#112thumbtacks

APRIL 8TH, 2017. 9:46 AM. SHIMANE OUTSKIRTS. JAPAN.

The countryside—the trees, the bare grass untouched by the civilization down the nonexistent road and around a hill, the small stream that led to a lake, the soil, the herbs and lingering symbols and runes carved into trees, the strange howls at night, the fairytale witch coven in the woods—it was all yours.

Yes, you were that strange witch girl at Maki’s school.

All those things—the myths, the stories, the mysterious looks you got from people when you made the thirty minute frolic down to the nearest village—were all yours.

And, they were your coven’s, too. Your mother especially. But your mother was different from the other women; the others weren’t as nosy and they didn’t quite have the suspicion to stick their snouts all the way into your business when you so much as breathed about talking to people outside of your coven. They all watched quite closely over you as you harnessed your cursed technique, which they were bewildered by as no one in their coven ever had a cursed technique before, and albeit, the pesky questions about it were annoying and they pestered you for information like it came with a prepackaged guidebook, but none of them were as eerie of it as your mother.

Your mother hated your technique, at least, that was what you thought.

For the longest time, long before she herself even joined, the coven had prided itself on being a witch-only coven after Jujutsu sorcerers became an influx in other covens around Japan. Your mother was one of those women who wore her pride on her sleeve and kept her heart in a freezer. She was also one of those women who believed that witches were above Jujutsu sorcerers, claiming that ‘their cursed energy brings nothing but trouble into this world.’ She cared even less for normal people, she believed they were the biggest contributors to the cornering of the witch population around the planet. She believed everyone who didn’t have magic in them—normal or Jujutsu sorcerers—was no more worthy of a witches spared glance than the dirt on their boots.

Your mother wanted to keep you sanitized—locked away from the rest of the world where curses and criminals and Jujutsu sorcerers and filthy non-witches roamed the land—and clean from the clutches of the undeserving. When she was pregnant with you, she prayed to the trees and the leaves on their branches and their trunks and the soil beneath their stumps that you wouldn’t stray away from the coven, that you’d stay a pure witch like the other women in your family tree had been (and some of the men, too).

She was thrilled when she first laid eyes on you.

All your studies came from your mother and the rest of your coven. Katsu, the coven’s resident author for keeping several lifetimes worth of books on her shelves, taught you your grammar and spelling and how to read and write (and taught you Latin, as well). Okuda, the chef between the nine of you, as explained, taught you your culinary skills and all your potions combinations. Your mother, Akizuki, taught you how to use your witchcraft, how to feel the magic that seeped from your blood into your bones. Shibata (your personal favorite from the coven, aside from your familial obligation to your mother) was the one who gave you your grimoire for your twelfth birthday and put on the last page a quite interesting quote for you to have remembered her by: ‘The power of the stars are in your hands, hasu. Don’t burn yourself trying to harness it. P.S., I know I’m your favorite to sneak out to the village with.’

Reading the second half for the first time made you laugh when you were twelve. By the time you made your decision to leave, it made you sad.

Shibata was the only one who actually taught you anything about the world outside of the coven. She taught you the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. She told you about different beliefs and ideologies people had and their versatile ways of life. And, inevitably, she told you about the world of Jujutsu, since your mother never actually delved deeper on why Jujutsu sorcerers were ‘vermin,’ as she liked to call them, and gave you a really, really basic rundown about how techniques and whatnot.

The coven truly cherished you, they really did. They loved and cared for you and raised you and helped you grow. They also wanted to fix you. And, as much, they envied you, and you once envied them because they envied you.

You saw things. Things that looked like they were there, you swore they were there—but they never were. One of the other witches presumed it was a gift as a byproduct of your mother’s excessive praying during her pregnancy.

They treated your visions like it was something prophesized by the dirt beneath their feet. They ignored your turmoil—your tears, your fear, your anguish and all else that ailed you because of those visions—and glorified it into something far prettier than what it was in its actuality.

