Murai never understood why people thought muses had to be docile, dreamy, or romantic. His muse argued with him. He corrected his grammar. He finished calculus problems in his head like he was breathing, and rolled his eyes when Murai lit up over bone angles or clavicle curves.

He also had a perfect GPA at Todai. Murai had looked it up once. Not because he cared about school — he didn’t — but because he needed to understand the contradiction.

“You want me to what?” the boy had said the first time Murai asked him to pose. Nude. “You’re joking.”

He wasn’t. And strangely, the boy hadn’t refused. He’d just sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose like Murai was a bad habit, and eventually agreed — under specific conditions.

No sketching unless the heater was on. No touching. No staring once the session was over.

But the thing was: Murai always stared. Not lasciviously — not exactly. It was more that he couldn’t stop analyzing him. That lean androgyny, the way his form shifted depending on the light — sharp in some moments, soft in others. Shoulders like lines drawn in ink. Hips that dipped gently but not quite delicately. A presence that was both aloof and unknowingly intimate.

Murai liked to draw him when he was reading. Or drinking tea. Or exhaling so slowly it made his ribs stretch like sculpture.

“You draw me too feminine,” the boy once murmured, watching over Murai’s shoulder.

“No,” Murai replied, pencil in hand. “I draw you as you are.”

The boy didn’t answer, but his cheeks turned the faintest shade of pink.

Murai sometimes wondered if he liked being seen. Not in a vain way — not like other models. But in that rare, painful way brilliant people sometimes crave understanding. And maybe that was why he kept returning. Not for praise. Not for Murai’s sketchbook.

But because when he was bare — academically accomplished, impossibly smart, and still vulnerable beneath Murai’s linework — he was finally known.

“You can return to the previous pose.”