Kijou was watching him paint again.  Katsu sighed, and tried to ignore her.  He couldn't really remember when he had first finally agreed to let her sit in on one of his painting sessions, fed up with the only argument they had ever had, but it didn't seem to matter anyways.  She was fascinated by the entire process, but – thankfully – didn't ask too many questions.  Katsu was irked enough that he probably would have responded harshly, and then he would regret that later.

It wasn't, Katsu rationed, that he had any solid reason to not want Kijou to watch him paint.  It was just a gut feeling for him, one he'd always had – one Yokuzoma-sensei had always understood.  Painting was a private thing.  It was precious.  Not to be shared.

Kijou wanted to share everything.

It was probably just him.  He was naturally a grouchy person, and it was probably unreasonable of him to keep Kijou from watching him paint.  It wasn't as if she was doing any harm.  No, Katsu knew he was being unreasonable, but he still wanted to have that little bit of selfishness that said he could want to paint however he damn well wanted to.  The conflict of interests had made him a bit snappy the past few days, and he was taking it out on his paintings rather than on Kijou.

For instance, he was about to do something unspeakable to that geisha who dared to look less than lovely in her kimono.

"Perhaps the blue?"

Katsu's head whipped around to Kijou, who had just spoken, and he barely refrained from growling a reply.  "Excuse me?"

"Perhaps …" Kijou ducked her head, looking demure and almost regretful that she had said anything.  Was he that intimidating?  Katsu tried to smooth out his body language, and was rewarded when Kijou immediately relaxed.  "I was merely thinking, perhaps she would look better in a blue kimono, rather than yellow.  It might suit her coloring better."

Katsu peered at the painting, and carefully changed the color of a small bit of the woman's kimono, near her face.  It did look better – much better.  He turned and beamed at Kijou.  "You are brilliant, darling."

She flushed, and murmured something to the negative, but Katsu wasn't listening.

It might not be so bad to have Kijou with him while he was painting, after all.

******************************************

Yes, here we are again.  Yay.  Hopefully I'm getting back on schedule.

blah: Yes, painting is good, and I can see that you are hyper.  Do you think you could drop me a line with your email, or, if you're uncomfortable with making it public, send it to me?  It's just that responding to reviews like this is time-consuming, and I want to be able to get the chapters out faster, especially when I'm on a time limit, like tonight.  I don't want to be inconvenient for you, and make you stop reviewing, but I really would appreciate it.  I'll still respond to all your reviews, I'll just do it when I get them, and it will take much less time that way.