Birds chirped a high pitched melody in the sunlight of the warm afternoon. Kids could be heard laughing and playing through an open window connecting to a house. Sai was sitting down at his desk, the illuminating light from the widow highlighting his painting. As always, thoughts pondered his mind. People called his work a masterpiece, but to him, it was nothing but ink on paper. There was no meaning to it. So he sat in the desolate vacant rooms, wishing he had something more.
"Hello Sai-kun, more art today?" Sai turned his head to his left, he could recognize that one particular voice from anywhere, it stood out to him. Endless light Icelandic pink hair swept in a low ponytail with wild bangs framed a tan complexion giving off a glow to golden eyes with a white lotus gently placed behind the crazy fringe to top it off. There sitting on his windowsill was Aria, a girl of the same age group and on the same ninja team as Sai. Bandages covered the bottom of her shoulders to her wrists and the bottom of her knee to her toes. Royal blue sleeves outlined with yellow bore her shoulders connecting to a collar that stretched down into a cape with a fancy design laced with silver. A strapless white cross shirt overlapped bandages that covered her mid section until her hips, where very baggy and loose royal purple ninja pants rested.
Aria would often come to Sai's house. She wanted to learn more about him. She had heard he was raised under serious training and was taught not to have emotions. He had them of course, being a human being; he just didn't know how to use them. When she first saw him she thought he was a bit like a drone. They became friends soon though, and Aria started going over to Sai's house, to draw with him or talk and then teach him about feelings. Sai started understanding, but Aria thought he still had a ways to go.
"Yes. What about you? Have you drawn any more pictures?" Sai asked. Aria merely nodded and lifted up her right hand. Her fingers spread, fanning out the drawings she had made. A gentle smile tugged at her lips, jumping off the window into Sai's house. While going to sit on the table Aria glanced at coal eyes conveying no emotion, as if they were a brick wall. Her fingers slipped the drawings onto the table as she examined the painting. An explosion of colour spread across the canvas detailing the sun diving into the water in its last few moments on the horizon.
"You drew this last night, didn't you?" Sai nodded, earning a giggle from Aria. "Did you really take this long thinking about the emotions with this painting?" She joked. He merely set the painting aside and took out her pictures. The lines formed a girl on all the drawings, her face different in each picture. "The pictures are of different expressions. I want you to tell me what you feel when you see them." Sai picked up one of the drawings tracing his eyes over it carefully.
Aria watched Sai's gaze closely, hoping she'd pick up some form of emotion. She knew which picture he had; the one of sadness. His eyes became soft, but dull as soon as he answered.
"I feel a pain in my chest." Aria smiled again. "I feel a desire to rid the tears." Sai looked up at her, seeing her smiling usually meant he had done something right. "Based on what you told me yesterday, I'm guessing this is sadness." Aria nodded. She took the paper from Sai's hands exposing the next drawing. "She's smiling," he stated, "but it doesn't look like she's happy. It's a fake smile, she's hiding something." The smiling grew as another picture was shown. It had two girls on it with a caption, making one of them very agitated. "I feel a fire burning inside. I'm guessing it's anger." Another nod was seen and the pictures continued.
"You're doing well for so little time." Aria commented. "Maybe next time I'll have you try to read people's emotions instead of drawings." Sai couldn't say anything to this, not knowing if it was good or bad. He heard it was hard reading people's emotions, but hearing praise made him have that feeling he got to go out and stand on top of the world whenever he was praised. Happiness. That's what Aria called it, at least. Sai finished analyzing the drawings and soon enough, Aria was gone on another mission. Alone at a desk he sat pondering how he could understand more. A pale hand picked up a metal handle attached to bristles dipped in paint, flying across a canvas creating another masterpiece.
Sai wasn't at training the next day. He had stayed at home, his hands floating over canvases creating painting after painting.
"Sai, is something wrong? You didn't come to training today and you never miss training, what's up?" Sai only looked up once to see Aria on his windowsill again before he took one of the dry paintings and showed it to her.
"You said I should try reading people's emotions, so I took yours and painted them." Grabbing the paintings browsing through them Aria was amazed. Sai could perfectly read and copy her emotions, even her being tired and sick. "Is something wrong?" Sai asked her.
"No! No! It's just you copied my emotions so well, I underestimated your learning." She set the paintings down and looked over at Sai, her mind buzzing with ideas.
The next couple of weeks Sai and Aria went around town, experimenting with real people and going beyond emotions and learning about proper etiquette and treating people well. At the end of the third week Aria gave Sai one final assignment.
"I want you to make a painting, then once your done talk to me and tell me what you saw and how you felt. You can take as long as you want, and I wanted to thank you for taking the time to learn this." Sai nodded, and Aria was out with a smile and a wave.
Sai took five days to paint the painting, making sure he never messed up. When he was done, he called Aria to his house, and met her outside under a Sakura tree.
"Did you finish the painting Sai-kun?" Sai smiled and answered yes. "Well, how'd it go?"
"I think, it'd be better to show you rather than tell you." With that, Sai leaned closer to Aria, giving her a soft kiss on the lips.
