Music in Media: The Picture of Dorian Gray (2009) Soundtrack

13 January, Thursday, 8 a.m. | Winter

Breakfast was a tea party, not only because they all had tea to go with their jam and bread, but also because Professor Juniper desired the newest 'tea' to be spilt. Cheren bore dagger-sharp stares at Fennel and Amanita for teaching her slang.

"Don't be a basic bitch about it, Cheren!" Professor Juniper nudged him, then, with a resigned sigh, clasped her hands together and brought out a smile. "Alrighty, sistas, Imma spill the damn tea! Where Pokémon came from and where they're going... If we can learn that, I believe we can get along even better! But things haven't been great on this side of the region."

"Why not?" Icosa pouted in a bid to suppress his laughter. He was certain this woman sitting across him had changed overnight. She didn't talk like this when they met last night. Today, she was an exuberant baby ready to cry all the life's wonder out of her as if she had just come out of her momma's womb. Which wasn't too much of a hyperbole. She had tears in her eyes.

"Dude! Haven't you heard?" Professor Juniper slapped his hand and Icosa, who had been holding his sandwich, dropped it onto his plate. "All the Darmanitan in Unova, wild or captured, have gone into Zen Mode two weeks ago! I've received so many calls and emails about them. Even faxes! Oh Arceus, annoying faxes! And you know what I think? It's a defence mechanism against the music perversion!"

Music perversion. That was the first time any of them heard such a label. Rae thought it was strange that Professor Juniper said "two weeks" instead of "two days" or even "three days", but decided against telling her. It didn't seem to be an ordinary slip of the tongue. Something peculiar was going on here. And it had to do with the music perversion.

The woman rattled on about the Darmanitan species. They appeared at least 2,500 years ago and likely guarded the Relic Castle, a landmark near Castelia City. Darmanitan were special Pokémon with the hidden ability Zen Mode, which Professor Juniper theorised was reminiscent of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" and enlightenment. "It may have been a way of adapting to harsh conditions or even the music perversion! Are you thinking what I'm thinking, sistas? I think something similar might have occurred in ancient times. Not all Darmanitan are capable of Zen Mode nowadays, which makes this phenomena strange, stranger, strangest! But Dream Mist can unlock this hidden ability. Ability Capsules are created by condensing Dream Mist! I think-"

Fennel raised her hand to shut her friend up. "I think Rae doesn't know much about Dream Mist. Look at her befuddled expression."

"Befuddled!" Professor Juniper swatted her hand in the air and judged Rae. The poor girl was sweating beads. "You mean bamboozled! She looks like a hungry Pancham!"

That comparison wasn't too far off. Rae did gain dark circles from a lack of restful sleep.

"Dream Mist," said Fennel, cutting Professor Juniper's giggles, "is produced by Munna and Musharna, Pokémon native to Unova. I'm a researcher of dreams along with my little sister and for the past years we have found a place known as the Pokémon Dream World. It's a real place that can be accessed via the Entralink, located in the middle of Unova. No, it's probably the Entralink itself."

"That means Burgh came for a dream consultation," reasoned Icosa.

Fennel nodded, but expressed it's a private matter and she could not divulge anything.

"But the tea, Fennel!" Professor Juniper sipped her earl grey tea. "I'm sure we all want to know Burgh's tea! Don't we, sistas?"

Fennel rose from her seat. "Or maybe... What we want is..." She motioned for Amanita to scurry over to Professor Juniper's side and both sisters lifted her off the chair, causing her to shriek. "You should go home, Aurea. You must be drunk on tea. Come, we'll take you home."

With that, the three of them left. Rae wondered if the professor realised her forced attempt at connecting with the three of them. Or maybe not. Whatever she said would sound ultra-natural if Linus were to say them.

"Found it!" Icosa waved a few pieces of paper in his hands, a bottle of Dream Mist tucked in his pocket.

"Hog!" cried Fennel's Watchog as it tried to snatch the papers from Icosa.

Fearing the Watchog would harm him, he sent his Pokémon out. "Whismur, Ice Beam."

That froze the Normal-type in place.

Rae and Cheren exchanged glances and frowns before checking out what it was their friend discovered. The papers were inked in red. Purple scribbles, barely legible, ran across the pages. Words like "murder", "fear" and "repression" popped out. One phrase in particular was circled multiple times: stabbing the painting. Was this not an act of vandalism, a stab to an artist's dignity?

"You didn't get enough sleep, did you, Rae?" Icosa turned to her and cracked his fingers. "Why don't you make yourself comfy on that bed?"

Cheren scrunched up his face. "Wait, Icosa! That bed's for Fennel's clients! You can't just do as you please!"

