Home Is Wherever I'm With You (a Kamisama Hajimemashita romance)

Chapter One

"Today we have a new student joining us from Shobara, Hiroshima!" Ama-sensei, the glassy-eyed middle-aged teacher announced in what was clearly forced excitement.

"Momozono-san, if you would please introduce yourself?"

Two months ago if anyone had told Nanami Momozono that she was going to pack her things, leave her home and move to Kyoto she would have told them no fucking way. It wasn't possible. What an absurd idea to even think about.

But there she was, exactly one month and twenty-one days ago, gaping open-mouthed towards her mother who suddenly announced that, oh, hey, by the way, we're moving three hundred kilometers away.

You see, she always knew that her parents loved Kyoto. It was where their wedding was held and where they had gone on multiple vacations to, but because her grandparents weren't well, they've stayed in Hiroshima all her life. While her mother, on the other hand was expecting her to be brimming with excitement knowing that they'd get to live somewhere 'new' and 'exciting!', Nanami was very much so dreading the whole thing, really.

Moving meant starting anew, making new friends (or trying to, not that she was any good at it), and moving to Kyoto?! This move felt like being thrown into an ocean with no life vest and no chance to go home. It was like Harry Potter in that scene where they lived on a house in the middle of the fucking ocean with no hope of happiness.

Geez, talk about spontaneous.

The only comfort she had in moving was that she wouldn't be completely alone seeing that Aki would come visit as often as he could. Of course he would be, after all, they were best friends. But luck wasn't on her side since he had school too and wasn't there on her first day to give her moral support.

Or at least to be next to her in his equally ridiculous uniform.

Nanami fidgeted nervously and wondered how many seconds had passed since Ama-sensei had told her to introduce herself. She tugged against the sleeves of her shirt and pressed her skirt against her sides. It was still hard to comprehend her mother's insistence on choosing a school with a cute uniform, seeing that it just looked stupid to her.

Nanami pushed her fringe behind her ears and glanced nervously at the dozens of eyes staring right at her.

"Fuck," she muttered under her breath.

Okay, here we go. You can do this.

Easy.

"Um- I'm Nanami Momozono. I'm seventeen and I just moved here from Hiroshima. I'm really new here, so, um, yoroshkun onegaishimas."

Her eyes never left the wall at the back of the classroom as she stumbled over her words, barely pronouncing the language right due to her nerves. She could hear the soft murmuring across the class as the students whispered amongst themselves, ever so often glancing at the new girl with questioning eyes. She held back her tears as she wished for Aki to be by her side.

Where are you Aki, Nanami sighed.

"Is Mikage-kun in school today?" Ama-sensei asked, peering over the attendance list.

"Not here obviously," someone from the back answered.

Ama-sensei sighed before assigning Nanami's seat at the back of the class behind an empty desk of whom she assumed to be Mikage-kun's vacant seat, right next to the window.

Just how I like it, Nanami thought, thank God.

Looking out the window towards the courtyard, Nanami wondered to herself what fate had in store to have placed her in a new school in the middle of her seventeenth year, with no friends, and absolutely no clue how to fit in.