Heart Strings

One

A/N: someone on AO3 requested this fic, so I'm making it your problem too, Wattpad. 

Reonagi until the day I die. 

"Nagi?"

At the sound of his name, Nagi looked up from his phone to find his two friends looking down at him. They'd clearly gotten up from the table and were discussing something the both of them clearly thought included him. They were looking at him expectantly, and he had absolutely no context with which he could make it seem like he'd been listening.

"Huh?"

"You coming?" Okuda asked.

"Where?" Nagi asked.

Okuda sighed. "I said, let's go down to the music shop. I need new cello strings."

"And my metronome just broke," Yasuba added, like he wanted to drive home the point of how much Nagi had really missed while he was zoned out. "I need a new one."

"I don't need anything," Nagi said.

It was the truth, but it was also an excuse to get out of going. He knew the two of them would insist on taking the train there, which involved a ten minute walk there, a ten minute train ride, and a two minute walk on the other side. All it sounded like to Nagi was that it would be an awful pain.

"Come anyways!" Okuda insisted, like Nagi knew he would.

"It'll be fun," Yasuba said.

Fun for them, Nagi thought with a sigh.

"I'll pay for your dinner on the way back," Okuda said.

Nagi took that into consideration, weighing the pain of cooking versus the pain of the trip to the music store. Once he recalled the fridge at his apartment was empty, he changed his tune.

"Yeah." Nagi slid his phone into his pocket and stood. "Alright."

Nagi had started hanging out with Okuda and Yasuba in high school because the three of them had all been into music. That's what the two of them would say anyways. Nagi wasn't really all that into music. The way he would tell it, if anyone asked, and he had the energy to bother to answer, was that they'd met in music class. Those two were into music. Like, really into it.

Okuda played the cello and Yasuba played piano and flute, which was some impressive combination, apparently, even though Nagi didn't really get it. Nagi didn't really play anything, but if you asked either Okuda or Yasuba, they'd both tell you that he played everything, which was also equally true. It was part of the reason why they'd become friends in the first place.

In high school music class, which Nagi took because it sounded like the easiest elective, you got to try a bunch of different instruments before choosing one to stick to for the rest of the semester. Nagi found all the instruments boring, because they were all so painfully easy to play. This is why he didn't consider any combination of instruments especially impressive, because they all seemed about the same to him. What he'd ended up playing for the semester was the violin, simply because the instruments you had to blow into constantly seemed exhausting, and the violin was lighter than a harp or a cello.

He was good. That's what everyone said, anyways. He didn't think so, and he hadn't really played since high school.

Outside of these trips down to their local music store that was, during which Okuda and Yasuba would drag him to, and get him to play all the instruments like it was some party trick. It was usually more effort than it was worth, but if he got a free dinner out of it on a night he didn't especially feel like grocery shopping and cooking, well, that was another thing. Nagi was a simple creature.