[LOG] Sasuke and Karin
Who: Sasuke and Karin
What: Karin and Sasuke's agreement to have her draw him for a while
When: Another backlog, it's the second day of school ^^;;;;;;
Where: Library
Warnings: Creepy obsessive girls and emo!Sasuke. n_n
Karin was wide awake, and if she was a more peppy person in general she might even describe herself as "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" (though that made her think of those Playboy-inspired bunny costumes and furries - she wasn't too keen on the latter). There were fifteen minutes left until the (not exactly) agreed time to meet and Karin was already in the library moving a few of the study tables to best capture the light. She adjusted the thick curtain and the sheers to create a soft light that wasn't too bright but gave Sasuke enough to study by without turning the library's main lights on.
She stepped back and checked her work. The set-up wasn't too different from how it normally was, but Karin had moved a few chairs away from the table so that she could switch her position without disturbing Sasuke by moving one of the bulky chairs. She stepped to her art kit and opened it, fingers dancing in the air as her hand hovered over the contents. Charcoal for now, she decided, and lifted up a fresh stick of vine charcoal in a medium width. She pushed open the large portfolio case she had brought with her and pulled out a large pad of thick sketch paper. She placed her materials on the table and held her wrist up. She pursed her lips together as she looked at the several hair elastics she wore on her arm in a variety of colors. Red today. After pulling her hair back in a messy bun (she only wore it like that when using charcoal) at the nape of her neck she checked the clock.
'He should be arriving any minute,' she thought to herself, taking a deep breath and starting to feel the rush she always felt before beginning a new project.
Sasuke's eyes are dark.
(They are dark because a day prior had he run into Shisui, and for similar reasons are they dark because he is with her, and they are dark because he is tired and the mornings never give him much energy when he comes to school so early to study. Because he's tired and sore and his bed always crains his neck the wrong way when Naruto's squished in it too-) Sasuke's eyes are dark, contact lenses covering them to sharpen the blurs of his vision (-the traits of the failing Uchiha eyesight are passed down from generation to generation, and eventually, they will all be blind.) and appearance as it usually is, spotting the shock of red hair and crossing the library to sit across from her, his books dropping with a dull thud onto the desk as he pulls his seat out and sits down.
These eyes do not acknowledge this girl (-he does not have her name, but doesn't doubt she has his.) as he sits, crossing his legs beneath the table and opening the text. (Of many things he dislikes does being watched rank up high, ranks up with the assurance that he doesn't give a shit about Naruto-) And his fingers flip between pages, to his spot and his head bowing to read, and so does he ignore the way she stares at him or the scraping of her charcoal.
(Tsh-)
She wants to gasp when she sees his eyes. She sees how stiff his movements are as he comes to take his seat and opens his book. She knows all is not well with him, and wants to ask (how could someone so lovely look this way? Who, what had been the cause, and how could she exact punishment on them or it?) but she closes her mouth before she can speak. She didn't want to irritate him any more than she had the previous day, and sets to work.
His expression is more serious than it was the day before, and she wonders just how breathtaking his smile is, and if he ever uses it. He doesn't prop his head onto a palm, back straighter than most teens', hands on either side of the book except to turn the page. He's in his own universe, much like Karin is in hers.
There is nothing in the room but Sasuke. Everything else has faded away, turned into black before changing to white - white like the paper she was working on. She watches him intently as her left hand presses the charcoal to the paper, a rough outline of a studious boy studying all by himself coming to life. She looks down every so often and makes adjustments in darker lines, but overall it is still a rough sketch, the tones and textures scratched down messily, but it still looks clean. His broad shoulders, the regality of his pose, the lonely aura, the determination to get through his routine like he normally does - it's all there in the sketch book.
She looks up again and stares at his face for a full two minutes. Focusing on his mouth, the full bottom lip pressed against a slightly thinner upper lip. They're both slightly chapped, and she wonders if it's because he bites his lips out of a nervous habit. That thought strikes her odd, and she wonders why she thinks it's a nervous habit, but she shakes her head and concentrates. A crack just off center of the bottom lip- she draws his mouth with perfect detail. (She doesn't need her glasses, her vision's 20/20. She only wears them because the prescription is strong enough to make everything even clearer. She draws as she sees, and she refuses to miss the details.)
His eyes are next, she stares at their shaded darkness. His head is tilted downward but his eyes are still a bit close-lidded. She draws his eyelashes one by one. It pains her somewhat to draw the imperfections, but she's against letting art lie.
