Chapter Text
Nagisa packed his small bag, getting ready to head home from work. It was an exhausting day with how every student seemed to have had an issue with him. What he needed right now was quiet time, said quiet time would have to be put on the backburner due to his little rascal Riku. She took priority of course, a little eight-year-old girl who was Nagisa’s whole world. Everything he did, it was for her.
The distance between the school he worked for and Riku’s was thankfully a short walk down the street. Riku stood at the entrance waiting impatiently, already buzzing about everything she learned that day, ready to tell her dad all of it. Nagisa listened the best he could while flipping through her drawings she made in art as they walked together, the sounds of the city fading behind them. Their apartment happened to be quite far away but neither seemed to mind, these walks were moments to prepare for school and also decompress from school as well.
The apartment in question wasn’t the best, it was a one bedroom one bath, Riku had the bedroom with Nagisa taking the couch. It wasn’t much, but it was home for them. Different drawings scattered the walls of all sorts of things, princesses being an especially common theme. Nagisa sighed from exhaustion as he set their bags down on the table before heading to the fridge to prepare dinner. Groceries needed to be purchased, he found a frozen pizza in the freezer and decided that was good enough for the night.
Riku on the other hand went straight to her room, not even caring about her homework but instead wanting to get her princess dolls so she could watch her favorite movie with them on the tiny tv in front of the couch. Everything was going to plan so far, her dad wasn’t thinking about her homework so maybe, just maybe if she kept her head low and the tv volume quiet, he wouldn’t remember the homework and she could get away with doing it.
Something about the oven beeping from preheating reminded Nagisa of the very thing Riku was avoiding, “Riku..aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked as he slid the plain cheese pizza into the oven.
“mmm…” she paused, pretending to think for a second, “nope!”
Nagisa sighed, he grabbed the folder containing her homework and walked over, “no I think you are” he waved the folder a little.
“Daddy I don’t want to do my homework!!”
“It’s important that you do it honey”
“Whyyyyyyy???”
“Because it helps make sure you understand what the teacher taught you today.”
Riku grumbled under her breath before pausing her movie and grabbing the folder from Nagisa, “can I watch tv when I’m done?”
“If there’s time between your bath and bedtime you can”
She nodded excitedly then hopped off the couch and to their small dining room table, stopping only to grab her pencil bag before. She was quite intelligent for her age so homework was a breeze, well, besides the challenge question her teacher always added.
“Daddy, what’s this math problem?”
Nagisa looked over from the stack of papers he had started grading, “its division dear,” he then walked her through how to do it without giving her the answer outright. With that her homework was done and pizza was ready to come out of the oven.
Being he was a little clumsy, Nagisa accidentally touched the hot pan for a second when he was trying to cut the pizza and bit his tongue knowing Riku would parrot whatever word she heard him say as a reaction back to her school friend’s. He pushed through the pain long enough to serve Riku a slice and then ran his hand under the cool water of the sink.
“Daddy what’s wrong?”
“I just burnt myself a little that’s all, I’ll be fine.” He found no point in lying to his daughter about things like this as she rarely believed them and would often call him out on the carpet immediately after.
Their evening continued with Nagisa enjoying dinner with Riku before getting her a bath and after that he felt she could have a bit of tv time until bed since she had been good. While she watched tv, Nagisa went into the bathroom and shut the door. He took a few deep breaths to regulate himself as even though he loved Riku so much, taking care of a child when already having a bad day took a lot of patience that he could feel he was starting to run out of. There was no way he’d let her know that though, he would not be like his mother.
After about ten minutes of bathroom regulation, he came back out and sat at the coffee table in front of the couch to work on grading while occasionally looking up at the tv, by now he could recite this movie in his sleep with how many times Riku had watched it.
Soon enough, it was Riku’s bedtime and Nagisa paused the tv, “time for bed, you can finish the movie tomorrow, okay?”
Riku reluctantly mumbled an okay before grabbing her dollies and heading to the bedroom with Nagisa following. She was tucked in followed by Nagisa telling a bedtime story about this octopus who was a teacher and made all his students feel loved. After the story she wanted a lullaby which Nagisa sang. He wasn’t so good he could make a career out of it, but the way he sang was soft and gentle, great for lullabies to help little ones fall asleep.
Nagisa walked out of the room and shut the door slowly before sighing, everything in his body told him to just collapse on the couch and sleep but his mind raced. He needed to settle his mind first and decided a walk to somewhere peaceful was a good option. He grabbed his keys and coat before heading out the front door and locking it, he worried about leaving Riku alone, but he would only be gone for an hour.
