now and then | megumi & reader

0: prologue

One foot in front of the other, you step on the school campus surrounded by chatter and laughter. The talk about the three new transfer students became the only thing people could talk about, and you understood why.

Three new students in the middle of the second term were odd- especially when they were set to arrive on the same day and same time, it was classified as a simple contradiction. In a way you were interested, but you never truly lingered on the thought for too long. You had much more important things to keep your mind busy.

Nonetheless, you moved along the school day doing your classwork and enjoying your quiet lunch on the rooftop- in a way you were "lonely" at school. You had acquaintances and people you would talk to regularly and whatnot, but you wouldn't consider them close friends and they wouldn't either.

It didn't make you sad, you were relatively neutral on the aspect. Yes, it did make you sad from time to time, but you'd get over it within an hour or so. You had a calm life, a comfortable apartment you used to share with your grandmother, a good school, and other positive things you could ramble on.

Yet as perfectly stable as it seemed to be on the outside, no one knew how you returned home to an empty space, as your grandmother was currently residing in the hospital until she grew healthy again. No one knew that it was you talking to landlords, reading over the bills, and picking up small jobs to pay the hospital fees.

No one especially knew what you did at night, and you intended to keep it that way.

No one knows that you sneak back onto the school campus in the dead of night all in the name of protection.

What most people in Japan were blissfully unaware of was the most dangerous places weren't graveyards or dark forests- it was hospitals, schools, and everyday areas.

Osaka High School was carrying over one thousand students and had slowly become overrun with curses lurking through the halls once night fell. The curses weren't all that strong or overall harmful, in fact, everything would run rather smoothly if you never intervened.

Yet you knew that one day it would become something that would only keep growing and growing until it would manifest into an issue that would leave people dead. It happens more frequently in high schools than most could anticipate, it occurred in Satozakura High School so what's to say it couldn't happen here?

"If you have the power to prevent something bad, then what's stopping you?"

You had the chance to do some good, perhaps even save a life or two- that's what she would've wanted in the end.

This was all routine to you at this point; wake up, school, study, and kill some curses. But this routine would change- all because of a coffee shop.

Over two cups of coffee and a slice of strawberry shortcake, a simple conversation had put all the gears in your life on a full stop- yet in a way you wouldn't go back to change it all.