Chapter 2: A little after the beginning
"This boy
This boy
This boy [fade out]"
This boy, The beetles
"Nani? You're my tutor?" Bokuto questioned, very fazed.
"I believe, I just said so," Atsuki explained, dryly. Putting her hair behind her ears, she shifted her attention towards Akaashi. He was looking at her, no, analyzing her, seeing if she was really fit to help out his friend.
"ARE YOU sure? I mean, Mizuno-sensei said you were very gifted in math, but in class today—you didn't seem very nice…" Bokuto announced, shifting Atsuki's attention back on him.
"Bokuto-san, she's your best bet right now. Please don't say anything unnecessary," Akaashi sternly scolded his friend, seemingly decided that Atsuki was fit to help his friend. Akaashi turned his gaze back to Atsuki, and added,
"I'm sorry, he's a bit…spirited, but feel free to hit him if you feel appropriate."
"AKAASHI!" Bokuto protested.
Atsuki, raised her eyebrows up slightly, surprised that a junior was giving her permission to do such to his senior. However, she didn't dislike it though, and as far as men went, Akaashi was okay, and bearable. Much more reasonable to deal with than his slightly larger, obnoxious counterpart. The lunch bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.
"I better get back to class," Akaashi said, bowing his head towards her politely, and then turning around and walking towards the first year corridor. Definitely bearable, Atsuki thought.
"We better get back to our class too," She told Bokuto, who immediately had put his hands up as she started to speak. Atsuki rolled her eyes, saying,
"I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to help you with math so you can play in your volleyball tournament."
At least not now she thought wickedly.
"Oh really, you are? Okay that's great!" Bokuto said, right forearm sheepishly behind his head.
"Yes, I believe this is the second time I've confirmed such." Atsuki replied, walking into their class. Today was Monday, so they had chemistry right after lunch, and then P.E. Atsuki walked over to her desk and collected her chemistry notebook, while Bokuto, casually walked behind her.
Atsuki was right when she thought people would forget about her little fiasco earlier that day—as people were not solely looking at her, but rather were gazing at both her and Bokuto, dissecting the situation and wondering if there was something going on between the two.
Oh brother
She didn't like people knowing what guy she was currently talking to, it was better to keep her habits on the down low, better to keep unsuspecting guys unprepared. By having a relationship, no matter how seemingly trivial on the exterior, with a guy to public scrutiny would really sabotage her man harming ways.
Chemistry book in hand, she turned to Bokuto and said quietly, keeping her words clip and to the point—as to not attract more attention to them or to add more to other people's curiosities,
"Meet me after P.E, we can look over you final. I'll assess what you lack in the most, and come up with a suitable plan that will get you the grade you need."
"Okay!" Bokuto said cheerfully, completely oblivious to the stares people were giving him. Or maybe he was just used to them, as Atsuki had a feeling that he was the type of guy who liked having people look at him, praise him—liked being validated by others.
The girl studied his face for a brief moment, deciding that he wasn't ugly but he wasn't cute either. He just looked…different, a bit tanner than the other guys in her class, taller, and more muscular—showing just how much he trained for volleyball. He was also, definitely smarter, and more evil than most boys in her class as he had easily manipulated Mizuno-sensei and was able to pull off a goofy, and dorky façade. Evil and good at acting. He would be her hardest challenge yet.
Her classmates started shuffling out of the class and towards the chemistry labs, she joined in passively. Bokuto maintained his proximity with her but was currently talking to another classmate. Atsuki began rolling ideas in her head. She always picked the guy she wanted to seduce, not the other way around. She always chose easy targets—guys who were easy to read and play around with, ones who wore they heart on their sleeves not guys who played the persona of someone stupid.
Wait Atsuki thought, steps halting as she came to a complete pause before the mouth of the hallway.
If he's really smart, how did he manage to fail math?
Atsuki looked over at Bokuto, who was ahead of her and no longer in close proximity. He was still engaged in his conversation, hands wild as he animatedly talked about some inane topic.
Did he fail math purposely? No, that couldn't be the case as he seemed to generally like volleyball, and so he wouldn't fail deliberately. It had to be because he wasn't prepared for it, or truly didn't understand it. So then, had she pinned him wrong? Was he not smart? But did that then, make Mizuno-sensei really stupid as she was fooled by someone who was not intelligent? No, she refused to believe a woman, especially one with the caliber of her sensei would be defeated by a dimwit. So he had to be smart.
I mean she ruminated,
Intelligence isn't black and white right? Isn't there supposedly 7 different ways to operationalize intelligence…or was it 8? Does it even matter?! The point is that intelligence is not restricted to one domain, so even if he isn't successful in a certain area it means nothing in another domain…so it doesn't make sense for me to call him stupid…on an overall level that is…
Atsuki could feel a headache coming, this boy was so hard to read. She watched Bokuto trot into the chemistry lab, and watched how the small, chemistry sensei hurriedly entered after him. Seeing her sensei rapidly run into class reminded her that she too, should get to class—she really hated being late.
