It is supposed to be a calming activity for mindless relaxation, but that very concept is foreign to me – even the antithesis of everything I understand.

Across the table, Kazu and Akira are working on separate coloring pages. Hers is a simple cartoon character design with large, easy to fill spaces – it is a sheet made for a child with thick crayons and an unsteady hand. She's planned out the color scheme before even starting, marking each section with a dot of color so she can come back in with confidence as she works the picture methodically from right to left. She is almost a quarter of the way done.

Next to her, Kazu bends over his picture, an 'adult-themed' page of a hawk. His picture has delicate lines and he attacks it the same way he does any task – with joy and excitement. He grabs colors seemingly at random, only looking at them once they are in his hand and he haphazardly applies them to paper with no hesitation. It shouldn't work so well, but for my vantage, it looks like a masterpiece – just like him. Kazu pulls back to look at the entire picture before choosing another one of the gel pens he is working with and diving into a new section.

My picture sits in front of me, colored pencils set out in rainbow order, an eraser at the ready. My theme is an enormous close-up of a basketball covered in a tattoo of swirls and patterns that have nothing to do with the sport. Akira chose it for me, but I regret allowing her to pick for me when I could have done one like hers with less stress.

In the center, I've filled one small section the color in my collection that is closest to the true hue of basketball leather. For three or four minutes I have been staring at it, unable to figure out where to go from there.

Kazu yawns and looks up. He smiles as he sees my dilemma. He reaches across the table and pushes five pencils out of their proper line with the others. They are red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I nod, acknowledging the truth of his choices, for without those colors, basketball would ultimately be hollow. I add one last pencil – the slate gray of his eyes – to the pile. He smirks and blows me a kiss, then diverts his attention back to his work.

After a while going back from one color to another, the pattern becomes established: Akashi, Kise, me, Aomine, Murasakibara, and Kazu. The black lines binding us together obviously represent Kuroko – always present but when everything works together, those lines bleed away becoming invisible.

When we are done, Akira insists on putting all three on the refrigerator. We have to use take-away restaurant magnets to hold them up, but we are proud of our work. As she stands there, beaming at our art, I check my pulse and it is pleasantly ten beats slower than normal. Yes, I think I can get used to coloring therapy.