strawberry pocky | tsukishima kei [SLOW UPDATES]

how to be nice

#1: thank you for 600, 700, and 800 reads! i'm so excited this is amazing i feel like i'm thanking you all for a new milestone every chapter. i love you guys so much i have such awesome readers!

#2 look at this obvious scam AHAHAHAHAHA

mfs couldn't even spell hello correctly💀 anyways on with the story. i tried something different so this chapter is from Tsukishima's perspective, which is why i used his given name.

Being nice to you was going to be a very difficult task. Kei wondered how he, who barely ever did anything against his will (unless someone older than him had asked him to do it), had managed to be dragged into this by you of all people. You, his best friend's best friend, whom he hated, but was forced to hang around. No, not hate. Hate was too strong of a word, and Kei wasn't one to feel (or at least, admit to himself that he feels) strong emotions toward anyone, whether those emotions are love or hate. He disliked you. That was it.

No, that didn't really fit either. He enjoyed his time with you sometimes. In fact, he'd had a very nice time with you and Yamaguchi when you had watched movies at the latter's house the past Friday. That evening, you had fit right into their little duo and it felt like you three had been friends for years.

When had he started to think of you as a friend rather than just a nuisance who hung around him and Yamaguchi? He didn't know. But he supposed he didn't mind having another friend.

Still, the fact remained that he didn't know how to be outwardly nice very well. He was a polite person, always addressing his upperclassmen and elders with the proper honorifics and bowing when he met others. But he didn't know how to be nice. 

Luckily, for all hopeless people looking for advice there exists a useful tool called the Internet. Kei's fingers hovered over the keyboard while he wondered how he should phrase his search query. He decided to just ask the exact question that was on his mind. "How to be nice," he typed into the search bar.

About thirteen billion search results came back at him. The first one was a wikiHow article that had the same title as his search query. That looked promising. He clicked on the article, skimming through it briefly to find something of promise. An article in the "related wikiHows" section that was more specific to his situation caught his eye more than anything in the actual article.

How to Be Nice to a Girl, the article stated at the top in big bold lettering. He printed out the article and studied it carefully, highlighting critical parts, even the things he thought were dumb. He figured that you would especially enjoy the things he thought were dumb. 

As he set out for school the next morning (he luckily didn't have morning practice that day), he kept each piece of advice in mind, trying to apply each one.

1) Be open and approachable.
Show interest and enthusiasm. Girls are more likely to engage in conversation with you if you are approachable. Give off the impression that you'd like to help, or at least be open to conversation.