Chapter Text
Tsukishima Kei had a system.
Not just any system. A meticulously engineered, ruthlessly efficient system. It functioned with near-mechanical precision, predictable and optimized to the millisecond. Deviations were irritating; surprises, unacceptable.
Step one: attend lectures.
Step two: ignore the vast majority of people. Their chatter, their laughter, their casual smiles—it was all background noise, static in the signal of his day.
Step three: arrive at the library at exactly 9:12 PM. Nine o’clock was too crowded—the early-bird engineers and literature fanatics made the room feel like a bus terminal. By 9:30, the engineering students migrated in droves, like a poorly coordinated flock of geese, settling into chairs with unthinking symmetry. Nine-twelve was optimal. The library was quiet, but not too empty; the fluorescent lights hummed softly, and the faint scent of aging paper wrapped around him like a comforting coat.
Step four: claim the back-left corner of the third floor. Dim enough for comfort, bright enough to read, with functional outlets. The floorboards creaked slightly when someone walked past, but in that seat, he could vanish from the world.
Step five: read.
Not textbooks. Not lecture notes, brimming with formulas and bullet points. Real books. Ones whose pages smelled faintly of dust, of time, and of human folly. Books abandoned by everyone else. Books waiting patiently for someone with the patience to notice them.
~*~
Which was why the problem was—unexpected.
Tsukishima stared at the empty space on the shelf.
Again.
He didn’t panic. That would be unworthy of him. He merely paused. Let his frown deepen. Reached out, fingertips brushing the laminated label as though the catalog system had personally betrayed him.
It hadn’t.
The book—his book—was gone.
Not in ownership, of course; it was ridiculous to claim such a thing. But in the sense of discovery, of quiet intimacy with the words and the worn binding, it was his. He had found it buried three rows deep, hidden behind books no one dared to touch, and he had been savoring it slowly, methodically.
No one else came here.
No one else read this section.
No one else—
“Looking for something?”
Tsukishima did not startle.
He turned his pale, bespectacled face toward the voice. A librarian stood a few steps away, holding a stack of freshly returned books, arms slightly too full, shoulders slightly too tense.
“Yes,” Tsukishima said flatly. “There was a book here.”
The librarian hummed thoughtfully. “Someone checked it out this afternoon.”
Tsukishima blinked. “…Someone.”
“Yes.”
“…Here.”
“Yes.”
“…On purpose.”
The librarian smiled with a polite finality that suggested the conversation had already ended in their mind. “Would you like me to place a hold for you?”
Tsukishima exhaled softly through his nose. “No.”
He could wait. He always waited.
~*~
The next night, at precisely 9:12 PM, he arrived.
The table was occupied.
A minor violation. Not catastrophic, but enough to irritate the precise machinery of his mind. His eye twitched behind the rim of his glasses.
The person sitting there was… small. Somehow bright, radiating noise without producing sound. Orange hair, messy, rebellious. The sort of hair that had its own agenda. Hunched over a book, elbows digging into the wood, lips moving silently along with the words.
Tsukishima considered walking away.
He didn’t.
Instead, he strode over, dropped his bag with a measured weight that announced presence, and took the chair across from the intruder.
The guy jumped. Literally, like a cat confronted by a cucumber. “—Whoa!”
Several heads turned. Murmurs, then silence.
Tsukishima stared back. Flat, unflinching. “…Quiet.”
“Sorry!” The orange-haired boy pressed a hand over his mouth, as if five seconds of sound could be erased with one gesture.
Tsukishima opened his own book. The spine creaked faintly. He ignored the intruder. This was fine. Manageable. Temporary.
It was not manageable.
Five minutes later—
“Hey.”
Tsukishima did not look up.
“Hey.”
He exhaled. “What.”
“You always sit here?”
Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his gaze. “…Yes.”
“Oh.” The boy grinned. “Cool.”
“…Why.”
“No reason.” He tapped his book. “Just curious.”
Tsukishima’s frown deepened. There was something unnervingly effortless about how words spilled from this person. Like the air itself carried them. “…Stop talking,” he said finally.
