Just My Type [Daichi Sawamura x OC]

Chapter 2: Why Have Friends When You Can Have Books

Jun Sasaki hated surprises. Or anything spontaneous for that matter. They weren't fun, like everyone seemed to think, or exciting in any way. In fact, one time, when her parents still threw her birthday parties, they had planned a huge surprise at the house with all the neighborhood kids. Every inch of the house had been decorated, complete with an ostentatious balloon arch near the door, and her father had even hired half a circus to entertain the kids. Jun cried. Partially from the clowns, but also because of the wave of anxiety it all seemed to crash down upon her. It had been too much; too much excitement, too much attention; just, too much. Needless to say, the party had ended early and not in the way it had been expected to, with Jun locked in her room bawling. Since then, she despised any sort of unexpected events. All they ever did was bring unnecessary stress and would mess up an otherwise perfectly scheduled day.

Which was how she liked things. Scheduled. Planned. Her daily routine was practically structured down to the minute, so when something interrupted her groove, it wasn't pretty. A coworker once forgot to tell her the shifts had been changed for that day, and Jun had to spend the rest of her work shift in an anxious frenzy as she moved appointments and rescheduled the rest of the evening just so she wouldn't miss anything. Even with all that effort, Jun still ended up late to the study group she lead at the library, where only one lone soul out of the five she normally tutored remained waiting. By the time she had returned to her dorm room, Jun was a shaky mess and couldn't calm down for at least an hour.

Luckily, these distressingly tense surprises were few and far between. For the most part, Jun stuck to her routine: Mondays and Wednesdays were dominated by morning and afternoon classes, after which she returned to her dorm room to get as much homework out of the way as possible before time "on duty" as the floor advisor, in which she had to be available in case residents needed help or a somewhat friendly face to talk to.

If one job wasn't enough to keep her always busy, twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday evenings Jun took time away from her own classes and studying to tutor students at the library. And then, as if some sort of masochist, she also worked three nights a week shelving books at the Hobbit Hole. Although, this wasn't so much a job as her sole escape from an otherwise overly packed week. The small used bookstore was probably the only place Jun truly loved. In the minimal free time she did have, it was almost always spent reading. Anything and everything; books were the one thing Jun wasn't picky about. And so it was a dream come true that first day on the job when she walked in to the store and was immediately surrounded by the musty smell of thousands of books.

More a friend than boss, Tadaari-San quickly became one of the few people Jun looked forward to talking to every week. The cantankerous old man didn't say much in general, which was fine with Jun, except when talking about books, and then he wouldn't shut up. Which resulted in many of her shifts spent less on working, and more on lounging around sipping lavender tea and discussing Dostoevsky. Sometimes she'd even stay after clocking out just to wander back around the store to find the novels she came across while stocking the shelves or that Tadaari-San had recommended. Every week she'd go home with at least three new books to add to her already far too overstuffed bookshelves. And it was honestly all that kept her sane.

If Jun had any roommates, or friends besides a 78 year old bookshop owner for that matter, she figured she'd probably spend weekends with them. That's what she always saw other girls in college do anyway. Going to parties and getting drunk, or spending a small fortune on clothes they'd only wear once. Neither of which sounded very appealing. And so every time the weekend finally rolled around, Jun always found herself curled up on the loveseat in her room, devouring book after book until the late hours of the night, not at all concerned about her lack of social life.

Every once in a while her mother would call, either to try and convince her to visit home more often, or to prattle off another lecture about how "concerned" she was about Jun's future. But, seeing as her mother could just as easily give the same nagging complaints over the phone as she could in person, it didn't make sense to travel all the way back to Tokyo; so Jun stayed at school and finished four books a weekend. Was she acting a bit like a recluse by keeping to herself most of the time and avoiding anything not on her schedule like the plague? Perhaps, but that wasn't any of her mother's concern. And besides, Jun was happy with the way her life was going. Or at least, content.