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“You ready, Yukihira?”
Souma stares at Erina with hardened golden eyes, waiting for her next question.
Rays of sunlight shines through the library study room they're currently occupying and the light casts a glowy halo around the two college students, who are about ¾ done with their sophomore year. To her left, Erina’s slender fingers plucks a random card from a stack of index cards. “Okay,” she breathes. “Clostridium botulinum. Is it aerobic or anaerobic, and what form does the pathogen take for the patient to get sick?”
“I think,” he says, making a face and scratching the back of his red head. Souma shifts in his seat. “I think that this is the one that is aerobic and it’s not the spore that makes us sick, it’s when it germinates?”
“Oh, so close.” Erina rubs her eyes with the base of her palm. “I thought this would be easier, doesn’t it sound familiar?” She rolls her eyes at his careless shrug. “I can’t believe you don't know this, this is the bacteria that creates the toxin for use in Botox. You know, for plastic surgery? I bet half of the female students in our microbio class has C. botulinum memorized already.”
He looks at her with a blank expression. Botox? What’s that? “Nakiri, you better not think about using that.” Souma grins at her. “You’re already good-looking as it is.”
Erina flushes and tries to ignore yet another attempt at flirting. “Okay, so you got one thing correct. C. botulinum is harmless in its spore form, but you have to keep them from germinating because the vegetative cell form is the one that produces the neurotoxin. But!” She flicks the card at his direction before placing it back in the stack. “C. botulinum is anaerobic not aerobic, which is dangerous because it’s found in canned food and since canned food is an anaerobic environment, it’s a perfect environment for this bug to grow.” She moves to take a binder out of her bag and turns the pages until she finds her drawing of the bacteria’s lifecycle. “See, if you just memorized this, it will be easier for you to remember that it doesn’t need oxygen.”
He looks at the illustration for a moment before sighing. “I guess half right is better than not right at all, but it’s definitely not passing.” Souma still looks chipper even though he gets the answer wrong again. At the moment, he is studying for their upcoming Cooking & Microbiology mid-term and this is definitely his worst subject. Erina, In all her gracious, queenly glory, offers her tutoring services to help him, in exchange for his time to tutor her in their Introduction to Organic Chemistry course.
“I still believe in you Yukihira, but you have to take the mid-term more seriously.” She straightens her dress under the table, a little fidgety due to her increasing embarrassment. She definitely has to say something - otherwise, he’s not going to stop (nevermind that her heart skips a beat whenever he does that and maybe it's starting to hurt her feelings a little). “And... you need to stop joking with me about that stuff, okay?”
"What stuff?" Feigning deep hurt, Souma flattens a hand on his chest and looks very offended. “Joking? I never joke with you. What, would you rather me call you ‘ugly’ instead?”
“That’s worse!” she raises her voice a little and gives him an irritated look. “Oh, you need to get serious! Even if you get a C, it’s passing. At least get a C. Let’s study a little bit more on our own and we’ll review together again.”
In the quiet moment that follows, Erina keeps glancing at Souma every so often. Souma still has his wild spiky red hair, but he has trimmed it down to lengths that make him look a bit more mature. He still has the same arresting golden eyes that sparkle with youthfulness and energy, especially when challenged to a cook-off - which, by the way, he has not yet gotten her to admit out loud that his food is delicious.
It isn’t so bad to have him as a classmate again at the university they’re both attending. While his company is too extroverted for her at times, that part of his personality has grown on her. Out of their cohort, they are the only two students to attend this college and they take it upon themselves to watch out for each other, save seats in class, and bring each other sandwiches from the cafeteria, tasteless food as they are. Time has softened some of the rough edges of their youthful personalities so they are not quite the same people out of high school, but Souma has changed, she thinks.
Ever since a classmate approached her inappropriately, Souma started acting a bit off from the Souma she knew. They were wrapping up for the day, about to leave their shared Microbiology lab, when a classmate named Takao came up and asked if he could speak with her alone. Discomforted and tired from the lab activity, Erina shook her head. “It’s fine,” she had said, staying at their lab station with Souma at her side, “if you have something to say, you can say it right here.”
“I… I just wanted to know if you - you wanted to go out with me sometime!” The word ‘no’ barely passed her lips when, out of sheer anxiety, Takao zipped out of the laboratory. Erina huffed at his rude departure and when she turned to Souma to complain, his expression gave her pause.
