"What a nice day."

Izuru stepped out of his house and into the hot saturday sun that shined brightly in the cloud-free blue sky. With his headphones on his head instead of around his neck as usual, and in a combo of black pants and sneakers with a white t-shirt and a sleeveless grey jacket with a hood, he walked his way up to the household's gate, which he closed after crossing. He pulled his hood up to protect himself from the sun and sighed.

"And then there's this."

"Waaaaaaah! Miyuki, Ako-chan dumped me for Tamaki-chan! What am I supposed to do, I can't beat a girl in a battle of being hot! I don't have boobs!" Tate's voice cried from the headphones.

"You've been saying that for the past two hours, even after I made it clear I was going to silence you while I had lunch, so what's your point? And make it quick, I'm gonna shit on you when I get to Yumi's house."

"B-but Miyuki! Ako-chan came up to me and said we were better off with other people like usual and then skidaddled to Tamaki-chan! What is a poor and innocent soul like mine supposed to do in this situation?! C'mon man, you played a shit load of games with dating sim aspects, I've seen your gaming shelf!"

"Perhaps not date the same two girls all the time?" Izuru suggested, rolling his eyes.

"Why though? Ako-chan and Tamaki-chan are simply so lovely."

"Lovely as in they're nice to you or lovely as in goddamn, their tits are massive?"

"LIKE GODDAMN, THEIR TITS REALLY ARE MASSIVE! TERE WAS THIS TIME AT LAST YEAR'S CULTURAL FEST WHERE THE THREE OF US FELL AND MY HEAD GOT SANDWICHED BETWEEN ALL FOUR OF THEIR BOOBS, IT WAS THE PEAK OF MY LIFE!"

Izuru pulled his headphones down to briefly groan loudly, both internally and externally, and then placed them back on his head.

"What's your point?"

"My point is that my heart is broken! It was stepped up by Ako-chan's vile words! The one who should have been stepped on by Ako-chan was me, not my heart! Oh, imagine those long legs of her just-"

"Oh no, I arrived at Yumi's house, what am I to do with this very important call with my best friend- And boop." Izuru said, bluntly ending the call and then sighing. "I must have been a real son of a bitch in my past life. Either that or karma is actually starting to catch up to me."

A few meters ahead was the Gushiken household, where the light blue haired kouhai awaited for him in front of the household's front gate in a light blue summer dress with a smile beaming across her face. Upon seeing her tutor in the distance, she began waving and calling out for him.

"Izuru-kun!"

"Good afternoon." Izuru said, waving back at his underclassmen. "I'm sorry if I got here late, a certain Kusotori kept chirping at me for the whole morning and up to ten seconds ago."

"Kusotori? Who's that? A whole month has gone by and you haven't presented me to all your friends?! Izuru-kun, you're so mean when you hide your friends like with Kasumi-chan!" Yumi pouted.

"Bold of you to assume I have any other friends. Kusotori is a nickname I'll officially call Tate by after he dunks on his midterms. We've had this bet waiting on the back of our heads for years but Ban eating fried chicken is what remembered us about it." Izuru explained.

"I see... Wait, why call Tametomo-kun by crappy bird then?"

"It's probably the most clever thing of clever things. After his results prove his lifestyle of being social leads to him dunking on tests for lack of studying, I will be able to confirm his brain is the equivalent of a bird's doodoo. Hence, Kusotori."

"Sometimes you and Tametomo-kun say things that make me wonder how you're still friends." Yumi chuckled.

"Me too. So, shall we get started on the studying?"

"Mhm!" Yumi nodded. "Where are your books? Did you bring any inside that jacket?"

"I was supposed to bring books...? I thought I'd just explain how to do this or that from things on your books. Ah, nevermind that. I'll rush home and return with some-"

"It's fine, we'll do your method! Come on!" Yumi giggled, grabbing Izuru by his arm and pulling him inside.

Whilst Yumi left to go get her books and other things, Izuru walked alongside the edges of the backyard by himself, looking down on the flowers planted there. He crouched in front of a small dandelion still blooming and smiled.

"Mom has a keener eye to this gardening thing than me, but this still brings back memories..." Izuru muttered, caressing the petals of the flower. "Maybe I really should start giving this a shot too."

Izuru chuckled, his mind trailing off to a memory of a couple of years ago as his eyes slowly closed, of when he was in his first year of middle school.

As he left his school by himself, a friend told him how the student council president of her school had proposed to a girl while holding onto a dandelion instead of of a proper ring, which he shrugged off. But when he arrived home, he came across his brother, pressed against the floor by their own mother.

"You idiot, you really went and asked her to loan you money to get married right away. She was the leader of the wrestling club in her high school for a reason." 

Another chuckle left Izuru. Looking back at the scene as if it was a picture in his mind, he smiled.

"The good old-"

Izuru's eyes shot open as he noticed the corner of that mental image, scratched to cover up the presence of an adult man in the room. Without noticing it, he started to fall back, gripping onto the dandelion and ripping it out of the ground, then smashing it inside his tightening fist.

