Chapter Text
Lately, the world had grown quiet around Nagisa. It wasn't the comforting kind of quiet, like falling snow or soft rain, but rather the hollow kind that echoed too loudly in your own head. He first noticed it in the laughter. Not its absence, but how often he was excluded from it.
It wasn’t sudden. There wasn’t a single moment he could point to and say, "That's when I stopped being part of them." It unraveled slowly, like a thread pulled loose from the hem of something once whole. One day, Karma had been laughing with him over bentos on the roof. The next day, he was texting back with one-word answers; his time was absorbed by someone else:
In Karma’s case, Okuda. And Kanzaki for Sugino. Kayano’s boyfriend didn’t even attend their school. Nagisa had never met him; he had only heard about him in passing.
He told himself it was normal. Maybe this was what growing up looked like. People changed and built lives that no longer included the same people every day. But that didn’t make the absence any easier.
In class, nothing looked different. They still passed notes and shared glances when the teacher said something ridiculous. Outside those four walls, though, they moved like planets that had spun out of his orbit.
One day, he sat on the edge of his desk long after the last bell rang. The sunlight slanted across the floor, golden and warm, making the silence feel heavier. From the hall, he heard familiar, distant voices. Karma’s low drawl. Okuda’s laughter, like wind chimes. Sugino was a beat behind them.
They didn’t check the room for him. They didn’t glance back. He let them go.
It would have been easier if he could have been angry. If there had been a fight or betrayal he could point to and say, "This is why," it would have been easier. But there wasn't.
He remembered when Karma had suggested a movie. "Just like old times," he'd said. They had even set a day. Nagisa smiled at the message longer than he would admit.
And then: Sorry, can’t go. Something came up."
He didn't ask what. He just replied, "No worries."
The next day, he was walking past the hallway when he overheard Okuda’s giddy voice, "We saw that movie yesterday! Karma wouldn’t stop laughing at the dumb scenes.” Her voice was light.
He didn’t confront Karma. What would be the point? Instead, he asked the question more gently later when they were all together. "Did I do something?"
They laughed. All of them. It was as if he had made a joke without meaning to.
Karma waved it off. "You're being weird, man."
Sugino just shrugged. "Don't overthink it."
Kayano smiled in that distracted way she’d mastered. "You always do this, Nagisa."
Maybe they were right. Maybe he was imagining it all. But that didn't explain why the group chats went silent until he messaged first. It didn't explain why plans were always made in his absence and why excuses were made when he tried to join. It didn't explain why he felt more alone in a full classroom than he ever had at home.
They were still kind. Still polite. But friends are supposed to be more than just that.
That night, as he walked home past shuttered stores and vending machines glowing in the dusk, Nagisa thought about what it meant to outgrow people or to be outgrown. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, he decided.
Some part of him still hoped things might change. That one day, Karma would text him just because. He hoped that Kayano would talk to him and listen to him instead of thinking about her crush all the time. He hoped that Sugino would ask him to hang out after school like it was the most natural thing.
Nagisa, who used to be good at waiting, was starting to wonder how much longer he could keep doing it.