Chapter Text
Katsumi is used to being popular with girls. So when he introduces himself to the bright-eyed brunette by the school gate, he’s entirely unprepared for the way her face goes cold and closed.
It’s something like a window slamming shut bare inches away from prone fingertips, and Katsumi very barely manages not to take a step back in face of the very immediate dislike.
“I, um,” he flounders, then rallies with what he hopes is a charming smile. “I’m here to see Natsume? Uh, Natsume Takashi?”
The girl stands in front of him with narrow eyes in an otherwise friendly face, arms folded, like some kind of security guard. When she turns away, its only to ask her curly-haired companion to please go and get someone called Nishimura.
But I asked for Natsume, Katsumi protests inwardly, without the nerve to say it out loud. This town is so backwards.
A bright, eager voice fills the school grounds whole moments before its owner comes into view. “Taki? What’s up? Tsuji said you wanted to see – You!”
Katsumi is already wincing into the abrupt silence when Nishimura draws up short. He recognizes Nishimura from that first time he came to see Natsume here what feels like ages ago. He remembers the heated way Nishimura sprang to Natsume’s defense the second their conversation took a cold turn. The glaring girl seems to be a mutual friend.
Great.
But tagging along behind Nishimura is another familiar face, and it’s pleasant surprise that flits across Tanuma’s face when their eyes meet.
“Oh, Shibata,” he says, coming a few extra steps forward. “You’re early, aren’t you?”
Relieved, Katsumi says, “Yes, I am, thank god you’re here Tanuma.”
The dark-eyed boy seems to be very barely not laughing at him. “Nishimura and Kitamoto actually told me and Taki all about you before we met,” he explains, and Katsumi watches some of the angry edges ease out of the other two students’ faces, just from the kind way Tanuma is smiling at him. “That’s why I was so eager to go along with Natsume when he went to visit you, you know, that time with the doll house.”
“Wait, you two have met?” Nishimura’s still scowling, but with a lot less volume. “You’ve all hung out together? What doll house?”
Taki, on the other hand, has drifted to stand by Tanuma’s shoulder, and her dislike has shifted into something closer to curiosity. She really takes his opinion into account, Katsumi realizes, trying to get a feel for their dynamics. They all seem to. Is it a Natsume thing, or is Tanuma really just that reliable?
“We have met,” Katsumi answers belatedly, when he realizes Tanuma isn’t rude enough to speak for him from two feet away. Prudently ignoring the doll house question, he goes on, “I’m actually supposed to meet him this afternoon, for um – a project? But my extracurriculars were canceled, so I was free much sooner than I thought.”
Nishimura’s frown doesn’t budge an inch. Taki seems swayed by Tanuma’s good opinion of him – and Katsumi is going to ask him all about that over dinner tonight, he really truly is – but Nishimura bites out, “The look on Natsume’s face when you showed up that day made me want to hit you. And I don’t usually want to hit people. But you were a real jerk, you know that?”
Katsumi does know that, actually. Thinking back on the way he acted fills his stomach with a heavy, sinking mixture of guilt and shame, so he does his best not to.
“We’re friends now,” is what he says aloud, maybe a little too sharply. “I hurt him before, I know I did. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to make up for it.”
And with that, Taki relents completely, and even smiles at him – a small gesture, but he’ll take it. Nishimura looks unconvinced, but a little less like he’s about to start a fight, and it’s about that time that Natsume finds them – with that cat trotting at his heels, and really, he brings it to school?
“You’re early, Shibata,” Natsume says by way of greeting, and his voice is sharp with annoyance but playfully so, completely without any unhappy edges. Katsumi grins like a knee-jerk reaction and plants his hands on his hips.
“Don’t pretend like you didn’t miss me, Natsume. Not after I came all this way for you.”
“You came all this way for Touko-san’s cooking,” comes the dry reply. “Don’t pretend otherwise, it’s demeaning to us both.” His expression gentles when he looks at Nishimura and Taki, and his sarcastic mouth forms a sweet smile when he bids them both goodbye. “And don’t worry, I’m taking this one with me,” he adds, jerking lightly on the strap of Katsumi’s bookbag as he passes him by.
Tanuma falls into step with them, looking equal parts patient with and amused by the animated bickering that picks up between Katsumi and Natsume within moments of their prolonged proximity.
Their friendship is a lot different, Katsumi thinks, than the friendships he saw back there. He thinks maybe it would be nice to be on the receiving end of more of those gentle smiles Natsume is capable of. His heart is set on the sun-bright prospect of earning them fairly.
He takes a moment to take it all in – walking with Natsume down an old country road, surrounded on all sides by blooming lavender, the other boy’s cat a heavy weight in his arms. Tanuma’s hand and Natsume’s brush with every other step, and Natsume’s eyes are bright when he teases Katsumi about his crooked tie, and Katsumi thinks those friends of his – Taki and Nishimura and whoever else – are right to defend him so fiercely.
He has seen the kind of trouble that follows his friend, the kind of trouble no one believed he was in when they were children, the kind of trouble he was never, ever rescued from – and resolve settles somewhere in the back of his heart.
So many people have been cruel to Natsume, and Katsumi is one of them. But they aren’t here anymore, and Katsumi meant what he said – he wouldn’t be here, either, if he didn’t really, really want to make up for it.