The next day I was waiting by the girl's front door. Right on time, she opened the door slightly and stuck her head out through the gap. She had obviously washed herself now, and wasn't wearing glasses.
"Hi, I'm here"
"So you really came"
"Of course"
"I'm still not sure…"
"You can go back and think again for a while. I will wait ten minutes and if you don't want to come I will get going myself. No pressure"
She then took a deep breath and took a step outside.
"No need. I will do it"
She was a rather short girl, a similar height to Shu. And she looked surprisingly cute, not as in wow she's cute, but 'oh she doesn't look as bad as I thought' kinda cute.
"Let's go then"
Then we were on our way to school. I tried to make a small convo but that didn't go that far. She was too timid and I wasn't much of a talker anyway. All I learned about her was that her name was Sayna.
"Hey Boh~"
"Good morning, Boh!"
As I entered the classroom and my classmates greeted me, Sayna hid herself behind me.
"Oh, do we have a transfer student?"
I looked at Sayna to ask her to introduce herself, but she just looked at me and shook her head, and looked down at her shoes.
"Er… she's new here, right. Give her some time and I'm sure the teacher will arrange for an introduction"
"Cool, Boh"
"Let me see… hmm, we don't have enough desks, let me get it from another class"
Then I turned to walk out of the classroom and noticed that Sayna was following me.
"It's ok, I will go get it myself"
Sayna just shook her head again.
Well, I guess she doesn't feel comfortable being left alone.
I walked into the classroom next to us and luckily they had an extra desk and chair, so I brought them back to our class. All the while Sayna was just quietly following me around using me as a cover to shield herself from curious eyes.
"Right, I'll put this desk just behind my seat, and you can sit here"
Sayna just nodded her head and sat on the seat behind me.
"Oh-, wait, you probably can't see anything because of me, let's swap seats"
I got Sayna to sit where I used to sit and then I took the backmost row desk.
Some kids were looking over her way, but Sayna just held her head low and kept her eyes on the desk.
Man, you look gloomy as fuck…
But I also chuckled a little inside as this reminded me of the first day Shu came to my class last year. Man, who would have thought how things turn out to be… it's been an absolute rollercoaster ride since.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Our homeroom teacher looked very surprised, yet extremely happy that I managed to bring Sayna to school so quickly, and she made sure that she would not scare this girl away. So instead of asking Sayna to introduce herself in front of everyone, she just said Sayna couldn't start the school year for some reason but now she will be joining our class. She was greeted with a warm round of welcome applause but she did not acknowledge it in any way.
I didn't try to chat up Sayna. She will speak when she's ready - that's what I thought. All I did was say 'let's go home' once the school was over, and I walked her back home. We did not talk about anything on the way.
The next day, the same thing happened. And the next day, it was the same again. And also the day after that.
Basically, this went on for like one and a half weeks. I didn't say anything to her and she did not say anything to me. I just thought to myself that a year ago, I would have been happy enough to get by my school life this way, so I didn't think I need to push her to socialize or open up or anything like that.
On Friday late afternoon I brought Sayna back to her place, I asked her,
"Sayna, have you been feeling okay at school?"
"Yeah.."
"Do you think you can start going to school by yourself?"
"…. Why so sudden?"
"You still need me to walk you to school?"
"That would be... Nice"
"If you really need it, I could do it for another week. But you need to be able to do it yourself eventually. You gotta start somewhere"
"Ok…I will try"
"Here, this is my phone number. In the school I'm there, out of school, if anything happens, you can call me"
"Thank you..."