Tutoring Calls

1.

"Where is she?"

Mai had been waiting for twenty minutes. The person that she was supposedly going to tutor has not showed up yet, and it has been twenty minutes over the time she expected her to come to the library.

Math was an easy subject to Mai, seeing as her grades are far from average to the point that it almost reached the mark of absolute perfect—a goal that is marked as 'in-progress' in Mai's set of objectives. Moreover, she definitely needed volunteering hours to fill her curriculum, too, and so far she only has three out of forty.

She definitely needed more volunteering hours.

To solve this problem, she decided to sign up to become a math tutor for Tōō Academy. It would earn her countless of volunteering hours, and even a basic review of mathematics for herself, too.

It was her first day as a tutor this Monday afternoon, and Mai was surely excited to begin the tutoring lesson with the anonymous student. Her teacher did not even bother to inform her the student's name or, as she conjectured, did not hear it due to her hearing problems and thus, possibly did not hear the person's name correctly.

And somehow, Mai supposed that the student would be a girl.

At any rate, the student's lateness that she vehemently had to accept made her hypothesize the situation in her head. Either she had forgotten or willingly chose to not attend the tutoring lesson. It was a fifty-fifty chance that either one was true.

Sighing in boredom and distress, she plumped her elbow on the table and let her chin rest on her hand as she still waited for the person to arrive. It did not make sense to her though; the lesson would start fifteen minutes after the final bell rings, so the person shouldn't need this much time to gather her things.

Eventually though, she had to succumb to reality.

Half an hour was too much time—she had wasted thirty minutes of her time pitifully sitting on a library chair as she waited for her. It was too ludicrous.

Before gathering her things (which wouldn't be much of a trouble since she hasn't opened her binder or books yet), Mai took out the plain hairclip out of her waist long, light-brown hair and sealed it back into place to tighten back her long bangs from falling into her face. Shortly after doing so, she disappointedly walked home.

.

.

It was definitely certain that Mai would complain about the first lesson's outcomes to her teacher. This only made her feel embarrassed of herself to just realize that the person is probably laughing as she imagined her tutor waiting for her to come when she wasn't going to.

It was Tuesday of just another week of school. The only thing the students could be worried about is the math test, which will be taking place on next Friday, so they are at ease for the moment until they have to undergo through studying.

"Sensei," Mai voiced away as she calmly stopped in front of her desk before she would begin her class. With a slight frown, she stated, "No one showed up yesterday for their tutoring lessons."

The statement simply made her teacher sigh in disenchantment. Her teacher did not seem surprised though. The person that needed additional assistance was a very troublesome student. The student was recommended a tutor a few weeks prior to this day, but never bothered to willingly ask for help. So, just last week the teacher threatened her student with detention.

Her teacher simply shook her head, asked, although not exactly intending it to be answered, "He did not?" She continued, "I will be taking care of this matter, Mai, so do not fret."

"Thank you."

Mai gave her a short nod and tranquilly went back to her seat, which was located in the far back. At times the farness that her seat beheld from the teacher was slightly difficult for her. Ever since Mai was born, deafness began to take over her ears, and eventually, she was forced to use a hearing aid at a young age.

Just lately her hearing aid seemed to not work properly, and has not been able to repair it just yet. Thus, her impaired hearing is not precisely corrected.

When she finally plumped down onto her seat, Mai realized that the person sitting behind her is not present, which was, in fact, not surprising to her—or to anybody. Mai often sees his seat empty, but never knew the reason behind it. She guessed it was most likely due to his pure laziness and lack of enthusiasm to school.

"Alright, class," the teacher got up from her seat and began to write something on the chalkboard. "Turn to page forty-two of your history textbooks," she added, "Answer questions from one to eight; answers may be found on pages forty-two to forty-seven."

In an instant, most students uninterestedly opened their textbooks and began to turn the pages until they were on the assigned page. Yesterday they were learning about World War II and did not have sufficient time to proceed to the textbook questions. So, they left their schoolwork to the next day as a work period.

Minutes into their work, the door creaks open to appear a tall student who had a frown on his features. It was also a habit of his to come late to class, something which the teacher found discourteous and careless.

Looking up from her work, her teacher stated, "You are late again, Aomine."

The tan-skinned student did not even bother to turn his head to the teacher, but simply turned his slightly squinted eyes to her, which did not form eye contact or whatsoever. He found it dense of her to simply state the complete obvious, something that applied to a lot of his high school days.

Setting his eyes back to the row of desks, Aomine resumed his way back to his seat, but was quickly interrupted by his teacher's voice once again, causing him to faintly sigh in aggravation.

