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Walking in, the school is seized with a surprising amount of energy for what should be a regular Wednesday.
Everyone is grouped up and whispering about something. Karube casts his gaze around as he and Niragi walk in. It’s not often that the school is so animated, especially this early in the morning. Hell, Karube is still tired and had been mostly hauled along by Niragi the whole walk to school. Stepping in closer beside Niragi so their shoulders bump, he lowers his voice to a joking covert whisper, the flash of an amused grin crossing his face.
“What do you think’s going on?”
Niragi smirks, rolling his eyes at the theatrics, and nudges him back.
“Samura Takatora’s come back apparently.”
Karube quirks a confused brow, silently questioning how Niragi knows such a thing. Niragi nods back towards a group they had passed by, a couple of teens that were talking a bit louder than everyone else, enough for him to overhear. He hadn’t been listening to them, but Niragi apparently had. Karube glances at them for a moment, then looks back to Niragi as they keep walking.
“Who?”
“Right, you wouldn’t know him. He used to be a student here before you came, but he hasn’t been back for almost a year.”
“Why?”
Niragi pauses, a small frown growing on his face. He and Karube continue down the hallway towards their classroom, dodging around other students.
“I’m not sure. He was coming to school less and less frequently until he just stopped coming all together.” Niragi pauses to ponder. “I wonder what class he’s going to be in.”
“What’s the big deal about him then? Is he super hot or something?”
Niragi snorts slightly at the question, elbowing into Karube’s side.
“He’s … fine looking, I guess. I don’t really remember him much. It’s just that nobody knew what was going on with him. People were making up all kinds of rumours. It kind of got out of hand really. After he stopped coming to school, someone started spreading this story that he’d killed himself and everyone believed it. Nobody was close enough to him to know any different.”
“So he’s back from the dead then, huh?”
“Guess so.”
They stroll into the classroom, stuff their bags into their backroom lockers and relax at Niragi’s desk, chatting until the bell tolls. With a sigh, Karube hauls himself off Niragi’s desktop and heads down to his own seat. The teacher starts in with the usual morning spiel before being interrupted by the classroom door opening. A student slumps in and whispers ripples through the class until the teacher tells them to quiet down.
‘So, this must be infamous Samura,’ Karube thinks to himself.
Karube looks over him, taking him in as the teacher drones on. Samura wears his hair long, it’s shaggy and unkempt and falls frequently into his thin, sharp face. He’s tall, but stands slightly hunched so it’s hard to tell his exact height. Through his dark hair, he’s got down-turned dark eyes, underlined with a dually tired and bored expression. His uniform seems to be wearing him more than he’s wearing it, like it’s a size or two too large on this thin frame.
He snaps back to attention when he notices Niragi tense and agree to something he didn’t hear. Samura glances sideways at the teacher, then trudges off to take the open seat behind Niragi, slumping into it, his tall frame practically folding in on itself as he sits. With that, the excitement passes and the lesson continues. A few students spare glances towards Samura, but never long enough to risk locking eyes with him if he looked up. Samura, for his credit, doesn’t seem to let it bother him - or maybe he just doesn’t notice, Karube isn’t sure.
Lunch rolls around and Karube finishes writing his notes before he moves to get up. He stands, flicking his book closed then looking down the row of desks towards Niragi, and is surprised to find that he’s turned around in his seat and is talking to Samura. He’s got his own book set on Samura’s desk, seemingly talking him through everything he’d missed while he was away. That must be what he’d been agreeing to.
Strolling down towards them, he kicks the toe of his shoe into Niragi’s as he comes to a stop. Niragi glances up, then looks between him and Samura. There’s a vague kind of disinterest in Samura’s gaze when he looks up towards Karube, not impolite or unkind in any way, rather just kind of apathetic.
Up close, there’s nothing especially striking about Samura. Not unattractive, but not exceptionally so either. He has a calm kind of demeanour, though Karube doesn’t know if he’d call it particularly relaxed either. Simply put, he’s rather average. It’s interesting the amount of infamy that’s been dumped onto him, but Karube supposes that’s what happens to someone people don’t really understand.
Niragi handles the introductions. Karube smiles politely. Samura simply nods, indifferent, then glances back down at his notebook.
“Do you wanna come have lunch with us?” Karube offers as Niragi gathers up his stuff from his locker. Samura looks up at him, his expression unreadable.
“Alright.”
