Sketchbook

"Whoa!" I shouted in surprise, barely managing to catch myself when my foot caught on Namine's.

The girl glanced up at me but she quickly looked back down at something in her lap. She didn't even looked startled by my tripping even. A warm, amused smile appeared n her face as she... Ah.

It took me a moment to realize that she hadn't just been sitting on the rooftop of the dorm for no reason. In her lap, open for all of the world to see I guess, was a large white notebook with scribbles in it. Seemingly unfazed by whatever shock she might have had, Namine didn't react as I looked over her picture. She even moved her arm a little so I could see it better.

To be honest, it was horrible. Even a little kid could do better than she had. But there was something else in it, something... I don't know, vibrant?

Vibrant didn't seem right. Full of life, maybe? Cubist? Picasso-esque. Weird. Fun. Cute? Child-like?

Her eyes flickered back down to the paper before she turned to a little wooden case next to her and very gently removed a yellow color pencil from its interior. She didn't seem to mind when I crouched down and took a seat to watch her draw. It was weird; a lot of the artists I've ever known in my lifetimes would have gotten enraged and thrown me off of the roof for peeking.

But not her. It was like she wanted me to look or something.

She just scribbled away, adding a little yellow to the figure she was drawing. Glancing over her shoulder, I could totally tell she was drawing a brown porcupine with yellow shoes.

"So uh..." My voice suddenly started working on its own, like some part of me couldn't stand the silence anymore. Namine glanced up but kept her attention solely on her picture. After a moment, she put the yellow down and worked on extracting a red pencil out of her case. "Did you come here just to draw?" I asked, wincing at how lame that had been. It was almost a pick up line...

She nodded once before managing to slip her second color out.

Geez, aren't you a talkative person... I rubbed at my cropped hair, leaning back on my place on the rooftop as the girl at my side focused intensely on the paper before her.

"He was my friend," She said after a moment.

I blinked and turned to her, my mouth opening to ask exactly what she meant by her friend.' As if realizing it, Namine's head shook, blond hair flying in a swish of anxiety. "We've been friends since we were both very little, me and that man. It's been a very long time since I've seen him. ... That's why I'm here," She said in an honest way, giving me a calm little shrug.

"That's why you came to the roof?" I asked curiously, more than a little confused. What, did she make plans to meet someone on the roof or something?

The little girl only waited a few seconds before rubbing the tip of the red pencil onto her figure. "Because I want to see him again," Namine murmured, though more to herself than to me. A bit of a smile ghosted over her lips, like she was remembering something from a very long time ago.

I didn't have the heart to ask her what she was remembering. So I didn't. But it did make me curious. Why would she explain it to me? I mean... I didn't know her. We'd just met, but somehow she wanted to tell me things. What did she mean, 'see him again?' Did she mean Leon? I wondered what Leon did to her that made her so... upset? Was upset the right word?

It was... wasn't like she was upset. It was more like she wanted to see him again, like she said. Maybe she was obsessed with him? I rubbed at my hair again, a nervous gesture I had picked up from Axel when we first became friends. Geez, Leon, why couldn't you just break up with your girlfriends normally? This was almost as bad as that Rinoa girl, even though you two were still in love with each other...

"I'm not a good fighter," Namine blurted out next, startling me into looking back at her. She chuckled softly as she put her pencil away and then reached for a blue one. "I'm not even that good at drawing." She said in a very quiet voice like she was admitting a terrible secret.

"You're actually terrible," I chuckled, though the vicious glare she passed my way instantly had me reaching for my Keyblade.

After a moment, she smiled.

"So are you, Roxas. But you're better at hiding that you suck."

Ow. Arrow right through the heart. But we started laughing anyway, somehow finding it inside of ourselves to laugh our heads off and fall to the rooftop floor in hysterics. We forget for a little while that we were scheduled for a battle tomorrow, that we were supposed to be bitter enemies. That she had to beat my team in order to get to the friend she was trying to reach.

If only for tonight, I let Namine relax before I had to destroy her hopes tomorrow.

The drawing sat between us as we talked, seemingly about nothing. The topic of her friend came and went, with her only mentioning that they had grown up together. Leon seemed to be a little too old to be her big brother figure but whatever. We moved onto her friend, to the mysterious DiZ, only for her to completely shatter his image of coolness with the offhand comment that he was probably snoring loudly in their shared dorm room with a sitcom DVD on.

I liked this girl.

And for some reason... she made me feel... happy.

But all happy nights have to end... and for tonight, I just sat there talking with the somehow much more animated girl with the sketch book. We sat there and we watched the stars. And somehow, it felt okay for once.

I still missed Kairi... but Namine made it feel like I could forget for tonight.