Answer

"Itsuka, I - I am in love with you!"

There had been a silence when that had come out. It probably hadn't been a very long silence, but at the time, it had felt like it had lasted an eon.

Itsuka had needed time to figure out what to say, what words she needed to use. A thousand thoughts had been shot into her brain all at once, and she found herself speechless. And thoughtless. Literally incapable of coming up with any new thoughts as she had processed what she had been yelled at.

At the time, it had come out of pretty much nowhere. Shock at the sudden declaration had shocked Itsuka into silence just as much as the actual words themselves.

She closed her eyes and shook her head as she remembered what her response had been.

"... I... I need to... Think about this. Please."

Hands behind her head, Itsuka look up at the roof of her room. Unfortunately for her, there weren't any answers waiting for her on the ceiling. She didn't know exactly how long she'd been laying like this. Maybe about an hour, or maybe two. Or maybe she'd just been like this for twenty minutes. She didn't know.

There was a part of her that wanted to stand up, and do... Something. Anything really, to try and focus her mind on something else. She'd tried that earlier that day though. Studying, as it turned out, hadn't been a good choice, and she couldn't think she'd make for particularly good company when she was like this. She ended up taking a walk. A very long walk.

Which did absolutely nothing to clear her head. The thoughts were still there. All that had changed was that she had a new change of scenery to deal with them with.

When she got back to her dorm, she went straight to her room, exhausted, and collapsed on her bed, and fully submitted to her thoughts. She knew what tomorrow was, and a part of her actually felt guilty for not wanting to think about it.

Irrespective of what she'd spent the last indeterminable amount of time doing, these thoughts had been in her head all day. All week, if she was being honest. Months, even, though the amount they occupied her thoughts varied from day to day. They had been somewhere, tucked away in the back of her mind though, never fully going away, and now they had made their way to the forefront.

Those two lines ran through Itsuka's head, over and over again. She remembered just about every detail of that conversation as clear as crystal. She remembered just how much sheer emotion she had felt behind those words. How sincere, and how genuine they had been, and how much effort it had taken for someone to finally push aside their anxiety to say that to her. How much effort it must have taken anyone to say something like that to anyone else.

It was paraphrasing. Only two quotes that Itsuka picked out of that entire conversation. Quotes that she felt were important, and defined that conversation... That particular conversation had been... Long. And emotional. And full of things and topics and talking points that she honestly... Ever thought that she would have to deal with herself. If she went over the whole conversation over and over and over again she'd be here, unable to think about anything else for the rest of the day, never-mind the next hour.

Being confessed to like that had been surprising enough. She had had partners beforehand, and she'd been told that she was loved by them long before she'd gotten into Yuuei. Those hadn't worked out though, for one reason or another. By the time she got to Yuuei, she'd decided that she just didn't want to really deal with romance while she was here.

That changed a couple of months ago. Thanks to Momo Yaoyorozu.

And her confession.

Of all the people that Itsuka could have predicted a confession from... Momo hadn't even come close to the top of the list. She and Momo were friends, and she hadn't seen it coming in the least. She hadn't even seen a hint of it... Though maybe she just hadn't thought to look. To say that a sudden confession like that had caught her off guard would have to be the understatement of the century.