She finishes a few minutes later (15 minutes in total have passed), signs her name and the date and turns the page.
She moves to the floor three feet to the right and one forward and settles on the ground.
She begins anew.
(For what it is worth I will do it again, and with no consequence-)
His breath is almost hitching.
(Slightly. Ever so lightly.
The mornings are the times when Sasuke is more susceptible to stray thought than any time of the day. Stray thought to accompany the rings under his eyes, the torn skin on his lips, the color in his cheeks that does not and will not appear for this girl. That face has silently but long since been reserved for-) his mother, who is hovering above him, kissing at his cheeks, his forehead, his lips. (-Naruto, of course.) Itachi. (Shisui?) Too many. (-I will do it again.) And the pain he feels pressing down at his skull (one he identifies morbidly as a terminal swelling of the brain, because Sasuke is and always has been a relatively morbid person. Morbid in the pictures, all of the pictures, and the box underneath his bed. The cowhide book. Bound away and-) Morbid in all ways except one.
Just one.
(Beat me up.)
He turns a page, carefully, as to subconsciously accommodate her efforts, because Sasuke would never let someone draw him less they be someone as outright frightening as this girl has more than proved herself to be, something Sasuke has had no problem acknowledging and headily avoiding since she left him be last. (He hates to be touched. He hates the mouths and the hands of every human being, because so many of the mouths and hands that he knows too well have touched him gleefully, as Naruto and Shisui and Itachi have, but-) some of it was consensual. (Just a bit. But that, of course, it was tears him up the most.)
(Beat me down.)
Another page turning.
Modern laundry detergents tend not to produce mountains of bubbles, but there are other good reasons to not substitute laundry detergent for dishwashing detergent. One reason is that you likely void the warranty on the appliance if you use a product not made for dishwashers. You may be exposing yourself to toxins, too. The detergent itself may be the same from one product to the other, but laundry detergents may contain brighteners, fragrances, stain removers, and anti-soiling chemicals that you don't really need volatilized by the heat of your dishwasher so that you breathe them. The ingredients in laundry detergent might not rinse completely from your dishes.
The chemistry text Orochimaru assigns is far too unprofessional.
(Mess me up-)
He looks up at her and meets her eyes.
(-beyond recognition.)
Before they sweep back to the pages.
And she is incredibly thankful she was looking up to meet his gaze. She wouldn’t be lying when writing in her journal later that her heart stopped for a period of time that she wasn’t counting (she could only think about that gaze-). It was only a second (if even that, sadly) but it filled her with a type of ecstasy that far surpassed any way he had looked at her beforehand. Shivers down her back, all the way down to the tip of her tail bone. (If she was a cat her tail would have waved before going stiff and then waving itself downward and flapping against her legs, smacking with memory.) Her breath caught as well, and she had to shake herself back into reality.
Karin looked down at her pad and began the quick, rough lines of a sketch that had to be put down before the pure inspiration diluted and distorted the details. The silent intensity (she could feel his dislike, it was hard to miss, really), the desire to be left alone (he’d give in to her again, though. They always did.). God, he was incredible.
The lines were scribbled over, proportion being corrected and shading being added where needed. Shape, volume, emotion, all of it had to be put down. (She had art first period, she’d continue working on it then, Iruka-sensei could go off on her for not doing the assigned subject matter and she wouldn’t care at all.)
The next time she looked up he had his finger under a page, ready to turn it over (slowly, again, just like last time. She smiled to herself, he didn’t want to be there but he was certainly being considerate). She took watched carefully as he flipped it over. Listened to the sound of the smooth paper against the rough skin of his digit. How easily it would be for him to get a papercut, maybe a deep one, one that would make him bleed. Not a lot, but enough to sting and turn into a red line. Would he stick the wounded area into his mouth? Just lick it? Ignore it completely? Just watch as the blood built up? Apply pressure to it to make the blood pool over onto his finger?
Or would she beat him to it? There was no dening the popularity of vampires, and the thought of pressing her tongue to his long, aristocratic finger as she held the cold hand in both of her own up against her full, warm lips made her tingle deep down in her center. She pressed her legs together and bit her lips.
(Karin had always liked the story of Sleeping Beauty. But if Sasuke had been stuck in a sleep waiting for true love’s first kiss and she had fit the bill, it wouldn’t have stopped at a single kiss.)
He was so graceful, even sitting still. She rose quietly and moved once more. Still closer, to the opposite end and side of the table he had settled at. A new page.
