Paintings of Terror

“He made this gesture to me before he died.” Ke Xun raised his hand and made an OK sign.

Wei Dong saw it, first surprised, then shocked, “Ah! This is—that time at the city sports meet—” xwktmd

“Right, it’s that time.” Ke Xun nodded slightly. “During that city sports meet, our school’s sports field was used as the main venue, so the audience was mostly our school’s students. At that time, Dong Zi, Tian Yang, and the others rallied the whole crowd to cheer for me, and everyone made this gesture. It doesn’t mean ‘OK’. This gesture represents the number I had on my back at that time. ‘O’ represents 0, the index finger represents 1, and the ring finger and pinky represent 2. Hence, my number at that time was 012.”

“—2012!” everyone exclaimed in unison.

“We’ve seen some food packaging bags with dates starting with 2. Combining that with the number 012 Tian Yang showed, it seems clear that the events depicted in this painting undoubtedly took place in the year 2012,” Shao Ling said.

“But it’s so strange,” Gu Qingqing said, “if the artist depicted events of the real world that occurred in 2012, why have we never heard any news reports about such terrible things happening?” hctykS

“Not all events are reported,” Zhu Haowen said sharply, as usual. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

“No, the contents of this painting are not absolute real events,” Mu Yiran said. “The chaotic vegetation in the forest doesn’t seem like a mistake caused by the painter’s negligence. I’m more inclined to think that this was intentional on the part of the painter. So, from this perspective, this painting seems more like what Wei Dong said, a piece of Symbolism art, where everything happening and depicted has symbolic meaning or comes from the painter’s imagination and metaphor.”

“So, the blurred-out timeline, rather than intentionally making it difficult for us to find clues, might actually be pointing us in the right direction,” Shao Ling said. “This is indeed the case, now that we know the year—2012, different from any other year in this century, it’s a number with many rumors and speculations.”

“2012, the end of the world?” Luo Bu widened his bloodshot eyes. “I feel like the painting instigator is escalating things. It used to be just small-scale, but now it’s escalating to the entire Earth…” 6Ie38F

“But the 2012 as the end of the world is just a rumor,” Wei Dong, with his eyes also red and tired from two days and nights without sleep, said. “Are we going to search for clues in rumors?”