By the time Cheren spoke his last word, Rae was already sprawled on the bed, her head on the glass pillow filled with swirling Dream Mist, cooling to the touch. Warmth tickled the nape of her neck. Noko-Noko curled up on her belly. Feeling a wave of lethargy come over her, Rae closed her eyes along with the wave's descent.

She opened her eyes to chirruping grass and snow swaying in a gentle wind. All around her, Fennel's house dissolved into a blue-grey swirl and the bed was no longer a bed, but a carpet of flowers decorated like a Poké Ball.

"This is... the Pokémon Dream World?"

The sky was dyed in purple and pink, the clouds chiselled into all sorts of shapes. Rae stuck her thumb out and found trees in the distance shrunken to a size smaller than her nail. Beside her were Noko-Noko, Tabutabu and Chilchil whose presences she grew aware of when she felt their fur bristle her skin.

"Huh? You all came along?"

Rae beamed at them. This place was miraculous. Tabutabu and Chilchil had been eating at the table a while ago and now they were here too. She was glad they could enjoy the fresh air and hear the beautiful melody of a synthesiser and the faint strums of a shamisen instead of the distorted overworld music of Unova. It sounded like the music she heard in her hometown of Enju, the shade of ecru she was so familiar with, as if she was in a forest of teak—

And she was.

White-flowering teak trees sprouted out of the earth, enveloping her in their rich, warm, spicy fragrance. A bell tolled, maybe in her head or in Entralink, but it must be a dream. It must be a dream to see the blue-haired boy leaning against a teak tree, pulling a branch downward to sniff a line of flowers. Clipped to his shirt collar was a black ballpoint pen with a Sneasel's red feather on the cap. But it was impossible! Rae had left the pen her mentor, Kaspar, gave her in her home because she was afraid she might lose it in Unova. She had put it in a locked drawer.

"Oniichan?" Rae blinked and took a cautious step forward.

"Rae," said Aomine Kyo, breaking into a smile.

"Oniichan!"

"You miss me?"

"Of course! Look, I have two Gym Badges!"

"I knew you could do it!" Kyo combed her hair. "Did you make any friends?"

She told him all about Icosa, Cheren, Lenora, Calliope and Linus. She told him about her film gig, how their mother had pushed for a lesbian love story. She told him about the musical crisis, without sparing any detail. Kyo listened without judgment, so she kept talking and talking, her mouth not once running dry.

"It sounds like you're having fun! But I hope you can convince Icosa to show his true self."

Rae looked up at her brother. "His true self?"

"He's still afraid of being genuine," said Kyo. "But you're too idealistic. You need to see him for who he is."

Then, Kyo melted into the tree bark before Rae could say anything else.

"Oniichan? Oniichan!" Rae howled and stomped her foot. She looked high and low about the teak forest, but Kyo never appeared again. In the end, she could only rely on her three Pokémon for comfort and solace.

A rustle in a nearby shrubbery averted her focus to a shyly-emerging Sewaddle. No doubt it belonged to Burgh. But what was it doing here? Didn't Burgh leave Fennel's house last night? Rae decided to tail the Sewing Pokémon.

Sewaddle led her into a land of cavorting shadows and crouching plants. The more distance covered from the teak forest, the drearier the atmosphere. The trees shed their leaves, their skin gradually darkening to the shade of midnight, then they bent over, their branches colliding and intertwining till it was more tunnel than forest, streaks of pale pink light dotting the undergrowth. Rae's Pokémon shared her wonder. Chilchil found a few shiny rings hooked onto the branches, probably leftovers from numerous trysts, and, shot through the heart by cupidity's arrows, darted through the trees and pocketed each and every one of them into his fur. Tabutabu placed her feelers gingerly on the tree barks in hopes of revitalising them, only to squeak in cold realisation of the futility of her efforts. Noko-Noko found out she could fly for longer distances now.

They eventually reached a flowering cliff. Rae didn't think the Entralink could have ended here, but if it provided a manifestation of dream, maybe it wasn't so implausible after all. Sitting precariously at the edge of the cliff, weary back facing her, was a slouching figure draped in green and fresh blood splatters, his curly brown hair flittering in the cooling zephyr. Noko-Noko landed on the grass carpet and Tabutabu stopped inches behind Sewaddle. Chilchil looked like he survived a Cofagrigus.

As their shadows loomed over the man, he exhaled sharply and tilted his chin to the purple-pink sky.

"I told ja not to disturb me, Fennel," said the man in a tenor voice, his chest rising and falling. "I have come to the Entralink on my own."

