Her pencil danced lightly across the paper, a few fainter lines here, a dark outline over there. Katsumi Suoh smudged a finger over her drawing, creating large circles under his eyes.
"It's beautiful." She didn't look up as Izumo spoke. "You're really good, you know."
Still she didn't answer. Katsumi carried on drawing, perfecting, rubbing out and beginning again. She had to get it just right.
When she was satisfied she put her pencil down and slid the drawing to the little girl two seats down the bar. She was clad in a long lolita style red and black dress, a matching hat perched on her pale hair. The girl looked up from the marbles she had been pushing around and picked up the drawing, a tiny smile emerging.
"Do you like it?" Katsumi asked. Anna nodded and handed her the drawing, going back to playing with her marbles, her shoulders slightly more relaxed now.
"How come she gets an opinion and I don't?" grumbled Izumo, but Katsumi knew he was joking. She reached across and pinched his cheek lightly before taking her sketch and hopping off the bar stool.
With a nod to Yata and Kamamoto she ascended the stairs to the second floor of the pub, her heeled boots making a pleasant clicking sound every time she took a step. When Katsumi reached the room she stayed in she pushed the door gently and it swung open.
The floor of her room was strewn with clothes and books, the pile of manga magazines that used to reside neatly on her desk now half opened and crumpled. She stepped over all of this to reach the opposite wall.
The wall was covered with pencil sketches of the same man-her brother. Mikoto Suoh. There were twenty-four in total-in some of them he was in the bar, in others he was asleep. Katsumi pulled a piece of blu-tack from the wall and used it to pin her latest picture up. It was the look he gave her the day he left and never came back; the gentle, brotherly smile he showed to her and only her upon rare occasion and somehow she knew, deep down inside her, that this was goodbye.
With a soft sigh Katsumi pressed a kiss to the final picture and for a moment she felt his warmth, his beautiful, beautiful red. But then it was gone and all she knew was the feel of paper and the smell of her pencils. A tear slipped down her cheek as she stepped away and pressed one finger to the paper, setting it alight.
She sat and watched it burn, her final goodbye, her final show of love for her brother, her King. Twenty-four pictures for twenty-four years, for twenty-four days since he died. Twenty-four pictures for the twenty-four seconds more she would have given anything to have with him.
"Anna." Katsumi said, not bothering to raise her voice, knowing the girl could already see what was happening. She heard the pitter-patter of her tiny feet on the stairs and then she entered the room, just as hurried as Anna ever got.
Anna sat on her lap and they watched in awe as his red disappeared through the window. When it was over Anna stood and left, while Katsumi sat a while and stared at the blank wall.
Sayounara, Onii-chan.
And then she left.