AN: Heyo, Nezu here! Wow, where did this come from
Honestly, I'm surprised that I even finished this little piece. Even though I'm totally into writing NMB fics (I oshi Milky, of course I am!), I want to have some variety with other 48 groups in my writing! Thus, as requested by
MayukiIsLife, this Furuyanagi fic was born! I worked on it all week and couldn't seem to find the right way to word it until today. I guess I'm only a day or so off from when I said I'd post this? Anyways, enjoy!
On another note, I've made it to the second page of this thread!
P.S. I've got an AnKobii fic coming up as well, so please anticipate that! And like always, suggestions for more fics are always welcome!
Of Birds and Sketches - Furuyanagi
Airi frowns as Akane plops down in the seat next to her, the younger girl staring intensely at the page in Airi's sketchbook. Akane's silence and strong gaze makes Airi a little concerned, but she doesn't press further. Knowing Akane, she would speak her mind eventually.
And eventually, Akane does talk.
"Another picture of Rena?" She voices, not taking her eyes off the picture, "Isn't this the third one you've made over the past three days?"
The two girls were currently at Airi’s apartment, supposedly to meet for lunch. Akane, having been invited by Airi, should’ve known that the other girl would have been busy with another drawing.
Airi shrugs, "I'm really psyched for her new drama. It's her first work after graduating. I want whatever I give her to be perfect."
"You're giving it to her? You're hand-drawn portrait of her?"
"Of her character." Airi corrects, "And yeah. I decided that I wanted to give her a physical copy."
"How many are you going to draw of her?" Akane asks, wondering just how many pages of Airi's sketchbook Rena would fill. It's not that she hated Rena, in fact far from that. Akane loved Rena very dearly. It's just that Airi also loved Rena, perhaps a little
too much."This is the last one." Airi responds, and Akane tries not to release her sigh of relief.
"I have another person on my drawing agenda anyway," Airi continues, and Akane's stomach drops a little.
"And who's that?"
"Jurina-chan of course!" Airi grins, "Her 'Halloween Night' outfit is just too cute!"
"What about mine?" Akane pouts, feeling neglected.
"Anything you wear is adorable Churi!" Airi immediately exclaims, tussling with Akane's hair, and the other girl swats her hands away, tsking in mock annoyance.
"But you're not going to draw my outfit, are you?" Akane sighs, looking away from Airi.
"I did already!"
Akane promptly looks down at the page Airi turns to, only to be disappointed when she sees that stupid yellow bird wearing her maid outfit.
Like her relationship with Rena, Akane did not hate that little yellow bird. In fact, Akane loved the fact that Airi had created a unique character all for her, but once again, Airi seemed to love that little yellow bird
a little too much.These days, Akane wished that Airi would actually draw
her.With a final sigh, Akane stands up, facing Airi with her hands on her hips, “Hey, are we just going to sit here this whole time, with me watching you draw, or are we actually going to make lunch?”
“Let’s start cooking!” Airi snaps her sketchbook shut, smiling at Akane, slightly guilty for making her best friend wait for her. “Oh, hold on a sec… Uh, Churi, you can get started in the kitchen. I have pencil lead marks on my hand from smudging. Let me just wash my hands before I help you.”
“They better be spotless when you join me!” Akane calls as she heads over to Airi’s kitchen, “I’m going to inspect your hands later!”
“Yes!” Airi answers, her spirits lifted a little as she hears Akane’s far more happy tone. She walks to the bathroom, picking up her sketchbook to drop it off in her bedroom. Just as she’s about to leave it on her desk, she turns to the back page and scribbles a little note to herself. She scours the desk briefly, just to make sure that she didn’t leave her second, more ‘classified’ sketchbook outside her room before grabbing her camera and leaving to wash her hands.
Five minutes later, Akane laughs in amusement as she faces the lens of Airi’s new Nikon camera, still holding a frying pan in one hand and lightly covering her mouth with the other. “What are you doing, Airin?”
“I’m taking pictures of you, of course!”
“And why?”
“Is it wrong to want to save memories of my wife cooking me a meal?”
Akane blushes a little, and she shakes her head playfully, “We’re not married, Airi! And did you even wash your hands?”
“I did! I did! See?” Airi sets the camera down on the kitchen table and holds up both hands to Akane. “I’m going to help now! I promise!”
A few days later, Akane sits in the park, a bag of birdseed firmly grasped in her right hand. Surrounding her are birds of all different kinds, chirping happily as she throws more of the feed on the ground. Eventually, she simply cups her hands and allows the birds to eat directly from her. A gentle smile leaves her lips as a small red robin lands to feed.
Suddenly, a familiar shutter sound goes off, and Akane whips her head up. Thankfully, the birds are too busy taking their food to notice. Regardless, Akane can’t help but be curious, so she turns her head more carefully, trying to find where the sound came from.
About ten feet away from her, peering from behind a tree, was Airi, her face covered by her not-so-new-anymore camera, taking picture after picture of Akane.
