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Your efforts will be rewarded someday.
Ishigami’s heart stops at the sight of the sutera flower, laminated and pressed into a bookmark, peeking from Iino’s math textbook.
She kept it?
Ishigami can’t stop staring at the delicate little flower; he remembers the day he picked it. Iino had an especially rough day at school; she had just lost the election for student council president, her last chance for middle school, and their classmates would bring it up every time she’d nag them for breaking school rules. To this day, Ishigami doesn’t know whether they did it just to get her off their backs, or if they truly wanted to hurt her.
“Don’t you get it by now, Iino?” one cruel classmate had asked at the end of one class. “The reason no one voted for you is the same reason why no one ever listens to you. We don’t like you. No one likes you.”
Iino put up a strong front, dragging her classmate up to his feet by his shirt collar. Her voice didn’t waver when she shouted in his face, telling him that she was going to write him up again. But the problem was, and the problem still is, that Iino is small. To make things worse, she’s also objectively cute. People can’t take her seriously, no matter how serious she is. Iino Miko yelling at you is like a tiny, cute puppy barking at you for spilling food on the ground.
And so, the classmate just laughed in her face, patted her head, and told her, “If only you were the student council president. Maybe then I would care.”
Despite the surprisingly graceful way Iino kept her self-compsure, let go of the asshole, and walked to the bathroom, he didn’t miss the way Osaragi ran after her, panicked and furious.
For the rest of the day, Ishigami couldn’t stop thinking about the strength it must have taken Iino not to fall apart right there and then. Even though he had just bought a new video game that he was really excited to start, he hadn’t even thought about it since first period. As lazy and cynical as he is, Ishigami isn’t the type of person who can just sit by and let his classmates break Iino.
But who was Ishigami to stand up for her? They notoriously didn’t get along, and he was the last person to publicly defend her.
He kept thinking about it even after school ended, but he couldn’t think of a solution. However, on his walk home, he spotted a small pot of sutera flowers on his favorite flower shop’s display, and he instantly knew what to do.
A year has passed since then, and Ishigami has largely believed that his gift had little to no effect on Iino. He’d always thought that she simply considered it a nice gesture, maybe the memory of it helped her get through her next rough day or two. That’s all he thought it would be when he left the envelope on her desk. But to think that she still holds onto it, even now?
“Ew,” he hears Iino mutter.
Ishigami’s head whips to the side. Iino, sitting next to him on the couch of the student council room, holds her clipboard to her chest, face pinched in disgust. A shiver runs down Ishigami’s spine.
“What did I do now, Iino-san?” Ishigami groans, eyes flickering back to the sutera flower, small and dainty, just like Iino. Why can’t he stop staring at it?
A couple days ago, Osaragi had called him out about the flower. She knew it was him the entire time, but if Iino knew, Ishigami is sure that she would have burned the flower in some sort of cleansing ritual.
“You were staring at my textbook,” Iino says, voice full of disdain.
“Um, yeah, sorry. I just, your bookmark,” Ishigami confesses, scratching the back of his head. Internally, he berates himself for telling Iino the truth, for leading this conversation into a very dangerous direction, but the words just spilled out.
Iino brightens up, cheeks blushing in surprise, and Ishigami feels a slight lump in his throat. He ignores it.
She puts down her clipboard, opens up her textbook, pulls the bookmark out, and holds the bookmark to her chest. Dreamily, she sighs, “During middle school, when I was shunned by everyone, someone left this flower on my desk with a note saying, Your efforts will be rewarded someday. It’s thanks to that flower I’ve been able to persevere and get to where I am today.”
Ishigami gulps. “It’s . . . it’s just a flower.”
Iino stands up in anger, throwing her hand violently to the side. “It was a compassionate, anonymous note asking for nothing in return! That sort of genuine emotion is what true love is.”
Ishigami coughs up a lung. He feels like he’s going to throw up.
“What?”
“True love?” he mocks, calmed down—at least, on the outside. Internally, he’s filled with panicked thoughts right now. “Let’s be a little more realistic. There’s no such thing as selfless love—”
Iino’s eyes go grey and distant. “I don’t want to hear that from you, Ishigami. It’s not like you’ve ever been loved by anyone before.”
Ishigami frowns. He doesn’t really care about what Iino said, but that was kind of a rude thing to say. “Me and Tsubame-senpai have been getting along really well lately,” he says, because they have. They’ve gone on a few dates, and Valentine’s Day is coming up pretty soon. Ishigami is hopeful.
He expected Iino to huff in irritation, or maybe say something snarky about how they’re still not dating yet. But she just sits back down, color returning to her eyes, and picks her clipboard back up, setting the flower bookmark aside.
What? Just like that, she’s going back to filling out her Disciplinary Committee reports.
That’s weird, Ishigami thinks. Is she just moving on?
“Stop staring at me, you’re gross,” Iino spits out.
Ugh. The second years are all at a class meeting, so it’ll be just them for at least another half hour, and an angry Iino is an annoying Iino.
He doesn’t like to do this often because it’s what Fujiwara does and it’s pretty manipulative, but he can’t think of any other way to fix this.
“It’s pretty cute how you still hold onto that flower,” he says.
Like he expected, Iino warms up instantly. (Ishigami always feels guilty when he does this; he’s taking advantage of her, and she’s better than that.)
“It’s a beautiful flower,” Iino sings, eyes bright with excitement. “It’s a sutera flower, it means—”
“A little strength, burning emotions, a mindful heart,” Ishigami blurts out, panicking a little when he realizes what he’s just said.
Iino looks at him warily. “How do you know that?”
Ishigami blushes, and he feels gross about it. “I, um, I know a lot about flowers. It’s a hobby of mine.”
“Huh,” Iino sounds, looking away, then back to her clipboard.
