CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

As Eiichiro walked out of the room, Fujio and Hikari sat in silence for a few minutes. Fujio kept checking his watch and shifting around in his chair. He tried to look up at her for a few seconds, before going back to looking at the table.

Eventually, after a lot of mental debate, Fujio decided to break the silence.

“S-so.... why did you decide to come here?” He spoke. He felt like slapping himself after saying that. It made it sound like he didn’t want her there, and he made it sound awkward as if he hadn’t been getting tutored by her for the past month.

“Well... you tell me! I’m ‘different’ right?” She said different while doing air quotes with her hands, however, she made it sound friendly instead of teasing. Fujio noticed her tone, and he hoped that what he said previously came across the right way.

“U-uh, sorry about the other day. I didn’t mean to make it weird” he said frantically. He wished he could teleport away.

Hikari watched him squirm in his chair, clearly uncomfortable, and let out a loud laugh. This startled Fujio, which only made her laugh more. After a few minutes she calmed down, and Fujio sat there the entire time confused on what to do.

“You know...” Hikari said, with a somewhat serious expression on her face, “you don’t have to worry so much-I'm sure you’ve heard this- but I'm not judging you Fujio.” She said, looking at him sincerely.

Fujio didn’t know how to react. For a moment he sat frozen, trying to process what she just said. This entire time he felt like he had barely been there, or like he was going in and out of the room mentally.

He managed to squeeze out a smile, when he kind of understood what just happened. Then, with perfect timing, the bell rang and Eiichiro came back to the room.

Hikari said goodbye and left, but Fujio barely noticed, her words still floating around in his head. Eiichiro noticed Fujio still in semi-zombie form at the table. He silently left the room.

Fujio, now sitting in silence, finally had time to think about what he just heard. He couldn’t hold back his smile. It felt unnatural to him that he was so shocked by a simple remark. Her words had the same unique ring that they had when he first met her, and this ring let them live in Fujio’s head for days.

“Next time,” he thought, “I should be myself,” and then he got up to go to class.