'Valentine's Day? What utter garbage,'Nonon Jakuzure thought to herself. Yet in her hands, she held a small bag of her own filled with badly homemade chocolates.
Today was February 14th and every girl in Honnouji Academy was determined to give their precious sweets to their crush or lover, but the student council had other plans for those chocolates.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!"
"What!? This isn't fair!"
"This is too much!"
The cries of many no-star high school girls rang throughout the school halls, as their chocolates were being taken from all the one-stars and student council. The day before, Satsuki had issued a ban on giving Valentine chocolates, claiming it would be distracting to the learning environment and was a useless commercial holiday.
As she retrieved another pink and heart adorned bag from a freshman, Nonon noticed the girl's small but exceptionally beautiful design on the bag and thought about her own bag. Compared to this one, it lacked in detail and cuteness.
"No! All that work I made! This is too cruel!" the girl Nonon had taken the bag from cried out. Looking around, Nonon silently muttered,
"H-how do you do this..?"
"Huh?"
Nonon turned red and shoved the Valentine's gift into the duffel bag bursting with other gifts from other girls.
"Confiscated!"
Tch, how could I even think of asking such a thing! I almost lost my reputation due to my naïvety! In the first place, why did I even dare make stupid chocolates for that idiot…? It's not like I'd give it to him anyway…
Such thoughts flowed through her mind but she knew at one point she either had to give chocolates to him or throw the things away. It would honestly be better throwing them away and following Lady Satsuki's ban as a fellow member of the student council. But…
After trashing her share of collected chocolates, Nonon went back to rest in the student council's room. Already there was Uzu Sanageyama, the one person she did not want left alone with. After all, he was the one she wanted to give the chocolates to. Her cheeks tinted pink and, stiffly, she walked to her sofa and stuffed animals.
"Done already? Did you even try to look around for chocolate?" She teased the monkey.
"Actually, it went by a lot easier than I'd expected. All the girls wanted me to take their chocolates for some reason," he replied.
"What's with that? Why would anyone think you're even slightly attractive to even deserve chocolate?" Nonon taunted, though hidden in her sofa was the small bag of chocolates she had been constantly wondering whether to give to him or not. But it didn't seem like he'd wanted any; he did throw all those other girl's chocolates away after all.
"Huh? Those were for me?"
… Is this guy an idiot?
After realizing what they were talking about, Uzu boasted, "Haha! Yesterday you kept talking about how I wouldn't get any Valentines from anybody, but guess who's popular with the ladies? ME!"
Nonon grew irritated at his response, but instead of her usual remarks and lashing out; she only grew quiet and fumbled around with the pillow on her sofa. Kind of worried about the girl, Uzu spoke up a bit.
"H-hey, something wrong?" he asked.
"No, I'm fine. Why don't you go bother someone else? Maybe your fangirls will talk to you instead."
"Something like that didn't really bother you did it..?"
He looked at her and Nonon's head bent down, focusing on the throw pillow in her hands. He stood in front of her and knelt down to take a look at her face hidden behind her big conductor's hat.
"Jaku-urk!"
Nonon's face and ears were red and it was almost as if she was going to cry. She saw his face looking back at her and pushed the pink pillow into his face in embarrassment.
"D-don't look at me like that, you stupid monkey!"
Uzu pulled down the pillow from his face and looked at her closely.
"Is something the matter?" he questioned her. His joking tone vanished and in place was a serious and concerned voice for his fellow deva. Yet, instead of answering, Nonon only turned her head and refused to neither answer him nor look at his face. They continually played a game of cat and mouse with the direction of their faces. After a couple minutes, Uzu grew tired of the jokes and pulled his hands out and held her face so she wouldn't be able to turn. He pulled her in closer until both their faces were just a hair's breadth away from each other. Nonon turned beet red.
"T-take your stinking hands off of me!" she commanded. She tried reaching for her baton but because of where she was forced to look, she couldn't see any bit of her surroundings except for Uzu's face.
"Only when you tell me what's wrong with you. You're acting really weird right now."
"N-no! You are!"
She struggled around on her sofa, trying to gain the upper hand; as she waved her hands around the cushions, something slipped off the seat and a thump against the ground was heard. Her heart stopped as soon as she heard the sound of her death resound through the room. Uzu finally released his hands from her cheeks and retrieved the small bag that had fallen. He analyzed it and thought aloud, "What's this?"
Nonon hid her face and stammered, trying to hold on to her usual disposition, "H-h-how should I know? I-it's probably a hidden gift from one of my fanboys!"
Uzu snorted ever so slightly and Nonon thought for a split second that that was one of the cutest snorts in the entire world before mentally smacking herself and the boy she thought was so stupid but so cute.
"Well, whoever did that has guts to even get in this room, much less hide this," he holds up the bag, "in your sofa."
"Y-yeah…"
"Well, aren't you going to trash it?"
"HUH!?"
Nonon looked up disbelief for a moment, before realizing why he'd said that in the first place. She eyed her lap in anger and let out a meek, "Oh, yeah."
He gave her the bag filled with chocolates and as she clutched the straps attached to it, she stiffly stood up from her sofa. Nonon bit her inner lip and began to slowly walk towards the door, silently screaming to herself not to let this chance slip away. Halfway to the door, she stopped and tightened her stance. Her grip on the bag grew stronger and, finally, she turned around and glared at the green-haired boy. Nonon opened her mouth unsteadily, and nearly screamed Uzu's name.
"I-I-I-!"
"Wh-what?" He seemed to be anxious.
She help up the chocolates with both hands and avoided eye contact with him as much as she could.
"Th-they're… For… You…"
Her entire face and ears were bright red as soon as the words came out of her mouth. There was a moment of silence before her gaze reluctantly shifted towards Uzu. She saw that his face had turned completely crimson as well and no words had come out of neither of their mouths for the past 2 or 3 minutes. Nonon had to break the silence.
"W-well?!"
"Ah…! Um… I, well, uh…" Uzu could no longer use comprehensible words.
Nonon grew afraid. Was this rejection? Hate? Her feelings became mixed and in anger, she let out an outburst.
"WELL ARE YOU GONNA SAY SOMETHING OR JUST BABBLE LIKE AN IDIOT?!"
She huffed angrily, letting all her breath out into that one sentence. Her face heated up, both from her lack of air and the embarrassment this was causing her. She prayed in the back of her mind that no one would come in right now; she might—no, she will die. Looking down, Uzu slowly strode towards Nonon. She had prepared for the worst possible situation beforehand but at this moment, Nonon could not think of a single thing other than, "I'm such an idiot." Yet, as she was about to run out with the chocolates and her dignity, she felt warm hands wrap around hers. Nonon's eyes fell on the blushing, yet serious-faced Uzu.
"Thank you for the chocolates."
"I-it's nothing."
He took back the bag from her hands and smiled.
"I hope this doesn't poison me."
She scoffs.
"Why would you ever assume that I would have even mediocre cooking ski-"
Nonon was silenced by soft lips touching upon her forehead. He had bent down and planted a soft kiss on Nonon's head and brushed away some of the bubblegum pink locks in her eye's way. Nonon was absolutely scarlet on her cheeks and in shock shoved the poor monkey. She then ran off at full speed, her head replaying that single 2 second kiss on their head.
I can't wait for next year!
Uzu, who had fallen on the ground, stared off at the girl who had run from his kiss. He laughed to himself. Who knew the sneaky little snake could be so cute?