||TsukkiYama||Sing For Me||Wattys 2020||

|18|

~I got 500 reads! Woo! Thanks! -J~

I wake up because my head is itching. I scratch my head, surprised to find something else there. Wondering what it is, I open my eyes, squinting against the light, and stretch out. But then again, I feel something else. I look up to see a frowning Tsukishima pulling away his hand, not looking away from his book for even a second.

I try to sit up quickly, but the lightheadedness that follows forces me to lean to the side, against the back of the couch.

'Did I wake you up?' he asks. It takes a moment before the lightheadedness disappears and the words come through.

I sit up normally, putting some distance between us. 'I don't know. Something was tickling my head.' I say while stretching out. 'It itched, so I woke up.' I look back at Tsukishima, who put his book away and is now looking at me.

'Oh, I'm sorry. Are you ready to continue?' he puts away the pillow and sits closer to me. I tense up, not too comfortable with it, as I had made the distance bigger not too long ago. 'I took a quick look at the things you made since lunch, and I want to talk about some of them.' he says as he grabs the papers I left on the table.

'How late is it? Why are you sorry? Did I do things wrong?' I ask, tired and confused. One of those questions is answered by looking at the answers I filled in; about a quarter of them are wrong. I sigh.

'It's 3 o'clock. We're missing two days, so we can't waste any time. Let's go over it.' Tsukishima answers most of my questions, but already continuing before I can ask more. 'Let's start with the first question...'

---

A full hour later, we're finally done. 'That's all. If you want, you can go over it a few more times at home instead of here. I don't know how much longer Akiteru can keep my brothers and sisters upstairs.' he says while handing back my exercises.

Finally putting back some distance between us, I get up and walk towards the door. Tsukishima follows, and opens the front door for me. I put on my shoes and jacket, go out, then turn around, facing the boy who just wasted a whole day of his vacation on me. 'Thank you. It means a lot to me that you want to spend your free time on this, on me.' I smile.

He looks at me, shocked, frowning. We stand in silence for a second, and just when I'm about to apologize for saying something weird, he smiles. A genuine, small smile. 'You're welcome.' he says, patting my head once, then closing the door. Still processing what just happened, I stand in front of the door for a while, my face feeling warm, before I quickly turn around and run home.