“You look like a stalker!” Akane giggles, being mindful not to be too loud.
“Sorry, but this looks too much like a scene from Pocahontas to pass up!” Airi replies, a cheeky smile playing on her lips as she walks closer.
“Have you finished your picture of Rena?” Akane can’t help but be curious.
“Yup.” Airi nods, “And my picture of Jurina as well.”
Akane raises her eyebrows in surprise, “Really? That was fast. Are you free now?”
“I’m taking a day off from drawing today.” Airi says, helping herself to some of the bird food and cupping it in her own hands. Not long after, a bluejay lands on her. “Tomorrow, I have to start working on a new project.”
“New additions to your illustrations?” Akane asks, biting her lip. “More pictures of members?”
The bird-lover almost sighs in relief when Airi shakes her head.
“Nope. Not either. It’s a commission this time. I got asked to draw something specific.”
“And you’re getting paid for it?”
“‘Course! I
am a professional illustrator, you know! And commissions can go for a lot.”
The bluejay flies away from Airi, as does the robin, and Akane refills her hands with bird seeds. Meanwhile, Airi takes out her sketchbook from her backpack, once again turning to the back page and scribbling a few more notes.
“Can I ask what you’re writing?” Akane questions, noticing Airi’s furious scribbling.
“Hm?” Airi looks up, “Oh, this? Just a few notes on references I thought I might need in the future. You see, the commissioner wanted a picture that included some birds. After you mentioned on Google+ that you were in the park, I thought that I should go and find you, since there’s always birds all around you.”
“I’m a good reference, huh?” Akane smiles slightly, trying to hide her disappointment that Airi wasn’t taking pictures of
her earlier. A yellow Goldfinch bird lands on her hands and begins hopping around.
“The best one yet.” Airi answers, pulling out her camera once more and snapping a quick picture.
Akane frowns, “It don’t think you focused on the Goldfinch enough in that photo, from the way that you were holding your camera.”
“No, I think I took a pretty good picture of a bird,” Airi confirms, bringing down the camera to view the picture of Akane staring at the yellow Goldfinch endearingly, “After all, it’s the most beautiful one in this entire park. It looks good in any photo it’s in.”
Akane doesn’t know what to say to that, but she’s sure that her blush speaks louder than words ever could.
Akane has the feeling that she’s really not supposed to notice, but she does anyway. Airi’s not exactly the best at keeping hidden, and Akane easily catches the older girl “sneakily” taking pictures of her when she’s doing various things. When they went to the arcade and Akane won a bird plushie. When Akane was planting some vegetables in her small rooftop garden, and Airi was “helping her”. Even when Akane was simply sitting on her living room couch, reading a rather engaging book. And more. Much more.
Akane begins to wonder what Airi could possibly be doing with these pictures. Airi doesn’t post any of them on her blog or any social media. When she comes to the theater shows, Airi mingles with the members backstage, telling them all the activities her and Akane had done over the past few weeks, but the photos are never exposed.
It’s then that Akane gets the crazy idea that Airi prints out the pictures of her and hangs them on the wall in her room, à la creepy stalker. That idea is quickly thrown out the window once Akane almost effortlessly persuades a very confused Airi to examine her room. There’s nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. Just Airi’s usual clean and pristine bedroom and Airi’s well-kept desk with all of her sketchbooks and whatnot. Nothing that really catches the attention.
What does catch Akane’s attention, however, is a new, leather-bound sketchbook that’s Akane’s never seen before.
“You’ve gotten a new sketchbook?” Akane asks, pointing to the darker sketchbook seated neatly on the corner of the workspace.
Airi nods, “Yup.”
“But what’s wrong with your current one?”
Akane gets a shrug in return,
“I could run out of space in my old sketchbook at any given time, so I realized that it’s best if I had a spare. I just so happened to spot that particular sketchbook in an art store one day, and I decided to get it on a whim.” Airi explains, “It looks really nice, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Akane finds herself agreeing, “It looks nicer than your current one. You should try to keep this one cleaner.”
“That’s the plan!” Airi grins cheekily, “I can’t wait to begin using it!”
“I can’t wait to see what drawings you’ll put in there!” Akane’s suddenly excited for no apparent reason, but she shrugs inwardly and just goes with it.
As soon as Akane leaves, Airi heaves a big sigh of relief and returns to her bedroom, collapsing onto her bed, absolutely exhausted.
She had been more surprised and worried than she’d originally let on when Akane made the sudden announcement that she wanted to investigate Airi’s room. And bless her lucky stars when her best friend decided against opening Airi’s new sketchbook (or any of them, for that matter) with the intention of examining their contents.
“Thank goodness that’s over…” Airi mutters to herself, flopping onto her stomach and burying her head into a pillow, “That was a nightmare…”
After a few more seconds spent sulking over the previous events, Airi pushes herself up and staggers over to her work bench. She reaches to the far corner of her desk and picks up that new sketchbook, opening it up to the first page and looking at her previous works.