Your mother appeared to have been the only one who took those visions seriously—as expected—and she never even called them visions. She called them something the other witches weren’t too keen about: hallucinations. She made it apparent to them that the things you saw were no pretty and flashy things to look at, or something that was a gift to the world, but horrible, scary things that you were far too young to even have seen.

They wanted to fix you. They envied you, they glorified you, but they wanted to fix you at the end of the day. They wanted to furnish you and shape you into what all the other witches were: people without hallucinations. You wondered what that exactly meant to them and what it should’ve meant to you.

The local townspeople from the thirty minute walk had no answer for it, you were sure, because they were normal people, and normal people knew nothing of what you saw and the things you knew.

It wasn’t until a fateful day in February of 2017 that you met a man on your way to the town. He was tall, talkative, strange in the way you were, wore bandages over his eyes, and was quite shocked when you didn’t know who he was. You wondered where he got such arrogance from, but he preached to you about a school he taught at and talked about your ‘cursed presence’ and ‘cursed energy level’ and other things you’d barely heard about.

The thing that had you hooked was that you would’ve been with other people—other kids your age, people to guide you who hadn’t been there to witness you at birth.

Two months later, you were talking with your mother about your final decision to leave.

The hut—yes, hut— felt colder than normal during the transition from spring to summer. At first it didn’t make much sense to you because the embers of a retired flame were glowing in the pit, and the tiniest streak of sun was shining in your eyes through the slim gaps in the roof. Along the walls, carefully curated with branches and clay at the bottom, were a myriad of things stacked along the sides: various books that were collecting dust and dirt, pots and pans that needed to be cleaned, a pile of extra firewood (though only small twigs and baby branches were kept in stock and very few chopped logs as exceptions), and a basket of leaves in one corner behind your mother, who had her arms crossed into a tight knot against her chest.

Then you remembered why the hut felt so feverishly cold.

Her stare could’ve cut clean through an iced-over lake if she wanted it to. The intensity would’ve shattered the ice and sent each split side running in a futile attempt to escape the scrutiny and the judgment in her eyes. Her glare sent a small shiver down your spine that had the same cold to it as something akin to chains locking around your feet and not even daring you to take a step away from her line of control. Mother birds and baby birds quivered in their nests and the spring-summer wind came to a stop.

Your breath, bated and strainingly patient all at once, came to a pause, too. She nearly paused your breathing just so she could revel in the opportunity to stare and scare you out of your decision.

“And how do you know this is real? How do you know this isn’t some trafficking scheme?”

“He knows Jujutsu. He knows it’s in me, he can help me!”

“You know very well that that Jujutsu he knows isn’t going to save you in any way. None of those mongrels can.”

“You can’t make me stay here forever, mother.”

“I can and I will!”

After that, you were sure the other women were eavesdropping outside the hut. Whether or not your mother cared or even noticed was the least of your worries, rather dwelling on the idea that they may have also been silently agreeing with her, just in a more sugarcoated manner with which they would’ve told you ‘Sweetpea, you really shouldn’t go. We can’t have you disappearing to be with people who can’t fix you, now, can we?’

It became disheartening, as you grew older, to know that your mother had nearly restricted you from any form of contact with anyone outside of the coven. At first, you thought nothing of it, so naïvely that you eventually thought it was just her job as your mother. But then, when you reached a certain age, you began to hear more and more stories from other women around the coven of other people they’d interacted with in the past, sometimes they were even younger than you when they happened, and it made you wonder why the only ‘stories’ you had to tell were all related to the coven or a mishap in your studies.

You were older. You were almost an adult, and the closer you got to being so, the more infuriating it became to stay cooped up around the same ten women all day every day every year.

“You can’t, and you won’t,” you argued back, firmly, but not whiny like a child or so rigid that it looked like it was an act.

She didn’t like that. It seemed that she wouldn’t like anything you said that day. You could tell by the way her frown deepened in a way that the gods would’ve held pity for whoever it was casted down upon.

“You think you’re in position to just do and say whatever you please?” She stepped closer, her arms slowly fell to her sides. “You’re a little girl. A sick little girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. How could you possibly be in any position to walk away like this?”

