Girl Next Door

Chapter Fourteen

Later on, Kyosuke, Takeru and Ichiro were hanging around in the school grounds. Takeru put a big ice pack to his head to ease the pain from his rough ordeal with Mio earlier.

"Dude, what happened?" Kyosuke asked him.

"Nothing," answered Takeru gruffly. 

"Why did she hit you?" asked Ichiro calmly.

Takeru sighed. "I saw her panties."

"What?" said Kyosuke. "So you peeped on her?"

"No!" retorted Takeru. "The wind blew her skirt up."

"And you stared?" said Ichiro, adjusting his glasses.

Takeru did not answer.

"I knew it," said Kyosuke. "It's your own fault. You should apologize to her."

"I'm not apologizing to her after my previous apology!" replied Takeru.

"Well," said Kyosuke, smiling. "Take your time then. Wait for her to cool down."

Takeru gave a sigh. "Yeah maybe."

"Um, Sakurai-kun?" said Ichiro, looking around.

"Yeah?" replied Takeru.

"Do you know where Nakamura-san might be?" asked Ichiro, scratching his chin.

"Yukie-chan?" said Takeru. "I heard she joined the library committee and is a student librarian. So you might find her in the library during recess. Why?"

After a brief pause came Ichiro's answer.

"I... have something to discuss with her as a member of the library committee."

"What?" asked Takeru, puzzled. "I thought you said you joined the literary club."

"I... was only kidding," replied Ichiro as he turned and walked away towards the direction of the library.

"Huh?" wondered the two boys.

Inside the huge library, Ichiro looked around for Yukie. He wished to apologize for running away while in the midst of their conversation. He walked through the great shelves looking for her.

However, he couldn't help but get distracted by some books he passed by. Everytime he sees an interesting book (or one he has not read before), he stopped and read as much as he could before returning it and continuing his search for Yukie.

Ichiro went to a corner of the library filled with geometry books. He was an intelligent child and understood most of the things he read. As he read on, he barely noticed as the person he was looking for visited the corner where he was reading his book.

Yukie was going to return a book someone left on one of the tables. She looked for the space on the shelf in which the book was to be returned. Unfortunately, when she found it, it was to high for her to reach, since she was too short. Nevertheless, she was determined to return the book to its proper place.

Ichiro noticed. At first, he was unsure of what to do. He had no idea how to integrate. But when he saw Yukie desperately trying to return the book to its shelf, his common sense gave him confidence. He slowly approached her and took the book Yukie held (much to her surprise), and put it into the space where it belonged.

Yukie looked at him who helped her. When she saw that it was that tall, glasses-wearing boy who ran away from her, she was even more shocked.

"Ah," she uttered.

Ichiro looked at her quite calmly, but unable to speak. Yukie felt the same, but she also felt she must express her gratitude somehow. After a brief moment, she gave an abrupt bow.