In truth, her “new sketchbook” wasn’t very new at all. Airi hadn’t decided to get it on a whim either, and she had walked into that art store with the urge to buy a new sketchbook for a very specific purpose. To top it all off, the sketchbook wasn’t even empty anymore.
Oh, it had been used alright. Drawings fill almost every page, and Airi is almost done with her special project.
For some reason, Akane can’t help but think of that new sketchbook on a daily basis. In fact, most of her thoughts before bed these days include wondering about that sketchbook. Theory upon theory enters and leaves her brain, each one becoming more and more unrealistic than the previous. It couldn’t simply be empty.
It’s the night before her birthday, and Akane realizes that this has to stop. That sketchbook is driving her mad.
She goes to sleep repeating the words, “The sketchbook is empty,” over and over again like a mantra, trying to convince herself of what she believes to be otherwise.
It’s Akane’s birthday, and the theater performance has just ended. She receives a letter from Matsui Rena herself, naturally with Jurina reading it aloud to her with a rather humorously bad imitation of the former member. She knows Airi’s somewhere in the audience, but she doesn’t know where, and in the back of her mind, Akane wonders if Airi is snapping away with her Nikon camera, storing memories for just-who-knows-what.
Airi meets her backstage, a gift bag on her arm and her camera around her neck. She sits down right next to the birthday girl, and Akane just comes to terms with the fact that the dressing room was emptied faster than NMB girls during the food catering period.
“Happy birthday!” Airi beams, pulling Akane close for a hug, “Let’s have a great upcoming 24th year, Churi!”
“Thanks, Airin!” Akane grins back, obviously enjoying the close contact.
“I’m sure you’ve been waiting for this, so here!” Without another word, Airi thrusts the gift bag into Akane’s arms, hopping excitedly in her seat.
“What is it?” Akane asks, sifting through the paper before coming in contact with… a book?
“This is…” Akane is stunned as she pulls out Airi’s leather-bound sketchbook, still looking as new and clean as the day she first saw it.
“Open it!” Airi says excitedly, motioning to the book in Akane’s hands.
Wordlessly, Akane flips the cover of the book open.
The words:
“To my best friend and wife, Churi,
Happy Birthday!”
greet her few, and Akane inhales deeply.
Besides her, Airi motions for Akane to keep flipping, and she does.
And what she sees is more than she could ever ask for.
It’s her.
They are her. Picture after picture, page after page. Every single page of that leather-bound sketchbook is filled with pictures of Takayanagi Akane-- the person, not the stupid little yellow bird.
So that’s what Airi has been doing with all those pictures...It starts with Akane cooking in her kitchen, laughing as she did so. Then there was Akane surrounded by birds in the park. There were even more. Akane in the arcade with her new bird plushie. Akane planting vegetables in her rooftop garden. Akane reading her engaging novel on her living room couch. And even more. Akane playing around with Jurina during a concert. Akane laughing as she and Airi splash soap bubbles at each other when they’re supposed to be washing the dishes. Akane singing at karaoke. The second to last page is Akane wearing a flower crown at her birthday theater performance that had just occurred moments before (she’s not sure how Airi accomplished this one, but she’s grateful nevertheless).
By the time she reaches the last page, there are tears freely falling from her eyes, especially as she flips to the back page and sees one final picture that makes everything all the more perfect.
One final picture of Akane and Airi, locked in an embrace. Their eyes are in the shape of perfect crescent moons, and their smiles are bigger than Akane could ever think possible. Airi’s arms are hugging her waist, and Akane’s are threaded around Airi’s neck. They’re leaning their foreheads against one another, staring into each other’s eyes, and Akane wonders how Airi can manage to portray such emotion with a single look in a drawing.
When Akane looks up at Airi, sniffing and hiccuping, Airi smiles and leans closer, so close that their foreheads are almost touching.
“I knew that you were tired of being portrayed as that little yellow bird,” Airi whispers, “And I know you got annoyed when I drew the other members like themselves, but never you. I wanted to make up for it, so I filled this sketchbook of pictures of you because I want you to know that I love you more than you think, and that you mean so much to me that I could draw you
over one hundred times and never get tired of your beauty.”
“I love you too, Airin…” Akane murmurs, pushing closer such that she could lock her arms around Airi’s neck. Immediately, Airi’s arms snake around her waist, and they’re leaning against one another, staring into each other’s eyes, and Akane mentally asks herself what she did to deserve someone as
perfect as Airi.
“Did I get the ending right?” Airi asks cheekily, nuzzling her nose against Akane’s playfully.
“You nailed it perfectly.” Akane says in response, her smile growing wider.
“Good,” Airi says fervently before leaning in and claiming Akane’s lips.
Fin.
Topic: Nezu's Box of 'Shots! (New WMatsui OS! - Think of Me) (Read 22502 times)