Going to the local library became a regular occurrence for Chad and Noah. They went there every afternoon after Chad’s detention, deciding not to give up on their romantic conquest just yet. Every time they would start off reading books and discussing plans for winning their respective girl’s heart but they inevitably veered off course and began chatting about whatever they felt like.
Noah told Chad more about manga and recommended some. The list of recommendations was initially intimidating in its length, but Chad couldn’t help but stare with a warm heart when Noah talked about something he loved.
It didn’t take Noah long to notice that Chad wasn’t fully listening, so he came up with a new course of action. He collected a pile of manga from the library and read the blurbs aloud to him. The ones Chad looked interested in were put in one pile and the others were put in a different pile. He pushed the interesting manga towards Chad and suggested he pick one to read for the day. The one Chad picked first was entitled, ‘My Girlfriend is a Giant Robot But She’s Also My Therapist’.
Noah beamed at him. ‘I’ve read the light novel for that.’
‘The what now?’
‘You know, light novels. They’re short novels that usually come in series.’ As he went on and on about this particular light novel with a manga adaptation, Chad paid more attention to the boy’s glowing face than what he was actually saying. That last light of concentration was extinguished when he saw a girl walk past him with a smile on her face.
She had frizzy strawberry blonde hair and wore rectangular glasses that perfectly balanced the roundness of her face. In her thin but muscular arms, visible via a singlet top despite the weather, were three thick books she carried easily. Her lips had seductive curves to them, aided by ample use of apricot lipstick and matching lip liner.
After heading to one of the shelves/lockers, she turned her gaze to Noah, who also smiled at her, and dropped her own smile. However, she didn’t frown. In fact, her expression was neutral and free from judgement. Noah did not see it this way.
He looked at the manga in his hands and used those hands to hide the cover. He hung his head and scowled at the lines in the oak desk.
Chad turned his head and saw Noah’s tense shoulders. He leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Go for it.’
Noah’s head jumped up. He looked at him like he’d just suggested he commit genocide. ‘Me? Why me? She’s going to choose you.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that. And if it doesn’t work out, you got some practice before trying to get Stacy.’ Chad felt a twinge of guilt saying this, not knowing if Stacy could possibly like a guy, though that guilt certainly wasn’t enough to stop him from trying to encourage his new friend. ‘Put these books to good use.’
With a sigh, Noah stood up and plodded towards the girl. He stood behind her for a moment, mentally preparing what to say to her. He continued standing there for enough time to make Chad make a shooing gesture.
After a few more seconds the girl noticed someone was behind her and turned around. ‘Hi, do you want to talk to me or something?’ she asked after she gave way to him and he stood still instead of looking at the books. Her voice sounded like someone had converted honey into audio.
Noah’s shoulders leapt up and he began to sweat. Even though she was smiling at him, he thought he could sense the stone-cold judgement in her eyes. She hated him. She was disgusted by him and wanted nothing to do with him. He was but a piece of snot that had stuck to her wrist when she sneezed into it.
He turned around and marched back to the desk. Chad gave him the eyes of someone seeing a kitten in the rain. Noah shoved his books and manga away from him before picking up his headphones from the desk and putting them on, taking a few deep breaths.
Inside Chad’s heart was a bit of pain. That bit was the size of a poppy seed and thus relatively easy to ignore, but it was there. What was bigger was the sudden need to make Noah smile again, though Chad didn’t know how.
He decided to use a weakness of his as a strength. His quick plan relied on the strawberry blonde girl’s reaction being the exact same one as every other girl Chad talked to. If not, well, at least he had someone to distract him from Becky.
He stood up and swaggered, or rather attempted to swagger, towards the girl. When she saw him she bit her lip and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
‘Hey,’ she cooed. ‘I’m Luce. You?’
The plan must have been working as Chad felt sweat drop down his back. ‘I’m, uh, Chad.’
‘Hi, Chad. So what do you like to read?’
‘Me? I’m, uh, not much of a reader.’ Luce raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t mean I hate it or anything, uh, you see, I’m here with a friend and, well, uh…. Why don’t you teach me what books are good?’ She scrunched her nose. ‘Wow, that sounded a little pervy. Haha. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sure you’ve spent a lot of time with your nose in a book, right? Oh, not in an insulting way, just, you know, you seem really smart with all those, uh, books.’ Luce swapped eyebrows and took a step backwards.
‘Uh, yeah… It was nice meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you here again.’
As she walked away, Chad said, ‘Yeah, totally. I’ll see you some time in the future.’
His shoulders drooped as he headed back to the desk. Noah hesitated before patting him on the shoulder and smiling.
‘There, there. So how exactly are you a Chad? Did your parents have the wrong kid when they named you?’
‘Hardy har har. Yeah, I suck. So don’t feel too bad.’
Noah crossed his arms. ‘Did you just pretend to be awkward just to make me feel better?’
With a shake of his head, Chad said, ‘I couldn’t be smooth to girls if I tried. That was a case in point.’
‘Sure, sure.’
Knowing nothing would change Noah’s mind, Chad instead decided to change the subject, picking up a manga from the desk with the title, ‘Love ☆ Lace’. It had two men who appeared to be very close to each other, one holding a measuring tape that tied the other’s wrists together. His heart beat a little faster. Just a little bit.
‘So there’s gay manga?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. I haven’t read that one since I don’t read that stuff, but I do know it’s for girls. I just grabbed whatever manga I could find here.’
‘Girls? Seriously? But they’re both guys!’
Noah laughed at Chad’s confused face, ‘I don’t claim to understand the average fujoshi.’ When Chad looked even more confused, Noah explained what little he knew about gay manga for women.
After he was done he said, ‘Anyway, tell me what you think about ‘My Girlfriend is a Giant Robot But She’s Also My Therapist’. It’s one of the best manga of the past few years.’ He spoke quickly and made large gestures as he detailed what made the manga so great, and, once again, Chad partially listened while staring at the boy’s ever-growing grin.
Another day, Chad started hanging out with Noah at school. During lunch they would talk about a range of topics from what movies they liked to what conspiracies seemed the most likely to be true. They both liked and felt nostalgic over the movie ‘Beauty and the Beast’, though Noah thought it was a bit unrealistic.
‘As if a femoid would choose the Beast over Gaston. I mean, look at his muscles! And that Chad jaw. How could any girl resist? At least the French movie understood that.’
Chad rubbed his jaw. When he saw Noah’s smile, he realised why he said that. He didn’t thank him for the reassurance but returned the same facial expression.
As for conspiracy theories, they disagreed over whether feminists had plotted to ruin ugly guys’ dating practices, with Chad not convinced that feminists were that powerful. However, they both had their scepticisms about the official JFK assassination story.
Whenever they talked about a new subject, the ratio between things they had in common and places where they differed was pretty even. Despite the disagreements, Noah’s passion during their conversations was enough for Chad to wake up each morning with his pearly whites showing.
During their discussions, people would regularly pass Chad and wave or high five him, interrupting Noah to talk to Chad for a little bit. When the frequency of this became too much for Noah, he put his headphones and listened to music while waiting to talk to Chad again, often posting to Incels.me on his phone about how ugly men were the social class facing the most discrimination.
Over the next two or so weeks, Noah did this less and less, even joining in on the conversations between Chad and other students on occasion. At one point he stopped bringing his headphones into the classroom altogether. He considered grabbing them again when Chad told him how proud he was of him for talking with others, but upon seeing Chad’s gentle expressions, he decided against it. He couldn’t help but wonder how hunter eyes could at times look like the eyes of a duckling309Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsxvp0ASfSq
