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“Man the weather is so nice!” Tomo exclaimed the moment they escaped the lecture hall.
“Oh yeah,” Jun agreed, inhaling deeply and stretching. “I swear an hour gets longer every lecture. I feel like that test took five years off my life.”
“Yeah, but we’re free! No more homework! We have a long weekend with nothing!”
“True. I’m surprised all our professors actually follow the rules this year and gave us no extra assignments over the break.”
“I thought for sure-“
“Tomo! Jun!” Misuzu called. The pair turned to the young woman who jogged over from another building.
“You finished too?” Tomo asked her friend.
“Yes,” the other wheezed.
“Then let’s go try to find Misaki. He said he’d be a bit late, he’s got a lab and then a report he’s gotta do,” Jun said. The girls nodded.
“I sure hate midterms, but I love not having homework!” Carol said in way of greeting as they arrived at the science building. They found her sitting cross-legged on the lawn outside, under one of the large oaks.
“Enjoying the nice weather too?” Tomo asked. The blonde woman nodded before plopping back, staring up at the trees. Tomo sat down too, and Jun soon joined her.
“Are you not going to join us Misuzu?” Carol asked after a moment. The shorter girl had been looming over them, considering the tree.
“I don’t want to get eaten alive bugs, thank you very much,” she replied, before dropping her bag to the dirt and pulling herself up onto the lowest branch. Tomo sat up.
“Wait that’s such a good idea.”
“The trees around here are so climbable,” Jun said.
“I don’t even remember the last time I climbed a tree, isn’t that crazy?” Tomo commented.
“You two would do it all the when we were kids.”
“Yeah, cuz you’d always demand we’d pick fruit or find bugs for you!” Jun shot back, already standing and hauling himself up to the thick brach Misuzu was perched on.
Tomo followed suit on another low branch, her arms wrapping around it, and pulled herself up, her feet scraping against the rough bark until she was on the branch. Then, carefully, she stood, one hand on the truck, the other on a branch above. She not stood eye level with Jun. She grinned. He raised an eyebrow. They both looked to Misuzu in unison.
“I feel like I’ve missed something,” Misaki said as he approached.
“I think Tomo-chan and Jun are about to fight, they’ve got that look their eyes,” Carol explained.
“We have a look?” Tomo asked, glancing down
“Yes,” Carol, Misaki, and Misuzu all replied in unison.
“Both of you do. And it’s the exact same too. Uncanny. You guys hang out too much,” Misuzu deadpanned.
“It’s not our fault we have the same class!”
“Okay, okay,” Misuzu gave a shrug and below them Misaki settled on the grass.
“Yo, are you gonna count us off or what?” Tomo asked her friend, who groaned. Tomo knew her friend had expected it.
“Ugh, fine. One, one and a half, one and two thirds… two-three!” The pair were scrambling up the tree, reactions fast despite their friend’s mean counting.
The wind was cool in Tomo’s hair, the bark solid as she gripped it, the sap sticky. The branches got thinner, the routes harder. Jun was a quarter of the way around the tree, right in eyesight. Then he passed her as her options. She had her focus on him, too much so. She went to grab another branch and pull herself up. Her foot caught in a leafy branch, her grip slipping.
He turned back to gloat, a hand reaching out to her. But Tomo was already falling.
——
Jun couldn’t move. His heart pounded as his best friend fell, and fell, and stilled. He saw her arm. All he felt was fear, crippling fear for the person he cared about the most. For a moment he felt like the world was shattering, like his heart would never beat.
Then she moved, and he blinked, and registered exactly what happened.
——
“Holy shit!” Jun.
“Tomo!” Misuzu.
“Hey, it’s okay. Breathe.” Misaki. Closer, quieter.
“Tomo-chan, did you hit your head?” Carol, at her side.
“No,” she managed to say, her teeth gritted in pain. Misaki helped her sit upright, and she blinked up at everyone. Jun jumped down from the last branch to land on the soft grass beneath just as Misuzu made it to her side. Carol was already on one side, with Misaki.
“That was not fun,” Tomo said. “I’m alive though!”
“Good,” Misuzu said, her voice a little shaky, eyes locked onto Tomo’s arm. She glanced down, then wished she hadn’t.
“It hurt worse than the last one?” Jun asked and he crouched down at her side. Tomo gave a one-shoulder shrug, careful not to move her broken arm.
“Hard to say. This hurt pretty bad. I think it was worse maybe when I broke when riding? Maybe that’s ‘cuz I got all sorta of scraped up too.”
“Do we need to get you an ambulance?” Misuzu asked seriously.
“Nah. Who’s gonna drive me tho? And Carol, you still carrying around your lunch box with the big ice pack?”
“Yes, I do!” Carol dug through her backpack in a heartbeat to pull it out. Misaki grabbed a scarf from the pile and wrapped the pack in it before handing it to Tomo, who pressed it to her arm.
“I’ll drive,” Jun said decisively, standing. “We can all fit in it, if you guys want. Carol I know you’ve got a car though if you-“
“No, I’ll come with to make sure Tomo-chan’s okay.”
“Someone got my bag?” Tomo checks. Misuzu’s already ahead of her, shoving it at Jun before pulling her own over her shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
“Yay! Field trip!” Carol said with a grin. Tomo couldn’t help but laugh, and she looked over at Jun. His expression was serious, and concerned.
“I’m sorry I’m ruining our plans,” she said quietly.
“Don’t be,” Jun said. Then he shot her a smile of his own. “At least we don’t have homework.”