Souma was animated and laughing just moments before he came up, but now he just looked quiet and annoyed. “Yukihira, what’s wrong?” she asked, which seemed to snap him out of whatever sudden funk he fell into and he reverted to his usual energetic self like nothing happened. They walked out of lab together, Erina trying to process the embarrassment she felt while he mused about what kind of dinner they’ll have that night.
The following day, he complimented how pretty she looked that day. The day after that, he asked if her hair had always looked as soft as it did, followed by him reaching out to play with the ends of her hair for a little while and then letting it go. Souma has continued to make those kinds of weird comments since then.
“Let’s try again, Yukihira,” Erina offers some time later. “What type of meat is usually contaminated by Trichinella spiralis?"
“Pork?”
“Correct! Finally, you got something right!”
Souma scratches his head, dissatisfied in spite of his success. "That's one thing, but I'm trying to get something else right. You think I'm messing around." He holds Erina's gaze, looking solemn at first, then he grins. "I guess I just have to keep trying."
There goes her traitorous heart again, skipping beats. "You're so annoying!" Erina throws her pen on the table in resignation and begins cleaning up, collecting the scattered index cards and open notebooks and other study materials on the table. Their study session is not going anywhere and this is just a waste of both their times. She pointedly ignores Souma laughing and that weird feeling on her chest that's like a slight bruising within. "I'm leaving, you're not really concentrating and it looks like you've done all the studying together that you can do today." She really doesn't know what to make of Souma's jokes these days, truth be told. All she knows is that it's confusing her, but what if she calls his bluff one day? What if she pretends to believe him?
Ugh, she needs to keep packing and get away from him for the rest of the day.
"Aww, come on, Nakiri! I still need help."
"I did try to help you! But you're acting like a fool. You can study on your own tonight!"
It is late afternoon when they exit the library, taking care to not bump into the stream of fellow students making their way to the building for their own studies. Over the horizon, the sun hangs low, casting muted shades of purples, oranges, and pinks over the sprawling green landscape of the west campus. They make their way to their dormitory building over on the east campus, Souma occasionally glancing at Erina's stiff form walking beside him. He feels so sure that if he squints and looks closely, he will see tendrils of purple-black dark energy emanating from her.
They don't need to ask each other whose room they will stop at first. Souma always makes sure to walk her to her room first, before heading up to his. She never reads into this: if Tadokoro, Yoshino, or Sakaki are at the same college too, she knows he will do the same for them. It's just the way he is.
Unbeknownst to her, Souma has different motivations from what she assumes is his chivalry: it has been some time since Nakiri-sama made his personal request to him, but Souma still observes his implicit promise to the elder man, that he and their friends will help save Erina, and he will keep her safe.
Erina isn't paying much attention to her surroundings, her body moving on auto-pilot: swipe her badge through the scanner, enter building, walk to room, open door with key, close the door, and engage door lock. Still, she is begrudgingly aware of Souma's presence, but she just feels so peeved at him and she is focused on disliking him at the moment that she doesn't notice she closes her door after he lets himself in. "Gah! No! No way!" she exclaims, backing away from him with a pointed finger. "What are you doing?! Go to your room and study there, not here!"
With steady and gentle hands, like he's well-practiced at doing so, he takes Erina's hand and holds it loosely between them. He does not betray nervousness when he steps closer towards her. Souma does not blink, so he doesn't miss the dying sunlight illuminate her shocked amethyst eyes, the subdued rays seeping through the narrow gaps of the window blinds. In reality, if anyone asks, he will swear that all he knows of the moment are her, her presence, and the blood roar in his head that sounds like turbulent, crashing waves against a rocky shoreline.
The nervous but intrigued Erina doesn't pull away, shocking her and pleasing him, her implicit act of acceptance. He presses them closer together, the long lines of his lean body against the soft curves of her body, and with his free hand, Souma pulls Erina in and presses his warm mouth to hers. "You keep thinking I'm joking," he chuckles softly, his lips caressing her lips as he speaks.
"I didn't know if I should take you seriously." Erina's blood rush mirrors Souma's though she does not know this, meeting him halfway when Souma moves to press their foreheads together. She feels dizzy, but it is a good kind of dizzy. It doesn't feel like she is going to throw up and he feels so warm against her. His presence keeps her upright. "It sounded like you were messing around."
Souma moves in for another kiss. "I know better than to joke around with you too much." He watches a reluctant blush bloom on her face when he licks his lips after, trying to capture her taste, and he learns that he really likes her flavour and that look on her. "Before I forget: next semester, when we register for Human Anatomy, let's register for the same class. I'll definitely need your help with that one, more than with Microbio."