Mending My Fractured Heart

Nagisa Shiota had gotten used to being underestimated. It happened often enough that he barely noticed anymore. The first time a new student looked at him and asked if he was really their teacher, Nagisa had smiled and introduced himself again. The second time, he had laughed. By the third time, he had started keeping count.

"Midget-sensei," one of his students said, leaning back in his chair with all the confidence of someone who had not yet learned to fear consequences, "are you sure you're strong enough to teach us?"

The classroom went dead quiet. A breeze rustled the sheer curtains by the open window, carrying the faint, earthy scent of the courtyard cherry trees.

Nagisa looked up from the stack of papers in front of him. He was dressed in a soft, mint-green knit sweater over a white collared shirt, looking far more like a college freshman who had lost his way than an authority figure tasked with handling rowdy teenagers.

He smiled. "Strong enough for what?"

The student hesitated. A few of his classmates exchanged nervous snickers, waiting for an explosion that never came.

"You know," the boy muttered, puffing his chest out. "To control us."

Nagisa tilted his head, his pale blue eyes clear, serene, and entirely devoid of fear. "I see." He placed his red grading pen down with a quiet click against the wooden lectern. "Then I suppose we'll find out."

The student swallowed hard.

There was no murderous aura, no sharp shift in air pressure, and certainly no hidden blade. But beneath Nagisa's easy, approachable smile lay an absolute, unshakeable stillness—the kind of presence that made a person realize, purely on instinct, that they were being evaluated down to their weakest joints.

Nagisa smiled just a little wider.

It was almost unfair. He was still shorter than most of his male students, and even a few of the taller girls. He had a soft voice, a dainty frame, and a habit of explaining complex equations patiently instead of raising his voice. But he had learned a long time ago, on a desolate mountaintop under the tutelage of an impossible yellow creature, that patience and weakness were two very different things.

By the end of the semester, the students who had once called him small were among the easiest to handle. They turned in their homework on time, brought him canned tea from the vending machines, and defended him fiercely whenever an outsider tried to mock his height.

Nagisa privately called it taming. He wasn't sure his coworkers appreciated the terminology, but he used it like it was the most ordinary phrase in the world.

"I've finally tamed them," he said one afternoon in the faculty lounge, sliding a stack of completed essays onto his desk.

His colleague, an older social studies teacher named Kobayashi, nearly choked on her green tea. She stared at him, eyes wide behind her glasses. "...You really can't say it like that, Shiota-sensei."

"Why?" Nagisa asked, blinking innocently.

"Y-you make it sound like they were wild animals!"

Nagisa thought about it for a second, humming quietly. "Maybe..." Then he smiled, warm and boyish, and pulled out his favorite pen. "They're good kids, though. They just needed to understand where the boundaries were."

Teaching suited him. That was something he had never expected to say with such profound certainty when he was fourteen, clutching a rubber knife with trembling hands.

His life was quieter now. There were no assassination attempts waiting around the corner, no government agents hovering in black sedans, and no secret missions to save the world. There were only lesson plans, piles of homework, parent-teacher conferences, students who needed a guiding hand, and students who stubbornly pretended they didn't need help from a twig of a man.

And, of course, the occasional headache. But it was ordinary. Nagisa loved ordinary.

After everything that had happened in Class 3-E, he had developed a deep appreciation for the quiet rhythms most people took for granted: an undisturbed morning train ride, the smell of miso soup simmering on a two-burner stove, a predictable weekend routine.

And, well... someone to come home to.

That particular thought had become increasingly difficult to brush aside lately. Nagisa wasn't embarrassed by it. When Kobayashi asked him a few weeks later over lunch whether he ever thought about getting married, he had answered without missing a beat.

"Yeah... I do," Nagisa had said, resting his chin in his hand. "To a person who is as willing to lean on me as I am on them."

The answer had been so immediate and sincere that Kobayashi had blinked in surprise. "Really? Nagisa-kun has some very simple wishes."

Nagisa had smiled. "I'd like a family."

"A family?"

"Someday." He had looked down at his mug, tracing the ceramic rim. "I think it'd be nice. I want to see if my heart can open up for someone like that." His expression had softened, carrying a gentle, earnest warmth. "I'd like to make someone happy. Surely, their smile would mean the world to me."

There was nothing complicated about the dream. A gender-neutral word like "spouse" felt right to him; over the years, he had realized that his heart didn't care much for traditional categories. What he wanted was a true partner. A quiet home. Children, perhaps, laughing in a sunlit hallway. Someone who would breathe a sigh of relief when he unlocked the front door at the end of a long day.

