The next day begins with a knock, a crash, and a scream that sounds like someone just saw their GPA in real life.
"I'M OKAY!" Yuuto shouts, emerging from under a folding chair like a wounded raccoon. He's early. Again.
"I brought matcha KitKats!" he adds, holding them up triumphantly.
Kaito, sipping coffee that tastes like desperation and recycled hope, just gives him a thumbs-up. "You're my favorite idiot today."
Rei enters five minutes later, holding an enormous sketchpad and the aura of someone who could both kill you and critique your line weight in the same breath. She nods once at Kaito and immediately begins sharpening six pencils with terrifying precision.
She doesn't speak, but her silence is practically loud.
Kaito's about to ask if she's okay—because Rei's left eyebrow is twitching at 3.6 Hz, which in Rei-speak means "mild emotional crisis"—but then the studio door slams open like a soap opera cliffhanger.
Enter: Mika Hoshino.
Twenty-four. Five-foot-eight. Covered in tattoos like someone lost a bet with a brush pen. Wearing combat boots, a fishnet crop top, and the confidence of a woman who once punched a paparazzi and got fan mail for it.
She walks in with a duffel bag, chewing bubblegum, and chewing life even harder.
"You Kaito?" she asks, eyes scanning the studio.
Kaito nods.
She tosses her bag on the floor with a thud. "Great. I'm here to be naked and emotionally unstable."
Yuuto drops a pencil. Rei blinks. Kaito reconsiders installing a panic button.
Fifteen minutes later, Mika is undressed, perched like a tattooed sphinx on a wooden crate. One knee up, one arm behind her head.
Her body is covered in ink—everything from delicate cherry blossoms on her ribs to a phoenix spiraling down her thigh to what appears to be a tiny anime corgi on her hip flipping off the viewer.
"What's the story behind the corgi?" Rei asks before she can stop herself.
"Got it after my ex said I 'lacked sophistication,'" Mika replies, grinning. "Now I bring him to all my most tasteful moments."
Rei snorts. Yuuto blushes so hard his glasses fog up.
Kaito gestures. "Okay! Pencils up, feelings down."
They begin sketching.
At first, it's business as usual: quiet scribbles, shifting poses, occasional gasps from Yuuto when Mika moves too fast and a new tattoo is revealed like a mini boss fight.
Then it happens.
The Armpit Incident.
Mika stretches into a new pose, arm raised, muscles taut, revealing a perfectly shaded tattoo of a koi fish swimming through a whirlpool—right in her armpit.
Yuuto gasps. Audibly.
"Oh my God," he whispers. "That's… beautiful."
Everyone pauses.
Rei lowers her pencil. Kaito blinks. Mika raises an eyebrow.
"You into armpits, buddy?"
Yuuto waves his hands. "N-no! I mean—yes? Not like that! Just… the way the ink flows into the folds… it's so symbolic! The fish… struggling upstream… in the pit of the body…!"
"You're crying," Rei notes.
"I'm not—okay yes I am," Yuuto chokes out, wiping tears. "I didn't know art could live in such a weird place!"
Mika just laughs. "That's the most poetic thing anyone's said about my armpit. Ever."
Kaito makes a note: "Potential merch idea: koi fish pit power."
Break time.
Mika wraps herself in a loose kimono and heads to the fire escape to smoke.
Rei follows. Not for cigarettes. For answers.
"You said you had stories," Rei says, leaning on the railing.
Mika lights up. "I've got more baggage than Narita Airport."
Rei waits.
Mika sighs. "Used to be a dancer. Not the glittery kind. The 'contemporary interpretive movement meets emotional screaming' kind. Got injured, fell apart, did some dumb things, got inked instead of therapy. The usual."
Rei nods slowly. "You don't dance anymore?"
"Only in my kitchen. Or when I've had wine and there's Mitski on."
Rei's eyes soften. "You're not the only one who gave something up."
Mika tilts her head. "You too?"
"I used to paint in color. Stopped two years ago."
"Why?"
Rei exhales. "Because the last time I used red, it was… for someone I lost. Now I only use black and grey. It hurts less."
Mika hands her the cigarette. Rei doesn't smoke. But she holds it anyway.
"I get that," Mika says.
Above them, Tokyo glows in neon loneliness.
Inside, Kaito stares at a fresh drawing left on a stool.
It's Yuuto's. And it's stunning.
A soft, vulnerable sketch of Mika—not sexualized, not idolized. Just human. Armpit and all. The koi fish flows, not as a design, but as a story. The pose is strong, but there's fatigue in the shoulders. Realness in the bones.
Kaito's breath catches.
Yuuto walks in behind him, chewing on a KitKat. "Too much?"
Kaito turns. "It's the best thing you've ever drawn."
Yuuto blinks. "Really?"
"Really," Kaito says. "You finally stopped drawing what you think people want. You drew what you felt."
Yuuto looks at his hand like it just did something illegal but beautiful.
Then says, "…Does this mean I'm gonna cry every time I draw now?"
"Probably."
"Cool."
That night, the studio feels fuller than ever.
Not because of people, but because of weight—shared, sketched, and seen.
Rei leaves with a cigarette in her sketchbook. Mika leaves with a soft thank-you in her eyes. Yuuto leaves humming and slightly terrified of himself.
And Kaito?
Kaito sits alone in the dark, staring at a drawing of an armpit that made him believe in art again.
He smiles to himself.
"Weirdest therapy group in Tokyo," he mutters. "But damn, it's working.
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