Tutoring
reminiscent-afterthought
Tohma/Nanami
739 words
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Nanami was on the lookout for a new job. Preferably something that didn't involve signing her body over to science and other-worldy creatures this time round. It was fun, while it lasted, but it cut too deeply into her pride and morals she thought she'd already lost. And there wasn't anybody else like Kurata anyway.
There was also nobody else like Tohma. She'd thought there was. She'd thought she was. But she'd been wrong. There were more people like her than him. Kurata was like her - and while it hadn't bothered her before, the idea crawled under her skin and pushed up goosebumps now.
Even if she'd told Tohma she hadn't lost to him, but Daimon Masaru - but who cared? They were semantics and the only person that little comment would fool, if indeed it did, was Tohma himself. And did she really want to know? Not really. She was grateful. Maybe not so grateful to seek him out and say it too his face though, because even with the wound she was a prideful little sprite -
'Hallo.' She circled an add lazily. It was amusing. Very amusing.
She called the number that evening and applied for the job.
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She wanted to bang her head on the table. Why had she thought tutoring Daimon Masaru would be a good idea? She wasn't dumb enough to think it his punishment for passing on such undesirable - or desirable, as it was now - traits on to Tohma.
She also wasn't dumb enough to think she didn't know why she had picked that job. It was a different sort of interesting. And challenging. Trying to teach someone many octaves below her level - it was like the two of them were talking different languages and could barely understand each other, at first.
She picked the job because it would challenge her like that: Masaru's spontaneous but not academically orientated brain against her far more clinical one. She'd picked it so she'd find the thing he'd passed on to Tohma, and maybe collect a little for herself as well. So she'd find the power that had defeated Yggdrasil, the power that had saved the world and done the impossible.
(And maybe she'd picked it so she could see Tohma when he came to visit his friend as well.)
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Unfortunately, Masaru had a big mouth and Tohma had been warned well in advance. And he was suitably cool to her.
She was cool right back because she wasn't going to admit to his face that he'd won, or that he'd been right, or that she was trying to reach the pinnacle he sat upon, on a slightly different level than her own...
'Why tutor Masaru?' he asked.
'He did defeat me,' she pointed out, coyly, even though it wasn't strictly true. 'He's challenging.'
Tohma stared at her a moment longer, then shrugged. 'Don't I know it.'
It sounded like he'd already tried and failed - but she had a somewhat different motive, and need.
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Tohma came around more often. Nanami didn't really care whether it was his suspicion or curiosity, though she was fairly sure it was a combination of the two. And if he'd been more like her, there'd be some jealousy as well. But Tohma would never be jealous of her. Jealous of Masaru, yes, but not her.
Jealous that she was finally making sense to Masaru while he still couldn't help him prepare for a simple math test? Maybe, but not very likely.
If that had been her aim, it was a victory. Except it wasn't.
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'Hey, do you think I'm a good person?'
'You're the smart one.'
'And you're the miracle boy.'
'... You know, people usually call me the hero boy.'
'Hardly correct, considering the amount of help you got.'
'Geeze, you and Tohma always get stuck in semantics, don't you?'
Nanami shrugged. She felt like she'd done that at least three times in the conversation by that point. 'Would you just get back to the original question?'
He thought about it. Trying to remember the question, first, and then working out how to answer it. 'Depends on how you mean "good",' he replied, finally. 'You're helping me out - though my parents are paying you. But you're good for Tohma too and you're not getting paid for that.'
She squashed her smile at that answer. No need to give Masaru ideas to pass along - despite how dense he could be about certain things.