Blessed Beauty

Chapter 18

It was getting towards the end of summer vacation when, one morning, Hitomi received a phone call from Nishinoya. "Hitomi-chaaaaan!! Good morning!" His voice assaulted her eardrums as soon as she picked up.

Hitomi rolled to her side on the bed, looking at the clock on her nightstand with bleary eyes. She rubbed at them as she noted that it was just past seven. "Good morning..." She managed to softly greet back through a stifled yawn. By now, phone calls from him were a normal occurrence and she no longer felt bothered by them.

Nishinoya seemed to be an early riser, or at least, didn't have too many problems with waking up since he sounded so enthusiastic over the phone. She thought it suited his energetic personality. She normally wouldn't be this tired, as she usually woke up around this time anyways, but a particular TV show caught her interest last night, resulting in a marathon of all of its episodes.

"Did you sleep well last night?" The libero asked her. Hitomi smiled as she sat up in bed. It was funny, how genuine he always was. People always asked insignificant questions at the start of conversations, but never actually expected in-depth responses. They were more like obligatory questions that had the same effect as greetings.

When people ask, 'How are you?' and other standard conversation starters like that, they didn't actually care about your response, so long as you said something more on the positive side. Everyone knows this, and that's why they always respond with one or two word answers. If they did otherwise, the person who asked the question would seem surprised or even annoyed at times. These types of questions have mostly become meaningless in society.

For Nishinoya, however, he was fully intent on hearing her answer. When he asked, he truly wanted to hear all about her day, whether it be good or bad. If it was good, he'd be happy. If it was bad, he'd do everything in his power to make it better. He was never anything but sincere.

At first, it was strange to Hitomi. She was used to answering those types of noncommittal questions when dealing with business partners and such. So, she always gave him curt answers because she didn't think he actually wanted anything else. Of course, the libero surprised her by asking follow-up questions like what she did, or what she ate, and so on.

Eventually, she grew more accustomed to giving more meaningful answers, or at least giving answers with more substance. Her days were never really bad, mostly just boring and mundane. One time, she was curious about what he would say if she responded negatively about how her day was, and so she did just that.

The boy immediately switched gears, bombarding her with questions about what he could do to improve her mood. He never asked her why it was that she was unhappy. His sole focus was just how to make her happy.

She thought it was sweet, but then it became a little annoying when he kept insisting that he should do something. She had given him a negative answer out of curiosity, but she apparently opened up a whole can of worms that she didn't want. After that time, she kept a mental note of never doing it again. After all, curiosity killed the cat.

Even if she was having a bad day, she felt it would somehow just get better simply by being able to talk to him like this. He was always so amusing, and Hitomi was starting to come to terms with the idea of calling him a true friend.

"I slept as well as I did any other night." She responded, smoothing down her bedhead with her hand. "I didn't dream about anything." She added on, knowing that he was probably going to ask her if she had pleasant dreams last night.

"That's great! I dreamt about you again, Hitomi-chan, and it gave me an idea! Today's a rest day, so I don't have volleyball practice! Are you free to hang out today?" He asked excitedly. She could almost hear his smile through the phone.