Well that died out quickly. Ishigami doesn’t know what else to say, so he just settles for a strange silence.
A little strength, burning emotions, a mindful heart. He hadn’t known about what the flower’s meaning was until weeks after he gifted it to Iino.
It fits her, he thinks absently, and goes back to playing Animal Crossing on his Switch.
Lately, Iino doesn’t scold him about playing video games. He doesn’t even have to feed her with praise for her to let it slide.
He wonders what’s changed.
Things have been good with Tsubame, so good that he hasn’t really been paying attention to other people. He’s pretty sure that something happened between Shirogane and Shinomiya—they’ve been different ever since New Year’s, good different, but he isn’t quite sure why that is. He wonders if Iino is doing okay; she has a tendency to bottle everything up until she bursts, and it’s up to someone who cares about her to put the pieces back together again.
Careless. Iino Miko is careless, and it infuriates the hell out of Ishigami.
Iino is lucky that she has people looking out for her. She’s an easy target for guys and it’s fortunate that she hasn’t been involved in any pyramid schemes yet. And she’s cute. Objectively cute. Ishigami always has to tack on that adverb when he thinks about how cute Iino is, because it’s creepy otherwise. She’s annoying as hell, but she’s only ever that annoying to him.
In the back of his mnd, he thinks about what Osaragi had said during that weird Operation Friendship trial: the way they interact with each other feels like when someone’s mean to the person they like.
He found the idea of it repulsive and outright incorrect on his part, but, with the way Iino reacted when he mentioned Tsubame, what if Iino—
No, Ishigami doesn’t want to let himself get too carried away in his own delusions. Life isn’t a shoujo manga. It’s not like that would change anything either, nor is it likely at all. Iino hates him, and she always has—she’s just warming up to him now that they’re fellow student council members. Ishigami has Tsubame anyways—well, almost. But he’s hopeful, and he has reason to be hopeful.
Tsubame Koyasu is the type of girl who’s out of everyone’s reach. Like Shinomiya Kaguya, except Ishigami has always thought that the President would be a great match for her. Tsubame Koyasu is untouchable; that’s what Ishigami thought. But he’s gone to the Skytree with her, he’s held her in his lap (although, that memory is traumatic more than anything), and she’s giving him a shot. The darling of the third-years is giving him, the pariah of the first-years, a shot. And it’s not fake either; Ishigami can tell that Tsubame is open to falling in love with him.
How could Ishigami not fall for someone as kind, someone as impossibly beautiful as Tsubame Koyasu?
On the other hand, Iino Miko is—
The type of girl you don’t really consider at the start because your first impression of her is how short she is when she’s yelling at your face. Or at least, that’s what Ishigami went through. She was never selflessly kind to him like Ootomo Kyoko, she hasn’t warmed up to him to the same extent that Shinomiya has, and the two of them didn’t exactly click like he and Maki Shijo did.
But Iino is pretty. Objectively, she’s a pretty girl. Just as pretty as Tsubame, Ishigami would say. It’s why all the guys tease her so much, break the rules just to get her attention. Iino, being Iino, hasn’t realized it yet, but Ishigami has a feeling that Osaragi has. Nevertheless, she’s a hard worker, she’s compassionate, and she’s fun around anyone but him. She’s the type of person who would fight for someone else behind their back, waste her time and energy on helping other people without anything in return. Just like him.
Huh.
Iino Miko is just like him.
Iino Miko has kept the sutera flower that Ishigami gave her for the entire year. Preserved it into a tiny, clear bookmark.
Ishigami decides that he meant it, what he said earlier. At the time, it had just been something he said to butter Iino up and get her into a good mood. But now, in retrograde, he decides that he meant it.
It’s pretty cute how she still holds onto that flower.
Iino Miko is cute. Objectively speaking.
Ishigami’s eyes flicker over to Iino, diligently working on her reports, an Airpod in the ear facing Ishigami, her brown hair tucked cutely behind her ear. His eyes then flicker back to the bookmark lying on the table, and he thinks about how even Iino—strong-willed, stubbornly strong Iino—has items that are precious to her, things that keep her grounded when things get hard.
The sutera flower. A little strength, burning emotions, a mindful heart.
Iino is small, but strong. She’s the most passionate person Ishigami knows, and she’s kind to top it all off.
She’s beautiful too, inside and out, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Iino did like him, because maybe he could end up liking her back—
Oh no.
“Ishigami,” Iino murmurs, cheeks tinted a soft pink. He thinks of cherry blossoms; not the red Taiwan cherry blossoms he promised to see with Tsubame, but the classic, stereotypical pink cherry blossoms you see in anime. “What’s your problem today?”
Ishigami swallows nervously. He can’t do this.
“I want to die, so I’m going home.”
Iino tilts her head to the side like a confused puppy, and Ishigami’s traitorous heart stings a little because of how adorable she looks.
Oh god no.
“Okay,” Iino says, brows knitted together in confusion, mouth pursed in a slight, genuine worry. “But don’t actually die?”
Another shiver runs down Ishigami’s spine as he packs up his things and heads out the door.
This is really bad. Really, really bad. Worse than when he accidentally confessed to Tsubame in a room full of third years. Worse than when he beat Ogino Ko bloody in front of their classmates. Worse than when he made fun of Shinomiya and Fujiwara for their breast sizes while they stood right behind him.
Tomorrow morning, he’ll ask Shinomiya for advice. For now, he walks home, trying not to accidentally fling himself into ongoing traffic.
But when he passes by that same flower shop, his eyes linger on the small pot of sutera flowers sitting on a windowsill, and his fingers twitch.
To Ishigami, flowers are a lot like feelings—incomprehensible, but beautiful. And these sutera flowers—it’s like they’ve always been here all along, unchanging, tucked somewhere deep in his heart.