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Serendipity
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i. (May 1)
Right after their Math class, lunch soon came, and students started pouring out of their classrooms. Some were grouped in pairs or in three's while others chose to be by themselves. Only a few were left in the rooms, and—
"What do you have for lunch?"
Kise moved his chair closer to Shizuka to get a better look on her lunchbox. The girl paused from reading, her eyes switching from the words '...I knew where eternity, our hearts and our souls all lay...' to connect with his eyes. He looked away in response — when did it get this hard to look into someone's eyes? — and proceeded to stare at the food on her table. They were colorful, he noticed — a neat array of white, yellow, red, pink and green — and, somehow, he thought she made this. And, he—
"Would you like some?" she asked, smiling and a bit teasing. "I made it so I can't guarantee the taste."
He blushed in embarrassment. Was he that obvious about it or—?
"T-This tastes too good! You really made this?!"
"Yeah. I'll cook for you, if you like."
"Sure! As long as you cook the food, I'll eat it!"
She laughed, and it rang in his ears like waves crashing down on a shore.
And from there, from that short conversation, from this serenity and her he thought—
'Shizuka would be a good wife.'
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"Are you okay? Your face is all red."
"No, I'm fine! A-Ahaha! Anyway, can I have more of those egg rolls? They're really—"
ii. (May 5)
In this world, some things were inevitable, and one of them was change. One way or another, it would happen no matter how much you resisted it. It would find its way into you, crawl into your veins and your bloodstream and bring out what could be the best or the worst thing from you, leaving marks or scars that anyone could interpret however they wanted.
But how could changes happen in such a short time?
"You look depressed," Shizuka asked, her book was now closed and her attention diverted to him. "Did something happen?"
Kise let out a sigh. Shizuka, who he found in a book store (of course, that place was a bookworm's natural habitat), was now walking with him on their way to the station.
"Well—"
As soon as their classes ended, he went to Seirin to check on his former teammate. It went pretty well - if you exclude the fact that girls started flocking around him (God, he almost couldn't feel his legs after that), Kurokocchi rejected him, and a rookie suddenly challenged him into a short battle. He had to admit - the rejection did hurt a bit. He was half-serious about what he told Kuroko, that he wanted to play with him again, wanted to be his teammate again, but he rejected his offer. He even told him he didn't consider him as a best friend, and, hey, who wouldn't get hurt when the person you thought of as your closest friend didn't consider you as one?
Not only those but Kuroko Tetsuya wasn't the same guy he knew back in middle school. He changed, and it was drastic that it was almost as if he couldn't recognize him anymore. There was something about him, something that reminded him of Shizuka's silent ferocity; the silent defiance which told him "nothing can stop me. Not even you or anybody else."
Then, there was that guy called Kagami. 'The nerve of that guy' – he thought he could actually beat him? He couldn't care less about him being a beginner - he got his head above the clouds too much. This was reality, and no matter how much he struggled, he would still be far below him.
And to think he was the one who made Kuroko turn against him, Kise would definitely crush him with everything he got.
"Wow," Shizuka said, repulsed by what he told her. "Aren't you an arrogant kid?"
"What?!" Kise almost whined. "I'm the one here who got rejected, and you think I'm the bad guy?!"
She shrugged her shoulders and looked up. "Not really. More like you're the one here who's got his head above the clouds too much."
He crossed his arms and huffed his chest. "And why is that?"
"Okay, first of all—"
She walked ahead of him; her pace was suddenly faster than him despite being considerably small in height. Even though he was getting lectured, he thought it was kind of amusing to watch; she was trying too hard at this when she really didn't have to.
"You gotta accept that changes happen all the time."
"I know that," Kise retorted. "But how can it happen so fast?"
Shizuka looked up for a while; her pace was slowing down as she pondered about it. "Well, I don't know exactly but—"
Her eyes turned towards his, and she was now walking beside him. "Changes are so dynamic that every little action we take causes some kind of reaction."
"Reaction...? Like chemistry?" he asked a bit doubtful and amused at the same time. "Are you going scientific on me now?"
"Idiot." She poked his side, and he jolted up. That was the weak part of his body – how did she even know about that? "What I mean is that reaction creates an entirety of possibilities that could happen anytime."
"So? You mean even if I think of anything right now, it will change something about me?"
"Yep. Even when you want something, you change, too."
Was that how Kuroko changed? When he said he promised Kagami that they would defeat the Generation of Miracles, it drove him to take drastic changes?
In some sense, it was scary – changes always had this kind of effect, huh? But, despite knowing that, he thought it was good. It would be good if he, too, changed even for a bit.
"You can use some of that change, too," Shizuka grinned, cheery and somewhat mischievous like a Cheshire cat. "It's free."
He arched an eyebrow. Him…? Change? 'How?' "Example?"
"Um... Let's say you start taking note of your teammates!"
"Taking note?" he asked, sceptical but not agitated, and a bit surprised by what she suggested. "What do you mean?"
"Take note of their abilities, their personalities, or even the things they do. Just by doing those, you'll change little by little!"
He didn't quite understand that. How could those change him when he was already better than them? In what way could they affect him?
"You are the ace, aren't you?" she said, positive and cheerful. "You're like the pilot who will take them to victory, so I think you should do it!"
