Hi Tia! Hope this is satisfactory, although I’m not sure I interpreted the request right (´•ω•`๑)
Fem!Reader ahead
A wonder and a shame, how people sometimes just cannot see themselves as how others see them. The discrepancy between thoughts and reality, caused by insecurities and self-doubt, rises like steam fogging up a bathroom mirror. It is metaphorically like that simply because the perception one has of oneself is distorted. Blurred. Obscured. As if the whole notion isn’t sad enough, the fact that most good people are unable to see how good they actually are is what makes it sadder.
This story focuses on two people in particular who are unfortunate enough to only be able to see their clouded reflections in their bathroom mirrors.
Your shower was too hot, you conclude as you absent-mindedly take note of interior of the modest bathroom that looks as if it has been covered in a white transparent blanket. That, or you took too long in the shower, which is most likely the case. Things haven’t exactly been going good for you, and your usually clear thoughts are easily polluted at times like these, surfacing most often when you’re in the shower.
You look at your reflection as you pass by a mirror, ruffling your hair with a soft towel. You immediately walk out of the bathroom. From experience, it’s better when you dwell on what you see for too long.
Three miles away from your home, Kasamatsu holds back a curse as he strums a chord that grates his ears. Who knows how many times he’s tried to get that part of the song right? (Dozens of times in the course of three hours, he keeps track in the back of his mind, but obviously that wasn’t enough.) Frustration occupies too much of his mind to let him focus on the instrument, and that mistake is what makes him snap, though it doesn’t visibly show. The only visual clue of his annoyance is the darkness in his expression, obviously forcing himself to calm down and set the guitar on its stand before falling face first on his bed.
He’s going to sleep in that position tonight—if sleep wins the battle against his thoughts, that is.
It’s hard to describe the distance between the two of you. Are you close? Are you not close? You find a hard time calling him a friend, since you’ve only been paired up in three projects throughout your school years in Kaijou, and you only talk occasionally outside of class. It doesn’t feel right to call him an acquaintance either, because you feel as though you know him more than a regular acquaintance would know each other.
You would have been more active in making an effort to interact with him if not for the fact that he seems to avoid you whenever you do. You account that to his shyness towards the opposite gender, which is half-adorable yet half-frustrating considering your… crush towards him. Yes, you’ve come to terms with your own feelings you have especially for Kasamatsu, and his timidity is doing a really good job blocking advances you plan on making.
But lately you feel that it’s actually not that. You consider yourself as a normal classmate to him, and you assume he thinks so, too. After all, you’ve shared a class for two years consecutively now. You figure that the shyness would at least dissipate by a little, but instead it has lately increased in its intensity.
The only conclusion you can reach is that he somehow, in addition to his shyness around females, doesn’t really like you.
“What’s up?”
Kobori’s question is undoubtedly referencing to the play Kasamatsu failed to execute just a few minutes ago during team practice. The captain’s face visibly hardened, probably an unconscious shift, and his voice somehow sounds off when he dismisses it as “nothing”. The difference in his behavior is acknowledged by the other team members, though they don’t want to confront him about it quite soon, and Kasamatsu knows this. His facade of being okay is slipping. In truth, his self-confidence is rapidly decomposing, replaced only by the black bile that is self-consciousness.
His facade needs to be kept up.
“One more time,” he calls out to the team, and he would have convinced everyone in the gym with the firmness of his words if not for the way a certain darkness clouds his eyes right after.
Two hours later, he stands on the free throw line, alone in the gym as he sends basketballs flying consecutively. His basket rate has decreased by quite a lot, but he defends himself with the fact that nobody is watching and thus giving him no reason to pretend to be fine. There is rage deep in his gut and a loud voice in his ears telling him that he’s a failure of a person, that he’s not talented enough—the same voice calls him useless for working so hard without yielding any results whatsoever.
Kasamatsu slumps to the shiny gym floor, silence buzzing in his ears mixed with the light sound of crickets from outdoors. Why is it that during these dark times, he always thought of you? His infatuation for you, running far and long from the first year of high school, has taken a bad turn, pushing him further down the ground that is his self-esteem.
She will never accept someone so weird and talentless.
There are many variations of that sentences, he finds thorough occasions like this. Defeated, he runs his fingers through his hair before gripping on the strands so hard as if he was about to pull the roots out of his scalp.
“Fuck,” he rasps.
It’s been two long weeks. He’s avoided you like the plague, like you’re filthier than pig fodder, and you hate yourself because of it. You’re working on a group project together with three other people, and it so happens that he would be perfectly fine around them but not with you. No reply to the “hello”s you say to him in the hallway. A curt reply whenever you ask a question. Pretending as if not to notice you as you offer him a seat during lunch time.
Your before bed routine for the past five days has been as follows: shower, look at your body in the mirror pulling at parts you despise, lie down on bed, and overthink before you cry yourself to sleep. He must hate you so much, and it hurts how you still have feelings for him despite how you resolve to hate him back for the way he’s been treating you.
But you can’t, no matter how hard you try. Curse him for being so captivating, so him that you can’t even push him away after he pushes you away. And then there’s the fact that you have a group project together… your other group mates must already notice what’s going on. You realize that you need to confront him about this, for your own sanity if not for that assignment you could care less about.
So after steeling your nerves for another five solid days, during which he still steers clear of interacting with you unless completely necessary, you corner him in front of his locker before class and grips his wrist as a countermeasure of him running away.
