- VIII -

"Here," he said, handing her the paintbrush she'd been looking for all day. Her doctor had given her this, saying drawing and painting would help her rehabilitation. "I found your roommate using it as a drum stick."

"Thank you, Naru."

"You're welcome, Mai."

As the sun set, it painted the sky with shades of color she could never capture no matter how many times she'd tried. The sketchbook in her hands housed many different versions of the sunset — from the view outside her ward, at the rooftop, or here at the garden. Not one of them was quite pink enough, or had the right amount of orange, with blues too blue and reds too faint.

What she struggled with the most was how the sun painted the horizon, how it painted him. The colors flattered him perfectly. The pinks and reds caressing his pale skin, the blues giving a shine to his hair, the warm orange bringing out a sparkle in his eyes.

She'd never attempted to capture his image, afraid she wouldn't give him justice. And every time she'd thought to try, there was a small voice in her mind telling her to stop—it said his eyes would be too dull, his hair too flat, his posture too rigid. As if it knew what he should have looked like.

And maybe be the voice did. Maybe she did.

She hoped so.

She wanted to remember him.

-:-:-:-:-