You weren’t so little anymore, you hadn’t been for a while. But the edge of her words was beyond enough to shave away the confident inches you’ve grown until you were as meek and small as she said you were.

“You won’t let me get better,” you wanted to sound a little more intimidating like your mother, but you had learned a while ago that you and her were nothing alike, so you scrapped your efforts as quickly as the thought crossed your mind. “You belittle me by telling me I’m not fit to walk away because I’m sick, but you make no effort to help me.”

“You know nothing of what you speak about—“

“But I do know, mother! All you ever do is talk to me about whatever it is that’s wrong with me, but you never seek a solution! If I’m so sick that I can’t leave this place, then why won’t you help me?!”

Your mother almost spat right in your face when she said it. “You think that man will help you better than I can?”  

She didn’t like what you had to say about that.

“I know he can, because you haven’t helped me at all.”

Somewhere along the time lapse of your argument, she’d gained a greater sense of audacity than the days before leading up. Somewhere along the lapse, she stopped listening to what you had to say. Maybe she was never listening to begin with. Perhaps it’d always been that way.

Her ignorance only slapped you in the face with a scoff that left her lips.

Nothing beyond that was spoken from her. It was like she was laughing at a child who had told her an awful joke that had no punchline. It was angering as much as it was expected from her, but to hold any sort of expectation of your mother felt almost taboo, the anger unorthodox.

She couldn’t stop you even if she had anything else to say. You’d been set to leave two days later early in the morning.

The goodbyes from the rest of your coven were infinitely better in comparison to the silence from your mother. She’d been nowhere to be seen that Monday, reason being that she’d stayed in her rolled out bedspread and claimed she couldn’t bear to watch you go. The words were vice with a sickly tone and not even a turn to face the fellow witch who came to fetch her was seen.

Some of the witches were emotional, as expected. Being sent off and away to a school miles away from the tiny hut-village where you were to face many dangerous things, as well as things foreign to you, and a new life where the chances your survival always varied, on top of being shipped off to spend virtually the next four years with strangers and eventual friends the coven never knew seemed enough to have warranted a visceral reaction such as sobbing into the cloak of your uniform and already staining it with tears. All of it was welcomed, though. It’d practically been an innate thing to know they all cherished you, but it’d warmed you nonetheless to see them each personally send you off with a good luck and goodbye.

The morning was beautiful when you arrived at the school. The mountain made it better, and the few friends you made turned the horizon ethereal.

_________________________

APRIL 11TH, 2017. 8:31 AM. TOKYO OUTSKIRTS.

“Boring” was an understatement when it came to Gojo asking his four first years how their first day went.

Unfortunately (for those who were sour or not well versed in the ways of patience), they all had Gojo as their teacher since they were first years. There was no official hierarchy regarding the grade levels—first years, second years, up to the fourth years—as far as the high school went, but the upperclassmen had a privilege the first years didn’t, and that was that the upperclassmen didn’t have to deal with Gojo on an almost daily basis for the rest of their high school careers.

Maki told him it was boring. So did Panda and Toge—the boy with the cursed speech; you didn’t have quite the same answer, you were profoundly more optimistic about your first day in comparison to your new classmates. Maki was almost stunned by your influx of enthusiasm if not for having already been met with your bright attitude beforehand. Panda asked (and technically spoke for Toge, too, as he thought the same thing) why you didn’t think it was boring despite the fact the four of you sat in the same class all day, save for lunch which was in one of the common rooms (of which the four of you found was quite small in comparison to other rooms that you all had peeked into out of curiosity) for an hour, and ‘taught’—said lightly, as it was clear (for you and Maki, at least) that he wasn’t excellent at teaching— by the same guy from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon.

You told them that the first day wasn’t boring because it was an opportunity to get to know your teacher and your classmates for the day. Naturally, none of you got very far, as the four of you had only met barely an hour before the day actually started, and Gojo had talked for most of it, so your hopes weren’t astronomically high in that regard.

