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“The second derivative…”
Maki trailed off, read the end of the line three times to check for accuracy, flushed a color she did not ever want to have to describe, and asked, “you got notes on that?”
Yuuta, whose own chicken-scratch calculus notebook was open in front of him, looked at her in confusion. “Yours are right there.”
“Yeah, but I stopped writing halfway through a line,” she said. “So I need yours now.”
“Lemme see?”
Maki snapped her notebook shut with more violence than it deserved. “Just let me look at yours, okay?”
Yuuta, now undeniably concerned, blinked at her for a moment before he passed his notebook across the table to her. “My notes aren’t that organized,” he said, sheepish. “Sorry if you can’t really read it.”
If she had actually needed the information that she had neglected to write down herself, Maki would have found his notes uselessly impossible to decipher, but she didn’t. A perfunctory scan of the page to give the illusion of having found what she needed would do.
“Thanks,” she said, then passed back his notebook.
“You look really red, Maki-chan.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry. Maki-san.” He repeated: “your face is super red.”
“Sucks for you,” she said automatically.
“What?”
Maki, looking down at her notes, could picture his wide-eyed confusion without needing to see his face.
Yuuta, she had long ago decided, was like a dog. A golden retriever, maybe, except that those were too extroverted and not nearly anxious enough; greyhounds were anxious, but not as sweet. A mix, maybe, or maybe something else – she hadn’t decided. But the conclusion was supported every time she managed to confuse him: dog. Some kind. One of the ones without a thought behind its eyes.
Okkotsu Yuuta has nothing in his brain, she had written to end a sentence in her lecture notes whose real purpose was now long-lost. It was true.
What was also true, even though Maki would deny it even under oath, was that she remembered exactly when she had written those notes, and that she had written that sentence because Yuuta had been staring at her from the next desk over.
At the time, she had told herself that she was merely annoyed at his unwillingness to take the class seriously. Now, she found it unpleasantly difficult to sustain that protective excuse. Yuuta did not have nothing in his brain because he was a poor student, or unfocused, or always underestimated Kusakabe-sensei’s exams; no, she would have thought nothing of it if he had been staring off into space and not at her.
But that was the problem – that he had been staring at her – and reflective of the bigger problem, which is, Maki could no longer deny, that he likes her.
Which was not a bad thing.
Which was actually not undesirable in the slightest.
The attention was flattering, especially from the only man she knew who she’d never earnestly wanted to punch, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a soft spot for the twerp, no matter what she said. To be desired was by no means unpleasant and at very least it was Yuuta, but. Well.
When it came to things like this, Yuuta really did have sadly little in his brain.
“I’m just saying,” she snapped. “It sucks for you.”
“Maki-chan-“
“Maki-san.”
“Maki-san, sorry.” He frowned. “What’s up with you today?”
She did not, in hindsight, even really know what she meant by sucks for you, except that if he was looking at her face closely enough to know it was red, he might as well just come out and say it instead of pretending to have some altruistic reason to notice every little thing about her.
Which he did not, because he liked her, and he would be far less strange if he would just say that.
“Probably just stressed.”
“You’re never stressed about exams.”
True and unfortunately hard to argue against. “But this is a big one.”
“Maki-san,” he reproached her, “you’re making your ‘I’m lying’ face.”
“I don’t have an ‘I’m lying’ face.”
“Yes, you do, Maki-san.”
“Don’t.”
“Is this about that guy in-“
“No.”
“Your sister?”
If only. At least she could yell at Mai without feeling like the worst person alive. “I told you I’m just stressed, okay?”
“About what that lady at the career panel said?”
Maki made a face at him. “Can you stop trying to be my therapist?”
Two years ago, that would’ve made Yuuta cry, but now it just made him look irritated. “Why do you never let anybody help you?”
“Why do you never consider that maybe it’s your own stupid fault?”
That was one step too far, it seemed.
“Maki-chan,” he said weakly, wide-eyed. “What?”
“Sorry,” she muttered, automatic. “Ignore me.”
“No, Maki, what do you mean by that?”
Maki couldn’t have explained why that made her feel so naked, but it did, and she hugged her knees to her chest and hid her face between them as if to shrink down too small to be seen. “It’s nothing, okay?”
For a few minutes, neither spoke, and Maki, who had not felt like crying in years, almost thought that she might, and didn’t know why. None of this should have made her feel anything more potent than annoyance. Certainly none of it should have made her want to cry.
Maybe it had just taken too long.
“Am I not worth it?” she asked without even knowing that she meant to. “Is that what this is?”
“Maki-“
“You can’t just be all over me and stare at me all the time for no reason and never hang out with anyone else and expect me not to wonder why you never tell me why!”
Previously, Maki had not even known that she felt those things, but this was rather par for the course with Yuuta: she would rarely know what she felt around him until frustration forced her to come out with it. He had a way of doing that to her, what with all the nothing in his brain.
Nothing in his brain but Maki, maybe. Nothing in her brain, or at least nothing properly labelled or examined. If his was a vast, empty grassland, hers was a storeroom full of dusty boxes with no labels that nobody had touched in years. Yuuta seemed to like poking around in them without even knowing it.
