The Painter | Story Time with Regigigas_YT

 Orochi Tanaka was, by the metrics most young men were measured in, normal. He was 34 years old, worked for the Kame-Yu Department store a few blocks down from where his apartment was located, had a hobby for creating oil paintings once in a while, and he owned a cat. The part about him that was, by all measures, not normal, was that he could store items within paintings. This ability had one day come naturally to him at age five-and-a-half, when he felt an impulse to reach for an apple within a painting and the item simply blinked out from the canvas and into his hand. Since then, he had used this ability on and off throught the years, never really questioning why or how he had acquired such a bizarre capability. He had used it for plenty things, such as painting a fridge full of delicious food to take supplies from whenever he needed to, finding out that items within paintings regenerated after a few hours. 

One time, when he felt lonely, he tried to paint himself a friend, hoping that it'd work. He had never been particularly skilled at drawing human beings, however, so he sat down and carefully painted a tabby cat, finding out that his ability in fact worked with living creatures. He had never thought of doing anything malicious with this power, truth be told Orochi was a very oblivious man and had never even thought of being in a relationship, so the possibility of painting himself a wife never crossed his mind in the slightest. Orochi's paintings were somewhat popular at the Kame-Yu, starting one day when a coworker had no place to stay during a thunderstorm and asked Orochi if he could stay over at his place and saw the beautiful paintings lining the walls and had been in such awe that he spoke to the manager about them. In no time, a few of Orochi's paintings were being sold at the location. He had once, however, recieved a commssion from one of his coworkers, a blonde woman named Yuka who had politely requested him to paint a portrait of her newborn child, handing him a photo for reference. 

Orochi had no particular need for extra cash, his basic needs were perfectly met, but he wouldn't refuse such a polite request from someone he saw as one of his dearest friends, and so he agreed almost instantly. That day he arrived home, set up his canvas and started painting with determination. Sooner than later however, reality creepred through his determination and excitement and he remembered his inability to paint human beings, he stared at the background, an adorable baby crib filled with stuffed animals, a blank space in the center that had to be filled with the image of a child he only had a picture of that he could not fill, and he sighed in defeat. He got up and headed towards his fridge and took out a beer and took a sip, trying to think of what he could ever possibly do to fix this situation. Then, instinctively, he reached for the fridge again to deposite the beer inside, and the object obeyed. 


The bizarre thing was that the fridge was a simple painting on the kitchen wall, and until that point, Orochi had no idea he could put things back into the painting. He had never tried to put the cat or the food back, the simply took them out and never thought about it after that. He could still not put much thought into this discovery however, as he had still taken a commission he had no possible way of ever fulfilling. He sat back down in front of the canvas, patiently waiting for the solution to his problem to, once again, come to him magically, but it seemed that his luck had run out with the previous discovery and he had no further great revelations. The idea of the commission he had to deliver in a few days lingered in his mind, and as he drifted off to sleep, his mind seemed to blank out, angry at this he spoke to his mind right before falling asleep, "Can't you find a way to solve this for once?"

When he woke up the next morning and groggily walked down the stairs, he was completely shocked, the painting now had the beautiful image of the child, exactly as depicted in the picture his coworker had given him right in the center, precisely in the empty space he had designated for it. The child in the painting looked as if he had been peacefully sleeping, his blonde hair shining in the light, though the painting was perfect, the floor itself was covered in paint, as if the painter had been a feral beast. He attibuted this to painting in his sleep, gaining miraculous inspiration from thin air once again. He excitedly took it to work with him, and Yuka had been delighted to see the painting, though she noticed a small detail on the painting, the baby's nose was just slightly different from her son's, but upon being reassured that it was simply a minuscule error because of the brush, she gladly took the painting with her back home.

Satisfied with his work, Orochi spent his work day as the store clerk with a wide smile on his face. Upon returning home, he took a soda from the fridge, and sat down to watch TV. When he turned on the news however, his heart sank like a rock in a river. Mother distraught after newborn child goes completely missing, with no traces left behind. The picture the news had decided to pick showed a baby with a disturbingly familiar nose.