Jealousy

10

 Nishikita had been waiting for 10 minutes, but for some reason, Takagi-San had yet to show up. He was about to give up and just go to school by himself when he saw her walk out to their meeting point, eyes glued to her phone. She looked like she had been crying, and Nishikita instantly felt worried for his friend. 

"Takagi-San, are you alright?" he asked his sad friend.

She looked up in shock, as if she hadn't expected to see him there, but her expression quickly soured when she saw who it was. She had been purposefully late to try and avoid him, but it seemed like fate had wanted them to see each other at that moment. She couldn't believe that he would lie to her like he did when he said that he wasn't going on a date. She now realized that they were dating, but that only made accepting her inability to have Nishikita to herself even harder, knowing that another girl was getting the majority of his thoughts. 

Nishikita, noticing her sour face, wondered what had happened and why she seemed to be angry at him. He scanned through his memories of what had happened over the weekend that could have made her annoyed at him but he couldn't think of anything. the only thing that had happened after he left Akari's house was him going home and finishing the rest of his homework, then going straight to bed. He hadn't even watched the latest episode of 100% Unrequited Love. Is that why she wasn't happy with him, and if so, how did she know he hadn't seen the episode. 

"Y-yeah, I'm fine" replied Takagi-San, emphasizing the 'fine'.

 Nishikita decided it wise not to push her any further, as they may add more damage to their seemingly already strained friendship. They walked in awkward silence. Nishikita noticed a distinct lack of teasing, which was odd, but he wasn't complaining. Ever since Takagi-San had started teasing him, he had wished for a day when he wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. To Takagi-San, it may have been all fun and games, but for Nishikita, it had effected his mental health massively. He had almost snapped and shouted at her, like he did outside the nurse's office, so many times, that he was convinced that what she was doing was unhealthy for his mind. Then, Akari came along and suddenly, Takagi-San had been strangely quiet. Maybe it wasn't because of her, but because of the way he had blown up at her. Despite feeling guilty about it, Nishikita still thought that Takagi-San had slightly deserved it, as she had teased him the most amount of times ever that day.

They finally arrived at school and put their shoes into their lockers. When they arrived at their class, almost everybody was in their seats already, and saw Nishikita walk in with a rather unhappy looking Takagi-San. He sat down in his seat, and started talking to Akari about the homework he had helped her with and checked that she understood. 

Takagi-San stood at the classroom, her eyes staring daggers into Nishikita's back, ignoring the entire class suddenly going quiet and quickly shifting their eyes between Nishikita, Akari and Takagi-San.