Maki thought you’d lied just to make Gojo happy, which she didn’t really see the point in doing so, as she herself and the other two had already been honest with their input. Panda and Toge thought you were being genuine because essentially there was no reason for any of them to doubt you other than their own teenage stigmata. Either way, Maki didn’t care all that much.

After the end of the first day, Panda and Toge went back to the boys’ dormitory hallway, and you and Maki went back to the girls’ hallway. None of you did anything in particular or noteworthy except for leaving when it was dinner time.

The next day wasn’t much better because it was basically the same. Only, Maki took it upon herself to look around the school for anything resembling a training room or something. She was already feeling cooped up, and she didn’t want to hang out with any of her new classmates as a way to burn energy.

Half an hour into searching, she found a sliding door cracked open. From what she saw, which was a simple mat and a bench on the side, she got curious, and slid the door open further.

Inside, on the bench saw before she went in, was an incense holder with a stick burning (which was an understatement, as it barely had an ember lit on its outer end and a small string of smoke flew upwards). Another one just like it was sitting several inches to its right, each one on opposite ends of the bench.

In the middle of the mat was you, sitting crisscrossed with a skirt akin to your uniform, only it was black instead of dark blue, and you’d long since changed from your uniform shirt to a purple shirt, buttoned up until the second to last one. Your arms were extended, bent at the elbow with your hands flat and your palms faced the ceiling.

The room was silent. Far too silent, much emptier than any quiet room Maki had ever been in.

As much as she knew that staring was rude, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Something taboo about it had pulled her attention. She’d never seen someone look so peaceful before; probably because she hardly had any idea of what a face of zen even looked like—but you didn’t have much of a clue either. You could only hope that the silence pleasantly filling your ears instead of macabre dreams filling your eyes was some resemblance.

Maki had seen people meditate before, she saw members of the Zenin clan doing it at the estate from time to time, though in various ways, some of which were similar to what you’d been doing. Of course, she never had time for all that, since she was once running on a busy schedule with chores or training to do from sun up to sun down and only rested during her minuscule meals she was fed and during her sleep (which she hardly got any of).

Though, she wasn’t sure if regular meditating included minute whispers of some foreign language.

Her instincts told her she was being rude by standing there and interrupting her classmate during her meditation. On one hand she wanted to leave. On the other hand she was tempted to kick you out so she could use the space for more productive things. An additional hand had grown itself for the sake of her internal debate and held in its palm the opportunity to stay and poke around out of sheer curiosity.

You’d made the decision for her before she could stop internally arguing with herself and realize she was subconsciously staring with a bewildered look in her eyes.

“I know you’re curious,” you told her like you’d pulled a quote from a book you’d so easily flipped open and read a thousand times. She frowned in an attempt to give you some reason to think otherwise, but she’d already given herself away.

“Why, cuz it’s all over my face?” Maki made her turn to quote you, shifting her weight onto one foot and crossing her arms.

You opened one eye and smiled at her, a crooked smile with fresh crow’s feet and a glint in your eye. “I was going to say it’s because you’re quiet.”

Maki’s eyes narrowed in addition to her frown. “My quietness means I’m curious, now?”

“Everyone expresses curiosity differently,” you opened your other eye and let your arms fall to the mat, your palms pushing you up to your feet, which Maki only then noticed were unoccupied by your boots that were next to the wall on your left. “You express yours with silence.”

“You’ll find that you’re very wrong,” Maki watched as you got up and walked over to your boots. Ironically, she was quiet after that. She made an effort to not come off as curious again as her gaze wandered once she remembered there was more to the room than you. Her attention leaned towards the incense sticks that still had the faint ember on the tips.

“Those are incense burners,” you called out as you were crouched down next to the wall and slipping one boot over your foot.

“I know what they are,” Maki frowned again as she stepped over to the bench. She looked around the surface and noted the lack of a lighter or a box of matches anywhere. She decided not to dwell on that and turned her head back over towards you. “Aren’t they used for religious stuff?”

“Some people use them in that manner,” you slipped your other boot onto your other foot and tied the laces together. “Others use it for meditations and such. They add to the atmosphere. I also use them because they smell good. Would you mind blowing those out for me, please?”

