2003, Shibuya Station, Tokyo, Japan.
Two or three high school girls in blue-and-white uniforms stood together on the bustling street, chattering excitedly.
“Look!
That guy drawing over there is seriously handsome.
Miko, why don’t you go ask for his number?”
One of the girls grinned as she nudged Aioi Miko forward.
“Huh?” Miko lifted her eyes from the little yellow booklet in her hands and muttered, “I already have a boyfriend, you know.
And you want me to ask another guy for his number?
What kind of girlfriend would that make me?”
“Maybe you’ll fall for him the moment you see him.
I’m serious, he’s really handsome.
He looks like some movie star.”
“As if I’d fall for every handsome guy I see!
What do you take my love for?”
Miko shot back indignantly, but her eyes had already drifted toward the direction her friend was pointing.
One glance became two.
Then she found herself unable to look away.
After staring for a long moment, a single thought rose sincerely from the bottom of her heart.
He really is handsome…
The young man her friend had pointed out appeared to be a street artist.
At that moment, he was completely absorbed in the blank sheet mounted before him.
His wrist moved in quick, confident strokes, each movement steady and decisive.
There was something strangely satisfying about simply watching him work.
Of course, Miko knew nothing about painting techniques, nor had she ever been particularly interested in art.
But perhaps there really was some truth to the saying that a man looked especially attractive when he was serious about something.
Her gaze seemed to have been caught by a magnet.
The young man had a healthy, fair complexion and short hair whose ends curled slightly inward.
His features were refined yet well-defined, and his eyes looked gentle and clear.
Yet even beyond his appearance, what drew Miko’s attention most was the effortless confidence he seemed to radiate.
That confidence made him stand out even in the crowd.
Shibuya Station was packed with people coming and going.
Among them, even a female photographer couldn’t resist secretly raising her camera and snapping a picture of the handsome, self-assured young man.
The look in her eyes wasn’t much different from a man admiring a beautiful woman.
“Well?
What do you think?”
“Go on, Miko!
Go!
Don’t let a good catch get away!
You might already have a boyfriend, but the rest of us are still single!”
Her friends giggled as they continued egging her on.
Miko was the prettiest among them, with a bright, cheerful sort of cuteness.
In their minds, all she had to do was flash the artist a smile and he would be as good as conquered.
Don’t let a good catch get away, huh?
Miko muttered inwardly.
Well…
that excuse was just barely enough to soothe her conscience.
This wasn’t cheating or flirting with another man.
She was simply creating an opportunity for her best friends!
Having found a perfectly convenient excuse, Miko finally felt at ease.
She slung her bag over one shoulder and walked toward the artist in small, confident steps, looking rather like a proud little peacock.
She considered herself fairly experienced when it came to romance.
Making a boy fall for her shouldn’t be difficult.
But just as she came within a meter or two of her “target,” the handsome young artist suddenly leaned out from behind his drawing board.
A warm smile appeared on his face as he nodded to her.
“Hello.”
His smile was so pleasant that it felt like a spring breeze washing over her.
The unexpected greeting caught Miko completely off guard.
Her heart gave several violent thumps beneath that clean, charming smile.
Her cheeks reddened.
The proud little peacock from moments ago seemed to lose all her feathers at once.
“H-Hello.
Um…
may I ask what you’re doing?”
The instant the words left her mouth, Miko realized how pointless the question sounded.
He was obviously drawing.
Realizing her mistake, she hurriedly waved her hands in embarrassment.
“Sorry!
I mean…
um, I…”
“It’s all right.” The young man smiled politely.
“But if we’re going to talk about why I’m drawing here, that’s actually a rather long story.”
He paused.
“Would you like to hear it?”
Perhaps there was something naturally persuasive in his voice, because Miko found herself nodding before she even realized it.
“There was a girl who chased after me for five years.
She confessed to me twice, but I rejected her both times.”
“Huh?”
Miko had expected some cheesy pickup line.
