his bottom lip.

Chapter 19

Winter break. Two whole weeks of no school. Around this time of year, it also meant Karma's birthday, which Karma himself isn't quite fond of. But Karma's birthday also meant Christmas, and Nagisa really wanted to get Karma something, for both Christmas and his birthday. But since Nagisa can't leave the house, he decided that he would make dinner for them.

After lots of protest from Karma, insisting that it wasn't necessary, Karma finally gave in and asked Nagisa what he would make them. Nagisa merely said that Karma should decide what he wants.

When Karma was younger, whenever his parents needed to work during the summertime, instead of having his older sister babysit him all summer they'd put him on a bullet train to go see his grandparents who live out in the country. Karma wouldn't ever admit it, but he adores the people. They have a huge house on the side of the mountain, and there's a stream that goes right through it. Whenever he went over there it felt more like going home than his actual home, mostly because his parents were constantly out on business and his sister isn't the nicest person in the world.

One thing that was always the same about going over there was that his grandma would always make pork and egg over rice for dinner on the first day he arrived. Karma would arrive after spending hours all alone on the train to get bear-hugged by his grandma and grandpa. He'd always exhaustedly but still happily poured over the food.

However, now that Karma is older and much more capable of taking care of himself he doesn't have much of a reason to go over to his grandparents. His sister has moved out and moved in with her 'ain't shit ass boyfriend' as Karma calls him, and since his parents thought their large family home would be too lonely he got his own little apartment. Too proud to admit how much he wanted to go see his grandparents, this year was the first summer he didn't go visit them.

In his own way, Karma felt like he was making his way in this lonely bullet train called life. It felt like there was never a destination, and that he'd just ride the damn thing by himself till he was at the end of the line or kicked off.

But since Nagisa came along it felt like he was going somewhere. Like he could count the stops till his destination, knowing the name of the station without having to look at the crumpled piece of paper with the directions in his hand.

And he was going to get off.

He was going to reach his destination and make it to his final stop where Nagisa would be waiting to pick him up, and they'd walk home together where a nice hot meal will be waiting to heal their tired bones.

Lost in thought, Karma blurted his answer out.

"Pork and egg over rice."

"Oh? That sounds good!"

Nagisa had happily replied, setting Karma's heart aflutter and riling up all the butterflies in his stomach.

It was the 22nd, leaving enough time for Karma to rent some cookbooks at the library and for Nagisa to find a recipe.

Nagisa's gift was soon to be ready to go, but little did he know that Karma also had a little treat in store for him.

After a full day of pouring over the cookbooks Karma had gotten, he had found a recipe that he could make on his own and looked good.

Nagisa had excitedly shown off the recipe and the needed ingredients to Karma, super excited to try making them.

Karma had merely sat and watched the small blue-haired boy jumping up and down about cooking, amused by excitement.