The Gentle Giant and Little Ray

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Soon enough, autumn came and Ray couldn’t be happier.
New class, new friends a whole new year.  Ray was very much ‌   looking forward to it. And the tales of a certain gentle giant  tucked away in her mind.
Almost forgotten, but not quite.

Entering her classroom on a fatefull autumn morning,  Ray noticed the boy.
The very boy who occupied a quite special part of Ray's mind om recent days. The  boy who sat at the very first bench.
 Ray could say hi. But then she thought, she didn’t really know him. She knew nothing of him. Welp. That was about to change. Soon the teacher came and elected a class monitor. The boy, now with the name Hideo, was selected to be one. "Tall, gentle and nerdy" Ray mused, "How fitting"  Another girl was also chosen as the second class monitor. "Great.." Ray thought to herself bitterly, another classroom romance is surely on It's way.

See, Ray wasn’t completely oblivious.  She could sense the boy, whom now she knew as Hideo,  was kind of interested in her. In what way she didn’t know. But as Ray also wasn’t someone who would just delude herself, she didn’t entertain this line of thought.

So, the days passed. The had their classes together, they had lab together, they had the lunchtime too. 
8 hours of day spent skimming over  something that's barely there. Something that was always, alwaays left unsaid.
Some hesitations and some feelings.

Romantic relationships in high school is definitely not the end of the world. Ray knew that. Hideo knew that. Still for some reason, both refrained from ever approaching one another. Never talking.
Only the stolen glances spoke.

And to be completely honest, those looks said many things which maybe words couldn’t convey. I can see that. You can see that. But the two remained blissfully unaware. The Gentle Giant and our Little Ray.