She certainly hadn’t expected a story like that to come out of his mouth.
The young man gazed into the distance as though sinking into a memory.
“A few days ago, she told me she missed me.
Then yesterday, she actually flew all the way from Osaka to Tokyo just to see me.”
How romantic…
Miko was still a fairly innocent high school girl at heart, and she had a particular weakness for sweet, sincere love stories like this.
Unable to contain her curiosity, she asked, “And then?”
“This time, I didn’t reject her.
She cried—cried like a little child.
Maybe this is what they call…”
“Wow…
Is that why you came out here to draw?” Miko interrupted in amazement.
In her imagination, the rest of the story had already written itself.
He was selling his paintings to support the girl, and the two of them were struggling together in Tokyo, relying on each other to survive.
Wasn’t that unbelievably romantic?
“No.” The young man laughed and waved a hand.
“I was just trying to say that this is probably what guys call bragging.”
Then he added casually, “The part about selling paintings is true, though.”
“…”
Only then did Miko realize that he had been teasing her.
She gave him an aggrieved little glare, but strangely enough, the joke also made the young man she had only just met feel much easier to approach.
A wooden sign rested near his feet, the writing on it neat and clear:
5,000 yen per portrait.
Various artworks were arranged around him.
There were oil paintings, fineliner sketches, hand-drawn pieces in the style of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e, and even ink wash paintings.
Most of them, however, were pencil sketches.
The works came in all sorts of styles, but Miko had only one way to describe them.
Beautiful.
She didn’t understand artistic technique.
She knew nothing about negative space, light and shadow, composition, or any of the other things artists talked about.
She simply looked at the paintings and thought they were beautiful.
In fact, she felt that even her school’s art teacher couldn’t draw anything as appealing as this young man’s work.
Most of the paintings bore a seal, along with a name written neatly in the lower-right corner.
“Tsukasa Higashino…”
Miko quietly read the name aloud.
For some reason, she thought it rolled pleasantly off the tongue.
She looked at the paintings lined up neatly on the ground and thought that buying one to hang at home wouldn’t be bad at all.
But 5,000 yen…
That wasn’t exactly a small amount of money for a high school student.
After hesitating for a while, Miko tightened her grip on her little purse and finally asked, “Higashino-san, could I trouble you to draw a portrait for me?”
“Of course.” Tsukasa smiled.
Then, after looking at her, he added, “But you’re probably still in high school, right?
Five thousand yen is my adult price.
That’s a little expensive for a student.
And since you’re such a pretty young lady, I’ll charge you only 2,500.”
Such a pretty young lady.
It was nothing more than an ordinary compliment.
Miko heard the same kind of thing from boys her age practically every day.
But hearing it from someone as handsome as Tsukasa Higashino was an entirely different matter.
Words she had long since grown tired of hearing suddenly made her heart flutter again.
Her face turned bright red.
“O-Okay…”
Being handsome really was an unfair advantage.
Even 2,500 yen was arguably a rip-off for a street sketch, yet Miko happily fell for it anyway.
Tsukasa removed the drawing board from the easel and placed a fresh sheet of paper on it.
“What would you like me to draw?”
“I can choose?”
Miko blinked in surprise.
Normally, street artists who charged for portraits simply drew the customer’s face.
At most, they might include the upper body.
It was faster that way, which meant they could serve more customers and earn more money.
But judging by Tsukasa’s words, she could apparently request whatever she wanted.
“More or less.” Tsukasa hesitated slightly.
“Although there is something I’m worried about.”
“Worried about what?” Miko asked.
“You’re so pretty that I’m worried I won’t be able to capture that bright, youthful charm of yours properly.”
Tsukasa smiled again.
There was no question about it.
He was teasing her again.
Miko’s cheeks flushed, and for several seconds she could only stare at him, completely at a loss for words.
She might have considered herself experienced in romance compared with other girls her age, but in front of Tsukasa, she wasn’t even playing in the same league.
