Chen G.H., hunched over a pad, charcoal stick a blur against the crisp, white surface. The witness was detailing a blur of motion, not a still frame, yet the judge’s gaze, a silent, weighty expectation, demanded precision. Not what was seen, but what *should* have been seen. Chen’s jaw, tight, probably mirrored the way my own muscles clench when I’m trying to force something into existence that simply doesn’t want to be there. I remember biting my tongue so hard once, trying to hold back a comment, the metallic tang of blood a stark reminder that some things simply refuse to be contained, to be perfectly shaped. And that’s often where the real truth lies, isn’t it? Not in the pristine, but in the slightly-off, the raw, the unvarnished.
Chen G.H. wasn’t just drawing faces; he was capturing fragments of human drama, the fleeting expressions that vanish before a camera can click. But the courtroom, with its unforgiving rules, often demanded something else: a sanitized version of reality. A face that perfectly matched the prosecutor’s narrative, an emotion that neatly fit the defense’s plea. It was frustrating, a constant battle between the vibrant, messy truth he saw and the sterile, precise version he was paid to produce. His fingers, stained with graphite, knew the contours of a genuine flinch better than any textbook description.