Maybe she liked that.
Maybe what she liked was not what she thought she liked.
“Maki…chan…?”
“Aren’t you ever gonna come out with it and admit you’re into me?”
She looked up after a moment without a sound and was unsurprised that Yuuta seemed to have frozen, open-mouthed, not a thought behind his eyes.
Buffering.
Maybe she needed to put him in a bag of rice.
“How did you-“
“Yuuta,” she said, pressing a palm hard against her temple, “you are literally the most obvious person I’ve ever met in my life.”
“But-“
“How do you not even know that?”
“Do you have to be so mean?”
Maki’s cheeks flush. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just been way too damn long!”
“Well, why was I gonna tell you that when you would’ve just laughed at me?”
She looked over at him and didn’t know if she had ever felt more betrayed in her life.
“What kind of sociopath do you think I am?”
Yuuta’s cheeks reddened like he was storing up breath for a monumental effort. It seemed to take him a few seconds to figure out what he wanted to say to that.
“You can be really mean, Maki-chan, okay?”
She slumped.
“And if I told you how I felt and you acted like it was some big joke, I…I would be…”
Sad, he probably wanted to say, but hearing him use that word always made Maki’s gut twist. She had few qualms about insulting even the people closest to her, and her favorite method of flirting was pretending she wasn’t, but that word – God forbid Okkotsu Yuuta ever be sad.
Maybe he was sad. Maybe she made him sad. Maybe she was the worst person in the world.
“I know I’m an asshole,” she said quietly, “but I’m not that much of an asshole.”
And Yuuta knew that.
Yuuta knew that in the way people who know their best friends always do: that she had never said so, but that almost nothing she felt was ever expressed, and that she wouldn’t know how to go about it if she tried. He knew that she sometimes looked at him and felt remorse when she knew she had said something more sharply than she needed to, even if Yuuta had learned to act like those things didn’t hurt him. And Maki knew he knew that.
“One time you called me a wet noodle,” he said, smiling sadly. “And I guess maybe I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“But you literally said-“
“It was a phase.”
He raised his eyebrows. “A phase.”
“I didn’t know how to talk to men I don’t hate.”
“I know, Maki-chan.” She still doesn’t - if he had learned anything in three years of university, that was probably it. “But maybe I never said anything ‘cause I really am a wet noodle.”
“Dumbass,” she said frankly. “What’d you think I was gonna say, get lost?”
“I mean…”
She rolls up her notebook and thwacks him over the head with it. “Dumbass.”
That was one of the things that he should have learned by now: that Maki did not stay where she didn’t want to be. That if she was still speaking to him, when so many other people had been deemed unnecessary, she wanted to be.
Maybe – she had never thought about it – she had wanted to be because there was nothing in the world that felt nearly as safe as sticking with Yuuta.
“We should get dinner or something,” she said weakly. “After finals.”
“Weren’t we gonna do that anyway?”
“No, like…get dinner.”
He frowned. “What’s that a euphemism for?”
Maki looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, euphemism? It means get dinner.”
“You mean that literally,” he said. “You mean, like, date kind of get dinner?”
She wanted to call him something that she’d feel bad about later, so she nodded to keep herself from saying anything. “Date kind of get dinner.”
It appeared to take about fifteen seconds for her words to sink in before Yuuta’s droopy expression lifted inch by inch, gradual enough that it somehow still surprised her when his lips lifted and his whole face seemed to be smiling. “Really?”
“I do have morals,” she said, picking at her cuticles. “It’s not like I was gonna interrogate you and not at least buy you steak after.”
Maki thought that was very magnanimous. Yuuta, judging by his appalled expression, did not appear to share this opinion.
“Maki,” he said plaintively, “you scare me.”
“Then why do you keep making ‘I want you’ eyes at me?”
Maki guessed that Yuuta wasn’t aware that he was doing that. At least, she didn’t know why he would look like he’d put his finger in an electrical outlet if he was.
“I don’t do that,” he said softly, looking at the floor. “I just look at you sometimes.”
Maki’s chest felt warm. It was a deeply uncomfortable sensation.
“Yeah, in lecture,” she said. “I keep catching you.”
He looked up at her so red-faced that he looked like he was pleading for mercy. Relenting, Maki reached over to ruffle his hair. “I don’t hate it.”
“I, uh, I’m…glad.”
“But you do need to pay attention,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Otherwise you’re gonna fail Kusakabe’s final and cry all night.”
“You’ve seen my notes, Maki,” he replied. “I think you already know that’s a lost cause.”
“Then fix it.” She pokes him with the clicker end of a ballpoint pen. “I don’t wanna take a guy out to steak and have to leave early because he’s moping about his calc final.”
“Maki?”
“Yeah?”
“Why is it you taking me out when I liked you first and more?”
Maki wouldn’t have admitted to being amused by Yuuta’s rare but intense bouts of pettiness if she were being waterboarded.
“Because,” she said, preening a little, “I said it first.”