Volume 1 - Top-Tier Character Ayanokōji-kun [DISCONTINUED] [READ THE REVISION]

SS - Kikuchi Fuka: An Author's Decision

"Bye, Ayanokōji-kun."

"Later, Kikuchi."

And so I parted ways with him...

I took an unsteady breath.

He.. didn't really enjoy himself.. did he?

There was an emptiness inside my heart that kept growing. This nagging feeling that whispered into my ear like Satan whispered into Adam's ear:

This is your fault. You ruined this day.

It felt absolutely horrible. I didn't know what to do. As I made my way home, I could only think about the summer festival with Ayanokōji-kun. Our conversations were often cut short, he didn't really talk much. I didn't as well, but..

I clutched my chest in the hopes of dispersing this horrible emotion.

I thought I could make it more enjoyable by buying him a candied apple. Maybe... maybe he would start enjoying himself more. But even then, his expression didn't change. He just kept biting down on that apple, with his ever unchanging eyes.

Those eyes of his were always special to me. But I didn't mean "special" in the traditional sense, no, more like.. they saw the world, if it even existed for him, in a different light. 

His always-observant gaze never faltered. It stayed the same not only during the fireworks festival, but in the library, in the school as well. I felt like he always looked at everything the same way. I think Ayanokōji-kun never judged anyone, but maybe I'm wrong. He-he.. maybe it's just my overactive imagination as an author. I've always done it. He even pointed it out in the library.

I stared at the ground, hoping to ignore the dark clouds that were throwing shade upon my mind.

The library.. Ever since elementary school, I'd spent my breaks at the library. Maybe at first it was an escape, but the time there passed quietly. The classroom, where everyone talked over each other, was suffocating to me; all I could feel there was that I didn't belong; that I didn't deserve to be there.

But in the library, no one rejected or accepted me. I could be myself there. I didn't have to worry about how people saw me, and that miserable helplessness eased. In the library, I was complete on my own. No one else was there to talk over me, judge me. It was a peaceful quiet.

At first, I was escaping there for comfort, but after a little while—I was there for another reason.

I'd fallen in love with the colorful world of books.

The library was like a grain of rice compared to the rest of the world, and yet that whole world seemed contained within the books on its shelves. In the classroom, I could never be a protagonist, but that feeling I had in the library, that hint of a wish, quietly affirmed who I was.

I felt.. saved somehow. Yes, the library was my own personal retreat.

It was that place where I found a companion. I can still remember it—it was April, just after I'd started my second year. One day, when I walked into the library during break before we switched classrooms, I found that someone had gotten there before me.

It was a boy from my class.

He was sitting by himself, reading, just reading with his eyes. Taking every single word that was written onto the pages of the book he was holding, and understand its true purpose. I was mesmerized by those eyes. Never before had I ever seen someone read so attentively. It was like everything the boy saw was engrained into his mind.

Then, suddenly, something stirred in me.

A boy had taken the trouble to come to the library during a short break to read—I think that was enough to make me feel we were kindred spirits. Did he feel the same way I did? Couldn't he endure the clamor of our classroom? Was the library his abode as well?