Her Portrait in Black

By Kassandra Alvarado

The past should never be forgotten. A foreign student studying in Japan becomes obsessed with the subject of a seventeenth century painting, awakening a dark curse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kassandra Alvarado
• Release date: Jun 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310814846

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Her Portrait in Black

by

Kassandra Alvarado

Published by Kassandra Alvarado at Smashwords

Copyright 2014

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Table of Contents

Her Portrait in Black

Author Note

~*~Her Portrait in Black~*~

Visiting hours were over, the security guard walked the halls whistling under his breath. Most were tourists who filtered in twos and fours, sometimes in tour groups with a guide droning in bad English for their benefit. The guard took three turns and would’ve mistaken the sole figure in exhibit four save for the soft exhalation of breath echoing in the three walled chamber.

The exhibit’s running for three months. He called from the arched doorway, smiling self-satisfied into the darkened room. Few artifacts resided in square glass cases lit within by track lighting. Worn fumi-e, metal plaques depicting Christian religious figures traditionally tramped down as a means of ascertaining one’s religion. The painting was the highlight of the exhibit, a rare seventeenth century image of a Kirishitan lady of high rank.

The student shook his shoulders and turned with a rueful smile. Wavy black hair flopped over a high forehead, narrow aesthete cheekbones arched gracefully inherited from a Eurasian mother. They’d made conversation over the last week and the guard had learned that while the family had adopted France as their home, their roots were once deep in eastern Asia.

Similar to most of foreign-born heritage, the student fancied himself wholly Japanese in thinking yet was shocked none so