It is a truth universally ignored that the weirder your clientele gets, the more likely your rent is late.
Kaito Fujiwara sits at his cracked desk, staring at a spreadsheet so depressing it might qualify as an abstract horror piece. The numbers are red. The coffee is gone. The incense burner is filled with matchsticks because Suzu declared traditional incense "too patriarchal."
And yet… the studio is thriving.
Artistically.
Financially?
He's considering selling one of his kidneys or finally uploading his cursed runway disaster to YouTube and monetizing the trauma.
Then, as if summoned by existential dread, the door opens with an eerie creeeak.
Everyone looks up.
A figure enters, wrapped in layers of black. Not fashionably so. No "I'm mysterious and sexy" drama. Just… shadows. Long coat. Wide hat. Gloves.
Face covered.
Voice silent.
Nocturne.
They don't speak.
Just hand Kaito a slip of paper.
Do not turn on the main lights. I pose only in shadow.I don't want to be seen. Just drawn.No one ask who I am. I'm not ready to be real yet.
Rei stares. Yuuto whispers, "Oh my God, it's a sexy ghost."
Haruka mutters, "No. That's trauma in a trench coat."
Suzu nods. "They're hot."
Kaito exhales. "Okay. Let's dim the lights and make some art before someone writes poetry."
The studio transforms.
Curtains drawn. Lamps turned low. A single spotlight, muted by gauze and fear.
Nocturne removes their coat. Slowly. Every motion careful, like they're peeling away history instead of fabric.
What's revealed is not shocking in the traditional sense—bare shoulders, smooth skin, a lithe figure with tension carved into every line.
But it's the posture that guts everyone.
Defensive vulnerability.
They sit on the floor. One leg curled. One arm wrapped around their ribs. Face turned away.
It's not a pose.
It's a shield.
And suddenly, every brushstroke in the room softens.
Even Rei's.
Even Yuuto's.
Fifteen minutes in, Suzu does the unthinkable.
She speaks softly. Kindly.
"Do you want us to draw you as you are? Or how you wish to be?"
Nocturne doesn't turn.
But slowly raises one hand.
And signs.
Both.
Rei's brush stutters. Then shifts.
She paints two versions.
One: hunched, guarded, cloaked in blacks and blues.
Two: standing tall, wrapped in streaks of silver and sky.
Yuuto draws a diptych: Presence and Absence. One silhouette filled with scribbled words. One with none at all.
Haruka sits back, not sketching.
Just watching.
Then—quietly—she walks out of the studio.
Kaito finds her on the fire escape ten minutes later, smoking a cigarette she doesn't even seem to like.
"She reminds me of me," Haruka mutters. "Back when I was still trying to disappear while pretending to shine."
Kaito leans on the railing.
"She didn't say a word, and I still felt everything."
"That's what real presence is," Kaito says. "It's not about volume. It's about weight."
Haruka exhales smoke through her nose. "She's going to wreck us, isn't she?"
"Probably."
"And we're going to make art from the wreckage."
"Absolutely."
Back inside, the session ends without a word.
Nocturne stands.
Puts on their coat.
Looks once—just once—at each of them. A pause. A nod. A silent thank you none of them know how to accept.
Then they leave.
Not through the door.
Through the back window.
Because apparently, ghosts need drama too.
Afterward, the silence is weirdly comforting. Heavy, but welcome.
Yuuto is the first to speak.
"I want to be that brave one day."
Rei glances at him. "You already are. You just don't know it."
He nearly cries again but settles for choking on a rice cracker.
Haruka walks over to her sketchpad. Tears out a page.
"Leave this for her," she says, setting the sketch on the table. It's a single image: a closed eye, surrounded by stars.
"Why?" Kaito asks.
Haruka shrugs. "So she knows we saw her. Even if she never lets us look again."
That night, Kaito finds a new note tucked into the curtain folds.
Thank you for the light in the dark.I'll come again. But not yet.Let me be a mystery a little longer.
— Nocturne
He smiles, folds it carefully, and places it in the same folder he keeps everyone's weirdest requests and best confessions.
His art family is growing.
And every member is a little broken.
A little brilliant.
And absolutely naked—in all the right ways.
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