That afternoon, in Kitagijuku High School’s art studio.
This time, Tsukasa Higashino actually showed up for club activities.
He had only joined the art club two days ago, then immediately skipped the very next meeting.
No matter how he looked at it, doing that again would be a little inappropriate.
Besides, there were only two or three weeks left before the competition entries had to be submitted.
Time was already getting tight.
Tsukasa had brought all the tools and materials he needed for oil painting to school, packed into two large bags.
Carrying one in each hand, he walked straight into the studio.
He wasn’t making much noise, but the sight of him hauling around two enormous bags was conspicuous enough to make the girls who were painting turn and stare.
What was he planning to do?
Why had he brought so much stuff?
Tsukasa ignored their curious looks.
He walked over to Ryoka Konoe, dropped into the seat beside her, and set both bags on the floor.
The sound was hardly loud, yet Ryoka still jumped in surprise.
Amused, Tsukasa gave her a small nod before reaching into one of the bags and pulling out four wooden stretcher bars.
Clack.
Snap.
Clack.
With a few practiced movements, he assembled them into a rectangular stretcher frame.
Then he pulled out a roll of linen canvas and a staple gun, working clockwise as he stretched the fabric over the frame and stapled it securely into place.
The girls nearby exchanged puzzled looks.
What was he doing?
Why did painting an oil painting suddenly look like carpentry?
Ryoka was equally confused.
Watching from beside him, she finally asked in a tiny voice, “What are you doing?”
“Stretching a canvas.
Come give me a hand.
Hold this side down.”
Tsukasa didn’t stand on ceremony in the slightest.
He immediately put Ryoka to work.
“Ah…
okay.”
Ryoka obediently nodded and pressed one pale hand against the opposite side of the canvas.
Her large, clear eyes watched Tsukasa’s every movement with open curiosity.
Meanwhile, the other girls in the studio had started sneaking glances in their direction as well, pretending to work while craning their necks to see what he was doing.
Their eyes practically sparkled as they stared at Tsukasa.
He’s so handsome…
but why is he doing carpentry?
They were only high school students, after all, and their art classes weren’t held to the same standards as a university fine-arts program.
Normally, they simply bought ready-made stretched canvases from art-supply stores.
None of them had ever gone out of their way to assemble their own stretcher frames and stretch raw canvas by hand.
Even their paintings tended to be stiff, mechanical copies of reference images, with little thought or interpretation of their own.
For traditional oil painting, linen canvas was commonly stretched over a rectangular wooden frame and secured with staples.
The process was known as stretching a canvas.
The tension had to be just right.
If the canvas was stretched too tightly, the wooden frame could warp.
If it was left too loose, painting on the surface would feel strange and unstable.
Tsukasa knew all of this by heart.
His hands moved with practiced efficiency.
In only five or six minutes, the stretcher frame had been assembled and the linen pulled smooth and taut across it, with the edges neatly secured.
He turned toward Ryoka and said bluntly, “You’re too timid with your hands, Konoe-san.
Being careful is good sometimes, but you’re too careful.
You need more confidence when you’re doing something.”
“It’s the same when you paint with gouache.
Some parts are actually very simple, but if you hesitate over every brushstroke, you’re more likely to ruin them.”
Tsukasa wasn’t criticizing Ryoka simply for the sake of criticizing her.
Her excessive caution was a serious weakness for someone learning art.
An art student couldn’t be terrified of making a bad painting.
If something went wrong, you fixed it afterward.
If it couldn’t be fixed, you painted it again.
But if you were so afraid of making a mistake that you couldn’t even bring yourself to put the brush on the surface, then art probably wasn’t the right path for you.
“Oh…”
Ryoka could only lower her head and nod, lips pursed slightly.
She didn’t dare argue with him or say anything in her defense.
Tsukasa left her alone and prepared to size the primed linen with a layer of white glue.
The purpose was to fill the countless tiny gaps between the fibers of the linen, sealing the surface so the oil in the paint wouldn’t seep through the fabric.
He had just raised his hand when someone beside him spoke.
