Kaisa was working at her usual librarian desk catching up on some paperwork. There was a part of her that thought about using her magic to speed things up but she knew that could potentially attract unwanted attention. She suddenly felt the presence of someone come up to her and saw two regular visitors to her library, David and Frida.
"Hello friends, checking anything out today?" she asked them.
"Sure are!" replied Frida, she handed her small stack of books to Kaisa along with her library card. Kaisa checked them out and then turned to David. She scanned his books and his library card, as she was handing them back to him, she noticed that he seemed a bit shaky and didn't say a single thing to her.
"David, is everything alright? You seem tense," she inquired.
"Uh, I have to…go to the bathroom!" he announced before rushing out, carrying his books but forgetting his library card.
"Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go," laughed Frida.
"Right, can you make sure he gets his card back," asked Kaisa who handed David's card to Frida, knowing that the two of them were good friends who would help each other out in this type of situation.
Two weeks later, David and Frida returned to the library to drop off the books they had borrowed and Kaisa noticed that they had brought someone she had never seen before. A blue-haired girl about the duo's age.
"Well, hello there, and who is this?" asked Kaisa.
"This is our new friend Hilda, she just moved here with her mum and well, she joined our Sparrow Scout troop and we wanted to show her around. Thought one of the first places we could go was here so she could get a library card," explained Frida.
"Well Hilda, welcome to Trollberg. I'm Kaisa, one of the librarians here, and I'll be more than happy to draw up the paperwork for you," said Kaisa.
"Thank you, Miss Kaisa," replied Hilda. The whole time Hilda wrote down her information to receive a new library card, Kaisa couldn't help but sneak a few glances at David who seemed to just be looking at her, not saying anything, his fingers seemed to be tracing shapes in the dust. Kaisa looked down to see what he was drawing, but he suddenly snapped to attention and used the sleeve of his sweater to rub off anything that was there.
"Just helping to keep this place clean for you!" he said blushing.
"Thank you," said Kaisa who then handed a new library card to an excited Hilda. Then the three children walked off to see what new books they could check out. Kaisa looked at the spot David had been playing with the dust on. It was the clear evidence of someone who didn't do a very good job of dusting. She quickly checked to make sure nobody was watching and used a very small and quick spell to reverse the effects. She couldn't help but think that if this was bigger than dust, somebody would be more likely to notice. She found that David had made a heart shape with the markings D+K in it.
Another time Kaisa was shelving some books when she saw trio sitting at a table together with their notebooks out and some reference books, too enthralled with what she assumed was writing to pay much attention to what was around them.
"Hey David how's your research on the trolls coming along?" asked Hilda. David turned bright red, ripped out a page he must have been working on, crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket.
"Sorry Hilda, I must have got distracted, that page wasn't really working out well. I'm going to start again," he said. Kaisa pushed her cart towards that area and very carefully picked up that wastebasket. If anyone asked, she would answer she was just emptying it, which she would anyway.
Once she was safely in the backroom, she used a quick spell to retrieve the piece of paper David had just thrown away. She did that to avoid messing with whatever kind of garbage could be in there. She set the wastebasket down and continued to use her magic to unfold the paper. What she saw confirmed her suspicions. It was a rough sketch of what could almost be deciphered as herself and David holding hands inside a large heart. David apparently had a crush on her. She wondered how she was going to let him down gently as she pocketed the drawing. Then proceeded to empty out the wastebasket in the back.
Two days later she saw David by himself coming into the library. She kept an eye on him as best she could from her desk so as not to be accused of following him. He picked up some books then sat down at a table to page through them to see if there were any he wanted to check out. That's when Kaisa got up from behind her desk and then sat down beside him.
"Hey David, where are Hilda and Frida? I never see the three of you separated! Thick as thieves you are," she asked.
"Oh, they had some kind of girl stuff they wanted to do and naturally I didn't want to intrude, being a boy and everything," he answered, starting to squirm.
"I get that, David, I kind of want to talk to you about something," said Kaisa. Here, the color in David's face drained out.
"Don't worry, you are not in trouble, and I am not angry with you, I just want to talk," she said. Here, she pulled out the paper that he had thrown out the other day.
"I know you have a crush on me, and I want to make it clear, I am not insulted. If anything, I'm mildly flattered. It's perfectly normal for someone your age to have a crush on someone older than you. I myself had a crush on an art teacher for awhile when I was about your age. But it's just a phase. You'll grow out of it. Besides, a relationship between the two of us wouldn't really work out. You'll realize soon enough that out there somewhere is a girl closer to your age that you'll fall in love with and have special feelings for her. And I know she'll be very lucky to have you," explained Kaisa. Hearing her say that, David stopped squirming and seemed to fall back into his chair in a more relaxed position as color slowly came back to his face.
"You won't tell anyone, will you?" he asked.
"No of course no, you're not in trouble, I just wanted you to know where I stood on this sort of thing," said Kaisa before leaning over and gently kissing him on the cheek. She got up to leave, take the drawing David had made and just left him there slightly stunned.