(The likelihood of Sasuke ever being dumb enough to get a paper cut isn't exactly a low proximity, but neither ways is it particularly high. If such an occasion did arise, he would probably brush it off as nothing and bare the sting. Sasuke's paper cuts are only ever that. Just a painful, nagging sting on a thumb or finger. Never bleeding, and taking too much time in healing. Sasuke's paper cuts remind him of-) But he has neither seen him or had a cut like that in a very long time. (Too long. Much too long. In the end, he really does-)
He needs a shower.
(He's being watched too much and it's bothering him to a degree that's extreme, if not lacking a better word.
But there is always a better word.
(He was taught this a long time ago.)
He does not look up at her because he does not want to see her, to see anything- Sasuke's eyes are the most peculiar creations because they operate in ways eyes are not supposed to and are never supposed to under any and all regular circumstances. (He sees what isn't there. Not for a psychosis or schizophrenia, it's nothing like that, but much more an incredibly unique form of color blind. Sasuke has been seeing blue for a very long time, and he barely knows the difference between what he normally sees and what he's seeing through his Periods. His Periods that go on and on- so long that he grows used to them and easily forgets what exactly everything looked like before then.)
Graphite isn't blue (-is now.)
Doesn't look at her.
(Is almost done with his work.)
If she presses her chest onto the tabletop, pushing the sketch pad to the side of the table, Karin can lay her head down and look up into Sasuke’s face, watching as his eyes quickly scan over the words and images, taking in all the information. The angle is skewed, both watching and drawing, but she tries to melt into the laminated surface (impossible, but oh to be invisible). The scratching of her charcoal (she’ll need another stick soon), the ticking of the clock on the far end of the room, and the intermitten turning of the pages of Sasuke’s book are really the only sounds she hears.
Even her own breathing has become barely more than a whisper, and Sasuke can be as quiet as the dead. His hair is so very glossy in the morning light. The temptation to reach out and stroke the raven (blue tinted) locks is more than she can bear. Half a pad full of sketches (she started it new). A glance to the clock doesn’t help because the bookcases (nonfiction, na-nu) are in the way. She watches him as his body shifts. His limbs glide smoothly and she sees the tendons in his hand flex. Karin imagines the way the rest of his muscles dance over each other. The human body is a lovely thing, and Sasuke’s is lovelier than most.
The tips of his bangs brush against his cheeks and she can no longer hold her urges in. She leans, stretches over to him and slowly places her hand on the crown of his head, caressing the jet silk. Her heart is pounding (can he hear it?) and she has a sinking feeling that she’s violate an unspoken rule (one she’d gladly violate again and again if only to touch him for even one more moment) and holds her breath, pulling her hand back before he can jerk away from the table and smack her hand away.
(‘Show me what lies beneath your mask,’ she urges silently, lips tingling from withheld breath.)
Sasuke flinches.
(It's a hard movement. Because her touch had been slow and daunting in all of the ways it had been quick and abusive, and his eyes freeze over the sentence he'd been trying to read, before flicking to her with a narrow gaze, holding the stare for only a second before returning to his text. (Only about ten minutes left anyways.) And there are all of two reasons why he doesn't stand up and leave right now. (Reasons he can't name.) But his discomfort is nearly at the peak of what it can be as he hovers over his work, forcing his eyes to keep moving down the words to lock the information away within himself, only to resurface again when he feels the need to know it.
(That is how education works.)
His hand is shaking very passively.
(He doesn't notice.)
Ten minutes left.
(Shisui is-)
Narrowed eyes is nothing new (she was hoping for more, in that somewhat faint masochistic vein witihn herself) and Karin withdraws back to her seat. She lets her eyes trail down his form and sees the way his hand twitches. Is he ignoring it, or is he oblivious to it? Either way Karin knows when to fall back (though a truly talented member of the underworld makes others do the falling back while he or she sweeps forward and claims the new territory) and knows losses and wins vary by circumstance. She’s still got time left in their agreement and she’ll let him go back into his own world as much as possible. Some normalcy to his routine before the school day really starts. The chair slides back along the carpet thanks to the plastic gliders attached to the bottom of the legs and she keeps her face to him as she hides amongst the shelves. Something like a wildlife scientist observing an endangered species in its natural environment.
He’s framed by books, bathed in light, glows, but is still so dark. She knows that this won’t be just another sketch, this will be an assignment. Competition entry. The Melancholic Student. How cliche.
