The smooth sound of the sliding door could be heard as Tagaki stepped into the classroom. Her immediate first glance was directed towards the seat next to hers where a black-haired boy was sitting behind his desk. She gave off two meek coughs before speaking in a weak tone towards her fellow classmate, "Good morning."

At the back corner of the classroom, Nishikata took notice of her from his seat, nervously responding back to the girl, "G-Good morning… or rather, are you okay, Takagi-san?" His usual nervous expression was mixed in with a look of concern.

"Yeah," Takagi slid the door closed behind her before walking towards her desk, "I haven't been coughing as much as yesterday."

That was certainly good news, seeing that her health was improving. "I see… You were coughing a lot more yesterday," he repeated.

"Hmm…, my fever went down, but I still have a cough," the brunette informed.

"That's rough," Nishikata responded sincerely.

For the past few days, it seemed that Takagi-san had caught a cold, resulting in her absence from school for a few days. Her health recovered immediately, and it was great that she's been able to come back to school since yesterday. From his point of view, he didn't get teased by her at all for a few days – a new record. Even though he hated getting teased by her, it felt almost uncanny and strange to not get teased by her for that long.

Sitting to the boy's right, Takagi outstretched an arm and handed him a notebook that she borrowed from him, "Here, I'm returning your notes." Due to her absence from school, she had received the boy's notes from class to copy down for herself, allowing her to keep up with the class.

"Oh, uh, that's alright," Nishikata had completely forgotten that he had lent her his notes, but it felt too sudden to receive them back knowing that she was sick. "You copied everything in one night? I can let you borrow them a bit longer," he offered in kindness.

"No thanks. Today's second period is English after all. I thought I should return them to you soon."

"Oh, okay…," he said timidly, accepting his notebook back into his hands.

"Did you want me to borrow them longer?" she asked curiously, but there was a speck of ulterior motive behind her innocent sounding voice.

"N-No, not really…," Nishikata replied hesitantly while glancing away to avoid eye contact with her.

A pause of silence grew between them. He could feel the girl's eyes staring at him.

"Huh? …What?" He broke the silence, feeling uncomfortably by her seemingly accusatory stare. It made him feel like she was suspecting him of something, trying to pry into his heart.

"I've been absent for two days because of this cold. How have you been holding up?" asked Takagi.

"Huh?" He felt his heart beating loudly within his chest. "'How have I been holding up?'" He repeated the question which was framed as if she was expecting him to feel disturbed by her absence. His face heated up, cheeks visibly reddening.

"A lot of things happened, right?" She added. The initiation of her question immediately drew suspicions from the boy who was beginning to suspect that this was all a set up to get him to feel embarrassed later down the line.

What are you planning? Do you want me to say that I was lonely or bored?

"T-Takagi-san, how were you holding up?" He reversed the question back at her. It was too risky for him to answer it. If he said that he had been perfectly fine with her absence, he would come off as rude or heartless, but if he answered that he felt lonely or bored, then she was bound to tease him, possibly making the false claim that he liked being teased – which was not true.

"Huh? Me?" She widened her eyes.

"Yeah! You haven't been able to come to school," he added, wanting to know how she has been doing while being sick and absent from school. Unlike himself, Takagi enjoyed school – at least more so than him.

"That's true…," she agreed. "I thought it'd be nice if you were with me in my room when I was sleeping," the girl stated with a straight, undaunted face.

"HUH!?" Nishikata reacted loudly. His eyes widening in shock as his face blushed rosy-red. Her words made his heart feel heavy as if it was sinking. And as always, he tried to analyze her words, trying to uncover any secret meaning from them. Surely, this was just another attempt to tease him, but he couldn't help but wonder if that wasn't the case.

What does she mean by that!? Could it be that she was lonely and bored without me?

"After all, I was bored," she added.

"What!?"

"I wasn't able to tease you, Nishikata!" a master of seeding thoughts into the boy's head, Takagi timed her words perfectly by predicting what would go through his simpleminded head.

"K-K-K…eugh….," while still flustered, his face was now mixed with annoyance. He didn't like to be teased.

Immediately, Takagi burst out into sweet, girlish laughter from his hilarious facial reaction. "What's with that face? Aren't you a little too surprised?"

"T-This is just how I normally look!"

I totally thought she was going to say that! I really knew she was! I wasn't surprised or disappointed at all! However… Darn you, Takagi-san!

"That was a bit unexpected," the brunette shifted the course of the conversation.