"I'm sorry if I made you wait alot, Izuru-kun!" Yumi apologized as she arrived at the garden with her school bag in her arms. "Izuru-kun?" She noticed him lying on the ground and smiled. "It probably feels good."

Yumi placed her school bag on a nearby white table and made her way over to Izuru, laying on the ground next to him.

"The earth is soft, and the sun is warm... I could spend the entire afternoon here..." Yumi chuckled.

"You're here already, Yumi... I'm sorry, I think I tried to hold onto the wrong thing when I fell." Izuru muttered, opening his hand to reveal the crumbled flower. "I'm sorry, I'll pay you back for the damage caused."

"What are you talking about, Izuru-kun?" The blue haired girl giggled. "You always get so apologetic over the smallest of things. It was just a flower, more will grow in its place. So don't worry about it, Izuru-kun." She said in a soft voice, wipping away the remains in Izuru's hand. "See? No need to worry about it!"

"You're too nice, Yumi." Izuru sighed with a small smile. He sat up and stretched his arms. "Alright, let's go study. If I leave without making you able to scoring a perfect score, then I have failed as a tutor."

"Hm, what's the hurry? The afternoon is long and it's so warm..." Yumi mellowed.

"Tate said the same thing and then boom, not the worst score on the school's history for some miraculous reason. Come on, get up." Izuru looked at Yumi, but was suddenly pulled down by her. "Y-yumi-"

Yumi rolled closer to Izuru. Puting her arms around his neck and pulling him closer to her chest, Yumi burried her face into Izuru's hair, leaving him in a state of confusion.

"S-seriously?" Izuru sighed. "What are you doing?"

"Sleeping..." Yumi muttered.

"Come on, this isn't the time for that." With another sigh, Izuru tried to pull Yumi's arms away, but her resistance surpassed his strength. "Alright, fine." He said. "We can laze around for a bit. Drowning in textbooks for five hours isn't healthy either way."

"Yaaaaaaay, Izuru-kun is so nice!" Yumi said with a drowsy tone.

"I think you mean I'm someone who can't get out of this one." He chuckled. 

"Hey, Izuru-kun. Do you remember how we met? It was about... Four years ago? Six years maybe?"

"Five. I met you during the time I was starting to bloom my personality into a blank piece of cardboard, so sometime before finishing my last year of elementary- Hey watch it!"

"I don't like when you say you're boring or have a personality of a cardboard piece." Yumi chuckled, pulling Izuru's ear. 

"Come on, stop it!"

"You sound just like a kid." The blue haired girl giggled.

"Sheesh..." Izuru sighed. "Right, it was five years ago."

Yumi was transfered from her old elementary school in Okinawa to one in Tokyo right before the start of the last semester of her second elementary school year, because of her father's sudden promotion in the publishing company he worked at.

Because of the light blue hair she had since birth, she rapidly became the center of attentions of her new class, but at the same time, the target of bullying by both girls jealous of the attention she received and boys who picked on her for the sake of picking on others. It was a normal case of dumb kids being dumb kids.

But Yumi persevered through it nonetheless, because nothing about her was special. There were plenty happy-go-lucky people besides her, there were plenty of students good at what she was good at, there were plenty of easily approachable people other than her. The only thing that made her escape the norm was what made her a target.

But Yumi persevered through it nonetheless, because among that continuous abuse was a thin ray of hope, an idea of how to stop it all. With the goal of showing she wasn't going to falter under the abuse, she began adapting the colour blue into her everday life, be it through blue acessories for her hair or school bag, blue coloured clothing when she played with her friends outside school, among others. But even that proved to be ineffective, and things only became worse.

But Yumi persevered through it nonetheless, until one rainy day at the start of April, she didn't.

After a harsh rain during most of the day, the sun showed itself right as classes for the day came to an end. Yumi stepped outside to leave school, but it was where they were her abusers awaited her. After so much rain, mud was formed all around the school grounds, and with handfuls of that mud, they blasted her where she stood, covering all of her beautiful light blue hair in a dirty layer of mud. 

As the only thing allowing her to be different from the rest was stripped away from her, Yumi stared down at a small pond of water that showed her reflection. The mud dripped from her hair and into the pond, destroying her reflection. But then, to put a final nail in the coffin, the one who started all the abuse threw a pair of scizzors to the ground.

"It'll be hard to get rid of it once it hardens, so might aswell cut it before it ruins everything."

Finally accepting defeat, Yumi's eyes darkened with a complete lack of hope. She tried to look up to face her abuser and admit her defeat, but as she did so, he suddenly fell with his face on the pond. Striken by surprise, the light in Yumi's slowly returned as she saw who took him down. It was boy from the year above hers, with dark brown hair, kicking a ball. Some meters behind him were a boy of his height with light brown hair and a young girl slightly smaller than the two, with brown hair aswell.

