She (TakashiMorinozukaxOC)

Chapter 2: Blue-Grey

Jenni tossed and turned. The sheets were too clean; the air too fresh. There was no lingering scent of cigarette smoke or water damage. There were no sounds of dogs barking throughout the neighborhood or her baby cousin whining from a bad dream in the bed next to her. There was no bed next to her. The room was perfectly lit-- not too light or dark. 

It annoyed her. 

Rustling of the sheets sounded as she turned her body once again, landing on her face into the pillow. Clinging her stuffed toy close-- what once had been a stuffy of Clifford the Big Red Dog was tired and tattered and faded-- she groaned into the pillow loudly. Relenting to her body's desires, she got up from the tatami bed and put her feet on the floor. Her basketball shorts slid down her stomach slowly, hanging off her hips haphazardly as she stretched. The cut-off cropped top on her lifted and sank on her form.

The light turned on at the flick of her finger. Light streamed into the room. 

Takashi stirred in his bed. A flash of light hit his floor, causing him to sit up in bed in confusion. He looked around for a second, collecting himself from the fact that he was blind without his contacts and that there was a strange light in his room. He got off the bed and stood up to look out the window where the light was coming from, squinting his eyes for clarity.

Across the estate, Jenni moved her bedside lamp and tried to angle it properly. Eventually, the light stopped shining into Takashi's eyes, and angled properly on the propped up canvas on the easel. Jenni took a plastic cup from her art set, took it into the bathroom, and walked back in to set it next to her paints. 

The canvas was half finished from the two nights before. Jenni slept well her first night at the Morinozuka estate, but found herself getting up too early for her morning jog. She painted for two hours before she put on her running shoes. The second night, she slept only for an hour or two before she woke up in a cold sweat from a dream she could not remember. Or perhaps a memory she'd rather forget. During this night, too, she got out of the comfortable (too comfortable) tatami bed, angled her bedside lamp, and took up her paint brushes. That night, she was far too anxious about her first day of training at the Haninozuka/Morinozuka dojo. Mitsukuni Haninozuka, the ever-famed eldest son of the Haninozukas, and Takashi, would be directing and overseeing her first day of training. 

Jenni took out her plastic palette and started to mix her paint. One color after another, she ended up with a blue-grey hue that she placed in the shadows of the painting she was working on. Takashi leaned against the windowsill and ran a hand down his face, sighing at the sharp stubble that had grown since that morning. The girl tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear. Takashi noticed that her hair was long enough to reach past the middle of her back and that it spiraled in waves like plains of golden wheat in the breeze. 

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and stood back from the painting, checking her progress. She shook her head and dipped her paintbrush into the water glass and swished it about to release the color. With the rag from her art set, she dried the brush and took out her brown paint color from the night before and fixed a line that she had apparently messed up. 

From where he stood, Takashi could not decipher what the painting was. All he could see was a form of reaching branches, perhaps a tree of some sort, and grey and white highlights and lowlights. 

Her painting that she had given his mother had been hung in the front hallway for everyone to see. Water and rippling waves carried forms of Lily pads and pink flower petals. Impressionistic, the painting was a vision of a pool bothered only by the landing of soft flower petals. The first time he saw it was in the early morning before he left for his morning run. It was dark in the hallway due to the lack of sunlight, and he had almost not noticed that painting. Had it not been for the pretty pink and green highlights, he would have walked right passed it. The dark blue fitted well with the front hallway. Takashi was unsure how she knew what colors would fit well with the house, but she had made a great guess as it looked perfect in the front foyer along with his mother's collection of Edo era paintings and collection of vases.