about this space between sunrise and sunset
"i would have drawn you for free," yuuta says.
1k. yuta/maki. fluff.
also on ao3.
Yuuta gets a day off once a week.
In a city as big and busy as Nairobi, he could have easily filled it with an entire day's worth of festivities. Instead, he finds his feet always carrying him down a familiar path on the main road, towards a small coastal town that tasted of salt and curry. Different artisan shops line around the seabank, multi-colored fairy lights dusted all over the poinsettia trees and lighting the walkway. The shoreline is a magnificent thing of beauty in itself, and Yuuta fings himself being able to spend hours and hours just people watching and looking at the waves crashing into the shore.
There are always festivals and there are always people.
But Nairobi, for Yuuta, is at it's most beautiful when the sun is just shy of setting: golden streaks line up against the sand, the clouds lounge lazily in the sky, floating carelessly like dandelions in the wind. There are times he thinks maybe the world is too large to contain his heart: but then there are little pockets of humanity like this—sunlight streaming in through the trees or the sound of children laughing—that he is reminded, again, just how much room he can still fit in.
It’s a bit lazy here, the mood of the city, somehow slower and more languid. It's a stark contrast to what he's used to in Tokyo: a city that never sleeps, a city that pounds footsteps into train stations endlessly, a city that never pauses to take in all that it's contained.
It's sometimes overwhelming, that feeling. Yuuta can't breathe it all in as fast as he can, no matter how hard he keeps trying. And so he draws.
-
His favorite spot to draw at was at a small embankment by the coastline.
The sea licked at his feet and he tasted salt in the air. His hair is in permanent disarray, his fingers are coated with grains of sand that never seemed to go away. Salt and coal clung to his clothes and skin. But always, when Yuuta situates his drawing pad and pencil, this is it.
When the first stroke from his pen meets paper, it then, is bliss.
-
And then, soft, there's a touch against his shoulder.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
Yuuta whips around slowly, bracing for something. He always traveled with his katana just in case. Seasoned into fighting he was now, he still can't help but be a sorcerer first. Only when his eyes finally make out the slender hand, and his eyes travel all the way to the rest of its arm, and then its body and its person and the familiarity, suddenly there is no threat at all.
Instead it's only, it's just, it’s finally: Maki, looking like sunlight filtered in and so golden it hurt, Maki.
"M-maki?"
Maki grins. "Konnichiwa!"
"What—" Yuuta stands up. Her hair is loose and tumbling down her back, and he eyes it, even as he steps closer to her. There's a pang in Yuuta's heart he registers as longing. He missed her. "W-what are you doing here?"
"How rude," Maki snatches the sketchpad he clutched to his chest, eyes lit in amusement. "Is that any way to greet your classmate?"
There's a pencil—his pencil, he now notes—nestled against a knot of her dark hair by her ear. He doesn’t know why he notices that more than anything else, but, he does.
"S-sorry," Yuuta looks away, sheepish. "I just. I didn't expect to see you here. See anyone, really."
"I didn't expect to survive an 18-hour flight either," Maki hums, looking over his drawings. "And yet here we are."
Right, Yuuta thought looking at her eyes trailing over his drawings. Here we are then.
Yuuta coughs. "Is everything okay back home?" Else why would she be here?
"Fine, fine," Maki waves him off casually, giving back his drawing pad. She turns to the sea, digging her bare feet into the sand. "Gojo-sensei needed to pick up a cursed weapon but was called for an emergency mission at the last hour. Nanami-san was also busy. So they sent me instead," her eyes flicker to him. "Sorry if I wasn't what you expected."
Yuuta didn't even hear his feet take the two steps closer. "No," he starts, trying to catch her eye. "No—um—not at all. I—I'm glad you're here, M-maki-san." He was nervous, and she knew he was, because the honorific only spilled out when he was.
Maki clamps a hand on his shoulder, grinning. "That's good then. Cause you're stuck with me for 2 more days!"
"How so?" Yuuta asks. Her palm was so warm, it burned through his tunic.
"Ijichi couldn't get me an earlier flight," Maki shrugs, facing the sea and the sky again. “Not complaining though.”
"I see," is all Yuuta says, still wracking his brain around her in general. It was always harder to concentrate when Maki was around. Even continents away, she still found a way to leave him breathless.
"I didn't know you drew," Maki says, tipping her chin at his sketchpad and oil markers.
"I don't, not really," Yuuta looks down at his stuff. "It's—it’s really just a hobby."
"Well, your drawings are not not terrible," Maki teases. "Must be doing something right with this hobby then."
Yuuta smiles a little at that.
Maki suddenly looks around for something along the seabed, stalking over to the shallow end and digging through it. She finds an old messenger bottle and saunters over back to him, grinning in open amusement. She stops just a few feet from him and situates the bottle at his feet. Then she drops a single coin into it.
"Will you draw me then?" Maki smiles, and it’s a sweet, careful thing; like holding a bird between his hands.
Yuuta flushes, and she notices, and she laughs then and it sounded as free as he felt. The wind, the sun, the light in her eyes. He fishes for the coin and tosses it back to the sea before turning back to her.
"I would have drawn you for free," Yuuta says.
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