What: Karin and Sasuke's agreement to have her draw him for a while
When: Another backlog, it's the second day of school ^^;;;;;;
Where: Library
Warnings: Creepy obsessive girls and emo!Sasuke. n_n
Karin was wide awake, and if she was a more peppy person in general she might even describe herself as "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" (though that made her think of those Playboy-inspired bunny costumes and furries - she wasn't too keen on the latter). There were fifteen minutes left until the (not exactly) agreed time to meet and Karin was already in the library moving a few of the study tables to best capture the light. She adjusted the thick curtain and the sheers to create a soft light that wasn't too bright but gave Sasuke enough to study by without turning the library's main lights on.
She stepped back and checked her work. The set-up wasn't too different from how it normally was, but Karin had moved a few chairs away from the table so that she could switch her position without disturbing Sasuke by moving one of the bulky chairs. She stepped to her art kit and opened it, fingers dancing in the air as her hand hovered over the contents. Charcoal for now, she decided, and lifted up a fresh stick of vine charcoal in a medium width. She pushed open the large portfolio case she had brought with her and pulled out a large pad of thick sketch paper. She placed her materials on the table and held her wrist up. She pursed her lips together as she looked at the several hair elastics she wore on her arm in a variety of colors. Red today. After pulling her hair back in a messy bun (she only wore it like that when using charcoal) at the nape of her neck she checked the clock.
'He should be arriving any minute,' she thought to herself, taking a deep breath and starting to feel the rush she always felt before beginning a new project.
Sasuke's eyes are dark.
(They are dark because a day prior had he run into Shisui, and for similar reasons are they dark because he is with her, and they are dark because he is tired and the mornings never give him much energy when he comes to school so early to study. Because he's tired and sore and his bed always crains his neck the wrong way when Naruto's squished in it too-) Sasuke's eyes are dark, contact lenses covering them to sharpen the blurs of his vision (-the traits of the failing Uchiha eyesight are passed down from generation to generation, and eventually, they will all be blind.) and appearance as it usually is, spotting the shock of red hair and crossing the library to sit across from her, his books dropping with a dull thud onto the desk as he pulls his seat out and sits down.
These eyes do not acknowledge this girl (-he does not have her name, but doesn't doubt she has his.) as he sits, crossing his legs beneath the table and opening the text. (Of many things he dislikes does being watched rank up high, ranks up with the assurance that he doesn't give a shit about Naruto-) And his fingers flip between pages, to his spot and his head bowing to read, and so does he ignore the way she stares at him or the scraping of her charcoal.
(Tsh-)
She wants to gasp when she sees his eyes. She sees how stiff his movements are as he comes to take his seat and opens his book. She knows all is not well with him, and wants to ask (how could someone so lovely look this way? Who, what had been the cause, and how could she exact punishment on them or it?) but she closes her mouth before she can speak. She didn't want to irritate him any more than she had the previous day, and sets to work.
His expression is more serious than it was the day before, and she wonders just how breathtaking his smile is, and if he ever uses it. He doesn't prop his head onto a palm, back straighter than most teens', hands on either side of the book except to turn the page. He's in his own universe, much like Karin is in hers.
There is nothing in the room but Sasuke. Everything else has faded away, turned into black before changing to white - white like the paper she was working on. She watches him intently as her left hand presses the charcoal to the paper, a rough outline of a studious boy studying all by himself coming to life. She looks down every so often and makes adjustments in darker lines, but overall it is still a rough sketch, the tones and textures scratched down messily, but it still looks clean. His broad shoulders, the regality of his pose, the lonely aura, the determination to get through his routine like he normally does - it's all there in the sketch book.
She looks up again and stares at his face for a full two minutes. Focusing on his mouth, the full bottom lip pressed against a slightly thinner upper lip. They're both slightly chapped, and she wonders if it's because he bites his lips out of a nervous habit. That thought strikes her odd, and she wonders why she thinks it's a nervous habit, but she shakes her head and concentrates. A crack just off center of the bottom lip- she draws his mouth with perfect detail. (She doesn't need her glasses, her vision's 20/20. She only wears them because the prescription is strong enough to make everything even clearer. She draws as she sees, and she refuses to miss the details.)
His eyes are next, she stares at their shaded darkness. His head is tilted downward but his eyes are still a bit close-lidded. She draws his eyelashes one by one. It pains her somewhat to draw the imperfections, but she's against letting art lie.
