Aoi sat still in the silence of her room; her art supplies strewn casually across the desk. From the open window, the sun streamed, lighting up her sketchbook with the clear glint of the bright-day sun. It was another day when she spent her morning working on her usual pieces, but today, something was bothering her. It wasn't her usual subjects - landscapes, abstract patterns, or simple still-life sketches. Today, her thoughts lingered on a face.
Ren.
The details of his face, his eyes, and that calm demeanor had left an imprint over a brief encounter in the train station. Aoi could not place the reason, but there was something pulling her towards him. They had hardly exchanged any words, and yet, he had become a constant thought in her mind.
It wasn't by design, really, as if the hand had mind of its own forming a compulsion in urge to draw him. Gradually, she raised her pencil and took to sketching, her mind hardly aware of the strokes she made. Her hand seemed to know just what to do.
Around the pencil, it moved easily, capturing the sharp lines of Ren's jaw-the way it cut through the soft light. Dark, tousled hair framed his visage to impart languid breeziness to his persona. Aoi's hand was rapidly capturing the minutiae of his eyes; those deep, dark eyes, spaced such a distance when they had met, now she thought, pierced through her, calm and piercing at the same time.
She couldn't stop. Effortlessly gliding a pencil over the paper made her draw faint lines of that face: a strong nose, soft lips, and an intent expression as though he were deeply lost in thought-but all just for that fleeting moment, as if she never knew him.
Continuing, Aoi realized it was not only the features of that person she was sketching. His presence was being captured, his quiet strength, the way he seemed both distant and close at once. He was someone that could have easily vanished into a crowd if it weren't for the fact that, looking closely, there was something that captured the mind because it was impossible to ignore him.
When Aoi finally stopped, her fingers sore with long strokes from the pencil, she went to check the page. It wasn't a very good drawing-it wasn't meant to be. Rather, it was more of an impression, a feeling-the kind that communicates a subconscious pull toward him. In short, she had drawn Ren without ever really knowing, capturing a moment that had lasted only a few seconds, but has now stayed with her for so long.
Now, Aoi was looking at the drawing and her heart racing trying to understand that, what was going on. She knew the vague inner meanings of things concerning her not understanding yet how she was so inexplicably attracted to him or why her emotions ran high with this drawing. But something in this very image before her lines, shadows, expression, seemed to carry the beginning of something. Something she could not explain, but something she could not ignore.
The sketchbook closed with the heart still racing, knowing not where this path would lead. One thing seemed pretty sure-the harder she tried, the more he stuck around in memory, so impossible to erase.