X
Atsuki wiped of the sweat from her face with an oil blotting sheet. She then spritzed some Tom Ford, Tobacco Vanille perfume on her neck, and then on her wrist, pressing her wrists gently together—these were supposedly the best areas to apply perfume. She neatly tucked the bottle of perfume in her gym bag, and untied her hair, letting the curls, now very loose, fall. The girl didn't hate gym, but wasn't fond of playing a team sport or doing any other kind of physical activity with other people because the cacophony of chatter and gym teacher shouting orders made it hard to focus. Not to mention, the greasy, sweaty boys ogling the girls. Disgusting.
She grabbed her bag and trudged back to class, taking her sweet time as the indoor shoes she was wearing was pressing into her heel very tightly, duly noting to get another pair of shoes over the weekend. The pace of her walk was giving her ample time to prepare for her meeting with Bokuto. Her initial step, after picking a target, normally would be to approach the guy sweetly, flashing a coy smile, and being kind—but she knew that wouldn't work on Bokuto because he would likely see through her act as he was intelligent. Or he would question why she was talking so gently, and girly, when she had earlier been more straightforward, and to the point.
So this meant that she couldn't partake in her usual overt measures. She had to try more covert ones, and that excited her and made her nervous at the same. Excited, because it was always fun to try new things, but nervous because a lot could go wrong the first time one tried something.
"Oshiro-san!" A sweet voice came from behind Atsuki, making her stop and turn to see who it belonged too.
Shirofuku, Yukie came up to her, small, sincere smile plastered on her lips. Atsuki wasn't very well acquainted with Yukie, and she only really knew two things about her, she managed the boy's volleyball team and she had a ferocious appetite—there was a rumor that she could eat three rice balls at once. As see took care of the volleyball team, Atsuki had a pretty good idea what Yukie wanted to talk about.
"Word of mouth is that you're tutoring Bokuto-san?" She questioned, but Atsuki knew that despite that innocent smile that Yukie was displaying, Yukie was sharp, and wise. She wasn't asking Atsuki if she was tutoring Bokuto, she was confirming.
"Hello, Shirofuko-san. Yeah, I was asked earlier today by Mizuno-sensei to do so…I hope I can help him the grade he needs to pass,"
"I see, well I know you'll do a great job...though I must warn you—she paused, to look at the hall window—it's supposed to rain pretty hard later tonight, so you should probably finish up before then," Yukie said elusively.
"I don't think I'll be staying that late, haha…but I'll definitely make note of it,"
"Well good luck then," Yukie said, she then waved goodbye, and after that disappeared into her homeroom. Atsuki was slightly bemused, as their encounter was very short and she didn't see why Yukie needed to warn her about impeding weather conditions as though Atsuki kept a low profile, a well known fact about her was that she was always prepared. She religiously checked the weather every morning, and night—but nonetheless it was very sweet, and caring of Yukie to warn her.
When she got into her classroom she looked around for Bokuto. A few students were dispersed around the class, excitedly chatting about evening plans. She noticed him, leaning against his desk, inhaling a sub with meatballs, cheese, lettuce—the whole works. She stared in amazement, she didn't know it was humanly possible to fit that big of a sub in one's mouth. If the rumor about Yukie was true—being able to eat three rice balls at once—then Bokuto and her would make a great pair.
Once noticing Atsuki, Bokuto inaudibly called out, disgusting the remaining classmates in class,
"OSsubitmasmfmfsdfjq!"
"What…?" Atsuki replied, very confused. Was that even Japanese? It sounded Russian.
Bokuto chewed quickly, took a sip of his Pocari Sweat which was adjacent to him, and then said,
"Oshiro-san, want to go somewhere to eat? I like the atmosphere of fast-food environments for studying,"
"But you're already eating…?"
"Ohhh, this? No, no it's just a snack after P.E!"
How much did this boy eat?
"Okay…we can if you want too…any places in mind? Will a coffee shop do? Also, do you have your final with you?" She replied, slightly annoyed. She didn't want to be seen with him outside of school, but Atsuki wasn't up for debating, and so would comply with his request.
"Coffee? Maybe after…but let's get burgers first! Well, first I have to find my final—stopping to rummage through his untidy desk—so that would mean get burgers second haha, and then coffee third," He said cheerfully.
What? Atsuki took a few moments to decipher what he meant, while Bokuto carried on foraging through his desk, not noticing her puzzlement.
