My Ex-Girlfriend Who Dumped Me, the Top Student, Is at Risk of Failing and Repeating a Year—but I’m Too Busy Tutoring a Former Shut-in Beauty To Get Back Together With Her - 2

Chapter 2: The Remnants of Hard Work

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The specified address was in a quiet residential neighborhood away from the school. Standing at the location indicated by the map app was a Western-style building with an impressive gate, a size larger than the surrounding houses.

The nameplate read “Kisaragi.”

“……So this is it.”

I stopped in front of the gate and let out a long breath. The lingering traces of the heartbreak from earlier had faded slightly during the walk here. Or rather, to be precise, it had simply been overwritten by the tension of “entering a stranger’s house.” When I pressed the intercom, a woman’s voice answered with a “Hello” after a short while.

“Excuse me, I’m Kashiwagi from Shuei High School. Saejima-sensei asked me to deliver some printouts to Kisaragi-san.”

“Ah…! Yes, I’ll open it now! Please wait a moment!”

The owner of the voice sounded terribly flustered. A few seconds later, the heavy front door opened, and a woman in an apron appeared. She looked to be in her forties—elegant, but her face bore the unmistakable signs of exhaustion. She was likely Kisaragi’s mother.

“I’m sorry to make you come all this way, Kashiwagi-san. To think a friend from school would come…”

“No, it was on my way. ……Um, Saejima-sensei told me to ‘hand them directly to her if possible.'”

When I brought that up, the mother’s expression clouded slightly.

“I see… Kotone is in her room on the second floor. However, um… lately, she’s become hypersensitive even when I just try to enter her room.”

“If it seems impossible, I’ll just leave them in front of the door and head home. For now, may I try going up?”

“Yes, of course. Please, come in.”

The hallway I was led through was polished without a speck of dust. It was an overly quiet house. I couldn’t sense any sounds of daily life at all. The heavy atmosphere made it feel as if the entire house were holding its breath.

It’s suffocating.

I went up the stairs as guided and stood before the room at the end of the second-floor hallway. From the bottom of the stairs, the mother was watching me as if praying. I gave a slight bow and turned back to the room’s door. A heavy-looking wooden door. Beyond it was a classmate whom no one had seen since the opening ceremony in April.

Knock, knock. 

I gave a light tap. No answer.

“Kisaragi-san. It’s Kashiwagi from your class. Saejima-sensei, our homeroom teacher, asked me to bring some printouts and assignments.”

I spoke through the door, but there was still no reaction. It was within my expectations. There was no way a truant student would suddenly invite a high school boy in. I put my hand on the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

“……I’m coming in. I’m just going to leave them and go.”

After giving that notice, I slowly opened the door. The moment I entered, a wave of stale air flowed out. The inside of the room was dim despite it being daytime. Thick blackout curtains were completely closed, rejecting the outside light.

As my eyes adjusted, the disastrous state of the room became visible. It wasn’t that trash was scattered about. Thick technical books, encyclopedias, and novels were piled up on the floor like towers. There was hardly any place to step. It was like a fortress of books.

And at the center of that fortress. In the shadow of the bed in the corner of the room, a small figure was crouching.

So that’s Kotone Kisaragi.

She was hugging her knees, her long black hair hanging down like a curtain to hide her face. She must have noticed I entered, but she didn’t twitch. Her entire body emitted an aura of rejection that said, “Don’t get involved with me.”

I swallowed a sigh and placed the printouts on the low table near her.

“These are the lessons for this week. Since Math and English are moving forward, I’ve put sticky notes on the corresponding pages of the textbooks.”

There was no reaction from her. 

I should just leave quickly. 

Just as I thought that, my eyes caught a notebook spread out on the low table. I stopped in my tracks. That notebook was in tatters. The paper had thinned and was torn in places because she had used an eraser over and over again. The same formulas were written out like incantations in handwriting with heavy pressure.

Ah, I know this. I know these marks.

A memory from my childhood flashed back into my mind. The night I cried because I couldn’t memorize the multiplication tables. That day I snapped my pencil in frustration because I couldn’t understand fraction division. Looking at me now—a guy who was told he “can’t do anything but study”—no one would believe it, but I was originally a dull child.

I couldn’t understand things unless I spent several times longer than others. That was why I put in dozens of times more effort than others. I read the textbooks until I had them memorized, solved every reference book until they were worn out, and built myself up through unrefined persistence to reach my current “top of the grade” status.

