𝙱𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚊𝚠𝚗 - 𝚃. 𝚃𝚘𝚢𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚜𝚞 𝚡 𝙾𝙲

Chapter Twenty Three

Volunteering at Esuha Community Connections quickly became part of Izumiya's weekly routine and this particular Sunday, Izumiya noticed one of the teenagers who'd begun attending regularly, seemed off. Kei had never been the most talkative kid but he was always engaged in whatever project they were working on, so when she had noticed how withdrawn and spaced out he was that day, she grew concerned. While all the other teens and pre-teens chattered away and messed around with the charcoals she'd managed to dig out of the supply room, Kei sat with the hood of his sweater pulled up over his head, staring down at the materials in front of him.

Sliding into the empty space beside him with her own sheet of sturdy paper, Izumiya reached over and snagged one of the smaller pieces of charcoal from the set she'd handed to him fifteen minutes earlier. Her hand glided smoothly across the page as she began to outline the black cat from her comic that had become almost muscle memory at this point, her tone low so as not to draw attention to them. "Something happen today, Kei?"

"No," he lied, bringing his hands to hide inside his sleeves as he set them in his lap.

"Ah, the brick wall response," she hummed. "It's like you're taking a page outta the Ivy handbook or something."

Met with only a deafening silence, Izumiya tried a less straight forward approach; she wouldn't push him too far, but the wishy-washy feeling in the pit of her stomach was impossible to ignore. "Remember that piece you like outside the Lucky Mart?" After another moment with no response, she continued. "I painted that one when my head felt really out of sorts. Almost as if I was going insane because my thoughts and feelings kept contradicting each other and I couldn't understand why or how that was even possible."

Kei glanced over at her, taking note of her attentive stare at what she was drawing. "No way you did that."

"I did," she shrugged. "Two and a half years ago. My hands were blue for a week because the paint leaked all over my hand when I made a rookie mistake with the can's nozzle."

Izumiya kept her tone muted as she carried on. "Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed and the only way I know how to let it out is through creating," she reached over and nudged the set of charcoals that sat in front of Kei a little closer to his hand. "Maybe you and I are similar in that way, Kei."

"What's the point," he grumbled. "No one wants to see the shit I would draw anyway."

"I do," Izumiya hummed as she finished the soft shading on her cat's features and began to draw Fat Gum's shape. "Your section of the mural we'd worked on was creative and detailed. You even have your own style that I think is really eye catching. I bet you'd come up with something interesting."

Despite feeling like she was being honest, he couldn't help but default to thinking that she was just being nice. "You're just saying that because you have to."

Izumiya chuckled softly. "Uh, no I don't. I'm not your parent or your teacher. I'm just some random street rat who started volunteering here."

Kei peered over at her through his overgrown hair. "Street rat?"

"The past few years have been pretty rough for me," Izumiya let out a long breath as she finished her quick sketch of Toyomitsu's shape, drawing him holding an umbrella beside him and above the cat. "I'd been in and out of shelters, sleeping in alleys or bus shacks...anywhere that seemed quiet and unoccupied. I worked, but that didn't really matter. I was never able to get a job that paid enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach."

"Oh," the teen's expression became unreadable as he digested the information she'd just divulged, not realizing just how much he could relate to her after all. "Are you... uh,"