Another Stray God [Noragami x Reader]

Riku's Route 2: Paper Cranes

The sun rises as a black haired boy gazed from the school window. His earphones stuck in his ears as he ignored the students in the classroom he's in.

'This world is such a boring place.' He thought to himself as he continued  scribbling in the back of his notebook. 'I wish there's a more fun world in the after life.'

"You're good at drawing, _____-san." A girl with short brown hair and big brown eyes commented as she peeked at his notebook. "Is that your character?"

The boy pretended he didn't heard the girl ask him. He continued on scribbling while the girl also watched him.

"I know you can hear me. You paused and your eyes averted to me when I spoke." The girl said again as she smiled at him.

The boy took one of his earphones off and raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you want?"

"I want to be your friend." She answered cheerfully.

"Huh? No way." He immediately rejected her request and went back on scribbling, completely ignoring her.

She puffed her cheeks and pouted. "How rude!"

The girl bothered him the whole week and followed him everywhere. She asked him the same question only to get rejected everytime she did. Until the boy finally let her follow him and stay near him despite of the silence between them.

"Why won't you stop?" He asked her.

Her brown eyes faced his dark red ones. "Well, you seem interesting."

"Interesting? I don't even talk to you."

"You are now, right?"

He pursed his lips and went back on fiddling with his phone.

"Ah! You're ignoring me again!"

Day by day the boy started to talk with the girl. He would answer her questions and if he find it nonsense, he goes back to ignoring her again. He can't deny that he grew attached to the girl that he would look for her the second she was gone.

But little did he know, his only friend have also problems he doesn't know about. Until one day, she didn't went to school.

The boy stared at her vacant seat beside him where he usually spot her smiling at him. 'I guess it'll be another boring day again.'

Their class adviser summoned him to the faculty room and told him about his friend's condition. He found out that she was confined in the hospital near their school.

"A thousand paper cranes, huh? I doubt they'll even cooperate let alone make even one." He muttered to himself before entering the classroom.

In the end of the week, no one gave a single crane just like what the boy predicted. Yet when the girl woke up from her hospital bed, she found a bunch of colorful paper cranes on top of her feet.

"All of this is obviously made by him." She giggled while holding it. "I wish I could stay with you longer, _____."

Months passed, the girl hadn't came back to school yet. The boy would often visit her in his free time and bring books, playing cards, or game consoles. She was soon released from the hospital only to return here after two weeks. Her condition worsened. Days, weeks, months, then a year passed but the girl was never released from her confinement.

The last time he saw her was at her funeral.

A dark room, an open computer, scissors, fresh bloody cuts, and drops of blood.