"Hey, what happened to your leg?"

Tsukushi pattered towards me, looking concerned as well as curious, but I waved him off.

"It's nothing, I just tripped. Go back to your room."

"You're such a klutz," He remarked, earning a whack from me before I hobbled into my room. I left the lights off and sat onto the bed slowly. Sports competitions were always tiring, but somehow I felt a lot more drained, even though I hadn't run nearly as much as I would have if I hadn't been hurt. I glanced down at the bandages so meticulously wrapped around me, and bit my lip.

Of all the times for him to come find me! I must have looked so pathetic, whimpering to myself in the medical room all alone. But... somehow, he didn't make me feel that way at all.

The memory of his hands against my skin felt almost burned into me. His hands were gentle in touch, and though he'd been so careful in his wrapping, everything he touched had tingled powerfully. He had treated my leg as though it belonged to something incredibly fragile, or precious. Except it hadn't - it had belonged to me, the 'klutz' as Tsukushi had been so keen to put it.

I shook my head, heaving out a slow sigh as I lay on my back, easing my bad leg onto the bed gently. I couldn't understand why he had been there in the first place. He had looked slightly, just slightly out of breath when he had appeared, and I'd been much too surprised to react appropriately.

Did he have to look so intense? His eyes, lavender and cool, had looked sternly at me countless numbers of times. It had been no different in the medical room, when he had been concentrating on treating my leg, but there had been something much more powerful in the stern gaze he was giving me. There had been something a little different in his eyes, too, behind the sternness... was I fooling myself into thinking it had been great concern?

After Suzuka-kun helped me get my sports bag down, and I bid him farewell and walked out into the courtyard... I had glanced upward at the school building, somewhat enraptured by the beautiful way the windows were catching the sun, when I saw his face at the window, his tall form leaning against the frame.

When I had raised my hand to wave, my heartbeat speeding up, he had jerked slightly, almost as if startled, before giving back an awkward nod of the head. Then he had turned back and disappeared from view.

What had that been about? I hoped it was only because he had been in one of his less amiable, strict moods that he occasionally had. It was somewhat relieving to think that Suzuka-kun had been there on the floor with the staff room, because I'd lost the courage to ask a certain teacher sitting in the staff room to help me instead. He would have said he was too busy, I told myself, and besides, you shouldn't bother him about those things... he's a teacher, for goodness' sake...

Yes, he is your teacher, another voice in my head said insistently, but when you think back to all the times he was teaching you, instructing the class, or praising your academic prowess, didn't you wonder what it would be like to break past that cool, collected exterior? Didn't you want to know what it would be like if he would let you see another part of him? Didn't you feel a deep thrill inside when he came to you in the medical room, as though beckoned by your thoughts? Was the way he was looking at you in the medical room the way a teacher looks at a student? Was it?

Pressing my palms to my cheeks, I tried to cool my face down, but it was to no avail. I turned around and pressed my face deeply into my pillow, sighing quietly. I would never know the answer to that last question.

Though my heart weighed down with that fact, I could not stop the soft glow from inside from the traces of his touch still lingering on my skin. The glow that would never let me stop hoping.