Take Me Home (Tendou x Reader)

Chapter 06

The next few weeks things went as they had been going. You spent your days sitting in class next to Tendou, most noons and evenings cooking with your club, and your weekends either studying when your mother or father was at home or lazing about when they were both at work.

Your other lunch and dinner breaks were either spent sitting with Akari and her friends or with Tendou. You noticed that instead of sitting on his own when you sat with Akari, after a short while he took the initiative to sit with a couple of guys. One of them was Semi Eita, from your class and you recognized two of them as the ones from the volleyball club who had invited themselves to your table that one time. There were two more that you didn't recognize. 

On the weekends you kept up your chat conversations with him. It didn't escape your notice that he started using more and more of the emoji and it gave you the impression that he was getting more comfortable around you, on chat at least.

When school had been going for about a month and a half, one of your teachers gave you a particular assignment.

"I want you all to pick a country, not Japan obviously, and give me a report on it. You have three weeks to do your research. I want two pages, excluding pictures, and I want originality." She spoke through the collective groans. "I want you to search for specifics about the country that aren't obvious and aren't the first things you would see in a travel guide. Every five year old knows that Switzerland has snowy mountains, but who knows about their unique educational system?"

Before the class could erupt into too much of a murmur of discontent and dismay she knocked her fist on her desk. "You'll be working in pairs for this assignment."

That caused even more noise as everyone started trying to get a friend to pair up with them. But the teacher knocking on her desk again, louder this time, made the classroom fall quiet again. An uncomfortable mood hung in the air as everyone knew what that most likely meant.

"I'll be assigning the pairs myself." She walked up from behind her desk before the complaining could begin and stood in front of the row that was furthest away from the windows.

"You guys pair up with the person sitting behind you." She said and you felt your heart sink. If that was how all the pairs would be formed, you were out of luck. The guy sitting behind you was not the most ambitious person in the class. 

Just as you were beginning to resign yourself to doing the assignment on your own, the teacher spoke up again.

"The other four rows pair up with the person next to you." And with that, she went back to sit at her desk to write down the pairs and give some more instructions. 

"Thank god." You spoke just above a whisper, glad to have dodged that bullet.

-

Tendou felt his heart twinge so badly that it almost physically hurt. He crossed his arms on his desk and hid his face in them to make sure no one would take notice of the fact that his emotions were about to get the better of him.

You probably had no idea what your little comment did to him, but the fact that you were so genuinely relieved to be paired with him instead of someone else made him so happy that it nearly brought him to tears.

The last month had been nothing if not amazing, even though most people would classify it as normal. Both you and the volleyball team had actually made him think that school was 'not that bad'. 

In class, you treated him as he had often seen other students treat each other. You asked him which answer he got on a certain question of a test, told him about your club activities, picked up his eraser when he dropped it. They were silly, small things that most people wouldn't think twice about. But to him, it was as if a life that had been so distant to him for all these years was finally within reach.