Maki leaned over and took the sticks out of their holders and blew a soft wind on them, effectively dimming the faint glow and leaving behind a stream of smoke emitting from the ends.

“I’ve never heard of people meditating while whispering shit,” Maki stood up straight, still holding the narrow sticks in her hand. “Usually I’ve seen them do it in pure silence.”

You smiled as you also stood upright, smoothing your palms over the silk of your skirt. “What kind of place did you come from where the people only meditated in silence?”

“That’s not really important,” Maki also reached for the incense holders as well with her other hand. She stepped across the training mat to the other side of the room and held both her hands out.

You thanked her while grabbing your things. “I guess it is important if you’re using that environment as a comparison.”

“It’s not,” Maki grunted. “And I’m sure other people do it, too.”

“Regardless, those ‘whispers’ were part of a spell for my wellbeing. Could you tell me how many other people you know who whisper incantations in Latin that benefit their state of mind whilst meditating?”

Maki bit down on her tongue in annoyance. She was sure there were people out there who did it, but she wasn’t about to get technical. Rather, she stayed quiet as her cheeks felt hot from slight embarrassment, but despite her internal discomposure, she hated to admit in her head that you had a point that she couldn’t really have argued with. So instead of answering (which would’ve only served to embarrass her even further), she let out a huff through her nose, a silent admission of defeat that brought an even brighter beam to your face.

She scrapped her thoughts with a light and barely perceptible shake of her head. “Was that the same Latin from yesterday? When you were ‘clearing the negativity from the air’ or some shit?”

“Something like that,” you shrugged your shoulders with a careless cock of your head. “They both were in Latin, but they were different incantations.”

Silence had fallen between you both. One, two, five moments passed, and neither of you said anything. You were contemplating between leaving the room or staying so Maki wasn’t alone. Maki had been watching you carefully and waiting for you to leave so she could finally let go of the breath she’d been holding.

You were so close to leaving—your foot was already out the doorway when you’d stopped and turned around slightly. Maki felt the shift in your attitude even when she’d turned around and all you saw was her back.

“Y’know, I could teach you, if you’d like.” You had given her a smile different from the one you gave her earlier. It appeared you had a different smile for every occasion.

Maki lifted her eyebrow when she turned her head back around to face you.

“Latin, I mean.”

“Why would I want to learn Latin? Isn’t that a dead language?”

You shrugged again, only the shoulder that Maki saw. “It’s not a bad skill to have.”

Maki stood there for a second as her eyes wandered off to some other part of the room. The corner wasn’t very entertaining to stare at. She pondered whether or not learning Latin was actually worth her time, but she decided against it since she didn’t really know anyone else who knew Latin other than you (and that wasn’t a club she’d been willing to join).

She brought her attention back to you. “I’m already preoccupied with my own ambitions. I don’t see how Latin would help me.”

“Alright,” you gave her a lopsided, wry smile and exhaled through your nose. “But I’d be more than happy to teach you anytime. You have–”

“I have only to ask, I know,” Maki frowned. Her cheeks grew warm again with irritation at the fact you still weren’t gone. She felt that you would’ve picked up by then that she was ready for some alone time after being around her classmates all day.

“Have a good day, Zenin!”

Maki’s eye twitched and her jaw clenched. She tried to simmer down her annoyance and instead exhaled sharply, stepping towards the door.

“Hey.” She called your name once she poked her head out from behind the door. You’d barely been five steps down the hall when she called. You turned around with a blank look.

She stared you down. “Don’t call me by my last name.”

It was your turn to quirk your eyebrow. “So, just Maki, then?”

“Yep.”

“May I ask, why?”

“No.”

The training room door shut with a quiet slam. You were left standing alone in the middle of the hallway, staring at the door in silence. It puzzled you, why Maki didn’t want to be called by her last name, but you supposed you wouldn’t really have liked it if anyone were to call you by your last name, something tied to your mother and your coven, so you weren’t in any position to question it.

