Plastic chair

The plastic chair she was sitting on was really not comfortable. It was too small, the backrest had a funny shape and her lower back hurt when she sat there for more than ten minutes. He must have found the chairs uncomfortable too. Surely, he was used to sitting on a chair made of gold and platinum, she snickered sarcastically in her mind, the same materials his butt was made of.

Anzu was deep in thought, watching him openly without shame.

For a long time she had assumed that she was not good enough for him. Not good enough as a fellow student, not good enough as a study partner. Not enough to be friends with his brother, not good enough to be a woman. Hell, she assumed she wasn't even good enough as a fellow human being for him. And how dare she even breathe the same air as him?

Because he, of course, was the epitome of a perfectionist, of perfection itself. He was the super human who overshadowed all others. His shadow was so big that he didn't even notice the folk underneath. He was the prodigy, the genius. He was the one who saw through everyone but was incalculable.

And ironically, Anzu had many flaws. She liked to stand in the shadows to let others shine. She was far from being a genius, her feelings an open book, for everyone to read.

And although she had never intended to outshine him, she had just did that. Because no matter how good his abilities were to see through other people, he couldn't understand himself. He was unable to even begin to comprehend his own feelings. He thought he was cold, a block of ice, as so many described him.

But she knew better. She knew he had so many feelings harbored deep in his core, that he didn't know where to put them. No matter how good he was at literature, he was rarely right to correctly title an emotion in him.

So he tried with all his might to bury them, these feelings, almost all his feelings that he couldn't control and overwhelmed him.

And no matter what she did, whether she shouted or smiled at him, he remained the same, emotionless person he always seemed to be. But it was different now, because the time she had spent with him taught her otherwise. She now noticed the smallest things about him, how his fist tightened even more when she told him that he was an egoist. How his breaths became more shallow when she sat down next to him.

And for a long, long time she had thought she wasn't good enough for him. That he was standing on the golden pedestal and she had to applaud him from below.

But Anzu was fed up. She had had enough of this theatre, of his performances.

She suppressed a wince of pain as she brought her stiff back into an upright position and leaned forward. Her heart sped up as she decided to fall in action.

She stretched her arm across the table and placed her hand on his, which was busy writing something down. She was not surprised to find that, contrary to the quaint claims, his hand, so much larger than her own, was neither hard, nor cold.

He stopped what he was doing and raised his head.

"What are you doing?"

She slowly withdrew, ignoring his question. Her lower back thanked her as she stood up, walked around the small table and knelt down next to him.

He was visibly irritated, but continued to sit on his plastic chair, looking at her from above.

This time she took his other hand, the one that wasn't holding a pen. She stretched his fingers and put it against her cheek and closed her eyes.

"We've been meeting here for weeks now, even though we've already finished our project long ago. And yet we continue to meet."

He made a move to take his hand back, but she held it firmly against her cheek and opened her eyes. He gave nothing away.

"We still have to look for the sources and evidence. Besides-"

Anzu shook her head.

"That's not true."

His gaze hardened. "Besides," he hated to be interrupted, "I don't see why else I would meet with you. Believe me, I have much more important things to do than this."

She shook her head again and sighed.

As soon as she loosened her grip on his hand, he pulled it back to him. She was frustrated but tried to remain calm and stood up.

"I think I'm going to go now. But I can't do this anymore. I'm not blind or stupid. I see the way you look at me."

At that sentence, his eyes flickered and he opened his mouth to say something, but Anzu wouldn't hear of it.

"Spare me." She raised her hand, "and talk to me when you're ready. Obviously you need time."

His lips formed into a thin line as he sat silently in his uncomfortable plastic chair. She packed her few belongings, an opened notebook and her pencil, into a gym bag.

One last time, her eyes swept over him uncertainly. As so often, he sat there like the robot he wanted her to believe he was. And as so often lately, she saw through him.

Because he, the big, powerful Seto Kaiba, the one who destroyed and condemned everyone with his looks, could not look at her. Her, little Anzu, the little worker bee that she was. Who actually wasn't even worthy of being a tiny pebble stone in his garage drive.

He just couldn't bring himself to turn his eyes to her and stared at the table.

Finally, visibly disappointed, she turned and left the library.

"Goodbye."

And as she left, Anzu thought, that she knew exactly what was going on in his mind. This time he hadn't managed to suppress his feelings and that's why he couldn't look at her. Because his eyes would reflect the truth.