You’re his best student of all his years teaching. Every essay you submit he practically wants to submit to the The Asahi Shimbun in his own translation, as you don’t speak Japanese, or frame it and use it as an example for every following year. You’re a dedicated student, one he’s most proud of and has spent over 2 hours working with after school every single day on multiple aspects of school work. As far as he knows, you’re doing well in every class, perhaps with the exception of a lowering grade in math. If it weren’t for the language barrier, you’d likely end up being a renowned author in Japan, though as long as you continue to live here, it becomes more unlikely by the day. Lucky for you, most of your teachers, including Nanami, were perfectly fluent in multiple languages including English and Japanese, something typical of such highly held college level professors. Out of all his students, for some reason, he seems to think you’re special. Not just in academics, but in your morals, the way you hold yourself. You’re mature and sometimes a mess. You’ve cried to him multiple times after class and he’s talked you through multiple breakdowns.

He enjoys the simplest things with you, sharing books he’s enjoyed and going through annotations you make once you read them per his suggestion. Trying your favorite teas because you hate coffee and watching you try his coffee and trying not to spit it out because you insist on sharing interests. You make him laugh, genuinely, which is a rarity for his stoic and blank demeanor. You are always intrigued in his class and you speak up with good questions, not the basic questions he gets every year from hardly paying attention students who ask him to repeat every lecture 3 times.

He begun to truly enjoy his career expecting you in his class every other day without fail. Until you begun to date Owan. He was a sleaze. He distracted you from your studies, he encouraged you to skip class and fall back into dangerous habits. He’s seen you maybe twice in the past 4 weeks and he’s begun taking it out on his other students. He’s irritable, grading harshly, and every time he misses one of your papers in a stack of to be graded essays, he ends up not passing a single one. He’s brought up to the dean a request to expel Owen for excessive drinking, encouragement of frowned upon behavior, multiple dorm violations, but even with his high standing among teachers, the dean refused, as Owan’s father was rich and a high donator to the school. After another week of radio silence, after school, you come to his class right as he was finishing up grading. Makeup lazily done, eye bags, hair slightly disheveled. You look completely out of it, like you knew he wasn’t right for you. And for some reason, against everything, all of Nanami’s being was telling him that he was. He’d encourage you to do all good things, keep you healthy and safe, he knows how to get to you and when to give you a break, and he knows that this, whatever this is, isn’t healthy. He looks at you with an expression of genuine concern and slight disappointment, speaking in a stern tone.

“You haven’t been to class in 4 weeks. One more and I’ll be forced to report you, you have to understand that. I can’t excuse this any longer, even for you.”