"Um, I don't think we'll have time for burgers and coffee, because I don't think you need more than an hour, two hours tops—" Atsuki began to say, but was interrupted by Bokuto yelling,
"TADA!" He proudly stood in-front of her, brandishing a crumpled white booklet.
"It only took me like 30 seconds! Am I amazing or what?" Atsuki heeded no attention to his question, as right, smack in the middle of the final Bokuto begrimed, in red, crisp letters was,
21/100
Twenty-freaking-one out of one-freaking-hundred. Not even close to the passing grade, which was 40 % (or 40/100). Atsuki took back what she had said moments ago,
"Actually, yes, we'll get burgers second—well now first because you found the paper, and then coffee,"
X
Atsuki rubbed her temples as gently as she could, but the pain would not go away. She closed her eyes tightly, hoping that the force from her eyes would somehow take away or at—least dull the throbbing sensation from her head. It was no use, other than the slightly blurry vision she got when she opened her eyes, her headache was still there, in full swing. Bokuto was also there, sipping his iced coffee—large, with milk, and spoonful's of sugar—her small cup of espresso looked very lacking in comparison.
They had spent a good hour at Wcdonalds, looking over his final, Bokuto constantly munching on his Big Wac and fries, Atsuki periodically nibbling her grilled cheese sandwich. When she had finished assessing his weaknesses—which was pretty much everything, they both decided that to save time they would just order coffee from here, lots and lots of coffee.
It was supposed to be easy. She was supposed to find a few mistakes here and there, and then plan out a schedule with him—what the hell made her think this boy was smart? She took back what she earlier thought about intelligence being fluid, and able to manifest in different ways—no way could some be so smart in one thing, but suck rat's ss on another…HOW? He clearly didn't fool Mizuno-sensei, no, she pitied him and that's why she asked Atsuki. Her analyzing skills were seriously lacking, or maybe she was softening up to men, as she clearly gave Bokuto too much credence.
She groaned internally. She was so excited albeit a little nervous, to try someone new, and different. In all fairness Bokuto was different, asnever in her life had she seen so many red X's on a test paper, but not the kind she was hoping to experiment with.
Bokuto was currently slurping down his iced coffee, intently staring at the questions she had wrote out for him, trying to figure out how to solve them. All his basics were askew; his understanding of the basic principles of functions were wonky, and filled with holes, large holes. For an example, the boy thought that the log function could accept negative numbers. She had then backtracked, and started taking baby steps. First she had written out neatly what the log function was, and what it could accept in it's range. Then she designed simple calculations for him with log, assessing if Bokuto was soaking in what she was teaching, when she felt he did satisfactorily she showed him to do derivatives with log in it.
Just like she had done with the simple calculations, Atsuki made questions about it, however they were slightly given the topic was more complex than the preceding one. She was now waiting for him to try and solve them. There was no point of tutoring someone if you didn't test their understanding periodically through the session.
Atsuki lost count of the amount of times she internally cursed herself. How did she read him so wrong? How could someone make so many mistakes?
The worst—and most confusing—thing about his final was that he got the hardest question, worth a whooping 20 marks, fully correct. According to Bokuto, it was completely by chance and he had no idea what he was doing but because, yahknow, he was 'the best', he got perfect on it. That angered Atsuki, if it wasn't for the negative she accidently dropped in that question, she would have received a perfect on the final. She worked so hard for her grades, and to see someone do better on a hard question like that, out of pure luck, made her very frustrated. She knew her frustration for Bokuto for that specific question wasn't warranted because she still did a lot better on the final, but she still felt frustrated.
It had been a good 20 minutes or so since she gave him the next set of question, but the owl-like boy was still stationary. He was staring at the white page, with her neat handwriting, still undecided on how to go about on the questions.
Atsuki looked around the room, wanting something to distract her from the predicament she was in. There was nothing interesting inside the shop. There was a couple, probably in middle school given by their puppy dog love vibe, sitting in the far left corner. In the middle of the couple, and Atsuki and Bokuto, was a grandmother and her grandson. It seemed like anyone else who came in wanted take-out. Realizing that the inside of WcDonald's was not going to get interesting by her surveying it, she looked out the large, slightly dirty windows.
No rain. The sun was setting and it was encompassing the sidewalks with a warm, beautiful, orange glow. If the sun was setting it had to be at close to 20:00, meaning she should really get a move on. Her mother never made dinner, and if it wasn't for Atsuki, probably wouldn't eat anything and go straight to bed, but Atsuki made sure to get home and make food for her.
Atsuki grabbed her phone, which was embedded in a sleek, black case and checked the time,
19:45
she was right, it was getting close to 20:00.
"Oshiro-san!" Bokuto called out to her, reverting her attention back onto him.
Embarrassed for losing focus, Atsuki hastily replied,
"Yes?"
