Inside Your Mind

98 - Aizawa

Bury your doubts and fall asleep

Office hours were always something that Aizawa hated. It was just an excuse for annoying students to come to his office and bother him with whatever trivial matters they thought worth discussing and he had to tell them all the stuff they really should have known all along already.

The amount of times he had to tell students in their final year how to properly do research for their essays was astounding. How had they even made it that far without knowing these basic things? Fair enough if some first years did that, but third years? It was absolutely ridiculous.

And then there were the kind of people that thought they could get extra credit by showing up with some arbitrary questions that led to arbitrary discussions. Pointing out the obvious never earned anyone extra credit. If someone brought up a very good point, by all means Aizawa would count it toward their final grade. But the amount of students who did that was small.

Over the years most of his students had internalized that he wasn't impressed if they visited him during office hours about something that wasn't absolutely important or very interesting at least. There were a few students that had always been welcome - Kaori was one of them - but most weren't.

Nishiyama was one of those candidates that came to him with all the questions that had obvious answers. It was so obvious that she was trying to get his attention for whatever reason and it drove Aizawa to madness. He hated having to explain everything to her over and over. She was a good student and she knew all these things, but she still decided to waste her time.

So when he heard a knock at his office door he wanted to pretend that he wasn't even in. It would be easier that way and maybe, maybe, maybe they'd go away. But then he remembered that he was taking his job too seriously for that and that he should probably see who it was first.

"Come in." he said and sighed as the door opened. He was rather pleasantly surprised when he saw that it wasn't Nishiyama or one of his first years. Standing in the door was Kaori Shinsou sporting a pair of wide, pegged slacks and a black turtleneck, holding onto two or three books, her hair up in a bun and a faint smile on her face. She looked as beautiful as ever, but...

"Kaori, what are you doing here?" Aizawa asked quietly, looking around nervously. She gave him an innocent look.

"Sir, it's... it's your office hours. Can I come in?" she replied and looked around the hallway nervously.

"Sure. Close the door." he said. He couldn't say that he wasn't glad to see her, but he still hoped she wasn't going to try anything stupid. They had already taken way too many risks and Aizawa didn't want to find out how much they could get away with, because that would imply that they'd get caught at some stage.

"I finished some of your books, so I figured I could give them back to you. And I had a question on that one bit in this one..." she started explaining, after she closed the door. She put the books down on his desk and pulled the chair out to sit down, while Aizawa watched her in confusion.

"That... that's why you came here?" he wanted to know. Kaori raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly.

"Yes...? I am still your student, Shouta." she answered with a slightly confused smile on her face. Aizawa rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Right. Yes. He kept forgetting that. She was so much more than his student at this moment, not even counting their relationship. She was his coworker, she was his TA. It was difficult to keep track sometimes. And he totally hadn't been thinking about having her on his office desk. He would never think a thing like that.

"Right. Sorry." he replied and moved some papers around that really didn't need to be moved.

"I can't believe you keep forgetting, especially with how anal you are about us not doing anything on campus." Kaori said with a grin, before she plopped down in the chair opposite him.