The Worst Day in the Life of Makoto Neagi

Section Three

That said, he didn't really have time to wallow in his misery⁠—he was still in the middle of an errand. His friend's group would almost certainly be expecting him any second now, which meant he needed to head into the store, get a couple bags that wouldn't break, and hurry back to the park.
His immediate plans all sorted out, Makoto made to toss the coffee into a nearby trash can⁠—and that was when he saw it.
"Huh?"
On the bench, there sat a large feature phone with a "safe driving" charm in place of a strap. He guessed it belonged to the old man who had just left. After picking the phone up off the bench, Makoto spun around to look for the man, who had evidently managed to cover a considerable distance in the short time since he had left.
"Hey, mister!" Makoto called out for him, but the old man didn't appear to have heard. For someone his age, he could sure move.
Makoto was faced with a dilemma.
Should he go after the old man? Or should he let him be and finish his own errand?
He looked down at the phone in his hand, then over to the pile of groceries sitting on the sidewalk. Phone, sidewalk, phone, sidewalk.
"Oh, fine!" he muttered, then started to run. Makoto had never been the kind of person who could not do the right thing if he had the chance. "Hold on, mister!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, but as luck would have it⁠—or, perhaps, as luck wouldn't have it⁠—a bus drove past the old man at that same moment, blocking out the sound of Makoto's voice.
When the old man caught sight of the bus, he suddenly broke into a jog⁠—straight for the bus stop. The bus and the man arrived at the stop at almost exactly the same time. A second later, the bus let out a buzz and its doors slid open. The man climbed aboard.
"H-Hold on!" Makoto cried, but the old man disappeared into the bus, not a glance in his direction. "Oh, come on!" he spat, sprinting as fast as he could manage. By that point, his body was too busy pushing him forward to say anything else. He clenched his teeth, held his breath, stuck his chin out, and desperately moved his legs.
The bus emitted a second buzz⁠—warning that the doors were about to close.
Through his sprinting and the intense shaking of his field of vision, Makoto watched the doors slide shut.
And just seconds before it clicked into place, he leapt through the gap and onto the bus.
Gasping for breath, he fell forward, his hands landing on his bent knees. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears.
"I⁠— I made it..." he gasped, between heaves.
Indeed, he had made it.
He let out a sigh of relief, then paused for several moments to catch his breath. Once his breathing was relatively steady, he lifted his head and took a look around the bus. Several passengers were staring at him curiously. Among them was the bearded man from before, sitting at the very back of the bus with a startled look on his face.
"Thank goodness," Makoto said with another sigh. "You forgot this, mister," he said, extending his arm toward the man, phone in hand. As he made to take the first step toward the old man's seat, he tripped over his own foot. "Whoa!"
The bus was still stopped, so it hadn't been because of that. He hadn't tripped on anything or slipped on anything either. More than likely, it was because he hadn't run like that in some time. Or perhaps it was just his bad luck rearing its ugly head again.
Crap! he thought as his body began to fall forward. He reached out, entirely on instinct, and grabbed onto something. The next second, he heard a sharp tear, and then he was on the floor. Whatever he had grabbed lessened the impact of his fall considerably⁠—a small stroke of luck in an otherwise unfortunate situation.
However, he hadn't been completely saved from the impact. His right shoulder and side stung, and he must have hit his head, because he was seeing stars through his barely open eyes.
Or, at least, that's what Makoto thought⁠—but he was wrong. The glimmering he saw was not an illusion, but real, physical light shining through the bus's windows and refracting through the jewels scattered across the floor.
"What?" Makoto mumbled, unable to comprehend what he was seeing, incapable of making even the slightest amount of sense out of the scene before him.
Why are there jewels on the floor of the bus?
And then, a shadow appeared beside Makoto, who was still lying, confused, on the hard ground. The shadow belonged to a diligent-looking businessman at the front of the bus who had just stood up. In a calm, professional tone of voice, the man said, "Don't move. Stay right where you are, everyone." He set his torn bag on the seat, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out an army knife with the same natural, smooth motion as someone pulling out a business card.
It was certainly a stroke of luck that Makoto had grabbed onto what he had when he fell.
Another stroke of bad luck.