Everything seemed incredibly surreal. The rumbling sound of the truck vibrating on pavement was drowning everything else out, including the shouts from a couple of passersby from across the street who were witnessing the event. Nagisa was too frozen to notice. He barely felt it when arms circled around his chest and yanked him up and out of the street, his ankle twisting as he came free of the drain.
Incredibly vibrant blue eyes were taking up his field of vision, and someone was talking to him, but Nagisa was in a fog. It took several moments before sounds and color and reality came crashing back to a normal pace, and Nagisa realized with abrupt clarity that he was kneeling on a sidewalk, there were worried-looking people surrounding him in a circle, and his ankle was burning with pain, all in that order.
"Are you okay?" The owner of the incredibly blue eyes was staring into Nagisa's face, searching for reassurance, and finally Nagisa willed himself to speak.
"I- Uhh, um. Yes?" Nagisa sputtered. "What happened?"
"Haru!" Another voice rang from outside the ring of onlookers, and a tall, broad-shouldered brunette was shoving his way through. Nagisa remembered him from the opening assembly. "Is everyone alright?!" His gaze moved to Nagisa, face etched in concern. "We saw you fall, but we didn't think… If Haru hadn't been so quick...!"
Nagisa was starting to put the pieces together; his brain felt like it had short-circuited and was still in the process of re-booting.
"You saved me?" Nagisa asked, shifting his weight to try and stand. The blue-eyed, raven-haired hero grabbed Nagisa's arm, keeping him firmly in place.
"Don't move. I think your ankle's broken."
Nagisa looked down. His shoe was missing. He turned to see it smashed to nothing in the street behind them, tire tracks running a line through it like something out of a cartoon. He stared for longer than was necessary. That was almost me.
"Hey, are you alright? Do you need us to call an ambulance?" the taller second-year was asking, and Nagisa quickly snapped back to reality.
"Uhh, no! No, I don't think my ankle's broken… It hurts, but I think it's just twisted…" He hoped that was true, but he was finding it hard to care either way at the moment.
The brunette groaned, heaving a deep, relieved breath. "I'm so glad nothing horrible happened… To think, if we hadn't been over here to visit Rin…" He shook his head, smiling gently. "Where do you live?" the taller boy asked, kneeling next to Haru. "Should you call someone to come get you?"
Nagisa remembered the broken phone that was still sitting in his pocket. He cringed.
"Ehh… I live real close by, I think I can make it there okay."
"That's stupid," Haru said, his expression unmoving aside for a slight narrowing of the eyes and a twitch of his brow. "Even if your ankle's not broken, you can't go walking on it until you get it looked at."
"He's right," the taller boy agreed. He turned his back to Nagisa, still kneeling, pulling back his massive shoulders. "If you live close by, then this isn't a problem, right?"
Nagisa regarded the gesture with complete confusion until it finally hit him. "Oh. Oh! Are you sure? I mean, I don't even know you, that seems like such a bother," Nagisa laughed.
The boy looked back with a gentle smile. "I'm Tachibana Makoto. And this is Nanase Haruka."
Haruka merely blinked in reply. Makoto rolled his shoulders invitingly. "Come on, it's really no trouble. Just point us in the direction of your house."
Although it was slightly awkward, Nagisa grabbed Makoto's shoulders tightly and stabilized himself just as Makoto stood up, hands slung under the bend of Nagisa's knees to keep him upright. Nagisa winced as shooting pains raced from his ankle to his knee.
"Are you okay?" Haruka asked softly, noticing. Makoto was reassuring the slowly dispersing crowd that Nagisa "-is fine, really, just a twisted ankle, we'll take him back home safely," which Nagisa was grateful for because after everything was said and done, he felt mildly foolish. He smiled feebly.
"Yeah... The pain's just kind of catching up with the rest of me."
"You be sure to tell us if it gets worse," Makoto said sternly. "Which way?"
"That way," Nagisa pointed, and smiled. "And I'm Hazuki Nagisa, by the way."
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Nagisa's mother was arriving home from work when the odd trio marched up to the house. She had naturally been surprised to see her son being carried on the back of a boy she'd never met before, but as soon as they filled her in on what had happened, she was so grateful to Haruka that she very nearly hugged him, (tearfully, which had caused Haruka to glow with the most acute expression of embarrassment Nagisa had ever witnessed,) and insisted that he let her do something for him to show her gratitude. Haruka resolutely refused, insistent that he didn't want any thanks or fuss. As they were leaving, Makoto casually mentioned Haruka's undying love of mackerel, and Nagisa was sure he saw a twinkle of understanding between Makoto and his mother before the boys said their goodbyes and departed.
The hospital was Nagisa's least favorite place. He hadn't been to a hospital in some time, not since he'd split his knee open on the coffee table in a freak (and completely unavoidable) couch-gymnastics accident when he was 11. The doctor had thankfully been very accommodating, and after having taken xrays and declaring his ankle sprained, he asked, curiously, how the incident occurred. Nagisa explained everything; the cat, the storm drain, the truck, and his rescue.
"Well," the doctor said, chuckling in wonder as he jotted down some notes for the nurse, "that sounds like a stroke of really bad luck. Good thing it wasn't more than a sprained ankle."
Nagisa hadn't thought of it as 'bad luck' until then. He had placed it firmly in the good luck category, a fortuitous event that could have ended very badly but didn't. He recalled the black cat in the tree. He supposed there was no greater symbol of misfortune than that, and combined with the conveniently rogue murder truck, it certainly appeared like bad luck at its most potent, the more he considered it.
He left with an ankle brace and a pair of crutches that he was instructed to use for no more than a few days. Nagisa was fine with that; hobbling to the car was awkward and vaguely challenging, and Nagisa couldn't wait to be rid of them.
His sister smothered him with a suffocating embrace the moment he walked through the door, (all-around being just as obnoxious as usual, but with a bit more gentle sincerity, which Nagisa always appreciated,) and spent the evening fussing over her brother in the most out-of-character ways imaginable. Both of his other big sisters called the house during dinner, speaking to him in high-pitched baby voices of admiration as one might talk to a 4-year old who has just skinned his knee. (You didn't have to call everyone, dad, Nagisa thought.) By the time Nagisa finished dinner, he was too overwhelmed and exhausted to even keep his eyes open or entertain the idea of homework.
Laying in bed, Nagisa mulled over his day. Reflecting on everything in the silence of his cozy, safe room was incredibly dreamlike. The doctor's words were prominent in his mind, bringing older conversations to the surface, namely the conversation he'd had with Hibiki after the opening assembly.
Nagisa turned onto his side, struggling to find a comfortable position. The pain meds prescribed by the doctor left his ankle with nothing more than a dull, throbbing ache.
Could it all have been left up to luck? Good luck, bad luck, curses… Did those things exist? It was easy to say yes, and Nagisa had always wanted to believe in serendipitous events and other-worldly forces, but it was all for fun. It wasn't a subject he spent any length of time considering as factual. But now, he was having a hard time pushing it out of his mind.
Nagisa sighed and shut his eyes. It didn't matter, anyway. If there was any kind of curse surrounding Rei Ryugazaki, it wouldn't be affecting Nagisa. Rei had said it himself, they weren't friends.
Nagisa was just the boy who had his pencil case. With that thought, Nagisa slipped into sleep.
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Author's Note:
I'm so so sorry I haven't been updating this fic over here! I started posting it on AO3, and since it's been much more viewed and reviewed there, I keep forgetting that I'm not posting new chapters here on . Over the next few days I'll post the next couple of chapters for you all uwu