The ace.
Wasn't he the ace just because he was the best one in the team? Wasn't he assigned to that position because he was far more skilled than the seniors? He couldn't see the point of it. Why bother with those things anyway?
"But, don't let it get into your head."
Taken aback, he paused from walking. "What?"
She turned, half of her was facing him with her black hair falling from her shoulder blades. There was a strange look on her face – something that was so distant yet familiar, ordinary yet unusual. Something told him he had seen this before – this look of knowing nothing and absolutely everything.
And, "If you take things for granted, you'll find yourself crying sooner or later."
Kise blinked for a bit before he let out a laugh. Did she even experience them? With her books and her little world, how could she even know about those things?
"Like that will happen," he smirked nonchalantly.
"Well, who knows?"
Then, Shizuka smiled, and it was the kind of smile that knew something; something that had to do with him and everything else in her own little world but she, of course, would only let him guess and think and speculate whatever he wanted until there was so much to learn and he would only get himself lost and wandering in nowhere.
"You know what 'Lao Tzu' once said?'Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.'"
For the very last time (and there won't be another one, hopefully), he gave up.
"Alright, alright. I'll think about it."
iii. (May 10)
"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person."
It was nearly 2:30 in the afternoon, and their substitute teacher went out early today (their actual teacher was out cold and won't be back for two more days.) Since they still had twenty minutes before their next subject, most of the class began chatting with their friends or seatmates.
From what started at the simple question of "What color do you like?" to "Do you think black holes are space portals?", their conversations took a new turn with Shizuka randomly quoting a line from one of the books she read, and every time, Kise would only end up staring at her. He wasn't disturbed or anything— her quotes were always thoughtful and simply beautiful, but— he was confused. He was puzzled and bewildered and just feeling utterly lost for everything, because every time, his mind would just go through a passage of thoughts and images and memories that could somehow connect to her words, to her feelings and to her very core, and somewhere along the way, he would suddenly hit a wall and get stuck there without knowing what to do and where to go to next. Those words and letters would keep on playing on in his mind like a broken record, with him searching and searching for the answer without any idea of what is was, so what is it? What is it, Shizuka, tell me, tell me, what is it? What is—
"Is that from an English book?" he asked; a bit frustrated at his self for not coming up with anything smart to say. God, he could've thought of something better than that. But—
Like always, she didn't mock him. Instead, she just smiled.
"Yes," she said, looking distant and dreamy. "The title is Paper Towns written by John Green."
He propped his chin on his hand and said, "It's a love story, isn't it?"
She laughed, light with a bit of mischief. "Of course. Love stories are one of the best things in life, you know?"
And, in that question, Shizuka was, once again, a jigsaw puzzle that he wanted to put together. The pieces of her were scattered around them like the petals of a rose, so he tried to pick one up, place it on his hand, and—
"What is so amazing about love stories anyway?" he asked, seemingly nonchalant but careful not to break a part of her. "What do you like about them?"
Shizuka stared at him for seconds as if looking far beyond in his eyes, and she smiled as she found something in him. She brought out a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a stick figure on it.
"See this person? Let's say this is you," she said, pointing at the drawing. "You start from the 'you' who is made from facts and truths and opinions you were made to believe."
Then, she drew another figure just a few inches away from the first one. "Then, you meet this person," she looked up at him, and he to her, before she returned on the drawing and pointed her pencil on the newly drawn figure. "And somehow, you find a connection with them just by seeing the slightest change in the person you imagined them to be."
Carefully, she drew an arrow from the first figure pointing to the second figure. "That connection, however small or big it is, is what will draw you into them."
"Huh."
Weirdly enough, this was starting to confuse him more than ever. There was this wave of familiarity inside him that had been telling him, "you know it, you already know about it, Ryouta, but—" then again, he couldn't point it out. What was it? When did this ever happen to him?
"From that point on, things just started getting, well, magical," she giggled at her own use of words as if she couldn't believe she was saying them out loud. "It's like you're bewitched. You are suddenly under this spell that causes you think about them all the time. Like when you're walking and when you're in the middle of a class, they just start popping into your mind. Even when you're eating or when you're taking a shower, you end up wondering what they're doing or what's going on in their mind.
"You even start associating them with the things you see. Like, um, for example, a flower. When you see a daisy popping from a sidewalk, the first thing you think about is that person."
She then started folding the paper, and Kise kept on watching her.
"And even the smallest of things they do will matter to you," he fingers glided across the paper which then turned into a wing. "Like when they smile, they look really pretty for some reason. When they look at you, you get this warm and fluttering sensation in your chest and in your stomach, and you start thinking of stuff about them and get embarrassed about it."
"To think that's just the first stage; falling in love can be one hell of a roller coaster ride," she said as she looked at him with wonder and excitement. In her hand, a paper airplane was formed. "It's one of the things I like about love stories, and there are much more amazing things about them."
She turned towards the window, pointed the paper airplane to the sky, and with one push, it began sailing gently along with the wind. With a grin playing on her lips and the sunlight tangled up with her hair and lost in her eyes, Kise found Shizuka the most beautiful. And—
'... Shit.'
Everything became clear to him.
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(That is how Kise realizes that he is, in fact, in love with Shizuka.)
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Nico: Edited. Hehe.
