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12.3% Love Is Hard For An Introvert / Chapter 30: The Book Club

Chapter 30: The Book Club

In the next couple of minutes ever since Hayashi Sakura went to the book club's signing table, she is now seeing herself filling out the application form and then giving it to the guy in charge of neatly piling it up inside their folder while also pushing her glasses upwards at the same time.

As Sakura sees it, there are only two application forms inside, hers and the one that belongs to the nerdy-looking guy who signed up earlier before her.

Despite the fact that they aren't getting a lot of applicants unlike other clubs, the girl standing on Sakura's right, who introduced herself a while ago as Ito Yui, still looked jovial to see two additional recruits to their small club.

"On behalf of the book club members, I, Ito Yui, welcome you two to our humble abode," she says as cheerfully as she could, like she just won the lottery or something. "To further discuss our activities, gathering schedules, and the likes, we strongly suggest you two to proceed to our club room first thing after classes tomorrow."

As Ito-san makes the introductions, the guy comfortably seated across the table suddenly gets another white folder where the photocopies of the map going to their clubroom are placed. He soon gets two copies from the folder and immediately hands them over to their two recruits.

Upon receiving the copy, Hayashi Sakura immediately buries her nose on the paper she just received from the guy, who still didn't bother to introduce himself to them. From what she is now seeing on the mini map, their clubroom is located on the ground floor of this unknown building that is certainly not familiar to her.

As someone who likes to know things right away, Sakura turns her head to look at the girl once again before saying, "I am not yet familiar with the school surroundings. Can you perhaps take us on a tour towards your clubroom now?"

The nerdy-looking guy from earlier, who is just silently idling on a corner, nods in response as he sees to it how he could benefit from Sakura's suggestion as well.

Ito Yui had already anticipated this, and yet she must say she is somehow impressed since she hasn't met an introvert that is as straightforward as this girl standing in front of her.

"Of course, er…" Ito Yui blankly stares in Sakura's direction and tries to figure out if this girl has already mentioned her name earlier or not yet.

Instinctively, Sakura quickly introduced herself, "I'm sorry. My name's Hayashi Sakura."

"Right, Hayashi-san…" Then Yui tilts her head and meets the nerdy-looking guy's gaze which somehow made him anxious about it with the way he slightly flinched.

"I-I am... " With his head looking down as if there is anything interesting beneath him, this odd guy makes an attempt to introduce himself but fails at his first try. His voice is too shaky to even omit a single, comprehensible word right now.

He then happens to look at the girl who also joined the book club with him and sees how she reassures him that everything would be alright with that bright smile of hers. Suddenly, his wariness goes away and he is able to complete his introduction.

"I am Fujita Hiroshi…"

Feeling delighted to finally know both of their names, Ito Yui then makes a motion for them to follow her, which these two obliged to do so…

***

Their club room is relatively isolated from the rest. The small, shabby-looking building that is now being surrounded by trees is not Sakura's ideal place to hang out and read her books. The wind suddenly blows hard and two tumbleweeds appeared out of nowhere and roll past the group.

Being secluded from the rest of the buildings inside the campus grounds, it gives its members that serenity they would not feel if the club room was situated next to the noisy ones. However, the building itself looked as if it has already been abandoned for so long that it almost looked like it's easily going to fall apart once an earthquake happens to hit them, heavens forbid.

Seeing Sakura's quite disappointed look on her face makes Ito Yui uneasy for a bit but then she just composes herself and says in a cheerful manner, "I know that the club room is really not that outstanding to look at compared to the bigger ones, but it's really not so bad once you go inside."

Yui didn't disappoint both of them as they set foot in the club room. The room itself is small but perfect, plain yet relaxing to those who walk in. The first thing Sakura spots are the two large bookshelves full of various books that were arranged on either side of the room.

Between the bookshelves was a rectangular wooden table with metal legs that supported whatever they put on it. It was in the middle of the room with six chairs that were neatly stacked on a dark corner. Near the sliding glass window, to the left of the table, is a large magnetic double-sided whiteboard with several unerased marks that indicates how often its members use it.

As Sakura was on her way to check out the available books on her right, Yui started blaring out, "During the assembly meeting last year, we were the last ones to get a room due to the lack of members and popularity of our club. It so happened that this was the only decent available one at the time."

Feeling the book's textures under her skin, Sakura responds, "Couldn't you try to get a safer room for this year's assembly meeting? No offense Ito-san, but the building is scaring me a bit."

Yui only shakes her head sadly before saying, "We wanted to but… we couldn't really recruit a lot of freshmen students in our club. I'm afraid that we will either get the same room or would be moved to a much worse building compared to this."

As they left the clubroom after that and walked back to the signing event, Sakura was pondering some possible ways she could extend her help in this poor, small club when three seniors composed of two boys and one girl wearing their smug smiles and crossing their hands over their chests happened to block their path towards the school gym.

"Oh, look who's here…." said the girl, whose black hair was tied behind her in a high ponytail. "It's the loser president of the loser club, recruiting additional losers to her group."

Sakura's blood boiled instantly as soon as she heard they had insulted their leader. She may have met Ito Yui a while ago, but seeing her getting insulted like this makes her angry for her sake.

"Kaneko-san..." Ito Yui grunts, glaring at the only girl in her group. "Let's not cause any trouble, shall we?"

As the Kaneko-san girl mockingly stared at Yui like she had grown nuts, the guys beside her started laughing with her.

"You should start packing up your silly, ridiculous books and start going home..." The girl continued ribbing their book club leader. "As I just heard from the faculty department, all clubs with fewer than ten members would be shut down immediately by the end of the signing week event."

With a final smirk on her lips, Kaneko-san leads the rest of her team back to the gym, leaving Yui and the others rooted in their positions. On the other hand, Sakura clenched her fist so hard her white knuckles appeared in it. Watching their book leader be so devastated also ripped her heart in two.

If only there's only a way that she could help save Yui's precious book club, Sakura would most certainly be willing to do it for her… But how?


CREATORS' THOUGHTS
AteJanz AteJanz

Sorry guys, but I can only write one chapter today. These muscle cramps caused by my menstrual period are unbearable which makes it impossible for me to write another one. Being a girl sometimes sucks, hwehwe...

Additionally, it is my honest mistake that I forgot my FL to be wearing glasses. I've just realized it by the time I read the first chapter of this book. And so, what I did is to add little details indicating she has glasses in some previous chapters up to the latest one. My bad :/

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