His train of thought broken, Lin Yu looked up to see Shizuka standing beside his desk. She was holding two small bread rolls and peering curiously at the notebook open in front of him.
"Is something wrong, Shizuka?" Lin Yu asked. (Though his planning had been interrupted, he wasn't annoyed; it wasn't worth getting worked up over.)
"Classmate Lin Yu, are you drawing?" she asked.
Lin Yu glanced down at his notebook. He'd been idly sketching, and a few simple pencil strokes had coalesced into a recognizable character – Keroberos, the guardian beast from Cardcaptor Sakura. He hadn't even realized he was drawing it.
"Yeah, just a little something to pass the time. Doodling, really," Lin Yu replied with a casual smile, putting his pencil down. (He'd been about to list out his plans, but clearly, this wasn't the right moment.)
"Can I see?" Like most girls, Shizuka had a soft spot for cute things. Though Lin Yu's sketch was rough, his [Manga Skill Lv.1] meant that even his doodles looked remarkably polished for an elementary school student. (And with simple line art, capturing the key features was often enough to bring a character to life.)
"Sure, here you go." It was just a rough sketch, after all. Lin Yu smiled and handed the notebook to Shizuka.
Shizuka was about to take it when she suddenly remembered the bread rolls still in her other hand. Looking slightly embarrassed, she quickly placed them on Lin Yu's desk, then pulled a glass bottle of milk from her own desk drawer.
"Lin Yu," she said, "I noticed you went out during lunch earlier without eating anything. So, when we were getting our school lunches, I saved you some bread and milk. Skipping meals isn't good for you, you know."
Looking at the two small bread rolls and the bottle of milk on his desk, a soft warmth spread through Lin Yu.
(In Japanese elementary schools, lunch was typically provided and eaten in the classroom. For Shizuka to have saved him bread and milk meant not only her own kindness but also that their teacher, Mr. Teragoya, must have approved. It was probably a bit of special consideration for a transfer student. Since arriving two months ago, both Mr. Teragoya and his classmates had been surprisingly welcoming. He hadn't experienced any bullying; even Gian, who often picked on Nobita, had never bothered him. It was only Lin Yu's own preoccupation with his transmigration that had made him seem somewhat aloof.)
"Thank you, Shizuka. You really didn't have to go to this trouble."
"It's okay," Shizuka replied with a kind smile, shaking her head. "You should thank the teacher too; he was the one who allowed it. A lot of the other students are pretty envious of the special treatment you get, Lin Yu," Shizuka added, then her eyes twinkled with a playful smile as she seemed to notice something.
Following her gaze, Lin Yu looked towards the back of the classroom. Gian was sitting there, staring rather pointedly at the bread and milk on Lin Yu's desk with an expression that clearly said, "I'm still hungry." When Gian noticed Lin Yu looking, he just scratched his head and gave a goofy, harmless grin – a far cry from his usual aggressive demeanor.
(Though Gian often acted like a tyrant, he actually had a decent heart and was fiercely loyal to his friends.)
Seeing this, Lin Yu picked up one of the bread rolls from his desk, smiled, and tossed it over to Gian. "Here, you can have this one. The one Shizuka saved for me is enough."
Gian caught the bread, looking surprised for a moment. Then, he grinned, tore open the wrapper, gave Lin Yu a big thumbs-up, and started eating with gusto.
Shizuka, however, who had been admiring Lin Yu's Keroberos sketch, suddenly looked up when she heard him say, "The one Shizuka saved for me." A faint blush crept onto her cheeks. 'My one?' she thought, flustered. 'But... they were both the same...'
"Lin Yu, the teacher approved both of those to be saved..." Shizuka murmured quietly, not quite sure if she was explaining it to him or to herself.
"But each person usually only gets one, right?" Lin Yu replied, tearing open the wrapper of the remaining bread roll and giving Shizuka a playful wink. "Shizuka has been looking out for me a lot lately, so I definitely don't want to give away this particular token of her kindness to someone else."
The innocent Shizuka, hearing Lin Yu's words, thought for a moment that he sort of had a point... but it still made her incredibly shy. (Still just an elementary schooler, she was no match for Lin Yu, who had the experience of two lifetimes.) With just a few well-chosen words, he'd made her blush furiously. She hastily put down the notebook with the sketch back on his desk, mumbled, "Cl-class is starting soon! I... I need to prepare...!" and quickly turned away.
Watching her flustered retreat, a wider smile spread across Lin Yu's face. Even though he was in a child's body now, teasing her like this was, he had to admit, rather amusing.
What Lin Yu didn't notice, however, was that Nobita, sitting not far from Gian, had been watching their entire exchange, his lips pursed in a slight pout as he saw Shizuka blushing from Lin Yu's words.
"Hmph, just because he's a transfer student, he gets to be all chummy with Shizuka," Nobita grumbled under his breath. As someone who had secretly harbored a crush on Shizuka for years, seeing her blush so prettily from just a few words by Lin Yu made Nobita feel... unhappy. He was still too young to fully understand complex emotions like jealousy, or what this budding closeness might signify, but he instinctively knew he didn't like it one bit.