She finishes a few minutes later (15 minutes in total have passed), signs her name and the date and turns the page.
She moves to the floor three feet to the right and one forward and settles on the ground.
She begins anew.
(For what it is worth I will do it again, and with no consequence-)
His breath is almost hitching.
(Slightly. Ever so lightly.
The mornings are the times when Sasuke is more susceptible to stray thought than any time of the day. Stray thought to accompany the rings under his eyes, the torn skin on his lips, the color in his cheeks that does not and will not appear for this girl. That face has silently but long since been reserved for-) his mother, who is hovering above him, kissing at his cheeks, his forehead, his lips. (-Naruto, of course.) Itachi. (Shisui?) Too many. (-I will do it again.) And the pain he feels pressing down at his skull (one he identifies morbidly as a terminal swelling of the brain, because Sasuke is and always has been a relatively morbid person. Morbid in the pictures, all of the pictures, and the box underneath his bed. The cowhide book. Bound away and-) Morbid in all ways except one.
Just one.
(Beat me up.)
He turns a page, carefully, as to subconsciously accommodate her efforts, because Sasuke would never let someone draw him less they be someone as outright frightening as this girl has more than proved herself to be, something Sasuke has had no problem acknowledging and headily avoiding since she left him be last. (He hates to be touched. He hates the mouths and the hands of every human being, because so many of the mouths and hands that he knows too well have touched him gleefully, as Naruto and Shisui and Itachi have, but-) some of it was consensual. (Just a bit. But that, of course, it was tears him up the most.)
(Beat me down.)
Another page turning.
Modern laundry detergents tend not to produce mountains of bubbles, but there are other good reasons to not substitute laundry detergent for dishwashing detergent. One reason is that you likely void the warranty on the appliance if you use a product not made for dishwashers. You may be exposing yourself to toxins, too. The detergent itself may be the same from one product to the other, but laundry detergents may contain brighteners, fragrances, stain removers, and anti-soiling chemicals that you don't really need volatilized by the heat of your dishwasher so that you breathe them. The ingredients in laundry detergent might not rinse completely from your dishes.
The chemistry text Orochimaru assigns is far too unprofessional.
(Mess me up-)
He looks up at her and meets her eyes.
(-beyond recognition.)
Before they sweep back to the pages.
And she is incredibly thankful she was looking up to meet his gaze. She wouldn’t be lying when writing in her journal later that her heart stopped for a period of time that she wasn’t counting (she could only think about that gaze-). It was only a second (if even that, sadly) but it filled her with a type of ecstasy that far surpassed any way he had looked at her beforehand. Shivers down her back, all the way down to the tip of her tail bone. (If she was a cat her tail would have waved before going stiff and then waving itself downward and flapping against her legs, smacking with memory.) Her breath caught as well, and she had to shake herself back into reality.
Karin looked down at her pad and began the quick, rough lines of a sketch that had to be put down before the pure inspiration diluted and distorted the details. The silent intensity (she could feel his dislike, it was hard to miss, really), the desire to be left alone (he’d give in to her again, though. They always did.). God, he was incredible.
The lines were scribbled over, proportion being corrected and shading being added where needed. Shape, volume, emotion, all of it had to be put down. (She had art first period, she’d continue working on it then, Iruka-sensei could go off on her for not doing the assigned subject matter and she wouldn’t care at all.)
The next time she looked up he had his finger under a page, ready to turn it over (slowly, again, just like last time. She smiled to herself, he didn’t want to be there but he was certainly being considerate). She took watched carefully as he flipped it over. Listened to the sound of the smooth paper against the rough skin of his digit. How easily it would be for him to get a papercut, maybe a deep one, one that would make him bleed. Not a lot, but enough to sting and turn into a red line. Would he stick the wounded area into his mouth? Just lick it? Ignore it completely? Just watch as the blood built up? Apply pressure to it to make the blood pool over onto his finger?
Or would she beat him to it? There was no dening the popularity of vampires, and the thought of pressing her tongue to his long, aristocratic finger as she held the cold hand in both of her own up against her full, warm lips made her tingle deep down in her center. She pressed her legs together and bit her lips.
(Karin had always liked the story of Sleeping Beauty. But if Sasuke had been stuck in a sleep waiting for true love’s first kiss and she had fit the bill, it wouldn’t have stopped at a single kiss.)
He was so graceful, even sitting still. She rose quietly and moved once more. Still closer, to the opposite end and side of the table he had settled at. A new page.