He had tried dating a few times in his early twenties. There had been pleasant conversations over pasta, polite walks through evening parks, and people he had genuinely liked. There had even been a brief, confusing period of mutual curiosity with Karma Akabane back in college, but that dynamic had quickly dissolved under the crushing weight of Karma's dizzying bureaucratic ambitions and Nagisa's need for tranquility. They were better as lifelong friends who shared a lethal past.

With everyone else, something inside Nagisa had quietly whispered that he wasn't quite where he was supposed to be. It always felt as though he were waiting—though for what, exactly, he hadn't been able to say. So he had simply stopped searching so hard.

Maybe eventually, he told himself, the answer would present itself.

───

Across Tokyo, nestled inside the bustling dressing rooms of a major television studio, Akari Yukimura was being informed that she had exactly twelve minutes to eat lunch.

She stared at the digital schedule on her tablet, her eyebrows arching. "Twelve?"

"Thirteen, if the director's call with the network runs late," her manager said, offering an apologetic wince. "You know how these drama shoots are. The daylight on the outdoor set is slipping away fast."

Akari sighed softly, but the expression was quickly replaced by a bright, practiced smile. "I do... it's quite alright, though!"

She reached for the bento container resting on her vanity. Twelve minutes. She could work with twelve minutes. In fact, over the last four years, she had become remarkably skilled at cramming essential human functions into tiny slivers of time.

Her life had changed dramatically since middle school. The girl who had once dyed her hair green, tied it into twin tails, and answered to the name Kaede Kayano had vanished almost entirely from public memory. Akari preferred it that way. That name, along with the heavy burden of vengeance and tentacle implants, belonged to an old performance she no longer needed to stage.

Now, she was simply Akari Yukimura. And Akari was an actress—a wildly successful one.

Her breakthrough period drama had become an unexpected nationwide hit three years ago, catapulting her from a promising young talent to a household name. Her face graced billboards in Shibuya. Her interviews were featured in fashion magazines. When she walked down the street without a hat and mask, people recognized her instantly. Sometimes they recognized her voice before they even saw her face, which she still found quietly hilarious.

Her schedule, however, was merciless. There were always scripts to memorize, fittings to attend, commercials to shoot, and someone knocking on her door to remind her that the next scene was starting.

She didn't resent the work. She loved acting with every fiber of her being. She loved the intoxicating thrill of becoming someone else, stepping onto a set of painted wood and studio lights, and making an entirely fictional emotion feel raw and real.

Because of that passion, she was ruthless about where she spent the rest of her energy. Anything that wasn't essential was trimmed away. Casual acquaintances fell by the wayside. Industry parties were avoided whenever possible.

Except for one person. One person she had never managed to cut from her thoughts, no matter how full her call sheets were.

Nagisa.

The name surfaced in her mind so effortlessly that she hardly noticed the small pang it left behind in her chest.

She had kept tabs on him from a distance for years. She knew he had fulfilled his dream of becoming a teacher. She knew he was working at a school that wasn't entirely unlike the old Class 3-E building, guiding kids who felt like lost causes. Occasionally, snippets of his life drifted into the class group chat. Sometimes someone shared a picture of him looking entirely too small next to his overgrown students. And very rarely, on group voice calls, she would hear his voice—that calm, breathy cadence that had always possessed an uncanny ability to soothe her frayed nerves.

He had built a life he cared about. Akari respected that deeply. He had survived too much pain to have his peace disrupted by a celebrity dragging him into the flashbulbs of the entertainment industry. So she had kept her distance. Mostly.

Still, whenever she filmed near his district, whenever a script called for a school setting, or whenever she walked past a classroom window, she found herself searching the crowds.

Would she recognize him instantly?

Years could change a person's features, but from the blurry photos she had seen, time had barely touched Nagisa's boyish face. And his voice... she knew she would recognize that anywhere. She had loved him for far longer than she had ever dared to admit out loud. It wasn't a desperate, teenage obsession anymore; it had matured into a steady, quiet ache that accompanied her everywhere she went.

She still carefully maintained the collarbone line he had complimented during an impromptu class dinner three years ago. She still kept her hair at a length she thought suited his gentle aesthetic.

Maybe someday they would meet again. Maybe they wouldn't. She told herself she was fine either way.

"Akari?"

She blinked, startled out of her reverie. Her manager was looking at her with furrowed brows.

"You stopped eating."

"Oh," Akari said, looking down at her half-eaten bento. The rice was getting cold. She picked up her chopsticks with a self-conscious laugh. "Sorry! So sorry! I was simply... lost in my thoughts for a moment!"