Karube and Niragi have taken to eating lunch up in the fenced-in area of the school’s roof. Karube insisted Niragi needed more sun and Arata’s crew rarely bothered to follow them up there. It was better than getting mean-mugged by them all lunch. It’s a nice enough day out and Karube leans his head back to let the sun bounce off his face. He’s already got a bit of a tan and sun freckles have formed across his cheeks.
Dropping to sit by the fence, Niragi and Samura follow suit. There’s a slight awkwardness at the new unfamiliarity that silences all of them. Karube was usually the more personable of the pair, but Samura seemed to navigate more towards Niragi, so Karube decides to stick more on the quiet side for once. He looks towards Niragi, trying to silent tell him to take the lead. Niragi doesn’t seem to catch on, crossing his legs and unpacking his lunch. Samura leans slightly back against the fence. The lunch he pulls out is impressively put together. He catches Karube staring.
“My mother has a lot of free time,” Samura explains in monotone.
Karube bounces his head in a short nod, fumbling out a kind of “oh, cool”.
Secretly, he’s a little jealous. With both his parents working, it wasn’t often he got a home-made meal for lunch. Niragi’s mother had offered once to send Niragi to school with two meals after she found out, but Karube had declined, feeling too bad about putting that kind of stress on the woman.
They fall back into silence as they eat. Given Karube’s scrounged-up meal, he finishes first, relaxing back against the fence as he turns his drink in his hands. His gaze flickers towards their new company. Samura picks at his food, but he doesn’t eat much. Must be why he’s so thin, Karube considers.
“You’re not getting bullied anymore,” Samura says, with no amount of tact, dark eyes flicking up, staring at Niragi through the strands of hair that fall in his face.
Karube almost chokes on his drink, Niragi tenses in surprise.
“Oh - uh - no. Karube helped with that,” Niragi answers awkwardly.
“That’s good.”
Niragi shifts. “I didn’t know you noticed.”
“You were always covered in bruises, and you had to keep replacing your glasses because they kept getting broken. It was hard not to notice.” Samura’s hands are in his lap now, his shoulders shrugged in. For a moment, Karube notices the slightest hint of remorse cross his expression, his gaze flicking sideways. “I don’t think I would’ve been much help back then.”
“You would’ve just ended up in trouble with them too if you’d tried.”
Karube could easily believe that. Arata would’ve happily added Samura to his list of victims if he’d tried to intervene, and Samura didn’t exactly look like he could throw even a half-decent punch. While casting his gaze over Samura again, curiosity rouses in Karube again. Could he have been sick and that’s why he hadn’t been coming to school? It would explain his thinness, the dark half-moons under his eyes.
He knows it’d be rude to ask and quickly squashes the wondering, relaxing back into the sunlight as he waits out the last few minutes of lunch before they have to haul themselves back inside. The breeze whistles through the holes in the fence, tickling against his ears and the back of his neck, rustling his hair. Niragi and Samura fall silent as they continue eating until the bell tolls and forces them to head back inside.
Despite the morning’s excitement, the rest of the day passes uneventfully. People seem to have discovered that Samura isn’t as interesting as the stories they’d made up about and quickly grow bored of him. That, too, didn’t seem to bother him much at all. Most of the time it was as if he’d be happy to just blend right into the shadows and disappear.
Niragi and Karube barely manage to say goodbye to him before he is simply walking off and disappearing out the school gates without a word. Karube purses his lips, slightly disappointed since he’d planned on inviting Samura to come hang out with them. Turning away from the direction Samura had disappeared down, he strolls along beside Niragi.
As they walk, Niragi flicks through Karube’s notebook, going over his notes from their last lesson. He strikes a line through a word, rewriting it in neat strokes. Karube guides him along to make sure he doesn’t run into anything or anyone, halting him at red lights. Niragi could wait until they were at his house, but he always seemed more eager to get it done quickly and spend his afternoons just hanging out with Karube instead of studying and fixing Karube’s work.
While leading Niragi along, hand on his elbow, Karube weighs how he could phrase his thoughts to deal the gentlest blow.
“Hey Niragi, do you remember a few weeks ago? When you were upset about how much time I was spending with Arisu?”
Niragi fixes him with a curious look before looking back down to the book, “Yeah, why?”
“And you said I was your only friend?”
