Love Blooms Amongst the Books

Chapter 3 : Love Sparks Like A Firework In A Festival, On The Starry Night's Sky

A week has passed since my encounter with Chisato-san. She has been consistently coming to the library every day, except for Saturday. She said she has something else to do on Saturday, and I don't think I has any right to stop her.

So far, I think she had been progressively better in English compared to when we started. She can understand more complex words from the English lexicon, but she still has trouble in understanding a full sentence.

"Because I've seen a drastic improvement in your proficiency of English, we'll be commencing the second phase of Project Englishization" I said to her first thing in the morning. She slowly clapped to my announcement. "That's good, but what does that mean?" she said, dumbfounded. "Well, in the second phase, I'll have you consume as much English materials such as novel, magazine, movies, songs, and anything related to it" "Consume? Do you want me to eat it?" she said, I don't know if she's joking or something, but based on her tone, I'll have to guess that she's seriously asking for an explanation. "Consume can be used in a word, like you mentioned; to eat, drink, or ingest foods or drinks. Other times, it can also be used like... Absorbing? I guess" "Ooh, I see" she said, while nodding. I'll have to guess that she understands that.

"One more thing. For me, one of the most crucial aspect needed to master English is to regularly converse and applying it to your everyday life. So, every day, I want to spare about 5 minutes where we will be talking with each other" "Ooh, but what will we be talking about?" she asked, curious. "Any topics is fine, as long as we are talking". "Then, can I ask you some questions about yourself?" she said, with her sparkly round eyes. Goddammit, I can't say no to such cute eyes. "Fine, but... why?". "Because I want to get to know you better, I hardly know anything about you other than the fact that you like reading dictionary, and you're a clean freak who will take any given opportunity to clean until you're satisfied" she exclaimed. It is kinda embarrassing when she pointed it out loud like that. "Ugh, just why do you want to know about some boring guy like me" after I said this, her face stiffen and she looked me dead in the eye, and said "No, you're not boring. You're amazing. Do not degrade yourself like that again". I can feel my face becoming hotter by the time, the atmosphere around us felt hotter even though the air conditioners are definitely working properly. I averted my gaze away from her, and when I face her again, she has gotten as red as a tomato, probably after realizing what she has just said.

"Ahem, well, I don't think I have any problem with answering some questions" I said, to break the silence. "Then, I want to ask. Don't you have any friends? I only ever see you alone" she said, I can detect that she's gradually getting better at conversing and forming complex sentences in English. "Hmm, I'm not really a social person like you, I'm the kind that can get by my life without interacting much with another person. But I do think that I'm friend with the other library committee member, Fukumoto Tsurataka, and his girlfriend, Ichihara Arisa. I've known them since middle school, we're all has been the library committee member since back then, though I don't think we're that close. Ichihara has moved to an all-girls high school under the command of her mother, in an attempt to split the two lovebirds because their exam results has dropped significantly since they started dating. I've only seen them flirting while on duty in the library as I've never been placed in the same class as them, only this year I'm in the same class as Fukumoto, but he doesn't talk much with me, only when he needs to bail out of his duty to go on a date with Ichihara that he told me in advance to replace him, and there's some girls that get upset when they realized that it's me on duty instead of Fukumoto. Even though he already has a girlfriend, there's still girls chasing after him... " I stopped talking when I realized that Chisato has been staring at me with her sparkly round eyes. I've been releasing my frustration after being the third wheel of Fukumoto and Ichihara's relationship that has been bottled up for years. "Ah, sorry. I didn't realize that I've been talking so much" maybe I've gotten too comfortable around her, to the point where I became more talkative than usual. Is this the power of extroverted people?