Corporate Prince

Chapter 69: Song and Festival

It was only a week away from the festival, so they'd had to stay behind after class to help. Ana was finishing cleaning up for the day when the band came back from practice. Seto wasn't with them. Erika seemed to notice that Ana was looking for Seto.

"He's still in the music room. Erika told her quietly.

Mikato was already over near his group of friends, complaining loudly. "How many times is he going to change the song? There's only a week left. Sheesh. We should have just picked something else and stuck with it."

Ana rolled her eyes at the complaint and ducked out of the room without anyone seeing her. She headed to the music room and found Seto staring at a notebook while chewing on the end of a pencil. It wasn't the fact that she'd never seen him chewing on a pencil that made her stop in the doorway, but the frustrated and sad look on his face. He looks deep in thought. Maybe I should come back later.

Seto didn't look up from his notebook but said, "What do you want?"

Ana sighed and walked over to him. His tone had been snappy, but she was going to ignore it since they were under a lot of pressure right now. "Amin-chan... Is something wrong?"

He looked up at her, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Well... You look sad."

Seto's eyes widened for a moment, then he looked down. He squinted at his notebook and shook his head. "I'm fine."

Ana almost rolled her eyes at his obvious lie. "You should take a break. Everyone is going home for the day."

"I don't need a break." He quickly erased something from his notebook, jotted something down, then frowned at it only to erase it again. He angrily rubbed the back of his neck. She noticed his shoulders were slumped down and his neck bent.

How long has he been sitting like that? Ana walked around behind him and lightly patted his shoulders with her hands. He straightened up and looked at her over his shoulder, confused.

"What are you doing?"

"Head forward." She gently turned his head forward with her hands and started massaging his shoulders. She felt him tense under her hands. "Geez, Seto. Your shoulders are all knotted. You really don't know how to relax."

"Uhhh." was the only thing that came out of his mouth. She focused on the massage. There was a large knot under his shoulder blades that made him tense even more when she pressed them.

"Was that too hard?" She paused when she noticed his hand gripping his pencil tightly. He lightly shook his head, but didn't look at her. Why's he—she noticed that the tips of his ears were turning pink. Ana's face grew warm from embarrassment, but it felt awkward to stop now, so she continued the massage. There was something else she noticed. "You have more muscle than before. Must be nice. It doesn't take guys hardly any time to build muscle."

Seto laughed. "What? Are you wanting to become a bodybuilder?"

Ana paused in her massage and thought about being that buff. "That would be neat."

"You already have an iron grip. Do you need to get any stronger?"

Ana used her "iron grip" to press hard into one of his knots and made him flinch.

"Of course, the stronger I am, the better I can protect myself."

There was a moment of silence, then Seto mumbled. "You don't need to get any stronger. I can just protect you."

Ana stopped massaging again. Her face was on fire. "Um, Amin-chan. That was really cheesy—"

"I know. Please shut up." She could see that back of his neck turning red and resisted laughing.