Silent Love: A Love Live Sunshine Fanfiction

New Student

"Italicized" = Signed

"Regular" = Spoken

Italicized = Yō typing

Bold = Someone else typing

----- = A spoken word Yō can't understand (or at least not lip read)

...

Yō's POV:

A few weeks had passed since I started school. Most kids gave me hell for being deaf as I had expected. Chika was the only one who didn't follow suit. Every day in school she would always be by my side and ready to chat.

She had met up with me at a café every day to learn how to sign. She was getting there, but it was hard. It was interesting to see what she would accidentally sign to me at times. But, she was determined to get through it and learn. I admire that. She's struggling a lot, but she really wants to communicate better with me.

Today was a different day at school. Pretty different. A new kid had entered the classroom this morning. She had long red hair and a shy, almost scared, look on her face. I guess she hates that everyone is watching her. I can understand that feeling well. I feel that same way whenever I'm signing in public. People always look at me like I'm a freak because I'm signing.

Chika being Chika was the first to introduce herself. She even offered the new kid a seat beside her. I watched them in amusement. Chika was way more hyper than that girl. I wonder if she can keep up. Even I can barely handle Chika's neverending hyperness on some days.

I stood up and walked over to them, hoping to save her a little bit from the questions. Chika sure loved to ask a lot of them whenever she could, that's for sure.

"Chika, she seems lost on your words. I think you should take a step back." I stated, watching the girl to see her reaction to my voice.

She didn't seem to have much of a reaction. I guess she's from a city then. Lots of accents there so this wouldn't be unusual for her.

"Sorry," Chika apologized, "I guess I got ahead of myself."

If she couldn't sign it, she'd speak it. So half the time her sentences were signed and half the time they were spoken. This seemed to confuse the girl even more. I gave her an apologetic look even though she wouldn't know that I'm the cause for Chika's weird speaking. I still felt like I needed to get that across to her though.

"Hi there, my name is Yō, what's yours?" I asked.

"My name is ----" She responded.

I'm not good reading words I don't know. I looked at Chika and asked her to sign the name for me. She happily did so.

"R-I-K-O." Chika spelled.

Riko watched us, her eyes wide. Well, it wasn't like she wouldn't know about me being deaf for long anyway. Someone would tell her if I didn't.

"I'm deaf. I couldn't understand your name so I asked her to spell it. My lip reading skills only go so far." I stated.

"Oh... sorry?" Riko offered.

I shook my head, "It's fine. Honestly I like being deaf. I don't have to deal with annoying brats like our classmates."

That earned a chuckle out of both of them.

"You can speak pretty well." Riko pointed out.

I chuckled, "Try telling that to everyone else. I only know how to speak because of some abusive family members. I can't say I'm not grateful, but... I'd be okay if I couldn't speak."