"Thinking about the emotional scene coming up?"

Akari smiled softly, her amber eyes turning luminous in the vanity lights. "Nothing important."

It was a lie, and she was pretty sure her manager knew it, but neither of them pursued it.

───

That evening, Nagisa's phone buzzed insistently on the kitchen counter while he was chopping scallions for a pot of udon.

Wiping his hands on a pastel kitchen towel, he picked up the device. A bright red notification badge sat atop the messaging app, indicating dozens of unread texts in the old Class 3-E group chat.

The chat title had been changed by Rio Nakamura: Reunion☆☆☆

Nagisa leaned against the counter, a fond smile immediately tugging at the corners of his lips as he scrolled through the chaos.

Terasaka was already loudly complaining via voice notes about the high-end izakaya Isogai had suggested, insisting that cheap skewers and draft beer were superior. Hara had jumped in to defend the izakaya's dessert menu with absolute authority. Yada was typing in all caps, declaring that everyone had to come—except Okajima, unless he promised not to bring a camera with a telephoto lens. Karma had chimed in with a series of smug stickers, casually dropping that he would clear his schedule just to watch Terasaka get drunk and cry again.

It had been years since all of them had managed to align their schedules. Life had pulled them in dozens of different directions: politics, hospitality, science, corporate offices, and classrooms.

Nagisa scrolled down, amused by the familiar warmth radiating from the screen.

Then, his thumb stopped.

There, just a few messages above the newest ones, was a brief reply from an account sporting a cartoon pudding as its avatar.

Akari Yukimura: If it's next Saturday, I actually have the evening off! I'd love to see everyone.

Nagisa stared at the name.

Akari.

Not Kaede. It had been years since she went by that name, and Nagisa had adjusted to calling her Akari long ago, but seeing her name pop up in the chat always caused a strange, gentle hitch in his chest.

He couldn't remember the last time they had spoken one-on-one. Three years? Maybe more. She was a star now. He saw her face on giant electronic screens whenever he passed through the central train stations on his commute. Every time he saw her in a commercial, looking radiant and elegant, he felt an immense swell of pride. But along with that pride came an unspoken hesitation—a feeling that his quiet, chalkboard-dust world was far too plain to intersect with hers.

Yet, here she was. She was going.

Nagisa looked down at the simmering broth on his stove, then back at his phone. The desire for routine, for that steady domestic warmth he had been daydreaming about for months, suddenly felt inextricably linked to a pair of bright eyes and a laugh he hadn't heard in person for far too long.

Without overthinking it, his thumbs moved across the keyboard:

Nagisa Shiota: I'll be there. Hopefully, I won't be distracted by late assignments. Hello to all of you! ♡

He tapped send.

───

On the soundstage across town, the lighting crew was adjusting the overhead rigs for the final sequence of the night.

Akari was sitting in a canvas director's chair near the edge of the set, a thick script resting neglected on her lap. Her phone rested face-up on her knee.

A chime sounded. The screen lit up with a notification from the reunion group chat.

She picked it up casually, expecting another absurd argument between Terasaka and Karma.

Instead, she saw the blue avatar.

Nagisa: I'll be there.

Akari froze.

Her breath caught in her throat. The noise of the busy production—the clattering of metal stands, the shouted commands of the gaffers, the rustle of wardrobe racks—faded into a dull hum. She stared at the message, her eyes widening slightly before crinkling at the corners.

"Nagisa..." she breathed, the name tasting like honey on her tongue.

A rush of heat rose to her cheeks. In an instant, her mind completely abandoned the tragic monologue she had spent all morning rehearsing. Instead, it drifted into an overwhelmingly vivid, pleasant daydream.

How would he look next Saturday? Would he be wearing one of those soft, pastel cardigans that suited his gentle demeanor so well? Would his hair still smell like that faintly sweet shampoo he used to buy? Had his shoulders gotten any broader, or was he still that delicate, effortlessly graceful presence she remembered?

"Effortlessly handsome... I can't wait..." she whispered, burying her lower face in the crook of her arm, unable to contain the giddy grin spreading across her lips.

"Akari-san?"

She jumped slightly, looking up. The assistant director was standing a few feet away, holding a clipboard and looking at her with a mix of deference and urgency. "We're ready for you on the main set. Are you prepared for the emotional take?"

Akari locked her phone, slipping it safely into her coat pocket. Her heart was beating with a sudden, brilliant rhythm that felt lighter than air.

"Yeah," she said, rising from the chair with a radiant, genuine smile that made the young assistant director blink in awe. "I am now."