You were sitting alone on a bench tucked beneath the bare branches of a tree, the sky dim with the threat of rain, your fingers smudged with graphite as they moved quickly across the pages of your notebook. You hadn’t noticed anyone approach—so lost in the messy swirl of your own thoughts and sketches—but the scent of smoke broke your concentration. A boy had seated himself beside you, close but not intrusively so, a cigarette resting between his fingers and a worn copy of Crime and Punishment cracked open in his lap.

He didn’t look at you at first, just flipped a page, his eyes skimming the dense print with the casual detachment of someone who’d read it before. The silence between you stretched long and strangely comfortable, until he finally spoke, voice low and indifferent, like he was commenting on the weather.

“You draw awfully graphic things,” he said, nodding once toward your open notebook.

You glanced down, suddenly hyper-aware of the charcoal-streaked depiction of something that could only be described as disturbingly intimate—anatomy twisted in symbolic chaos, eyes too wide, mouths sewn shut.

He took a slow drag from his cigarette, then exhaled, smoke curling around the words he added, almost as an afterthought.

“I like it.”