Nagisa walked quietly along familiar streets, knowing where to turn and which areas to avoid by heart. Soon he approached the backside of a forest and entered it. Climbing up the hill and through the trees until he reached the oh so familiar building, the Class 3-E classroom. Everything was just as he remembered, carvings in the wood walls of everyone’s names, the octopus doodles that littered the old chalk board, and his desk, where in the corner a heart with initials carved into it sat. “K.A. + N. S.” A reminder of what could have been.
After his walkthrough of the classroom, he headed outside and climbed up onto the roof. The same roof he spent many nights with Karma, just talking about their plans for life. At that time, Nagisa was unsure of what he wanted, he just knew he wanted the freedom to choose. Karma on the other hand had been dead set on politics as a career. Nagisa wondered if Karma ever achieved that goal. He rarely thought about Karma, but being at the classroom building brought those thoughts. He closed his eyes and hummed a little, the image of one of their late night roof convos popping up.
“Hey Nagisa..have you ever thought about kids?”
“A little..why do you ask?”
“Just curious, saw a video on Instagram of this girl ranking baby names and it got me thinking about our future and if we would ever have kids”
“Karma we’re fourteen.”
“I know! That doesn’t mean we can’t plan out something like names”
“names..” he had gone quiet for a moment, “Riku, I like that name, it feels peaceful and sturdy.”
“For a boy or a girl?”
“Both, I could see the name being for either.”
“It’s a nice name, I like it. Riku..” Karma repeated the name to himself a few times, just getting a feel for it. “I can’t wait to see what happens.”
Nagisa felt himself snap back to reality when he heard someone’s footsteps. He opened his eyes and turned around to see none other than Karma himself. He paused, felt his breath stop, his hands shake. So many emotions immediately overwhelming him. He didn’t cry though, just stared. Karma climbed up onto the roof with him, he was taller, more stoic, less chaos. He wore a plain professional suit, a little unusual for his character but it fit him very well. Silence hung between the two, neither wanting to utter a word, scared of what the other would say. Finally, Karma spoke up with a sigh.
“So um.. how have you been?”
Nagisa shrugged his shoulders, “I’m alright I guess.”
“Good, good..”
Silence again, Nagisa wondered what he was doing now, Karma wondered if he had finally broke free from his mother’s clutches. Nagisa finally spoke again,
“What have you been up to lately?”
“Eh just dumb political stuff, keeping dumbasses from ruining everything because they had a bad day.”
Nagisa couldn’t help but laugh a little, he was indeed the same Karma, cracking jokes so casually. But he was also different, less angry, more calculated. It was refreshing yet scary.
“Enough about that boring junk, what have you been up to? It feels like you disappeared off the face of the Earth.”
“I’ve just been keeping to myself, got a job in teaching and a tiny apartment, nothing special really.”
“So you took his advice to heart then?”
“Of course, he would have never lead me into the wrong direction.”
Karma nodded, looking for a topic. Nagisa sat there too, not feeling like they had to talk, but wasn’t against the idea of a conversation. The two sat and they chatted for what felt like hours. Most of it was about miniscule things like work and movies, but it felt natural and right. Like maybe the universe brought them there together for a reason, wanting them to meet again. It had been twelve years since they last saw each other. Nagisa didn’t mention Riku not even once, he was scared, scared of how Karma would react to the name. He knew it was their name, the one they picked together with the idea of a hypothetical child. He didn’t want to explain why he named his child that. That was a topic that still held too many sensitive and emotional baggage. He wanted to bury it away and never talk about it again if possible. Their conversation continued a little longer before Nagisa looked down at his phone, seeing that three hours had passed since he left the house.
“Shit..” he mumbled under his breath, “I’m sorry I have to go” he paused for a moment, trying to think of an excuse to leave, “it’s getting late and I have work in the morning.” He started to get down when Karma called out,
“wait, has your phone number changed?” he asked, feeling desperate, almost pleading.
“No it hasn’t” he said before leaving again, quickly running down the mountain and back to his apartment, worried something must have happened to Riku, hating himself for having been so selfish and careless. He arrived at the apartment in record speed, then ran to the bedroom before quietly opening the door and sighed a breath of relief seeing his sleeping princess in the same condition, he left her in. That made him relax before going to the couch and just crashing on it.