After story:Devotion male reader insert version

Chapter twenty three-The Pendulum Swings

"Why do you refer to yourself as "Fuuko" instead of saying 'I' or 'me'? You know, pronouns?"

I held Fu-chan from behind, with my arms around her waist and my hands on her stomach as she leaned back against me while working on her blanket. It was hard to do while sitting in desk chairs, but we managed it. The other girls had long since cleared out, leaving just the two of us in the warmth of the afternoon sun. A nice break from the stress of late.

Fuuko paused her sewing and sighed. The party hat on her head somewhat offset the seriousness of her expression.

After about a minute, she decided: "Fuuko doesn't know."

I mulled over her answer for a minute. "Hey, Fuuko?"

"Fu-chan," she corrected with a blush.

"Huh?" Up to this point I inwardly thought of her as 'Fu-chan', but had been calling her 'Fuuko' out of respect for her space. "All right, then; Fu-chan?"

"Never mind; Fuuko," she corrected again, her face even redder.

I chuckled softly. "Could I get off of this merry-go-round? I have a question for you, whatever you want to be called."

"Okay."

"They might sound stupid, but please treat them seriously, okay?"

"Okay."

"Do you consider yourself to be Fuuko?"

She paused in her sewing. "Yes."

"What about the girl lying in the hospital bed? Is she Fuuko, too?"

Fuuko's hands stopped working, and she seemed to be thinking hard. "Yes."

I wanted to carefully phrase my idea. Fuuko went back to work as I retreated into thought again.

"Fuuko? I think you refer to yourself by first name because your body is far away and you're...acknowledging the distance."

"Huh?"

"So, maybe when you recover, you'll start referring to yourself as 'I'. I mean, you're the same age as I am, and your sister never mentioned any problems with your learning ability, so you must have been able to use pronouns before the accident, right?"

"Done!" she cried out, standing and holding up her finished product to show me. She had created a blanket large enough for a large bed. Starfish filled the visible side of it, so many that the background color could barely be seen.

I nodded approvingly, putting the rest of my thoughts aside. "Looks good. And warm. You'll sleep well from now on, won't you?" I gave an impish grin. "Just don't look at the top of the blanket; I'd hate for you to be stuck in Eternal Bliss Mode."

She giggled; a rare treat. "Don't worry; Fuuko knows better now." Having been given a starfish while facing a clock, she finally accepted her tendency to 'space out' when admiring starfish. I was relieved; I'd hate for something bad to happen to her during one of her episodes, and I had even told her as much.

"But," she continued, "this isn't for Fuuko." She rose and walked over to me, folding the blanket and placing it on my lap. "It's for F/n-kun."

"Th-thank you." Truth be told, I still wasn't into starfish. But, she went to all the trouble to give me something that she had worked hard on and meant a lot to her so... "I'll take good care of it."

She smiled awkwardly while shifting her weight from foot to foot. "C-Can Fuuko have a reward for the hard w-work?"

I smiled broadly. "Sure."