(The likelihood of Sasuke ever being dumb enough to get a paper cut isn't exactly a low proximity, but neither ways is it particularly high. If such an occasion did arise, he would probably brush it off as nothing and bare the sting. Sasuke's paper cuts are only ever that. Just a painful, nagging sting on a thumb or finger. Never bleeding, and taking too much time in healing. Sasuke's paper cuts remind him of-) But he has neither seen him or had a cut like that in a very long time. (Too long. Much too long. In the end, he really does-)
He needs a shower.
(He's being watched too much and it's bothering him to a degree that's extreme, if not lacking a better word.
But there is always a better word.
(He was taught this a long time ago.)
He does not look up at her because he does not want to see her, to see anything- Sasuke's eyes are the most peculiar creations because they operate in ways eyes are not supposed to and are never supposed to under any and all regular circumstances. (He sees what isn't there. Not for a psychosis or schizophrenia, it's nothing like that, but much more an incredibly unique form of color blind. Sasuke has been seeing blue for a very long time, and he barely knows the difference between what he normally sees and what he's seeing through his Periods. His Periods that go on and on- so long that he grows used to them and easily forgets what exactly everything looked like before then.)
Graphite isn't blue (-is now.)
Doesn't look at her.
(Is almost done with his work.)
If she presses her chest onto the tabletop, pushing the sketch pad to the side of the table, Karin can lay her head down and look up into Sasuke’s face, watching as his eyes quickly scan over the words and images, taking in all the information. The angle is skewed, both watching and drawing, but she tries to melt into the laminated surface (impossible, but oh to be invisible). The scratching of her charcoal (she’ll need another stick soon), the ticking of the clock on the far end of the room, and the intermitten turning of the pages of Sasuke’s book are really the only sounds she hears.
Even her own breathing has become barely more than a whisper, and Sasuke can be as quiet as the dead. His hair is so very glossy in the morning light. The temptation to reach out and stroke the raven (blue tinted) locks is more than she can bear. Half a pad full of sketches (she started it new). A glance to the clock doesn’t help because the bookcases (nonfiction, na-nu) are in the way. She watches him as his body shifts. His limbs glide smoothly and she sees the tendons in his hand flex. Karin imagines the way the rest of his muscles dance over each other. The human body is a lovely thing, and Sasuke’s is lovelier than most.
The tips of his bangs brush against his cheeks and she can no longer hold her urges in. She leans, stretches over to him and slowly places her hand on the crown of his head, caressing the jet silk. Her heart is pounding (can he hear it?) and she has a sinking feeling that she’s violate an unspoken rule (one she’d gladly violate again and again if only to touch him for even one more moment) and holds her breath, pulling her hand back before he can jerk away from the table and smack her hand away.
(‘Show me what lies beneath your mask,’ she urges silently, lips tingling from withheld breath.)
Sasuke flinches.
(It's a hard movement. Because her touch had been slow and daunting in all of the ways it had been quick and abusive, and his eyes freeze over the sentence he'd been trying to read, before flicking to her with a narrow gaze, holding the stare for only a second before returning to his text. (Only about ten minutes left anyways.) And there are all of two reasons why he doesn't stand up and leave right now. (Reasons he can't name.) But his discomfort is nearly at the peak of what it can be as he hovers over his work, forcing his eyes to keep moving down the words to lock the information away within himself, only to resurface again when he feels the need to know it.
(That is how education works.)
His hand is shaking very passively.
(He doesn't notice.)
Ten minutes left.
(Shisui is-)
Narrowed eyes is nothing new (she was hoping for more, in that somewhat faint masochistic vein witihn herself) and Karin withdraws back to her seat. She lets her eyes trail down his form and sees the way his hand twitches. Is he ignoring it, or is he oblivious to it? Either way Karin knows when to fall back (though a truly talented member of the underworld makes others do the falling back while he or she sweeps forward and claims the new territory) and knows losses and wins vary by circumstance. She’s still got time left in their agreement and she’ll let him go back into his own world as much as possible. Some normalcy to his routine before the school day really starts. The chair slides back along the carpet thanks to the plastic gliders attached to the bottom of the legs and she keeps her face to him as she hides amongst the shelves. Something like a wildlife scientist observing an endangered species in its natural environment.
He’s framed by books, bathed in light, glows, but is still so dark. She knows that this won’t be just another sketch, this will be an assignment. Competition entry. The Melancholic Student. How cliche.