tacerevatum:

    _{“Cannot complain.“ His answer to her query was somewhat vague, though it was purposeful. His problem as of late had been boredom, not necessarily anything that complaints could deal with. With the stables under construction, it left him with few places to go other than the Crystarium, and quite frankly, he was tired of reading educational texts. If he wanted literature, he would have to venture out.}

    _{And he simply did not enjoy venturing out into the capital city. It bustled and was loud, rushed and hurried passerby and simply was not an environment he ever felt comfortable in alone. With classmates that were more than willing to walk the stone paved streets with him, it was not so bad, but alone, he feared a faulty sense of direction would be his downfall.}

    _{He would not ask Naminé to join him in such a conquest, anyway. Her company did stir things up slightly, and he was thankful to be a man of simple pleasures in that way, despite not actually being a man by any legal binding. She gave him company, a thing not often found with his classmates that tended to leave him be. However, she also gave him curiosity over things he otherwise would have no cares about: art.}

   _{“How about yourself? Still drawing, I imagine.” He stopped before a door and fumbled a hand into his blazer’s side pocket. The light jingling of a key could be heard, but it took a few moments before he had grasped it.}

         _{Vague as the answer was it was good to hear that there was nothing immediately awful that was going on with him. A glance at him told her that he was primarily telling the truth, or at least she thought so, though sometimes it was hard to tell. Ace was a stoic young man and one that did not express much emotions when it came to some things, and she liked to think that she could read him at least a little bit.}

         _{As he went through his pocket to find his key that she could faintly hear she nodded agreeably. ”Yes, I have been drawing still,” because it was one of the few things that she knew in the world. Art was her first connection to things outside of the cage that she had been put inside of, and art would continue to be there for her. Or at least, she thought it would, as she found it hard to express herself through means other than art, even though she was an open book.}

         _{”Otherwise I have been alright,” the blonde continued as she watched her friend pull the key out from his pocket and slide it into the door’s lock. She could hear the door unlocking as the key was turned and she let him pull open the door himself before stepping through into the threshold of his room.}

         _{Once or twice before she had been in there, though primarily just for a few moments, dropping stuff off or seeing him briefly. Really, as far as she knew, Ace was rarely ever in his room and instead was just about anywhere else in the school that he attended. Most of the time she found him in random classrooms or the library or outside in the gardens, but almost never in his room.}