Is she fighting, too?

She wasn’t just slacking off. She was standing before the wall of “not understanding” and hitting it until her fingernails peeled off. As someone who knew that pain, I couldn’t just abandon her and go home. I knelt down and looked at the math textbook by her hand.

“……That part is hard to understand with just the textbook’s explanation, isn’t it?”

When I spoke, her shoulders jumped with a start. Ignoring the reaction, I took a pen from my breast pocket.

“The geniuses who write textbooks don’t understand where ordinary people stumble. That’s why they skip explanations.”

I quickly drew a diagram on the back of a printout. It was an “interpretation” I had derived myself long ago after stumbling there and agonizing over it for three days and nights.

“Rather than memorizing this formula, imagine this diagram first. ……Don’t think with just words. Animate it in your head. This is the starting point, and as time passes, it moves like this.”

I slowly wove my words while adding arrows to the diagram. I wasn’t looking down on her or pushing her away. It was as if I were explaining it to my “past self who didn’t understand.”

“There’s no need to rush. This is the most difficult part, so once you get past this, the rest is easy. ……I used to get this wrong many times, too.”

“……Eh?”

A small, perplexed voice leaked from the gaps in her hair.

“It’s because I’m not a genius. That’s why I can somewhat tell why you’re struggling and which parts feel uncomfortable.”

I put down the pen and waited for her reaction. Silence fell. Perhaps I had stepped in a bit too far.

“……Sorry. I talked too much on my own. Well then, I’ll be—”

It was just as I turned my back to leave.

“……Wait.”

I felt a couple of tugs on the hem of my clothes. Looking back, she had raised her head. The long hair that had covered her face flowed smoothly over her shoulders.

“—!”

The moment I saw her face, I froze, forgetting to even breathe.

She was pale. Her skin was pathologically white and smooth like porcelain. And more than anything, what caught my eye were her eyes. Large, clear eyes—distinct even in the darkness—were staring straight up at me. Tiny beads of tears still lingered on her long eyelashes.

The term “beautiful girl”  was too cheap to describe her. The class rumors? Gloomy? It was all nonsense. All that existed here was a beauty so perfected it seemed out of this world.

She—Kotone Kisaragi—opened her trembling lips.

“I understand……”

“Eh?”

“With that explanation just now…… I understood. Even though I didn’t get it no matter how many times I read the textbook or watched videos…… it came to me so naturally, like the fog had cleared……”

Heat dwelled in her eyes. It wasn’t fear or rejection. It was a look of intense “craving” and “dependence”—like a shipwrecked person who had found a single rescue rope at the bottom of a dark sea.

“Amazing……”

She looked back and forth between the diagram I drew and my face, letting out a hot, soft breath.

“It’s like magic…. I’m not stupid…. I can actually understand……”

The moment I heard those words, something throbbed deep in my chest. Those were the words I had wanted most today. My ability, which had been branded as worthless and cast aside with the words “you can’t do anything but study.” This girl had praised that very ability as “magic.” And above all—the fact that she said “I understand” felt like it validated even my own past efforts.

She kept gripping the hem of my uniform as she looked up at me. Her eyes swayed anxiously.

“Um…… Please don’t leave yet.”

“No, but… A guy you just met staying too long is—”

“Teach me more…… Sensei.”

Sensei.

That sweet resonance made my brain go numb. Calling a mere classmate “Sensei.” Was that her own way of being spoiled, or was it respect? Either way, those words pierced deep into my heart.

Before I knew it, I had sat back down in front of her. When I was with Rina, study sessions were an “obligation.” But now it was different. The girl before me was looking at me with a serious gaze, determined not to miss a single word. There was no reason not to reach out to someone who genuinely wished to learn.

“……Alright. I have time today, so I’ll stay until we finish this unit.”

“Really……?”

“Yeah. If you can keep up with my explanation, that is. I’m a Spartan, you know?”

When I gave a slightly mischievous smile, Kisaragi smiled like a flower blooming.

“I’ll work hard. …If Sensei is with me, I can work hard.”

I involuntarily looked away from the destructive power of that smile, trying to make sure she didn’t realize my heart was beating like a drum. And so. The strange private lessons between me and the truant beauty began.

At this time, I didn’t know yet… That the feelings she held for me would turn into something far deeper and heavier than a mere “motivation to study.”

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