"It's sort of 'I support your decisions because I love you, but I do not agree with or understand them at all,' which isn't really disapproving but it's still not great and. Ugh. It's just. It's terrible, okay? It's all terrible. Pity me, damn it."

"There there. I would pat you but you are too far."

"You're not even looking up. You're just reading while I'm here suffering."

"Correct."

"Bah!"

She turns so that she's not facing him, clearly deciding that now is the time to pout.

Still not looking. Maybe not exactly reading, either, but not looking.

Akiho gets bored of pouting soon enough, and gives a (dramatic) sigh and faces back towards the ceiling. For a little while, she's quiet, and then:

"... Um, hey. I've been meaning to ask. Is it okay if I, um. Call you by your personal name?"

Well, now he's blushing.

"Yes. Akiho-chan."

"Thank you, Inori-kun," she says. "And where are your manners? I mean, yes, absolutely, call me Akiho, just. Come on, I was all formal and polite and asked first! And you just go and do it! That's not fair!"

He's still blushing. "World's not fair. Deal."

"Bah," she repeats, but sounding very fond.

He grins again and actually looks at her.

...wait maybe this was a bad idea she's really pretty and his mind is going places he does not want it to okay he's hiding behind the book again.

Akiho is smiling too, and lets things lapse back to silence. She gets out her phone.

"So should I tell mom you like her gift, or do you want to be all mysterious?"

"You can tell her."

“Okay, I will.”

She should probably leave and go to her own room? But she’s comfy here, and she likes sharing comfortable silence with him. This is nice.

After the blushing subsides, yeah, it's nice.

.......and maybe the blushing part was nice, too, but he won't be caught dead admitting it.

“I like Maki-senpai,” she says, after a while. Not to fill the silence, just as a thought to share with him. “She was… a lot… but extremely competent and helpful.”

"Maki-senpai is very good at what she does," he agrees.

“Yeah! And I like her honesty.” Pause. “Okay actually, while we’re talking about upperclassmen. Why is Panda-senpai a panda. Why did no one think that was strange. Where… where did his phone come from. Everyone else I understand but I am just so bewildered by him.”

Inori nearly chokes on his spit and spends the next several seconds laugh-coughing.

“You didn’t explain him at all! You just left me with a ’this is Panda,’ and I was just. I didn’t know how to ask, okay, how do you ask someone why they are a literal, walking talking panda bear!?”

When he finishes laughing he says, "Have you run into principal Yaga's cursed corpses?"

“Yeah, they’re very impressive. And occasionally cute.”

"Panda's one. No one knows how he did it, but he created Panda as a person and then raised him from childhood."

“Wh. I. That. Did Panda-senpai literally grow, or. Was he having a childhood as a large panda bear?? And he’s definitely his own person, yeah, he didn’t feel or act like he was a puppet of someone else.”