"What was?"

"Your notes are really easy to read. I understood the English present and progressive forms," she complimented him in the quality of his notes.

"Huh? Uh… yeah…," he looked away, uncomfortably receiving such a compliment from her. "Tamura-sensei checks notes from time to time. If you copy them wrong, she gets really mad," he justified.

"Really? I've been praised for scribbling before though."

This was news to him. "Really?"

"Yeah. See? Take a look at the 11th page," she pointed to the notebook that she had just returned to him.

"11th page of my notes…?" Nishikata began flipping through the pages of his notebook one at a time, counting the number of pages in his head.

1, 2, 3… There aren't any page numbers on my notes, so its really hard to tell which page I'm on… Let's see… The 11th page… Huh!? There's something written here. 'Go back and look at the 7th page.'

Strange. There was no scribbling here; this didn't match with what he was told. He was puzzled.

"Takagi-san, what do you mean by…," he started to speak, only to notice that the girl was looking straight ahead, paying no attention to him.

Ugh… She's pretending she can't hear me! However! That is absolutely fine!

He closed the notebook and settled down on his desk, adamantly showing his resolve to not getting fooled by her tricks. There was no way he was going to proceed with this wild goose chase of page numbers.

Takagi shifted a glance at him, "You're not going to look?"

"Nope!" He stated firmly, showing his resolve.

"But I spent the whole night thinking about what to write."

"Heh, at any rate, I bet it'll keep telling me to look at different pages just to make my look pathetic at the end." He wasn't going to fall for her tricks. This was probably just all a ploy to prank him.

"If that were the case, what would you do?"

"Nothing. I wouldn't care at all."

"But, what if it wasn't that?"

"Eh…," he wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"It might be something really important," she hinted.

"Important?" a seed of doubt was now planted in his mind.

"Like 'you'll lose if you don't read it' or 'something terrible will happen if you don't'," she offered examples to persuade him.

"!" Nishikata widened his eyes at this realization. Not reading what she wrote could be the trap! Now that he thinks about it, being sent on a wild goose chase across random page numbers was too easy of a trap – more so than her usual tricks. Perhaps she was counting on the fact that he wouldn't read it, anticipating that this would be his response.

What am I going to do? After all, it's just Takagi-san teasing me as usual!

"Then… tell me what you wrote," he sought for a more direct answer to this problem.

"I can't do that," she stated firmly.

"So, you can't say it because it's so meaningless, huh?" a bit of smugness grew on his face as he said that.

"If it was meaningless, I would just say it out loud," she retorted.

What should I do? Having come this far, I really want to avoid being teased! However, if I back out now, she'll just assume I'm scared! What should I do!?

A wonderful realization on how to resolve this then struck him.

"W-Well…, I guess I just have to if you insist that much!" he said confidently to portray a change of heart with his poor acting skills. All he had to do was keep a face such that she could not tease or laugh at.

I might be able to escape with this expression even if I get teased!

"Let's see. Which page was it again?" he asked while playing dumb.

"The 7th page," she quickly placed him on track.

"Ah, right, right," he nodded while flipping the pages in his notebook towards that designated page. From there, he read out loud the next string of text, "Look at the back of the 3rd page."

Eh? She keeps on going? Isn't this a little drawn out? But I can't stop now. Let's see… 'Read the English sentence from the 6th line on the 2nd page.' Hm? Her trick appears again! The 6th line from the 2nd page is… "Thank you for your kindness."

He read out the meaning of the sentence out loud to reassure his understanding, "So that means 'Thank you your kindness'?"

"Yup," she said with a smile on her face.

Come to think of it, Takagi-san hasn't said 'thank you' to me yet.

Just as Nishikata thought the issue was resolved, Takagi added a final touch, "There is one more on the very bottom of that same page."

"Hm? The very bottom?" he grew curious.

"Yeah," she confirmed before adding another seed of thought into his mind, "That's where I wrote the most important message."

"The most important…," he gulped, unsure what she meant by that.

Is there anything more important than expressing your gratitude? Does that mean… Could it be…?

He felt his heart pounding faster and louder.

"Here it is. Let's see…, 'You misspelled 'where' every time as 'whare''" He sighed in disappointment. "Thanks…," he said gloomily.

Takagi giggled a bit, "What's wrong? Are you disappointed, perhaps?"

"I-I'm not!" said the boy with a reddened face.

Takagi burst out into laughter.

Darn you, Takagi-san!