Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle

Chapter 1276 614: Drawings

To the children at the orphanage, Director Qin's office is a very mysterious place.

Her office is on the first floor, with poor lighting. Only a few hours a day does sunlight reach it, and the door is always closed, resulting in a persistent musty odor.

Director Qin rarely stays in the office. Compared to being inside, she clearly prefers the sunlit yard. Normally, if Director Qin stays in the office for a few hours, it indicates she has important matters to attend to, and the children at the orphanage sensibly do not disturb her.

Furthermore, everyone knows that Director Qin's office holds many important documents, reports, and files. Even the smallest, most clueless child knows to steer clear of the office.

If in the hearts of the children, Director Qin's office is a mysterious, untouchable, and important place, then in the eyes of excellent graduates like Qin Huai, especially those who graduated many years ago, the office is quite terrifying.

Director Qin's office stores a lot of things. Of course, the word "store" is what Director Qin herself says. In Qin Huai's view, Director Qin is simply a hoarder, and the words "discard" and "declutter" don't exist in her dictionary. She keeps everything, accumulating over decades, to the point where even Director Qin herself doesn't know how many things are stored there.

On that day, Director Qin pulled out from the corner of a cabinet a math workbook belonging to a graduate from the orphanage 20 years ago, which was assumed lost back then, and Qin Huai believed it.

Qin Huai himself doesn't resist going to Director Qin's office. Sometimes, when he visits the orphanage and doesn't see Director Qin right away, he directly goes to the office to find or wait for her. As long as he's not bringing friends to the office, Qin Huai can accept it.

Now is a situation Qin Huai cannot accept.

Qin Huai walked at the very end of the group, looking as if he had lost all hope.

The enthusiastic Director Qin led the way, energetically introducing Chen Huihong and Mr. Xu to this regular activity.

"Every year, on the day of the Little New Year, the children from the orphanage agree to come back and see me. Whenever that time comes, I take them to my office and pull out their paintings from back then to appreciate and reminisce one by one."

"Back then, the orphanage had no money. Whether it was watercolor pens or crayons, they were very precious. The children cherished their paintings so much. Every time they finished one, they treated it as a treasure, afraid others might damage it or take it away. They all cried and shouted to leave them in my office for safekeeping. They've been stored for so many years now."

"What paintings does Huaihuai have? Huaihuai has quite a lot. He didn't like playing with other kids at the time, and I was afraid he'd be bored, so I often secretly gave him special lessons, handing him leftover crayon bits for drawing. Huaihuai's paintings are a whole stack in my place!"

Qin Huai felt like sneaking away quietly.

Although he doesn't remember clearly what paintings he left with Director Qin, indeed there were many, and they were ugly.

It's not the kind of ugliness in technique, but an all-encompassing ugliness that brings strong visual impact.

First and foremost, Qin Huai wants to emphasize that his aesthetic judgment is entirely normal. Although he can't always see why famous paintings at art exhibitions cost so much, he has the basic ability to discern beauty and ugliness, such as thinking guo'er is ugly.

His paintings give a strong impact in terms of color combination because back then he didn't have any good materials.

Young kids love using pretty colors. Red, yellow, green, orange crayons and watercolor pens were the first to be used up, and Director Qin secretly gave him leftover crayon bits or obtained unwanted watercolor pens from the teachers to let him have private lessons, under poor conditions.

They were all colors nobody liked, and imagining the paintings produced under such conditions is not difficult.

Qin Huai still doesn't understand how he thought those paintings looked alright back then, happily handing them over to Director Qin for safekeeping each time he'd finished.

People really can't relate to their childhood selves.

Despairingly, Qin Huai joined everyone in going to Director Qin's office; he could see everyone was very excited.

Chen Huihong was already uncontrollably rubbing her hands together. Although Qu Jing didn't show it on her face, her eyes were filled with excitement. Mr. Xu stood at the front, eager to see the paintings. Cheng Gong wasn't checking his phone for messages, Zhou Hu slyly took out his phone, and An Youyou's phone was already on video recording mode.

The only one who's not very excited is Qin Luo, who has seen them many times.

Director Qin happily walked to the back of her desk, pulled out a key, unlocked a drawer, and opened it, taking out a bundle of paintings, spreading them one by one across the entire desk.

These paintings were all handed over personally by Qin Huai to Director Qin for safekeeping when he was a child, each one drawn by him with his own hand.

Everyone crowded around to observe, gasping in astonishment.

How to put it, if the visual impact brought by guo'er's aesthetic is 5 out of 10, then the impact from this stack of paintings is at least 50.

It's not that guo'er isn't ugly enough, mainly it's the sheer number of paintings.

Black mountains, green rivers, brown suns, brown rain—all sorts of color combinations beyond imagination can be found in Qin Huai's paintings. As for Qin Huai's drawing skill, it can't be said to be entirely absent, but it can only be described as barely recognizable what he was trying to depict.