Niragi’s brow creases slightly, confused, a silent kind of ‘where are you going with this?’ as he flips the notebook closed. Karube hand drops from Niragi’s elbow and he darts his gaze forward, as if watching where he was walking. His adjusts his bag on his shoulders. A beat of silence passes.
“Samura seems nice.”
Niragi’s mouth twists slightly, considering and quickly understanding what he meant. They walk in silence for a little while. Karube doesn’t push it. He doesn’t want to shove Niragi into anything he doesn’t want to do - but maybe just a little nudge. Tugging on the strap of his bag, his mouth opens to say something when Niragi speaks first.
“I’m supposed to go help him catch up with schoolwork on the weekend.”
“That’s great.” A pause, then a smile flashes across his face and he swings an arm around Niragi’s neck, leaning heavily against him, “but now what am I going to do this weekend without you around? I’ll be so bored, Niragi!”
Niragi barks a laugh, stumbling slightly under Karube’s weight.
The next couple days pass regularly. Samura tends to stick to himself, but he still comes to join Karube and Niragi for lunch. He’d still barely eats the meal his mother had made, and instead hunch over a thick notebook that he’d write in. Karube didn’t know what he was writing, but he carries the notebook around all the time.
It was a thick, rather old looking thing. The spine was worn and slightly cracked, the magnetic clasp hung a little loose, and there was a few papers that stuck out when it was closed. Karube had spied that some of the binder snaps inside were broken, likely the reason for the loose pages.
Karube had considered asking him about it, but he seemed so overprotective of it, and they didn’t know each other that well yet. So he kept his curiosity to himself.
When Saturday morning rolls around, Karube wakes just before 10:00 to a call from Niragi. Karube mumbles a greeting into the phone, voice low from just waking up. His eyes are starting to fall closed again, hand and phone pinned beneath his head against the pillow.
“Are you still sleeping?” Niragi asks, amusement clear in his tone.
“No,” Karube answers around a yawn. Niragi laughs. “Are you heading to Samura’s now?”
“Yeah. No doubt I’ll be there all day. We’ve got a lot to cover, so I’ll probably be too busy to answer texts.”
“Don’t overwork yourselves too much. Take a break this afternoon … or I’ll blow your phone up until you do.”
Niragi laughs again.
“Okay, fine.” He pauses for a moment, then with amusement still tinging his tone, he speaks again, “Don’t be too bored without me - and get out of bed!”
Now it’s Karube’s turn to laugh. His forced a tone of mock drama into his still sleepy voice. “I think I’ll just rot here all day in my boredom. Whatever will I do without my boyfriend around to entertain me?”
“Maybe finally work on your homework?” Karube groans and Niragi snorts. “Is Arisu free?”
Karube hums, rolling onto his back and stretching his stiff limbs. “He’s probably still in bed right now too. Maybe I’ll call him later.”
“No wonder you two are friends,” Niragi teases. “I’m outside Samura’s now, I’ll text to you tonight, okay?”
“‘Kay.”
Niragi hangs up as he hears Karube yawning again. He smirks as he tucks his phone into his pocket, but nerves soon take over and he shuffles his bag on his shoulder. He hadn’t hung out with any other students except Karube for what was surely years, it wasn’t as if he had any other friends. He’s unsure how to act. With Karube, it’s easy, but without him around, it’s like he’s been left floating in the middle of the ocean without a life vest.
Samura lives on the second floor of a small standalone apartment building. Niragi heads up the stairs, counting along doors until he finds the one Samura had scribbled down on a note for him.
Taking a breath to settle himself, he lifts a hand and knocks. He shifts on his feet as he waits, adjusting his bag and straightening his shirt. The door opens and a short, older woman stands in the doorway. Samura’s mother, Niragi presumes, from their similar thin faces and down-angled eyes. She had the same dark hair as Samura too, but it was streaked through with grey.
“Oh, hello. I was looking for Samura,” Niragi starts, voice stiff and polite. The woman’s eyes light up with understanding.
“Ah, you must be Niragi. Taka mentioned you’d be coming around,” she says, ushering him inside with a gentle hand on his arm.
She closes the door behind him as Niragi pauses to nudge his shoes off. Glancing around, Samura’s place is rather average. It’s neat enough, with a few small piles of casual mess, like a stack of letters on a table and a couple plates in need of washing up. Really, it was simply homely, comfortable even. Shoving his nosiness down, he stands awkwardly in the hall, watching after the older woman as she calls out for Samura. She knocks on a door and, after a minute, Samura exits.
