Private Finished The Art of Improvement

After a somewhat more stressful week than usual, Carmin decided to get away from it all. Thanks to the time of year, there were far fewer people hanging around the lake than usual, so that’s where he headed. He had his normal school getup on, letting the world know that he was at least in high school rather than some early grade schooler. However, something was off about him. He had at least twice as many flowers growing on him as usual. He was fairly certain it was linked to magic being all weird, but didn’t totally know the reasoning.

Either way, he wasn’t going to bother pointlessly plucking flowers from his body over and over just for them to grow back within minutes. Instead, he was going to draw.

He sat himself down in front of a tree, set down his backpack, took out a notebook and a pencil and began. Or at the very least, he tried to begin.

He was only trying to sketch a small tree a short ways in front of him, but it was obvious to anyone nearby that it wasn’t going so well. Before long, he ripped the page out, threw it in his backpack and started again. This repeated more times than it should’ve, with Carmin looking a little more frustrated with every drawing.

@GrimRPer

Carmin was too zoned in to his art disaster to notice a wolf cub approach the lake. He never even noticed them enter or exit the body of water not so far away. He just kept scribbling, getting worse and worse with every attempt. Eventually, as he was drawing, another pansy popped up on the back of his hand. This caused him to give up early, looking at the uncoordinated mess of a drawing slapped across his page. He let out a disappointed sigh and turned his head up to the sky. However, in the process he thought he heard something and turned his head to the direction of the sound.

He stopped when his eyes met a figure. A small white wolf, a cub, with dark eyes. It almost looked like it was watching him. Carmin's situation had him fearing butterflies more than wolves these days, but he still felt uncomfortable being watched. He was actually pretty sure this was just a regular wolf cub, but he still spoke to it. "Um, can I help you?"

After no initial reaction aside from a head tilt, Carmin was certain that this was just a normal wolf. That only made it more of a shock when Sumi finally spoke.

His eyes opened real wide when he did, unable to get a single word out before the wolf continued.

When Sumi told him he wasn’t so bad, Carmin instinctively shut the notebook. Even if he was going to say nice things about them, Carmin didn’t want anyone seeing his sketches.

“I’m still relearning this, I don’t...” Carmin kinda trailed off before switching what he was going to say. “Can you even hold a pencil?”

Carmin just stared in utter disbelief as the wolf just dissolved and then reshaped itself into a human. Well, almost a human, he still had a tail and ears. It seemed a good number of the island's residents were capable of changing form at will, something Carmin had always been very jealous of, but somehow he still hadn't gotten used to people doing it in front of him. It took him a moment to collect himself after that, but he eventually spoke up again.

"So what, you're some kind of art god and my cruddy drawing skills summoned you here?" Carmin sounded slightly annoyed, even though he didn't really have a good reason to be.

Carmin vaguely knew that a yokai was a ghost or something, but this would be the first time he’d ever met one. He wasn’t sure how someone went from human oni hybrid to yokai, but he supposed he wouldn’t dig into it.

It kind of bothered him that Sumi had seen him getting frustrated and his dumb drawing. Carmin’s face blushed in a lighter green when Sumi brought it up.

“Well I doubt this part is gonna be a reminder of anything, because I quit.” Carmin tried to break his pencil in half, but it didn’t work out. He just didn’t have enough strength to do it. He struggled for a few more seconds, but ultimately, he just gave up and threw it at the lake.