ceased to exist the moment it coursed towards the window. It was just another cry for assistance gone unnoticed and untended to. Her sleeveless vest and torn jeans were a mess with all the ink while her right arm adorned with a tribal tattoo shivered. She could see nothing but darkness on the inside, all she wanted was a glimpse of light.

The night definitely wasn't meant to turn out the way it was in that moment and point in time. Everything about it had promised to bring enough inspiration. The night had crept up on her without notice, but the skies had been beautiful for days now when it did. In fact, just the day before, she had willed herself to make do with the following night should things look as pretty as they did while she sat on the front porch by herself.

Luckily, the current night had begun in the most beautiful manner too. The blue-rimmed moon slowly tucked itself into the darkened cloud, while millions of glistering stars lit up the heavens. Asides a few dark patches which seemed to blend perfectly with the silhouette she could make out from the heavens, all she could see while she stared into it was beauty and perfection.

Attempting to stabilize her breath, she held off from breathing for some seconds before exhaling out aggressively. "It is right there! Dig in deep and take it!'

The words blared aloud again and this time around, with some level of conviction and verve. Her hand moved and skillfully so too; she swept the paint brush she had been holding for the past few hours across the canvas, feeling the intricate relationship between the brush and the canvas begin to gladden her heart as she went on without attempting to stop or even hold back.

"You might lose it when you stop… you could lose it if you paused for a moment to think", she reprimanded herself from halting to check out what she was painting.

There was definitely no room for self-doubt again. The other times had been brought to an end with an overwhelming feeling of self-doubt crushing her chest and causing her windpipe to shut down. She had almost passed out on one occasion out of anxiety, before deciding to cast off the particular canvas and to begin afresh.

For the umpteenth time, the young woman had begun afresh and this time around, she seemed to be making progress. Her hand continued to dab the brush it held into paint, while she swung and swerved hard without allowing whatever image was forming on the canvass to bother her for a moment.

"Just keep on going!' The inner voice, birth from frustration and pain, urged her forward and she willfully agreed.

She swept east and dabbed through the canvass, before majestically heading north to continue her painting. In that moment, the intent behind her painting didn't seem to matter; what mattered was being able to get something down. All she wanted was something drawn from her emotions at that moment.

Time and time and again, they've been taught to trust their emotions while they paint. They have been taught to respect the outburst of emotions and to channel it into painting. There have been great tales and examples of premium painters over the years, making masterpieces from allowing their emotions take over.

"Emotion over logic", were the words the young woman had ringing in her head.

Logic was fallible and too complicated. Logic came with endless reasoning and the desire to second-guess her actions before she would even get them done. So, she would stick with her emotions and allow them to lead the way without attempting to hold back one bit.

"Yes! Yes! Yessss!" the voice in her head seemed to grow louder as her brush met against the canvas again and again.

She splashed, brushed, dabbed and marched her emotions all through the canvass before finally coming to a halt. The chirping sounds from the midnight crickets coming from outside her window seemed to stop. It felt as though the world had taken a break in that very moment to witness and access the work she had done.

The blue-rimmed moon had peaked through the clouds properly now and it too looked down to bear witness to the young artist through her window.

Beads of sweat trickled down her face in countless numbers. They ran along her body and finally blended with the already consuming sweat drenching her body surface. Her eyes clamped shut intermittently, trying to fight off the salty liquid attempting to breach the safety of her eyes, and in that moment, she struggled to clearly see what she had created.

It was the best she had given the canvass for the night and while she took a step backwards to access it from some distance, she stomped her foot into a rolled up canvas paper with sticky paint atop of it. It was a reminder of one of her failings and she quickly looked away and attempted to set her eyes solely on the prize ahead.

"Something finally came through… something came through", she smirked to herself sheepishly even without seeing the entirety of whatever she had done.

It felt more than perfect that she could summon that much out from herself. The colors remained a perfect bled in the darkness before she slowly began to part her eyelids. In that moment, her heartbeat began to heighten and her hand began to tremble gently on the side. She braced herself for whatever was about to come, but sadly, her strength wasn't about to be enough.

"Oh my God", she muttered with realization, lacing her tone of voice.

There was no sugarcoating what she had created. There was no overhyping it either. She glanced at it over and over and again through different angles in the room. Hoping the different reflection of light bouncing off the surface of the canvass would grant her a lifeline, she ducked to the side and held her breath for a very long period.

Finally, after no less than five minutes of attempting to see the best in her painting, she marched over to it as she had done for countless times through the night, ripped the canvass off of the board, crumpled it with so much anger coursing through her veins and tossed it into the farthest corner of the room as it landed with some others failed canvasses which had previously found their way over there as well.

"Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!" she screamed in frustration, fuming and cursing underneath her lips and she kicked and punched against everything in sight.

She lowered her head into her hands and felt the hurt from every ounce of failure she had been dealt through the night, coming back one at a time to her memory and haunting her

"Why?" she asked herself.

She needed an answer as to why she couldn't quite make something compelling or even build from the inspiration she felt. She needed answers to why her work turned out horribly every single time and why she just didn't seem to be apt at doing what she had finally settled for and what she claimed she enjoyed. Her heart broke into a million pieces as she gawked at the crumpled canvasses lying all around.

Her floor was littered with strokes of failure, masterfully done and overwhelmingly present for her to gawk and marvel at.

"Oh God!" she heard herself murmur before slowly crawling to the ground and holding her head atop her knees.

"Xing Fei!" a raucous voice called aloud from somewhere within the house in the oddest manner.

Xing Fei looked up, realized who it was and felt herself wet with despair.

"Not now… any other time but now", she begged within herself before jumping up from where she had crouched and hoped to enjoy the silence.

Heavy thuds from footsteps approaching her room felt like the loch ness monster was coming her way. Her heart thumped in accordance with the aggressive foot and she readied herself for whatever aggression was bound to walk through her studio door. There was one person and one alone, capable of letting out such disturbing screams and in such hours of the night and it wasn't about to be a better night.

"Xing Fei", the voice echoed from the other side of the door before an eerie silence followed.

Xing Fei could feel her lungs overworking as she struggled to keep a sane breathing pattern, with her most troubling critic standing just on the other side of the door. It wasn't what she wanted on what was already becoming a daunting night and a negative one at that too. She watched the door knob turn, slowly, and almost as if the entire world was about to come to an end with it.

If she could plead for the figure not to walk in, she would. If she could pay the figure not to come in and witness her moment of failure, she would. If Xing Fei could ask the woman whose shoe she could clearly see, not to step into the studio situated in the house she bought with her hard earned money, she would.

Sadly, that wasn't about to be the case and it just wasn't about to happen.

A woman who has the same features as her but well groomed, stepped into the room and looked around before spotting her "Xing Fei", Linghan muttered with the door agar, her full frame visible to her daughter and a look of despair slowly crawling across her face.

With the little breath Xing Fei could muster, the little strength she had left, she responded through her tightened lips, "Mama".

Both women stood in silence after verbally acknowledging each other's presence in the room. The night was about to be an even longer one for Xing Fei.