I Was Hired As A Tutor By A Cute Little Devilish Junior - Chapter 52 Past

　◆　Shiina Azusa　◆

When I was in middle school, I was a plain and inconspicuous girl by my own admission.

I had long bangs that exuded a lack of confidence, a skirt below the knee and shirt buttons that strictly adhered to school rules.
I had a few really good friends, but I never seemed to get involved with them, and spent all my time in the classroom reading books.

I had always liked reading books, I didn’t hate school, and of course I wasn’t bullied.
Really, I was just a plain girl, not very active.

I lived up to my bookish reputation and spent my free time after school everyday reading books in the school library.
I originally thought that the library was a quiet place, but the library at my school was really not very popular and the number of visitors could be counted on one hand.

This naturally meant that the number of students were fixed. We didn’t communicate much with each other.
However, I could remember the faces of the regular members without being conscious of it. That was how small the number of people was.

I always read at a large desk in a slightly open space next to the bookshelves.
It would have been best if there had been some kind of private space, but there was no such space in the unpopular library, and the only place I could sit was at that one large desk.

However, because of the size of the desk, unless someone sat right next to me, I could concentrate on reading alone without anyone else in sight.
The chairs were arranged so that they faced each other across the desk, but the desk was wide enough that I was not bothered by anyone sitting in front of me.
…Well, since there were only a few of us to begin with, it was rare that someone would sit near or in front of me.

My ordinary time spent reading in such an ideal space turned into a completely unordinary time after a certain point.

It all started in the fall of my second year, a year after I had started reading in the library.
I went to the library as usual and was reading a book at my usual seat.
Then, a boy came into the library.

From my seat, if I looked up a little, the door to the library was just within my sight.
Normally, I would return to the world of books immediately without paying any attention to him, but at that time, I was a little bit conscious of him.

It wasn’t because I had a strange feeling, but simply because he had a face I don’t see often.
Of course, there are some people who are not used very often and I don’t remember them very well, but that male student was someone I really hadn’t seen before.

The impression I got from the glimpse of his profile was that he was a kind person.
I didn’t feel anything special about him. But I felt a serious and warm atmosphere in his face.
From that point on, I can still vividly recall the memory.

At first I just looked at the person and didn’t particularly care. I just glanced at him a little when he came into view.
He took a few books from the bookshelf and came over to me, as if he was going to read them here just like me.
Then he sat down just across from me.

I stopped reading and glanced at him to check on him.
I couldn’t tell what kind of book he was reading because there was a certain distance between us. But from the size of the book, it didn’t look like a manga or a novel.

He began to read the book he had brought with him with a serious look in his eyes. The impression of gentleness remains unchanged.
I found myself continuing to stare at him.

Whether he noticed my gaze or it was just a coincidence, he suddenly looked up.
I had long since forgotten about reading and was staring at him, and my eyes naturally snapped to meet his.

“…”

I quickly blocked my vision with a book and looked away from him.
All at once I felt a rush of embarrassment and felt my cheeks get all hot.
I don’t know what drew me to him. I was even more unsure of my feelings and just embarrassed.

After that, I never turned my head toward him and continued reading a book in my hands.
When the bell rang to tell me it was time to leave school, I couldn’t get up first for some reason, so I stayed reading for a while, and then he got up.

He had been reading so earnestly, but instead of borrowing any books, he put them all back on the bookshelf and went home without a second thought.
I was reading a book that I had borrowed earlier, so I could continue to read at home in my spare time.
But if he borrowed the books, I’m sure he could take his time reading them at home…

I had this simple question in mind, but I felt a look from the book club member sitting at the counter asking me to leave quickly, and I hurriedly left the library as well.

From that day on, he began to visit the library every day.
Every day he brought the same book from the shelf and reads it seriously in the same seat in front of me as usual.

I happened to see the cover of the book the other day.
I thought he was reading a very thick book, but it turned out to be a reference book.
The contents were probably a textbook and a collection of questions to prepare for the high school entrance examinations.

It was too late to say this, but it seems he was one of my Senpais. He was in his third year of middle school, and I think he was just starting to push himself for the high school entrance exam.
The more days passed by, the more I thought about him.

Then one day. I came to the library and I was in front of the bookshelf, which was unusual for me.
I had read through most of the books I had stocked at home and had forgotten to buy new ones.
So, for the first time in a while, I decided to borrow a book from the library to read it. With this in mind, I looked at the bookshelf, which I usually didn’t look at, to see if there were any books that looked good.

A title caught my eye. It was a shelf of novels, and I reached for a simple but intriguing title.
But it was just a few centimeters too tall; my hand couldn’t reach it.
I tried to tiptoe to reach for it, but all I could do was touch the spine of the book a little. It seemed impossible to pull it out.

I was too lazy to bring the stand just for a book I can’t get, so I gave up and looked down to see if there was something else I could find.
Suddenly, the area became dark. The lights did not go out. A shadow fell over me…

Then my gaze caught sight of a large hand extending from behind me to the top shelf of the bookshelf.

“Is this the book you wanted?”
“Eh?”

I turned around and there he was, holding the book that had attracted me.
His face, usually seen from some distance away, was right in front of me, and the first time I heard his voice.
His voice was low and firm like a normal boy’s, but it was calm and gentle, and lingered in my ears.

He smiled at me gently. In contrast, I was so flustered that I could only respond with a pathetic “Y-yes,” in a voice so small it seemed to disappear.
He smiled gently at me once more, handed me the book, and returned to his seat.

Perhaps that was the final trigger.
It tugged at my heart, filled it, and then tightened it. I couldn’t hide it anymore. It overflowed.

I was in love with that person whose name I didn’t even know.

It was nothing major. I also don’t know a lot about him.
But…that was why my heart was drawn to him before I knew it.
Perhaps I was a simple and very naive person deep down.

But strangely enough, I never had any complicated feelings.
I loved him. I couldn’t think about anything else, just thinking that.

From there my school life changed forever. …Well, it was originally disrupted by him.
The first thing to do was to gather all the information I needed to know about the person.

I didn’t want to be too much like a stalker, but I worked up the courage to expand my friendships with the kids in my class, and I worked on networking.
Surprisingly, the world was a small place, and I didn’t have too much trouble, because the boyfriend of a girl in my class whom I befriended was a friend of his.
Of course, the girl in my class knew I was in love with that person. She became very supportive.

But due to lack of time and my lack of courage, I was not able to take action before his graduation.
When I moved up to my third and final year of junior high school, I regretted this so much that I even cried at first.
But my love for him was not small enough to be cooled by such things. And it continued to burn for the rest of the year. I had such confidence in my heart.

I changed my look in that one year. I got to know the girls in that class even better, and they gave me lots of advice.
When they took me to a recommended hair salon to get a haircut, they joked frequently, saying that it was too good for me.

One year later, I was accepted into the same high school and met him again. He was more mature and cooler than he had been in middle school, and my heart jumped more than a little.
I wondered how I should talk to him, and how I could win his heart. Then resulted in a strategy meeting with my friends.

I was just a plain junior high school student. Yet, the high school life I had always dreamed of — my tutoring life with Murakami-senpai — began.