River of Stars

Chapter 8 - Retying Knots

Takagi woke up to the sunlight peering through her window. Many things had happened on the previous day, when she turned 15, and she took a few minutes sitting on her bed thinking about them. Her cheeks glowed red at the thought of the last events of that night, but she smiled with joy.

Soon after, she checked the hour, 7:06. She got up and left her room to have breakfast. As she walked downstairs, she found before her the vision of a sleeping Nishikata on a futon in the living room. She stopped for a moment, and then walked quickly until she stopped right in front of him and crouched.

Her face grew hot, and she stared at him with a smile in a childlike manner. She wholeheartedly wanted to let him sleep, it was clear how rough the previous day had been to him. It was a pity for her that they had to go to school, and it would be bad if she took too long to wake him up.

Now the question was how to do it? The idea of waking him up with a kiss did cross her mind, and the thought was indeed pleasant to her. But she blushed violently, for it was yet too much of a bold move for her to do out of nowhere like that, and she recognized that her actions from the previous night had only been possible in the heat of the moment. That thought was out of the question, and so she shifted to the most natural idea possible on how to wake Nishikata up: Teasing him.

... How would she tease him? She found herself wondering, and it was difficult. For the first time, she couldn't think of a way to tease him. Some ideas did come to mind, but she didn't think she could actually put them in practice without getting embarrassed herself. She closed her hand into a fist, had she forgotten how to tease him? What if things couldn't go back to how they were before, after all?

She had been staring blankly into nothing while thinking that, and only now she noticed that Nishikata had opened his eyes and was staring at her, his face looked like he had seen a ghost.

"U-Umm... T-Takagi, w-what are you d-doing here?" He said, trying to put some distance between them, since Takagi had been staring at him really closely.

Then, like a lamp that is lit up with just the flick of a switch, Takagi knew what to say. She put on the best smirk she could "Oh, sorry Nishikata, you looked so cute while you were sleeping, I couldn't help but stare at you"

Nishikata's face went bright red, his mouth was hang open, and he made sounds that mixed embarrassment with confusion, before letting out a "EEEHHH" and getting away from her.

Takagi laughed lively, holding her belly with one hand, she had missed these reactions so much. "You should get ready for school, Nishikata, it's 7:20"

"Ah!" he exclaimed, checking the hour "Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" he said, getting up and picking his uniform from his bag "I hope we won't be late for class" he mumbled taking his clothes and running to the bathroom to get changed.

"Don't worry, we'll be fine if we rush a little" she said cheerfully to him while he entered the bathroom, then her expression softened, and she whispered under her breath "Yes, I'm sure we'll be fine"

After getting ready, they had a quick, but nice breakfast with her parents and left immediately after. As they were getting ready, Nishikata had gone through their conversation last night, and he was now determined to bring their relationship back to normal. He also wanted to ask her out somewhere on a date, but for now, the thought on his mind was 'What even is our "normal"?'. He quickly got to the conclusion that they normally had competitions. They were walking on the sidewalk towards school, and all his thoughts were bent towards thinking of some game to play against her.

After some time walking in silence, he finally thought of something "Takagi, let's play a game" he said with a smirk.

Takagi turned to him, and her face was filled with joy "Okay, what game is it?"