Niragi lifts his hand in a small wave when Samura looks down the hall at him.
They set up at the table. Niragi pulls out one of his old notebooks, flipping through to the work Samura had missed. Samura, unlike Karube, doesn’t complain about the work. He gets down into it, quickly setting about getting the work done. It’s quiet as they work, Samura doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with chatter.
His mother breezes through to give them drinks and snacks. She’s nice, quiet like Samura though she talks more than him.
Eventually, afternoon comes around and Niragi’s phone buzzes. He misses the first text, focused in over notes in a book that he hadn’t looked at for months. Another couple of texts quickly come through and Samura glances sideways at him.
“Your phone’s going off,” he says plainly. Niragi glances up from his book.
“Huh? - oh, it’s just Karube.” He plucks up his phone, smiling lightly at the string of texts. He fires back a quick reply to get Karube to stop typing whatever he was planning next. “He thinks we should take a break.”
“Are you two dating?” He says it so casually but Niragi still jolts in surprise, flushing pink over his ears. He thumbs nervously up the side of his phone, his free hand pushes his glasses up. Really, they’d only told Arisu they were dating but he felt like Samura could be trusted to know.
“Uh, yeah. For a couple months now.”
“It’s sweet how much he cares about you.”
Niragi smiles. “Yeah.”
Samura flips his book closed, folding his arms on the table.
“So … a break, huh?”
The pair end up piling into Samura’s room, sat shoulder to shoulder on the ground in front of a small television as they watched an episode of a dramatised documentary about missing explorers. Often, Samura would butt in to explains a misconception or string of misinformation, and Niragi would sit in surprise at the amount of talking he was doing, silent as to not interrupt.
They end up not getting back to their school work, clicking through to the next episode and then the next, and, before they knew it, the sun was close to setting and Niragi was grinning as Samura excitedly rambled on about a theory he had about one of the explorers who had gone missing almost a decade ago.
Knowing he had to get going, Niragi packs up his bag, saying his goodbyes to Samura and his mother before heading leaving, a content smile on his face the whole walk home.
Karube groans, grumbling back a string of curses as he shoves the controller into Niragi’s waiting hands. They’d been passing back and forth the controller with each death in the game for the last hour. He flops back onto the ground, kicking his legs out and shoving a hand behind his head, frustrated enough by his loss that he can’t even watch Niragi’s run.
The game’s song runs back to the beginning as Niragi starts his turn. Karube can hear him tap the buttons with practiced ease. He doesn’t need to look at Niragi to know his brow is creased in concentration, glasses slipping down his nose bridge, dark hair pushed back to keep from falling in his eyes. His gaze shifts, looking at the back of Niragi’s head. His hair … it’s almost long enough to tie up now. It falls in soft dark waves against the back of his neck. Whenever they kissed, Karube would tangle his fingers in it.
The ‘game over’ tone plays and Niragi huffs, dropping the controller aside. He flops onto his back beside Karube, folding his hands over his stomach. The game’s title screen plays a tune, waiting for them to start again. Neither move to pick up the controller.
“Do you think Samura will keep coming to school?” Niragi asks, rolling onto his side to look at Karube. Karube hums, contemplating. He still wasn’t even sure why Samura had stopped coming in the first place, so he didn’t know if the reason would resurface.
“I don’t know … but at least this time, he’ll have us to come check in on him if he doesn’t.”
Niragi nods in agreement, rolling back onto his back. A silence grows between them.
“I feel like I’m … like him,” Niragi says quietly. Karube’s head turns to look at him. Niragi stays looking at the ceiling, fiddling with his hands. “I’d considered it once, back then … I thought if I wasn’t there, Arata would just forget about me. Everyone else would too, I think. If I’d stopped coming to school, I don’t think anyone would have cared like - ”
“I’d care,” Karube cuts in.
“You’d care now, but back then?”
Karube laughs in disbelief, rolling to clamber overtop of Niragi, who grumbles under his weight but still slides his hands over Karube’s waist, curling his fingers loosely into his shirt. Brushing Niragi’s dark fringe from his face, Karube gazes down at him.
“The first day I met you, I stopped those idiots from pitching baseballs at you and then spent my night cleaning your glasses instead of doing my homework. If you hadn’t come to school that next day or the day after, I would’ve been worried … and I would’ve still had your glasses.”
