A/N: … I don't really know. Listening to 'No Such Thing' by John Mayer made me think of this fic. I don't even consider Tatsuya and Kirihara in my top favorite characters, but something about these two particular characters made the fic come to life. This takes place when Tatsuya is about five…
Enjoy.
Stay Inside The Lines
"Daddy, Daddy, look what I drew!"
Souichiro Kirihara looked up from the newspaper he had been reading, and his eyes directed themselves over to the corridor where he had heard his son's voice call out to him. "I'm still in the den, Tatsuya."
He heard the tiny feet patter across the wood floor, and then the small brown-haired boy appeared in the doorway. He held a piece of paper in his right hand, and his face was adorned with a boyish smile. "I colored in the sun."
Tatsuya's mother had printed out some coloring pages for the boy about a half hour ago, and the five-year old was making the best of them. Every few minutes he would come galloping down to his father to show him his new masterpiece.
"Let me see it, little guy." Kirihara said, putting his newspaper down on the table and adjusting his reading glasses. Tatsuya walked over to his father and shoved the coloring page in his face.
Kirihara leaned back a bit so he could take in the picture. It was a simple page really, one big circle in the middle and a bunch of triangles decorating all around the outside of the circle, and all the lines were bold enough to handle a preschooler's mistakes. Tatsuya had so skillfully colored in the circle with a bright yellow crayon, and then triangles were a burnt orange. The colors were matched correctly, but the boy's coloring was erratic, and the bold lines could barely contain the crayon, and so the color spilled off of the sides.
"It's… Cute." The gray-haired man found himself cringing at the imperfectness of the lines. "But… If you want to try it out, you could stay inside the lines the next time. How's that sound?"
The brown-haired boy paused, but he quickly nodded, the usual grin plastered upon his face again. "Okay!" he said, snatching the paper out of his father's hands and running off to the doorway with it. "I'll do the sun again."
Kirihara nodded over to him, and returned to his newspaper. The boy had requested that a few copies of each picture were to be printed out, just in case something happened to one of them.
A few minutes passed, and this time gap seemed to be larger than the others, as if the idea of 'staying inside the lines' had forced on a couple more minutes. As Kirihara had just gotten into the natural gear of things again, he heard his son's footsteps come barreling down the hallway again. Alert this time, he looked up from the paper as soon as Tatsuya poked his head in the doorway again.
"I did it, Daddy." The boy walked into the room, and gave his father another piece of paper. "I stayed inside the lines this time."
Kirihara inspected the drawing. It was the same black-outlined sun, as always. Except this time, Tatsuya had nearly perfectly, or as perfect as a young child could, stayed inside of the border.
Unfortunately, the circle of the sun was a stunning light green, and the triangles surrounding it were a dark brown.
Kirihara found himself grinning. "This is great, Tatsuya. Good job."
The boy smiled.
Tatsuya couldn't be as perfect as his father wished he could be. But boy, he sure was trying.