"I think I'll be good for now, you should probably go home now because it's getting darker and it's supposed to rain!"
What was it with people notifying her about the weather? Did they assume that she didn't check the weather?
"Yeah, I know—but it doesn't seem like it'll rain. I can quickly go over one more concept, and then we can meet again tomorrow morning? Or does after school work better?"
"No, no—I think I got it now. You should really get a move on, even if it doesn't rain it'll definitely get dark soon" Bokuto ventured, but when seeing Atsuki looking at his empty sheet devoid of any attempts of problem solving, he laughed sheepishly,
"…well, I mean—I will get it shortly! But yes, tomorrow morning will be good!"
Atsuki thought over his reply for a few brief moments. Why did he care if she walked alone in the dark?
"Welllll, if you insist—Atuski said, pausing to get up—I guess I'll be on my way," She picked up her bag, and her empty cup that she planned to throw out when she noticed his cellphone, face down and parallel to his empty plate. He hadn't touched it once, surprising Atsuki, he could really focus when he wanted to. She took out her own phone, and asked him,
"What's your mail address? We should exchange our addresses so we can decide on more meeting times," this was a first for Atsuki. She had never once, in her short 17 years of life, asked a guy for his email—it was always the other way around.
"Oh yeah, sure! Good idea!" Bokuto said, suddenly remembering that he had a cellphone and it was very useful when people wanted to communicate each other instantaneously.
They exchanged their mail addresses, and Atsuki give a quick nod as a farewell. She tossed out her empty cup, and walked into the warm glow of the evening. Looking back only once, to see Bokuto not gazing at her—again another first for Atsuki— but at the sheets of paper in front of him. She waited to see if he would look up—but he didn't. He just stayed in that position, eyes wide, fully focused. Atsuki shivered, she didn't know he could make such a face. Finally, he grabbed his mechanical pencil and began writing. She left then, feeling like it was an appropriate time to do so.
She felt droplets on her head, and looked up to see dark, stormy clouds. Just how long had she been staring at Bokuto? It had been warm moments ago…Sighing she quickly ran to the nearest train station, barely missing the storm. She thought over today, again, and again in her head, only making her headache more vigorous.
As soon as she got home she went to their medicine cabinet and took some Ibuprofen. Then she checked up on her mom, who was passed out in her room, empty tablet packages on the floor of her room, used tissues spread out about. Atsuki gently nudged her mom awake. Her mom woke up but didn't say anything, she knew resisting Atsuki when it came to food didn't work.
"How long?" Her mother asked tiredly.
"20 minutes, I promise. Stay awake for 20 minutes and I'll bring you something warm and then you can go back to bed and sleep for as long as you want." Atsuki said sincerely.
"mhmmm," her mom hummed.
Atsuki went back to the kitchen and starting reheating some soup she had in the fridge from the morning. While the soup was reheating, she quickly washed some rice into the rice cooker. When the rice was ready, she added some eggs, and whatever vegetables she could find in the fridge to it. Adding a little bit of soya sauce, salt and pepper, she gave the rice a good mix.
She took out two bowl, and diligently poured soup into one and the egg fried rice in the other. After that she grabbed a tall glass, and filled it with lukewarm water. She put all the items in a tray and headed back to her mom's room. Her mom, had her head propped up against her headboard, eyes closed. She sighed when she saw Atsuki saying,
"I don't know why you're so uptight with me eating regularly…You know your appetite diminishes as you age…"
"Hai, Hai," Atsuki retorted, gently placing the tray in-front of her. Her mom played around with the rice with her chopstick for a bit, but when seeing Atsuki's tired expression, she began eating it.
Atsuki started picked up the dirty tissues, and tablet packages from the floor. It was always best to clean mess right away. Her mother didn't pay attention to Atsuki, or even thank her, but Atsuki didn't mind. Once she was done with, she headed to her room and changed out of her uniform. She needed to wash off her makeup, but she didn't have energy.
It was only later that night when she had willed herself to wash off her makeup, and brush her teeth that she realized, she never once thought about seducing Bokuto when she was tutoring him. For the first time in her life, she sat with a guy, for a very, very long time and didn't think anything negative about men. She was annoyed with him, and tired, and so mad, that she understood him wrong…but she didn't hate the time spent with him.
A.N I'm sitting at a coffee shop right now. This is so weird to me, because I don't normally write stories at coffee shops—usually I cry over school and enjoy donuts haha.
Few things to point out:
-I used WcDonalds instead of McDonald's (pls tell me you guys get why!)
-Yukie can eat three rice balls in the manga and four in the anime, I went with the manga version because it's the truest version of the story to me
-I'm sorry if my tone seems all over the place—very novice at writing
-lastly, thank you so, so much for reading this!