“Excuse me.
Are you Higashino-kun?”
“Yes.
I’m Tsukasa Higashino.”
Tsukasa looked up and saw a girl with medium-length hair standing nearby.
She had a round, cute face.
Tsukasa immediately recognized her as Fukushima-senpai, the upperclassman Ryoka had specifically mentioned before.
Two days earlier, she had been surrounded by a group of girls, and her painting skills genuinely were quite good.
Among high school students, she could easily be considered one of the better ones, so Tsukasa still remembered her.
But why was she looking for him?
Tsukasa was puzzled.
As far as he remembered, the two of them had never spoken before.
“Did you draw this sketch?”
Before Tsukasa could ask, Madoka Fukushima held out a drawing and looked at him expectantly.
A sketch?
Tsukasa leaned forward for a better look, then nodded.
“Yeah.
I drew it.”
It was the profile sketch of Ryoka he had left behind.
Tsukasa himself wasn’t particularly satisfied with it.
In his eyes, it belonged to the category of work he would rather toss straight into the trash.
Seeing Madoka bring this embarrassing piece of his past back to him, Tsukasa briefly wondered whether the girl had come to give him drawing advice.
So he smiled and asked, “Is there something you wanted to point out about it, Fukushima-senpai?”
“Ah, no!
Not at all!”
The moment Tsukasa smiled at her, Madoka’s face flushed as quickly as a boy’s might when a beautiful girl smiled at him.
Clutching the sketch carefully in both hands, she said in a softer voice, “I just thought…
since it’s such an excellent piece, you’d probably be upset if one of us lost it while looking at it.
So I wanted to return it to you.”
“Huh?”
Tsukasa looked genuinely surprised.
Then he laughed and waved a hand. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“Fukushima-senpai, are you joking?
You actually think this is good?”
To Tsukasa, the sketch was practically a black mark on his artistic record.
He had made quite a few small mistakes while drawing it.
If something like this qualified as good, then what were people supposed to call some of the paintings he had produced in his previous life?
Divine masterpieces?
“Huh?
T-This still isn’t good?”
Madoka stared at him with her mouth slightly open.
“Of course not.”
Tsukasa waved dismissively, still smiling.
Madoka, however, interpreted his words very differently.
Even Ryoko Okano had spent a long time praising this sketch.
How could it possibly be bad?
Madoka could only conclude that Tsukasa was deliberately downplaying his own work because he didn’t want to discourage the other art-club members.
What a nice person.
Not only was he kind, he was humble too.
Madoka found herself unexpectedly moved.
“If you don’t mind, you and the others can keep it.”
Tsukasa continued brushing the sizing over his canvas as he handed the sketch back with a casual smile.
“But…
I couldn’t possibly take something this good…”
Madoka hesitated to accept it.
A sketch of this quality had probably required Tsukasa to work very seriously.
Maybe it was even the kind of drawing he could only produce when inspiration struck at exactly the right moment.
Tsukasa chuckled.
“No matter how good the sketch is, it still isn’t as pretty as Fukushima-senpai.”
Then, as though that weren’t enough, he added, “Besides, Konoe-san is sitting right next to me.
With such a pretty model around, drawing another one wouldn’t be difficult.”
“Ah…”
Ryoka, who had assumed the conversation no longer had anything to do with her, had already shrunk back toward her gouache painting.
Then she heard Tsukasa suddenly mention her.
She looked up with her mouth slightly open, completely bewildered.
Why had Tsukasa dragged her into the conversation again?
“W-Well…
all right.
Then I’ll accept it.”
Only after Tsukasa repeatedly insisted did Madoka finally nod and take the sketch.
She had apparently overlooked one important detail in his wording: he had said he was giving it to “you and the others,” not specifically to her.
Tsukasa didn’t care.
It was only an embarrassing old sketch in his eyes.
It wasn’t as though something like that could be sold for a fortune.
If she wanted it, she could have it.
He turned back toward his canvas and continued carefully applying the white sizing.
A little while later, Madoka spoke again.
“Higashino-kun…
may I sit beside you?”