"Aomine, please come to my desk once lunch starts," she told him as she cleared her throat. "I do wish to speak with you."

Almost all eyes were on him, evidently curious to the reasoning behind their teacher's call. They knew the subject would not be a good thing when considering Aomine being involved though, which was fairly true.

Stubborn as ever, Aomine still did not bother to pay enough respect to his teacher. He plainly brought his hand up and carried out a small wave without turning his head back to the teacher, and simply responded, saying, "Sure."

For whatever reason she wanted to speak with him, Aomine was, without a doubt, uninterested. He merely guessed it was something about a missing project or assignment that has already been marked as overdue and he has not handed it in just yet.

Mai looked up from her work upon hearing her teacher's voice, and slightly shook her head at the peculiarly tall student that sits right behind her everyday at school. She didn't appreciate his lack of effort in school and perceptibly his attitude with other people.

Now that she thinks about it, not once in her life she has ever recalled conversing with him. Mai usually finds him absent, skipping class, or sleeping while the teacher is lecturing the class a lesson, so, in summary, she doesn't normally talk to him. The only time they did 'talk' was when he asked her if he could borrow a pencil, something that she definitely did not get back.

When she focused back to her work, Mai couldn't help but notice the large pair of legs under her chair.

It was a habit of his to stretch his legs out to the point her legs were almost handicapped from pulling them back without touching his legs. Mai had been considering on telling him to nicely ask him to pull them away, but his physical appearance made her think otherwise.

Aomine was tall—he did not possess the average height of a typical sixteen-year-old. Even if people believed that Mai's height is pretty tall for a girl, the tip of her head only reached to about his upper chest or so.

And she also seemed to forget the fact that her teacher mentioned the student that was absent for the first tutoring lesson as a male.

.

.

It almost made him laugh for completely forgetting the slight chance that his teacher was going to talk to him about his absence during the tutoring lesson. Yes, he did voluntarily skip it, but did not even bat an eye on its consequences.

"Why did you not show up for your tutoring lesson?"

"I didn't want to show up."

Aomine's hands were sucked into his pockets as his features were clearly expressing his annoyance to this tedious conversation. The teacher should at least be thankful that he did not lie about his reasoning to his absence yesterday.

The older woman sighed and shook her head in disillusionment. She was hoping that the tutoring lessons would help him get through the hard steps in mathematics since he is not doing his homework daily. But if he wasn't going to show up then this would be futile.

"If you do not show up to the following tutoring lessons, you will be sent to detention," she threatened. The only way to actually make someone like Aomine to follow the rules was to go to tremendous measures. And sometimes, they don't even work. "Please show up tomorrow."

His frown worsened and he wordlessly grumbled in discontentment.

Did he want to attend these preposterous tutoring lessons? Absolutely not. Aomine had better things to do rather than being stuck in the school library as he is getting tutored by one of his classmates.

.

.

On the subsequent day, Aomine stayed put on his assigned seat during lunch seeing as he had fallen asleep during the previous class, and was more than grateful to find that the teacher did not find out. Sakurai, his fellow classmate and teammate in the basketball team, was silently nibbling on his lunch along with another friend that pulled his chair out to sit beside him.

Mai, on the other hand, was sitting on her regular seat along with her desk neighbor, Hana. They eventually befriended two weeks after school began, and started talking ever since. Hana was a little shy at first, only speaking little by little each day until she eventually warmed up to Mai.

"Look," Hana stated, slightly smiling in amusement as she looked over at the group of girls on the other side of the classroom. "Seems like they are finally making a move on him."

The group of girls always fancied the tall student who sat behind her. Their liking towards him was almost too obvious considering the fact that they are quite loud when they are 'whispering' to each other. Aomine didn't seem to notice, which is not that surprising. He doesn't care about them at all.

She faintly laughed, saying, "Congratulations to them." Mai placed down her bitten sandwich on the container to grab her juice box. "Honestly, all they do is blabber about him."

Hana nodded in agreement as they both watched a short girl shyly walk towards Aomine. It was a girl with long red hair who had a relatively flirty smile on her face. Mai didn't know why the girl—whose name was Fuyu—decided to speak with him now. The guy was literally asleep with his face on his desk!

When Fuyu finally stopped in front of his desk, Mai, on the corner of her eye, could tell that the short girl was nervous, but clearly did not blame her. She would be edgy as well if it came to a possible confession. Again, she had no idea what Fuyu was doing in the first place. Heck, she might of only came to him to ask for juice.