Niragi snorts a quiet laugh, appeased, and Karube leans in to kiss him. When they part, Karube presses a couple short kisses to Niragi’s cheek and jaw before he notes the slight nervousness across his expression. He pulls back slightly, looking down at him.
“What’s wrong? Is it your mom? Didn’t she say she was going out?” Karube asks. Niragi squirms slightly, he rubs the fabric of Karube’s shirt between his fingers. Karube’s shirt hikes up slightly under the fiddling and he can feel the coolness from the fan over the thin strip of exposed skin of his lower back.
“I told Samura about us - well, I mean, he asked and I confirmed. That’s okay, right? He seemed cool about it,” He replies finally. A smile grows to Karube’s mouth, relieved.
“You can tell whoever you want that I’m your boyfriend.” He loves how Niragi goes pink at the term.
Reassured, Niragi exhales and leans up to kiss Karube again.
School’s back again come Monday, and passes without much of note. Just like Tuesday and then Wednesday, and somehow it’s been a week since Samura first came back. The trio hang out at school, but neither Niragi nor Karube had managed to convince Samura to hang with them after school was over.
Thursday afternoon is when there arises an issue.
The school day’s over and the students were busy cleaning - or rather, most of them were.
Samura, done with his duty, was busy packing his bag, uncaring to the happenings around him until a hand snatches his notebook from him. He flinches, whipping around to see who’d ripped the book away. Kanemoto, one of Arata’s right hand men, stands and carelessly flips through the first few pages. Samura snaps out a hand to try and grab it back, but Kanemoto holds it out of reach. As tall as Samura is when he actually stands up straight, Kanemoto is taller still.
“Is this your diary, Samura?” He taunts, loud enough that the rest of the classroom can hear.
A couple people titter. Other’s watch on, concern creasing their features. Some surely want to go find a teacher to diffuse the situation but worry about getting caught in Arata’s crosshairs, so they don’t move at all.
“Give it back,” Samura says tensely.
Niragi and Karube walk into the classroom then, immediately uneasy at the sight. Karube gaze flicks around until it settles on Arata and the rest of his goons, all watching Kanemoto’s taunting with amusement. It lights an agitated flame in Karube. Niragi, on the other hand, doesn’t look away from Samura, his hands clenching around the handle of his broom so tightly his knuckles whiten.
Some part of Niragi immediately blames himself for it, for letting Samura get too close to him when he knew Arata and the others still had it out for him. Another part, with a voice that sounds reminiscent of Karube, chides that Arata and his gang are douchebags who would’ve tried their hand at bullying Samura no matter what, because that’s who they were at their core and it had nothing to do with Niragi at all.
Kanemoto holds the notebook out to Samura, then snaps it to the floor with enough force that some of the loose pages flit out and scatter across the ground.
“Oops?” He says in a mocking tone, blatantly not sorry in the slightest.
Niragi tenses. That notebook, it was important to Samura. Just like anything that had been important to Niragi, Arata’s goons would be gleeful to destroy it. Where Niragi would’ve reacted, even if he tried to stifle the emotion, Samura seems strangely calm, not even a flinch breaking the flatness of his expression.
Samura crouches, gathering the book into his hand. A few more stray pages fall to the ground. Karube scowls, pushing his broom into Niragi’s free hand and starting off towards the pair to do something about Kanemoto’s shitty attitude. Samura’s expression remains unreadable as he stands up again. He weighs the book in his hand and clicks the clasp shut, his head tilts towards the bully, then - wordless - he cracks the spine of his notebook into Kanemoto’s jaw.
Chaos erupts.
Karube sees Arata start to move and barrels forward, colliding into his side before he can get anywhere close to Samura. Arata grunts at the tackle, stabilising himself on a nearby desk before slamming his elbow in between Karube’s shoulder blades. Karube recovers quickly and hauls up to mash his own fist into the side of Arata’s ribs.
Niragi subtly trips Imaeda with his broom when he starts to move and his head bounces off the nearest desk as he falls. Saguchi pays him no mind as he instead races to help Arata only to catch an elbow to the side of his face as Karube winds back another punch. Niragi decides to stay out of it, almost frozen in place as he watches everything unfolding in front of him, gaze darting around so quickly it was almost making him dizzy.
