お前がこれからどうなろうと、俺はお前をずっと愛している～
Whatever you do from now on, I will always love you~
-Uchiha Itachi
Test~
Five months after the surgery
He took a breath, acutely aware of the cool air in the classroom. His glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose. Taking a shaking hand, he pushed them up. By no means should it be this chilly, but he sweated under his shirt as the seconds ticked by, each tick tock carving the black characters on the sheets of paper before him deeper and deeper into his eyes until he was entranced in a way he could not look away. He clenched his fist for a second, taking a breath, but it did nothing to relieve the tension building inside his muscles.
"Arima…?"
He shot up, his vision adjusting. The man at the front of the classroom swam into view.
"Arima? Dou shita n' da?"
What's the matter?
He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Iie," he said quickly. "Nandemo nai desu, sensei… Sumimasen."
It's nothing, sir. Sorry.
The teacher shook his head, and Kousei felt himself almost draw a little bit deeper into a shell. Some of the more curious students around him had torn their gazes away from their tests and were eying him silently. He scratched the back of his head. From the seat to his right, Kaori looked at him in worry, one glance showing him that the sheet before her was full of text from her pencil.
She caught him looking at her test, and her eyebrows rose half an inch in understanding. He shrugged helplessly.
He did not know the answer to a single question in the test.
Kaori paused for a moment, before taking two discreet peeks around her. She had transferred to their class as soon as she returned to school in order to be closer to him, and now they sat as close as possible.
The rest of the class had resumed writing, their pencils scratching away at their papers in a sound that slightly panicked Kousei today, because it meant they all knew what they were doing. The months following Kaori's successful surgery had been like a dream. How could he focus on studying when he was too busy thanking whatever deity was out there that he would not lose the person most dear to him? The teacher was writing something on his own desk, his phone beside him, oblivious to their silent exchange. He looked back at Kaori. She lifted her test up slightly and gestured toward him.
His heart speeding up, he took another look around them, but no one had noticed what they were doing. Taking a breath, he looked back to her. "Ii no?" he mouthed.
Are you sure?
She made to nod, before hesitating. Lifting her pencil, she quickly scribbled something on the top of her test, and passed it to him.
Feeling as if his heart would stop at any moment, he reached out and pulled the sheets to him as quickly and silently as he could. For a second he waited, as if waiting for the teacher's wrath to depend upon them right that instant, but nothing so dramatic happened. Their entire exchange had gone unnoticed.
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Arigatou," he mouthed, looking up at her again.
Thanks.
She smiled, her beautiful face lighting up at being able to help him out, and his heart melted. "Aishiteru," she mouthed back.
I love you.
His face heating up, he lifted his pencil, and, feeling slightly flustered but oh so impossibly happy, made to copy her test. As he brought the pencil down to write, however, he hesitated. He noticed her elegant script at the top of the page. Of course. She'd written something to him before giving him her test. In the heart-pounding nervousness and excitement of taking the test from her, he'd forgotten, but now he saw it. Taking another look around the room, he pulled the sheets closer to read what she had written.
School is supposed to prepare you for adult life, right? If that's the case, it makes no sense for us not to be on the same side. We'll be together when we're adults, so it makes perfect sense to cooperate here as well.
He paused, and despite himself looked back up at her. She smiled happily at him, and for a moment he found himself marveling the fact that this goddess was right here, right beside him, and that she loved him. He took a breath, the appreciation leaving him slightly shaken. It seemed like a dream, almost, that she would want to be with him forever. Once more he looked up at her, meeting her smile with one of his this time, trying to convey with that single expression all the love he had for her, love that he could not fit into any amount of words.
By the way her eyes seemed to light up even more, she understood the message.
Sometimes, when I have some dialog I feel will lose its meaning or nuance in English, I write it in Japanese. However, I provide the translation (not word-for-word literal, but rather what conveys the closest meaning). I just want to clarify that I'm not using Japanese just because. For example, saying something like "Suki" or "Aishiteiru" have completely – completely – different meanings than each other. In English both would be translated as "I love you", but in Japanese the amount of love – or how much love a person is feeling at the moment they say one or the other – is on totally different levels. Some people say "suki" is like, but I would not agree. Personally, I feel like those people don't understand that aspect of Japanese culture. Just something I wanted to mention.