Rae's eyes widened. "You can enter this place without sleeping?"

The man gulped and turned to face her. The first thing that caught her attention was the dried blood matted over his face.

"You're not Fennel." The man frowned. "Do I know you?"

"You must be Burgh? I am Rae, from Johto." Rae reached out to him for a handshake which he reluctantly reciprocated.

"Why are you here?"

"Castelia City needs you. And I... I need to battle you."

The wind slithered between them. The grass blades knotted themselves.

Burgh's gaze hardened. "I'm not in the mood to battle."

"May I ask what happened?"

"You're pretty, ja? I would've painted a portrait of you. Alas, I've failed as an artist." Burgh shifted his weight, prompting Rae to pull him back. "Oi! Oi! Oi! I won't die!"

"Gomen."

Resigned, Burgh laid down on the grass and invited Rae and her Pokémon to join him. His Sewaddle demanded belly rubs which he gave for the sake of it.

"Ever since the music changed, everyone's out of spirits. My Gym Trainers suddenly disliked the portraits I painted for them and destroyed them all. They stabbed my self-portrait too. Said we're all motherfucking degenerates. All harlequins clinging on to stagnant realities we can never return to.

"But what do you know? Each and every one of them and their malice aforethought!" Burgh stopped rubbing Sewaddle's belly and the Pokémon sat up.

"What do you mean?"

"I told them I would repaint their portraits and they said if I ever tried to 'frame the present in any way', they would kill me. In cold blood! O murder and murder most foul!"

Rae had never met anyone more dramatic. Still, it was best not to pass judgement.

Burgh propped himself up and raised his Sewaddle to the sky. "For the final purpose of murder, considered as a fine art, in precisely the same as that of Tragedy! To cleanse the heart by means of pity and terror!" He dropped the poor Pokémon and pulled his eye bags down till Rae could see the redness of his eyes, his bloody window to the soul.

"You can just say no?" Rae blinked. "Tell them you won't paint them."

"What is a painter to do if he doesn't paint? It's just like you, Rae. What is a kid to do if she doesn't kid?"

"I don't understand."

"Very funny." Burgh chuckled and Rae's blood froze in her veins. "You go to limbo, you go to hell! And to save yourself, you have to paint and keep painting. You have to be a kid and keep kidding."

"So you want to paint a portrait of me."

"I—" Burgh stopped himself and appraised Rae and her Pokémon. "But you will not stab my painting?"

"No."

"So you will stab my painting!"

Out of exasperation, Rae whispered, "I won't stab your painting."

"Very well!" Burgh clapped his hands twice. "Then we must fulfill our roles as painter and kid."

He got up and pulled Rae off the face of the earth. When both of them reached their full height, an easel with a blank canvas as well as buckets of paint materialised at the edge of the cliff. One of the flowers had bore fruit. No, a palette knife. Burgh's hand swooped down to catch it. Then he got to painting.

Displaying a gyaru peace sign, Rae posed under the shade of a teak with Noko-Noko on her head and Chilchil and Tabutabu on either side. Her three Pokémon noticed her gesture and tried to follow suit, though Noko-Noko struggled with it and formed a heart shape with her body instead.

"You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream," said Burgh upon the painting's completion, a jumble of words Rae couldn't quite comprehend. What she could comprehend were the delicate brush strokes that were a far cry from what she had seen in the paintings displayed in Studio Castelia. There was so much joy and sorrow packed into every stroke and each hue and shade was chosen to evoke the misty, romantic state of the Pokémon Dream World, or at least, the teak side of it, a pastel-coloured reality.

"It's beautiful."

"Thank you."

"But does it stay here? In the Dream World?"

"No." Burgh smiled. "I can send it to your home in Johto."

"That would be nice."

"Do you feel better?"

Burgh nodded. "I think I shouldn't let the dust settle on such a conclusion. It's only right if I apologise to them, no? I should make amends."

Rae affirmed his sentiments with a soft "yes" and further agreed to accompany the Castelia Gym Leader when he asked her.

Their last moments in the Pokémon Dream World ended with a star shower, a product of both their imaginations. In that instance, Rae wondered if reality was naught but a dream.

She found her answer when her surroundings swirled as if in a washing machine and she found herself sitting upright on a bed face to face with Fennel and Amanita and their looks of concern and all around her with blinking lights and staccato beeps and Cheren chiding Icosa for his recklessness and her three Pokémon staring into her eyes and the Watchog sipping tea from a cup after being defrosted and Professor Juniper feeding the Pokémon a chocolate chip cookie...

"I think I'm fine," she said, rubbing her temples.

... and a sense of foreboding.