first.
He hears her call his name quietly, somewhere off in the distance. Despite its low volume, her voice still manages to weave its way over and around the many bowed heads around them. It taps on his shoulder and tugs at his chin with gentle hands.
He turns around and she smiles, off in a corner of the classroom like a solitary star floating in its own galaxy. There is fabric on her lap and bright spools of thread on her desk.
He blinks and then he is next to her, watching her peer up at him expectantly. "Like this," he tells her, before she can ask, plucking the needle and thread from her cool palm.
He can feel her gaze on him, flitting between his hands and face. It's as though it is a heavy weight tied sloppily around his neck and wrists, anchoring him to the spot. He frowns, trying to focus on the fabric bunching in his leaden hands.
"Here," he finally tells her, handing back the materials. She reaches out, her skin brushing against his. His fingertips twitch.
"Thank you, Ishida-kun," she says, softly and sweetly. She's still looking up at him. "I'm sorry for the trouble."
He tastes salty wind in her words and nods shortly. Then he moves to another student and the world refocuses again.
Orihime Inoue is an odd girl, they say.
She makes strange foods and babbles nonsense about robots and aliens. She daydreams occasionally in class, with stardust and distant satellites for eyes. She's forever tripping on air from distracted, dancing steps. She's beautiful, in every sense of convention and eccentricity.
Her older brother is dead. She lives alone.
She likes to make conversation with strangers. She likes to sew. Sometimes, she likes to sit in companionable silence and whittle away the time without words.
"They say I'm an odd girl," she told him once, early on. She had beamed as though it was a rare compliment, but he took it as a disclaimer.
"It makes no difference to me, Inoue-san," he'd replied, and she'd turned at that, studying him with her wide, headlight eyes.
In truth, such gossip had never really meant much to him. Maybe it's because he's a bit odd, too.