“Kasamatsu-kun, can you please meet me after school? I need to talk to you about something important.”
It was a clear-cut sentence, and there’s no way someone could misinterpret it or misheard it, and especially not a smart basketball team captain, at that. His wrist burns from your touch. His heart would flutter from the physical contact if not for your words that seemingly sent small needles into his chest. What could be the important thing you’re trying to tell him?
The rest of the school day seems like a blur, not only to him but also to you. Orange light bathes the classroom, signifying the hour most anticipated by students looking forward to ending the day and most dreaded by both you and him. Should the circumstances be different, you would be disheveled and blushing, because it’s only the two of you in the classroom, standing in front of each other.
“W-What is it, __________-san?”
You look down as if the floor is the most interesting object in the world. To think that you actually felt you were ready to do this.
“Listen, Kasamatsu-kun,” you begin, a hand fiddling with the edge of the table you are leading against. “I… notice that you’ve been avoiding me lately.”
His mouth suddenly dries and it’s hard to swallow. He himself is unable to look anywhere your way, not bearing to see what sort of expression paints your face. You sound like you’re hurt. By him.
“I just,” you continue against how your voice shakes, “w-want to know what I did wrong? Was it something I said that offended you or the way I treated you at one point in our friendship—I mean, I know we’re not really close, but I felt—”
You let that sentence die down into a sigh. Upset, you wanted to say, but immediately felt that you have no right to. You just told him the two of you weren’t really close, after all. So what if he upsets you?
“I’m sorry,” Kasamatsu whispers, a hand cupped in front of his mouth as he looks at his own feet.
The words act as oil to the fire in your stomach. Yes, of course he’s sorry. Why did you see that coming?
“Can you please answer the question, Kasamatsu-kun?” You say, voice breaking despite the stern tone you mustered up, and then you realize the wetness in your eyes.
Kasamatsu must have noticed too, because he’s now looking at your face and the pained expression painted on it. Your eyes are reddening, a prelude to the tears that endeavor to escape the ducts at the corner of your eyes. The way your lips are slightly parched and how they tremble. The thought of him being the one causing you this sends a jab to his heart, the left side of his chest aching as if he’s been physically hurt.
“Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, losing control of his thoughts and his tongue, “it’s a h-hard thing for me to explain and I—”
“Tell me anyway.”
That sends him on a flurry of words.
“—I’ve liked you for a while now,
__________-san, and I’ve grown to realize that you’re too good for a person like me, and I’ve been feeling small and useless so I thought it would be best for me to just forget about how I feel for you by avoiding you altogether, but after a while it still won’t work—”
It’s as if you’re looking into a very clear mirror. His eyes redden, not unlike yours, darting around to avoid you altogether. His voice turning into a rough rasp, and how the words seem to spill out of his mouth. The feeling of panic and something akin to a bandage covering an old, painful wound being unraveled.
But neither of them matter when you hear his first words.
I’ve liked you for a while now,
__________-san.
And the tears pooling in your eyes flow forth, running down in big droplets down the skin of your cheek and you stifle a sob. The words he said were exactly how you felt towards him, how you thought you weren’t enough for someone as prolific as him, as popular as him, as perfect as him. He stops talking immediately when he sees you cry, seemingly put under a spell with a look of your tears.
Kasamatsu reaches out, his hand cupping your cheek, thumb brushing the droplets away and you melt. Despite the overflow of your tears, your sigh turns into a laugh accompanied by a sad look on your face. You only spare him seconds in confusion at the juxtaposition of emotions you’re showing to him.
“It’s funny,” you interject the silence, “painfully so, I would say.”
“What is?”
“I like you, too, Kasamatsu-kun. I also have now, for a while.”
Steel blue eyes widen at the confession, something he thought he would only hear in his wildest dreams.
“The funny thing is,” you say, eyes blurry, “what you said… they’re also exactly how I feel. I thought I was never,” you choke, “good enough for an amazing person like you, and with the way you were avoiding me, I thought you’ve finally realized that, so I decided to talk to you for one last time before getting out of your life—”
It’s as if the rest of your sentence fell apart when he pulls you into a tight embrace, your head buried in his chest and his face in your hair.
“I am so sorry,” he says, “I didn’t… I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to. Oh God, how can I ever make it up to you,” he whispers into your hair, hand stroking up and down your back to calm down your sobs. If you weren’t resting your head on his chest, you would have seen him trying his best to blink back his own tears.
The two of you stay that way, silent in each others presence and sharing warmth until you speak.
“…what now?”
At that, the old Kasamatsu makes his return, his cheeks so red he looks like he’s about to explode from the amount of embarrassment that he has to cover the bottom half of his face as if it helps. In his mind, there is only one way this can continue, and the thought of it sends more blood to his face.
“W-Well, about that!”
You look at him, tears dry, with a face that says ‘slight amused’ at the display of his shyness, but deep in the pool of your eyes is encouragement for him to say the words—unless you say it first.
“Will you… be my girlfriend?”
You chuckle, suddenly feeling shy yourself. He beat you to it, as expected of the man you adore so. You gingerly place your hands on his chest, and when presented without any form of objection to the physical contact, you lean in—
—and kiss him on the cheek.
“I thought you would never say that,” he hears your voice amidst the rush of blood in his ears, and he knows that it’s a yes to his question. Kasamatsu pouts at how badly he’s handling this and how hard it is for him because of your utter cuteness, but somehow he finds the courage to trap your wrists in each hand.
“Come, I’ll walk you home,” he says.
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