You didn’t bother with looking for someone else to talk to. You were sure that Panda and Toge were doing their own things and talking to your teacher for entertainment seemed kind of weird and, not to mention, lame by all standards. So, in an effort to not go bored, you went back to your room.

_________________________

The days ticked by in a blur. Panda already took it upon himself to talk to you and Toge, making the three of you into friends. The only one missing was Maki, who looked like she wasn’t all that interested in talking unless she was in a good mood.

Friday eventually came around, though it seemed like it couldn’t have arrived fast enough. Friday afternoon heading into the weekend up until Sunday evening were apparently the only times of peace if no one was occupied by a mission. Back in your small village, you spent your weekends doing the same thing you were doing the week before—reading, entertaining yourself with your own abilities, or fantasizing about sneaking off to that ‘nearby’ town but rarely ever actually leaving, or spending time with the other witches.

It was your first Friday without them. You’d expected the change and you expected to have gotten attacked by your own illusions from nervousness of being away from home for a while. It surprised you when you managed to have gone a whole week away from the coven and not be terrorized by hallucinations.

Gojo was as talkative as ever that day. He talked from the start of the school day to the end. He’d talked so much that Maki got the impression he just liked hearing the sound of his own voice, because at one point he just began saying things that didn’t really make sense and was even laughing at his own nonsense. After a while, she gave up and eventually started talking to you again. (After another while, it turned into Gojo talking to himself.)

She’d asked you about a necklace you’d worn around your neck and said she hadn’t seen you wear it the whole week. You told her it was a pendulum you wore on Fridays as a personal tradition you made for yourself; one of the other witches, Shibata, gave it to you when you were ten as a gift for mastering your first spell (you’d made a leaf start levitating three inches above ground), and it happened to be on a Friday when she’d given it to you. To you, it was like having a piece of home with you no matter how far away it was.

Maki noted how you were strangely sentimental. It was strange to her because of the way you only wore that pendulum one day out of the whole week and held it gently to your forehead before you walked in the room before class started and after coming back from lunch. She concluded that maybe you were just strange in general. She supposed she should’ve guessed it sooner just because of the fact you were a witch.

You asked her if she had any traditions akin to your own in any matter. Maki assumed you’d left the regard to be ambiguous because of how she didn’t like being referred to by her family name. She noted again, and liked that you were also attentive. She told you she wasn’t really one for traditions and said it made her think of how traditional and disgustingly old fashioned her clan was, and that the thought sent a shiver up her spine.

Panda overhead your conversation about traditions and such and invited himself in with Toge butting in, too. You got the impression that they just wanted to be nosy.

“So you only wear that pendulum once a week?” Panda asked rather dumbly in Maki’s opinion. You lightly nudged her in the arm when you heard the snarky comment she made under her breath.

“Yup!” You smiled as you brought your hand up to your chest and clutched the pendulum over your white uniform shirt, cupping it and feeling its weight in your palm. “It feels odd for me to wear it everyday as if it were a casual item.”

“It’s also vulnerable if you wore it all the time,” Maki commented as she crossed her arms over her chest. “It would eventually become a liability if you wore it during a mission and such.”

“I would certainly hate to see it get damaged,” you let your hand fall back, bringing your arms up to your desk and resting your elbows on the surface.

A grin made its way across Maki’s face. “I bet that thing’s never gotten dirty since you first got it.”

You huffed out a quiet chuckle through your nose. “Well, it’s within my nature to like my things sanitized.”

“Salmon cod roe,” Toge held his phone up so the rest of you could see what he typed.

i’m kinda the same way with my scarf except i gotta wear this every day.

You raised a curious eyebrow. “Because of your cursed speech?”

Toge shrugged his shoulders, then he took his phone back. You, Maki and Panda all looked at each other for a moment in confusion like any of you had an idea.

“Cursed speech users have markings around their mouth and on their tongue,” Gojo spoke up right as Toge raised his phone up again for your table to see. All four of you looked at him for a second to acknowledge his presence, then back at Toge’s phone screen.

kinda. it’s just to hide my clan markings around my mouth cuz i don’t feel like explaining to outsiders what they are

You frowned softly, your eyebrows pushing together slightly as you nibbled on your bottom lip. “Inumaki, do you know sign language?”