"Ah, I'm sorry. My friend Tate kicked it far and I accidently kicked it against this guy. What a bad way of being an upperclassmen." He said as he proceeded to kick the ball against everyone that surrounded Yumi, until they were either crying or had ran away. "Use this to clean your hair. Bye bye."

Yumi looked down on the white handkerchief the older boy gave her, but instead of using it to clean her hair, she used it to wipe the tears caused by that new glimmer of hope.

"I wonder what happened to that handkerchief. I think I lost it when I visited my grandparents or something." Izuru shrugged. "Man, kids really are the worst."

"They really are, aren't they?" Yumi chuckled. "I never repaid you for that day, and then I've been clinging to you for all these years..."

"What are you talking about? You don't need to- Y-yumi?"

Yumi released Izuru from her grasp, holding his head up and she sat up on her knees, then rested his head on her lap.

"I never told you this, but... I really thought that was it. That was my final straw. I was ready to endure the abuse for the rest of the semester and then dye my hair black when the next year began. I kept resisting it because I had hope, but they took that hope away, so I was ready to just give up and give them the pleasure of winning. But then... But then you appeared out nowhere. You gave me hope. I'm nothing special at the end of the day. There are lots of people better than me academics and sports and with better personalities, so my hair was my only escape to not being another nobody. But when I lost my hope, I accepted that my fate was that, being a nobody. But you gave me hope, Izuru-kun... You stood up for a stranger you never interacted before, and that filled me with hope... That maybe I can be more than just that one girl with the funny coloured hair. So thank you, Izuru-kun." Yumi explained in a soft tone, looking down on Izuru with mellow eyes.

"Y-yumi... I-"

"Hey hey, Izuru-kun! You probably had a bunch of girls of my year confessing their love for you already, right?" Yumi giggled, lifting her head.

"Pfffft." Izuru cackled loudly. "Af if! Have you looked at me? I fill the entire approachable bingo card. I'd rather spend my days playing games, I've wasted money on gacha, I'm not that good at sports, I don't hold back on the words, and that's just personality-wise. I somehow inherited Shouto's strained eyes, so I look like I'm constantly glaring, and my mom's genetics didn't help either with leaving me with this dark hair. I look like a delinquent that has nothing lose, that beats delinquents who bleach their hair and use a ton of hair gel!" He laughed.

"I guess you're right!" Yumi giggled and moved Izuru's hair out of the way, allowing her to see the entirity of his face. "But maybe that isn't that bad of a thing, you know? I'm sure Chika-chan or Aimi-chan probably like it, maybe even Kasumi-chan too."

"After hearing Kasumi and senpai calling me out on my quote on quote scary eyes, I don't think so. And Aimi? Nah. Let's face it, I'll live and die on the hill that I scare away potential love interests. But that isn't bad. I'd rather live with friends that won't stab me in the back than share love with someone who would."

"I think so too." Yumi said with an empty smile. "Izuru-kun-"

"No more words that aren't related to the subjects on the midterms." Izuru said bluntly, getting back on his feet. "Let's get some studying done, Yumi." He said, reaching down for Yumi.

"Yeah." Yumi nodded and took his hand.

As the hours went by, the sun began to set and Izuru and Yumi finished their studying session after hours of arduous math revisions. Yumi walked Izuru to the household's gate and closed it after he stepped outside.

"First year math really is tougher than I remember." Izuru sighed. "I don't think I'm ready to see another number any time soon."

"Same here, but math is also what I want to have the highest score at." Yumi chuckled. "Izuru-kun, maybe you could return tomorrow? My parents aren't planning on going out, so I'll be here for the day. Maybe we could use that time up to study some more."

"I'd typically say yes but I can't tomorrow. Senpai has been under alot of pressure by midterms so we're going to Chibuya tomorrow." Izuru explained. "Why not join-"

"No, I'll just go study with some friends of mine instead." Yumi said. 'Chika-chan is a really amazing girl. She's smart, beautiful, popular... How did I think I could surpass her just because of one afternoon? I went out of my way to blind myself...'

"Hm? Alright then. But make sure you don't stress yourself alot. Tests are important and all, but being too stressed won't do you any good. Study for bit and then go do something fun." Izuru suggested.

"Will do, Izuru-kun!" Yumi smiled. 'Chika-chan and Aimi-chan are special. I am just me.'

"Good. See ya, Yumi." Izuru waved at her and started walking away.

"Bye bye, Izuru-kun!" Yumi waved back. 'But you still gave me hope that I could be special. Your hope makes me feel special... You make me feel special!'

Yumi's hands trembled as she gripped onto the gate. Watching as Izuru walked away and eventually left her eyesight, she slammed the gate open and began running, chasing after him.

"Izuru-kun!" She called out.

"Huh? Yumi?" Izuru stopped and looked back. "Did I forget something? Wait, I didn't bring anything in the first-"

Yumi stopped in front of Izuru, holding back her words to first regain her breath because of the running. Then, she looked up at him.

"I... I love you!"