He had dismantled her defenses without breaking a sweat.
“Then…
could you draw a full-body sketch of me?”
After being teased so thoroughly, Miko lowered her head, suddenly looking meek and defenseless.
Her earlier declaration—”What do you take my love for?”—had already been tossed somewhere into the back of her mind.
“A full-body portrait?
Do you want a background?”
Tsukasa didn’t continue teasing her.
Work was work, after all.
He wasn’t a host at some nightclub.
A little harmless flirting was enough.
After asking the question, he immediately began.
His wrist moved with practiced ease.
His strokes were fast, steady, and remarkably confident.
With only a handful of lines, the overall outline of Miko’s figure had already emerged on the paper.
“No, it’s fine!
You don’t need to draw a background,” Miko hurriedly replied.
“Got it.” Tsukasa nodded with a smile.
There seemed to be something naturally approachable about him.
He was witty, easy to talk to, and charming enough that a simple smile could draw women toward him.
During the short time he spent sketching Miko, several female university students shopping around Shibuya wandered over and struck up conversations with him.
Two or three of them even offered to pay him for portraits.
Tsukasa politely turned them all down with a smile.
Those university girls were most likely far more interested in his face than his artwork.
Getting a portrait was probably just an excuse.
What they really wanted was a chance to discuss a far more “valuable business deal” with him later that night.
Compared with those bold, experienced women who had approached him on their own, dealing with an innocent high school girl like Miko was much simpler.
Even when refusing the university students, however, Tsukasa handled himself perfectly.
He was neither overly friendly nor deliberately distant.
He simply kept smiling and chatting with them in an easygoing manner.
From a distance, it almost looked as though he were juggling several women at once without letting any of them sink the ship.
A seasoned captain, indeed.
“All done, Miko-san.
Come take a look.
If there’s anything you don’t like, I can fix it right away.”
After finishing the sketch, Tsukasa stepped aside to give her room.
“Okay, Higashino-kun.”
Somewhere during their conversation, Miko had already upgraded the way she addressed him from the more formal “Higashino-san” to the friendlier “Higashino-kun.”
She eagerly hurried to the drawing board, anxious to see how the portrait had turned out.
Then she stopped.
She couldn’t move.
It wasn’t because the drawing was bad.
It was because it was far too beautiful.
Even Miko herself was stunned.
It was clearly a conventional sketch.
The face on the paper was still her face.
Nothing had been exaggerated or dramatically altered.
And yet, somehow, it looked unbelievably good.
Yes, it was unmistakably the same face.
But under Tsukasa’s hand, it was as if someone had added a layer of special effects to reality itself.
The result was so striking that even the university students watching nearby began murmuring in admiration.
Unlike the drawings Miko had seen from her school’s art teacher, Tsukasa’s work possessed an indescribable quality.
The Miko in the portrait had short hair, a sailor-style school uniform, and a navy mid-length skirt.
A faint but unmistakable pride lingered in her eyes.
She looked so vivid and alive that even the way she gazed outward seemed to carry the haughty confidence of someone looking down on the world by half a step.
The corners of her eyes.
The shape of her face.
Her posture.
Her movements.
With only a few strokes, Tsukasa had somehow captured everything.
Miko felt as though another version of herself—a little mischievous, a little proud was standing inside the drawing, smiling back at her.
But more important than any of that was the feeling the portrait gave her.
Simply looking at it filled her heart with an inexplicable sense of happiness and peace.
Miko was in her final year of high school.
Every day, she had to deal with schoolwork while also squeezing in time for cram school.
The pressure had been steadily piling up.
Yet for some reason, as she stared at the sketch, much of that accumulated stress seemed to quietly melt away.
Miko became so absorbed in the portrait that she lost track of everything around her.
It wasn’t until one of her friends came over and called to her that she finally snapped out of her daze.
Still surprised and confused by her own reaction, she heard Tsukasa ask in a concerned voice:
“Miko-san, is something wrong?”