𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐘 [Akaashi Keiji]

3. DOTTED QUAVER

~ KEIJI ~

I glanced at the short girl sitting in front of me, blatantly playing Minecraft on her phone without even bothering to hide it behind a book.

Ikeru Ena.

Before our encounter that night, I had never paid much attention to her. Sure, like everyone else, I knew of her existence, but I hadn't really acknowledged it. For some reason, I didn't really interact with anyone in my class. Now that I thought about it, for the past two years, all of my friends had been from the year level above. Ikeru was perhaps the first person in my class who I've had a decent conversation with, one that I had truly enjoyed.

It had been a few weeks since our first encounter but I had yet to approach her at school. Either I was busy or she was occupied with something or someone, making it hard for me to interrupt. The only time we spent with each other were the evenings in the practice room. And honestly, I didn't mind that.

I continued to watch Ikeru's screen as she exited Minecraft, only to open YouTube. Was I surprised when she clicked into a video titled "Minecraft: hidden sliding wall tutorial"? No, not at all. After noticing her for a while, I had come to realise this girl's unhealthily insane love for the game.

I sighed, wondering how she managed to maintain her grades. She had to be academically capable to be placed in my class. The fact that she was here indicated that she didn't just pass her exams, but passed with pleasing results.

In high school, you essentially had two choices: pay attention in class and learn the content or slack off during school but teach yourself the content at home. Of course, I had always gone with the first option. With volleyball taking up most of my afterschool hours, I didn't have the time to waste on figuring out how to graph exponential functions by myself. It was better to understand it here and now.

But I couldn't say the same about Ikeru. Looking at her how, she seemed to fit under option two but that still wouldn't have made sense. Where did she find the time to study and practise? As if on cue, the girl turned around.

"What?" I mouthed with a shrug, pretending that I hadn't been staring at her for the past five minutes.

"Nothing. I'm just bored." Flashing an awkward smile and an even more awkward peace sign, she turned back around and resumed watching the Minecraft tutorial.

I averted my eyes from the girl and brought my attention back to the whiteboard, deciding I should set my priorities straight and at least try to learn. The teacher was scribbling illegible lines, probably ancient runes or something. It took me a moment to decipher them, revealing that Da Vinci's code was just basic chemical equations. I sighed, shaking my head. Seriously, how did anyone manage to learn in this class? I slowly went over the messy working out and copied down the balanced equation in a neater, more organised format.