Karube stumbles back between desks, trying to figure out his best course of action against both Arata and Saguchi. Out of the corner of his eye, Karube realises he had been wrong days earlier, apparently Samura can throw a punch. He blinks in stunned surprise watching Samura swing a fist into Kanemoto’s face, right against his jaw where he’d hit him the first time, finally knocking him down to the ground. The taller spits blood, holding a hand to his face as he screeches in pain, hurtles curses and insults.
Karube doesn’t get much of a chance to watch out for him with Arata and Saguchi coming at him from both sides. He’s quickly distracted, slamming one foot hard into the front of Saguchi’s calf before tackling Arata down to the ground. They grapple at each other, tacking on punch for punch until Arata’s nose is bleeding and Karube’s shirt is ripped.
Ota, sneaky as always, comes up behind Samura before he can spot him. He kicks into the back of Samura’s knees until he topples to the ground. He follows up with a swift kick to Samura’s gut, and then another. When Karube freezes while whipping to look over at him, he catches a hard punch to the mouth from Arata that knocks him off balance before he shoves Arata back to the ground beneath him. He can taste blood when his tongue prods at the new split in his lip.
A pair of teachers finally appear through the classroom doors to break them up, shouting over the noise at them to stop. One hauls a flailing Karube off Arata by the back of his shirt, pushing the pair apart when they lunge for each other. The other shoos Ota away from Samura, helping the battered teen to his feet.
The following reprimand is frustrating for everyone involved. The teacher’s face goes red as he screams at them. A few students pause to stare until the other teacher shoos them away to continue their cleaning. The six battered students are lined up against the wall, barely stable on their feet and no doubt aching. Karube’s sure that, like him, none of others are actually listening to what the teacher is saying.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Arata scowling in his direction. Karube ignores it in favour of looking down the line of them.
Kanemoto is still spitting blood into a tissue; Karube wonders if Samura had knocked loose one of his teeth. Ota is digging the scuffed toe of his shoe into the ground, disinterest evident in his face. Arata and Saguchi share matching bruises, the shapes of Karube’s knuckles and elbows and shoes. Down the hall, Imaeda is nursing a nasty bump on his head as he waits for his friends to be released.
To Karube’s other side, Samura stands quietly, leaned heavily against the wall, his head hanging down so low that his hair covers his face like a curtain. His arm is wrapped around his gut, trying to soothe the ache of Ota’s kicks. To his credit, Karube hasn’t heard a pained sound out of him the whole time - and he knew well enough how bad Ota’s kicks hurt. Even Arata hisses and grumbles as he skirts fingers over the bruise on his cheekbone - then again, Arata isn’t as tough as he’d like to make people believe.
When the teacher finally decides he’s done screaming at them, he orders them to leave and come back tomorrow with ‘better attitudes’. Karube’s sure that none of them take the warning to heart. He sure as hell doesn’t, knowing if Arata’s group starts trouble again, he’s going to be there to fight back.
Niragi stands waiting as they limp out the school’s front doors, Karube and Samura’s bags are hooked in the crook of one arm and Samura’s notebook is in his hand. As they approach, he holds out the notebook to Samura. Closer now, Karube notices how even more corners of loose pages are sticking out, a couple bent and slightly ripped.
“I tried to pick up all the pages that fell out,” he says, apologetic.
“Thank you,” Samura says quietly. Taking the book, he strokes his fingers over the worn spine and fixes the clasp across the front. He takes his bag and moves to start walking away when Niragi reaches out to catch his wrist. He lets go just as quickly when Samura stops and looks at him.
“Did you know there’s a really good convenience store near your place?” Niragi asks, hardly tactful. Karube smiles lightly, hiding it as he thumbs at the split in his lip, and stays quiet, letting Niragi fumble his way towards what he intended. Niragi shuffles, then continues. “Come get something to eat with us?”
Samura stares at him for a long beat. He doesn’t quite smile, but there’s a ghost of it.
“Okay.”
Weeks pass. Samura gets on better with Niragi, not that Karube really minds. It’s a good thing, he reminds himself, Niragi needed - deserved - more friends than just him. Their closeness was a success story as far as Karube was concerned. He doesn’t talk much to Samura; they both seem to recognise they had a fair bit of differences between them, though not so much that they couldn’t stand to be around each other.
It’s nice, Karube thinks, to see Niragi smile so often - even if he’s not the cause.
Niragi still sidles close to Karube, but Samura fits himself on Niragi’s other side, and it’s good.