"Aomine-san," Fuyu said timidly as she pulled her arms behind her back, her body slightly swaying from left to right. After a few seconds, a frown formed on her face as she realized that he didn't hear her—in other words, he didn't wake up to her voice—which wasn't so surprising.

Sakurai did hear her call for his desk neighbor though, and finally spoke up, saying, "Fuyu-chan," he began, his timid eyes shyly looking at his classmate. "H-He's sleeping, so he must of have had not heard you. Sorry."

The girls' green eyes connected with Sakurai's for a short second and nodded in comprehension, but slightly confused to why he apologized. Slowly, her arm reached out to his shoulder to shake him awake, but quickly pulled it back once he heard him say, "Don't."

She blinked twice—or maybe even trice—in astonishment. Fuyu didn't know that he was actually awake or maybe was awakened by her voice. His tone came out low and quite frankly, bothered by someone interrupting his sleep.

Once his sharp, blue eyes slowly opened, Aomine pulled his head up and rested his chin on his hand. He uninterestedly looked at the girl whose eyes were flickering at him, and suddenly found her quite inconvenient—but then found his eyes trailing somewhere else.

Quickly recovering, Fuyu asked, "I was wondering if—"

"No thanks," he interrupted her in a nonchalant tone. "I'm not interested."

Aomine was aware of the girl's intentions and where this conversation was heading into, and certainly, he didn't want to waste any more of his breath towards it. He was conscious of the fact that they had affectionate purposes in their flirtatious minds.

"W-What?"

"You have no breasts," he said matter-of-factly, not batting an eye if the words impacted her harshly or whatsoever. It was true though, Fuyu did not possess large breasts—and some even say she doesn't have any at all; that was a complete exaggeration though.

Mai and Hana were clearly eavesdropping on them—not that they really had a choice anyway. Since they sat right in front of Aomine, it was hard to not listen to his conversations sometimes. Mai couldn't help but feel pity for the short classmate that had just been rejected by the ace basketball player of the school, even though she didn't know why they fancied someone like him in the first place. He was full-out shallow and only cared about appearances when it came to women.

But when she curiously looked down at her own chest, Mai felt a little bit uneasy.

Is that what men thought about her, too?

Surely, Mai didn't know if Aomine's preference also applied to other men, but it made her feel a little bit uncomfortable and intimidated for some reason. And when she deeply thought about it—there was a sign that she felt offended at his indirect words. Aomine was technically implying that he wasn't interested on any girl that didn't have large breasts.

But that did not imply that she cared for that thought either.

.

.

It was the second time that she waited for her.

Her teacher specifically said that she would be coming to this tutoring lesson this time, and on point, too. But it really seemed like it was a repetition of the day before yesterday, and she certainly did not want that. The librarian that stays after school for a few hours might start to question her about why she constantly comes in to the library to wait for somebody and then just leave half an hour later because they never showed up. It was all too embarrassing.

As she killed her time by tapping her fingers on the large table, her head perked up in surprise once she suddenly heard a bag drop onto the floor right across the table. When she looked up at the anonymous, her eyes narrowed at seeing someone that she had not expected to see at all.

"Do you need something?" Mai asked, thoroughly confused to why Aomine randomly decided to sit in front of her. She thought that it was so impossible to have him as the person she is supposed to tutor that she expected that he was only bugging her—all except that. But, as she thought about it more scrupulously, it somehow made sense. Aomine had poor grades, skipped and slept through class, or simply avoided coming to school entirely.

Mai watched his eyes narrow, and a slight hint of amusement crept upon his deep blue eyes, which slightly confused her. What was so humorous about her mere curiosity?

"What does it look like to you?" Aomine responded, his manner was fairly voiced quite rudely, causing her to faintly flinch in reaction. "Tutoring."

Oh.

To all the times that her teacher referred to the student as a male, Mai failed to differ her mentioning properly. Truth be told, Mai did not want to tutor him—she really didn't. But she was left without a choice, and she really wanted to complete her volunteering hours as soon as possible. However, she is beginning to question her goals.

Mai found her leg beginning to shake in nervousness, totally not wanting to tutor a guy that she found just a bit too intimidating. Moreover, her mind began to go back to today's lunch period and how he hardheartedly rejected the poor girl so easily just for one sole reason.

"Okay," Mai bluntly said, her mind completely blank.

And somehow, she attempted to hide her flat chest as she began to be wordlessly intimidated by the tall student sitting just across from her.

Note: I apologize in advance if this chapter starts out slow, but it's just to finally set off this story. This is also my first try on a KNB fanfiction, so I would really appreciate some reviews concerning if they are on character or not. Thank you!