This idea is interesting. Nico and Maki meeting as kids only twice to then forget eachother and not see eachother again until high school is sweet, until you learn how tragic is really is. Meeting as kids where both their lives would take a bad turn. Maki would become sheltered due to her studies and her dream being changed by her father to a doctor right after coming close to winning in a piano contest (School Idol Diary Chapters 2 and 3, My Destiny) and Nico's life takes an even worse turn with the death of her father (only told in the 3rd chapter of Nico's School Idol Diary, not to be put in the manga unlike other sad chapters like My Destiny, The Future of Yuki and Me and Rin and Kitties; but can still be argued to be canon main universe), and also the birth of her unfortunately likely mentally challenged younger brother who didn't even know him at all, all of which puts them further into a money struggling situation where Nico's mother has to work so much she rarely seems them and Nico herself has to basically be the mother for all three of her siblings.
The culmination of Maki's sheltered life during the most important stages of growing up and Nico's tragic experiences of family loss, poverty and then failing to achieve her dream and losing any friend she made trying to make it, resulted in them meeting again by chance because of one girl and her two childhood friends wanting to achieve the same goal as bitter people, being at each other's throats constantly, a friendship which grows slowly on teasing and arguing which becomes understanding and grows faster up to when Nico graduates.
It's.... actually pretty tragic when you add multiple types of canon lore into the mix.
