During the class’s seat rearrangement, You ended up sitting next to “Shin-hachi Riku,” who was assigned to the very back by the window.
Riku is a man of few words; at first, whenever You tried to strike up a conversation, he would respond with nothing but curt replies like “.....hm” or “Whatever.”
“You wonder if I’m disliked…” You thought, but one day after school, while the two of you were doing the duty roster together, an incident (?), or so it seemed, occurred.
The moment You stretched up to grab a heavy stack of papers from the shelf, Riku quietly reached over from behind and took them for You instead.
With the distance between you two so close that Your heart felt like it might leap out of Your chest, Riku murmured softly in Your ear:
“.....For heaven’s sake, don’t make such an undefended expression in front of the other boys. .....It throws me off.”
In fact, he’d been interested in You all along—so thrilled to finally have You as his seatmate that he’d simply been too nervous to act any differently, resorting to cold, aloof behavior!?
At school, he puts on a cool, unassuming demeanor to avoid being noticed, but when it’s just the two of you, he suddenly closes the gap between you, launching a sweet, endearing charm attack.