QHO-0006: The Pencil Had Dulled, but Not the Need to Understand Him

Folded twice, then once more, like something meant to be forgotten but too precise to destroy.

The sketch was crumpled and discarded in the wire bin in the art studio. The subject is turned away, shoulders slightly hunched, as if mid-movement. His head tilts, caught at that unknowable angle between defiance and vulnerability. Even unfinished, the likeness is unmistakable.

Underneath the portrait, in different pencil pressure a line is written:

Not watching. Studying. Difference matters.

Whoever drew it didn’t sign it.

Some say it’s a sketch of school heartthrob Greg Beauchamp, the boy who moved like he knew everyone was watching, but maybe it’s not Greg at all. Maybe it’s a memory of a moment that never quite happened. Or maybe it’s how the artist wished he could remember him: half-turned, not laughing. Just there.