“Right. Sorry. Studying.”
Silence. Thirty seconds. Enough for the library’s hum to feel magnified. Then—
“Do you understand anything in this?”
Tsukishima closed his eyes, counted to three, opened them. “No.”
“Oh!” The boy’s face brightened, a sun breaking through clouds. “Same.”
“…Then why are you asking?”
“I thought maybe you looked smart.”
“I am.”
“Then why don’t you understand it?”
Tsukishima stared. Long. Flat. Unblinking. “…Leave.”
“I can’t, I’m studying.”
“Somewhere else.”
“No.”
He exhaled slowly, the calm in his chest like a dam holding back a flood of irritation. This was fine. Temporary. People like this did not last in quiet places. They burned out. They disappeared. He would outlast him.
~*~
The next night, 9:12 PM.
The seat was empty. Good. Correct. Balance restored.
He sat, opened his book… and froze.
Something lay on the table.
A book. Not his. But familiar. Too familiar.
The missing book. The one from the shelf. The one no one read. Except—
A small sticky note on the inside cover. Bright orange. Of course it was.
“You read slow.”
Tsukishima’s eye twitched.
Below it, in smaller, hurried writing:
“(That’s okay. Me too.)”
A doodle of a sun, smiling and slightly off-kilter.
He stared. Long. And then… very deliberately… flipped the page.
Margins scrawled with messy, energetic notes. Questions, exclamations, reactions. Not academic. Not structured. Just human:
“wait this part is actually kind of sad??”
“no way he just did that omg”
“why do I like this guy he sucks”
Tsukishima’s fingers tightened slightly. Annoying. Intrusive. Disrespectful. And—he kept reading.
~*~
The next day, Hinata Shouyou (because that was his name, apparently) was loud. Naturally. He had a volume setting somewhere above human tolerance.
“Wait, wait—so if that’s due next week, does that mean the other assignment is also next week??”
“Yes,” the professor said patiently.
“That’s illegal.”
“It’s not.”
“It should be.”
Tsukishima closed his eyes. Three rows back, invisible. He had learned quickly that proximity to Hinata was a mistake.
Hinata turned abruptly. Their eyes met. He beamed. Like old friends.
“Library guy!” he whisper-yelled.
Tsukishima looked away. Pretended. He had absolutely heard.
“Hey,” Hinata tried again, quieter, leaning back. “You didn’t come yesterday.”
“I was there.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Oh. That was your book, wasn’t it?”
Tsukishima said nothing.
“I left it for you.”
“…I noticed.”
“You read it?”
“…Yes.”
“Nice.”
A pause. Then:
“Did you like the part I marked?”
Tsukishima hesitated. “…It was fine.”
Hinata gasped. Personally betrayed.
“Fine? That part was so good!”
“It was predictable.”
“No it wasn’t!”
“It was. You just think everything is unpredictable.”
Hinata squinted, then smiled softly. “Then why do you keep reading it?”
Tsukishima didn’t answer.
~*~
That night, 9:12 PM.
The table was occupied.
Hinata looked up, grinned. “You’re late.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. By two minutes.”
Tsukishima sat, opened his book, ignored him.
Hinata leaned forward. “Did you read ahead?”
“…No.”
“Liar.”
Another page turned. Another note.
“you definitely read ahead.”
Tsukishima exhaled slowly. “…You’re insufferable.”
Hinata’s grin widened. “Thanks.”
Tsukishima didn’t officially know his name. Not from the library, not from the margins, not yet. Just—Hinata.
Loud. Annoying. sports major, judging by the textbooks he didn’t touch. Hinata didn’t know that Tsukishima had noticed every mark he’d made, every pattern, every circled word, every underline. Didn’t know he waited—
For the notes. For the next page. For the next thought.
“Hey,” Hinata said suddenly, softer this time.
Tsukishima looked up. “…What.”
Hinata tapped the book. “Same page?”
He paused. Then, slowly: “…Same page.”
Hinata grinned.
For a moment, the library felt less empty. Not louder. Just… less hollow.