KNB: Stay Forever with Me (Kise Ryouta)

9 - Deal

NINE - Deal

“Sayokocchi…”

“Hmm?” the raven-haired councilor hummed. She didn’t even bother to look up to the blond model, as she was looking for tools that she could use to prepare for tonight’s dinner.

“Your place is boring~” Kise whined. He was lying down on the sofa that was on the living room, browsing through channels on her barely used flat screen television. There was only a wall that served to divide the living room and the dining room and kitchen so they could have a decent conversation with little screaming. “And I’m bored…”

“Well why don’t you get up from the sofa and help me for dinner?” she instructed, slightly irritated.

“Ugh…” Kise groaned back, but decided on doing as she said. He lazily got up from the white sofa, and dragged his feet towards the kitchen. The guy was really acting like a five-year old. But, that was to be expected, she thought. He is a model and the youngest with two older sisters. She’s betting that he lived in a mansion with servants who attend to his every whim.

“I thought you lived in a mansion, with your family Sayokocchi. I thought I would have met them…” Kise started to say the moment he entered the kitchen. He saw the girl by the counters, fidgeting to peel the skin off some of the vegetables. They decided to go with a hotpot for dinner.

“Well you thought wrong,” Sayoko answered, still concentrated with cutting the ingredients to manageable pieces. She simply let out her urge to cut Kise’s tongue into pieces with dicing up a stem. “I’m not originally from Tokyo, so I’m just renting this place. I’m studying at Teiko because I had some recommendation from a family member who is an alumnus from the junior high counterpart. My house isn’t technically a mansion, but it’s considered spacious and we also have a kind-of wide yard.”

“So you are rich…” Kise swooned. It was quite noticeable now that he’s here at her place. She lived alone, yet her apartment space would be good for three people. The design was modern in nature, and rather expensive. The furniture and gadgets (especially the barely-used flatscreen television; it had high definition) were of excellent quality. He imagined her bedroom to be something grand – like a queen-sized bed and hidden rooms.

“Shut up. Come here and slice up the onions. You wanted onion gratin soup, right? Get to it…” she barked up to the blond model, who, though half-heartedly, complied to do the task.

---

“Then you have to rationalize the number in order to remove the square root from the denominator in order to answer—” Sayoko holds her tongue for the nth time this session. She finds her student catching on some sleep and not paying attention to her. His eyes were completely shut as he rests his cheek on his hand.

“Kise… wake up,” she tells him for the third time this hour. And within seconds, Kise jolts awake. He whined slightly as he hit his knees on the kotatsu table, massaging the pained body part. After that, he fixes his hair and checks on any evident sleep mark or drool on his face before looking down the sheets of paper at the table and his instructor who was not pleased with his actions.

“Where do we have to get the reciprocal again?” Kise asked slowly, smiling sheepishly as he ended his statement.

“That was the problem on number three. We’re already at number six,” Sayoko said irritated, yet she continues to retain a calm face. Kise mouths an evident ‘oh’ then smiles, as if shrugging it off.

Sayoko thought that it would be a challenge tutoring Kise with such little time, but she felt as if she wanted to explode. Kise was near hopeless – he is a complete mess when it comes to academics. It was nice seeing him being neat about his things – like how he arranged his clothing and bags when he got here, his systematic way of cooking, and even the fact that he washed the dishes for her. The thought instantly crumbled when she saw his school bag. He had crumpled papers and misplaced markers and pencils around. It was even worse when she found out that some of these papers were unturned home works. She then gave a ten-minute speech on the responsibility of a student of doing and turning in homework, and about his study habits.