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‘Your hair…’ Katai read on the signature notebook his master had often used to communicate. She was addressing him, it would appear, with a question that pertained to his hair. Komi turned the page. ‘Is it natural?’
“Ah, no… it’s not.” He rasped out, forgetting to lighten his tone to appear innocuous. As a result, Komi began shaking and thus he panicked, leaning closer to prove the point. “They didn’t turn this way out of stress! I bleached it, I swear! Um, h-here…”
Over the classroom desk, Komi’s nervous shaking turned muted and was replaced by her active staring. She set down her notebook on the wooden plane, bleak eyes finding an easy, ephemeral focal point.
“Your eyelashes are… very long.” Unexpectedly, she finds herself using her voice, surprising Katai and even herself. But he is just as dazed as she is, hence his next statement.
“Yeah… do you like them?”
It was an unexpected question, a catalyst of shock and subject of gossip, surely. But it was the school’s after-hours, and they were alone waiting for a certain ordinary man with this… odd tension looming between. Among his many firsts today was being the cause for a flushed madonna and though it was shamelessly entertaining, he couldn’t pinpoint why. It seemed neither could she.
Just then, the door creaked open to an occupied Tadano, hands full with paperwork. As is expected of a class president, after all. They tore away from each other, heart rates going haywire. Just then, some semblance of sense struck Katai as he ran to help carry most of the papers.
“Katai-kun… did something happen?”
“It’s nothing.” He responds, all too immediately.
The next day, Katai opens his shoe locker to find a folded note teared from a notebook. Unraveling it, he quickly recognizes the elegant handwriting but finds unfamiliarity in the words:
‘I do like them.’