She Reads, He Follows

She Reads, He Follows
this is how seiji fell in love with shizuku

The first time Seiji sees her, he is not at all impressed. She is reading - hair askew and limbs akimbo - a thick tome of a book and wiping away tears that really should not be falling because honestly, crying in public is only for little children.

Not for teenage girls who spend their free-time in the library.

However, despite his attempts to find fault in her, he finds his curiosity piqued by the girl and, half knowingly and half unknowingly, takes a seat where he can simultaneously work on his history essay while watching her from the corner of his eye.

He spends a good fifteen minutes pretending to work, head down and shoulders tense, when in reality he is watching her flick through pages like food—her expressions leaping from north to south as she devours every written side of the book.

What a strange, strange girl, he thinks to himself. Still, he can't help himself from watching. There's something about her that draws his attention. He pretends it's her eccentricity and he glances at her with bemusement like all of the other patrons do whenever she breaks the silence with her gasps and soft sighs, but he knows inside it isn't. Finally, after twenty minutes of this farce, he forces himself to turn away from her and deliberately plants his pen onto the paper from which he is going to write an amazing essay on the Edo period and receive yet another top-tier mark.

("You can do it, Son," says Father over dinner one night. "Your mother and I believe you can get into the top university with ease.")

So, for a full thirty minutes, he is engrossed in two thousand words of excellence, because anything less is a failure. And no girl with her head in the clouds is going to stop him, whether conscious of it or not.

However, amidst his in-depth analysis of battles for succession, betrayal and general political turmoil, he is hyper-aware of the girl when she passes him ten minutes later. Her soft footsteps, a strange staccato mix of skip and hop, leave behind a niggling curiosity to discover more, to learn more, to dream?

(His first violin. Not as refined as it should be. An ugly rock that's beautiful on the inside.)

"Flying in feathers, freely frolicking friends," she whispers, giggling, and he counts her fading footfalls to the library checkout counter.

He stays still for a moment, before stubbornly turning back to his paper, pen in hand, intrigued.

.

.

Seiji's back the next day, history essay still in hand. He's disappointed when he does not immediately see the girl in his peripheral vision.

Maybe she's hanging out with her friends at the park and eating ice cream like a normal girl, like the girls in his class do. Maybe she's not the bookworm he pegged her to be.

After all, it's a beautiful day... What are you doing inside, Amasawa? But that question's easy to answer: he has always prioritised his studies before his social life—before anything, for that matter. Even his dreams.

(His third violin is his pride and joy and places above all of his scholastic and musical achievements. "A distraction?" his father asks, eyes hard and disapproving. "Best keep your head out of the clouds." And that's the end of that.)

Work hard, play later, he recites to himself, but it rings dull in his mind like an ill-strung violin.

He frowns for a moment, before taking the same seat he took yesterday. Fifteen minutes into his essay, a telltale blur passes by. It's her, and she's stalking the bookshelf like a cat; the fantasy and fairytale section is her prey.