Toge shook his head, his off-white hair juddered slightly with him and his arm retracted. “Mustard leaf.”

“I don’t either,” you leaned forward and rested your chin over your knuckles, your elbows propped on the surface of the table. “Would it inconvenience you any if we both took time to learn it together?”

Toge’s thumbs tapped softly on his phone.

u wanna learn sign language with me?? isn’t this form of communication much easier?

You brought your hand from underneath your chin and scratched the top of your head with your fingers. “I mean… I guess it’s easier.”

“I think learning sign language would be beneficial,” Panda sat down crisscrossed next to Toge’s desk; he was still sitting as tall as everyone else in their chairs. “You also have to take into consideration if and when you and she end up going on a mission together and you need to communicate more efficiently.”

“I don’t think Toge’s gonna have time to type on his phone in the heat of battle, either,” Maki pressed her cheek to her palm with her arm on the table, her finger tapping the side of her face. “So I guess that’s grounds for all of us learning sign language, then.”

You looked at Maki. “I was about to suggest it to you and Panda as well—”

“Hey!” Gojo appeared at the congregation of yours, Maki’s and Toge’s tables along with Panda sitting to the side. He stood in front of the collection of students before him with a massive grin on his face. None of you noticed him getting up, and you could’ve sworn that just a second ago he was at his desk staring at the wall.

“Hi, Mr. Gojo,” you gave him a smile whose size paled in comparison to his. “How are you, sir?”

Maki side-glanced him with narrowed eyes. “Is that gonna be a thing from now on?”

“If he wants to be included, let him!”

“He’s our teacher…”

“I’m actually pretty well, young padawan! I need you for, like, an hour,” Gojo pointed a long, pasty pointer finger in your face that surprisingly didn’t even shake with the soft blow of the air unit with how long it was. It was borderline uncanny.

You blinked. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Gojo nodded with his excited platinum hair swishing back and forth with him. “You’re not in trouble. I just need to borrow you for a survey.”

“What kind of survey?”

Gojo stepped away from your collection of desks and walked towards the opened door at the front of the room. “Just a quick one.”

“Then why is it gonna take an hour?!”

“A chunk of that hour is gonna be spent walking towards Shoko’s office,” Gojo stopped at the door and stood by it with his hands in his pockets, seemingly waiting for you to get up and follow him. “Another chunk is gonna be us waiting for Shoko to actually do her job instead of playing tetris on her computer all day.”

“Isn’t Shoko the school’s resident nurse or something?” Maki raised an eyebrow, then looked at you as you pushed your chair back and stood up.

“I think so, which is kind of confusing for me,” you stepped out from behind your desk and pushed your chair back in place. “I’m not sick or anything…”

“It’s probably for an allergy test. Inumaki got one yesterday,” Panda chimed in.

“Nope! Though it’s probably gonna be her turn to get tested for that next week,” Gojo grinned again. “Can’t disclose it to anyone until we get to Shoko!”

You blinked, dumbfounded. “Is it a blood test or something?”

“Not quite. Even if you did guess correctly, I wouldn’t tell you that you did.” Gojo held his arm out next to the door. “Come along!”

You fixed your hood over your shoulders, sealing the button with its clasp over the bosom of your uniform shirt, and waved to the others. “Bye, guys!”

“Mustard leaf.”

“Bye.”

“See ya later!”

“Oh, and by the way,” Gojo added one more time before you got to the door. “The rest of class is dismissed! Can’t have you guys in an empty room without an adult around here.”

You stopped just before your foot left the threshold of the room and turned your head to look at the others, watching them get up from their spots, then smiled at them. “So I’ll see you guys at dinner, then?”

Panda held a thumbs up— or maybe a claws-up, considering he didn’t technically have thumbs— and Toge waved at you in return. Maki didn’t say anything.

“Come along, young padawan!”

You finally stepped out of the classroom and into the hallway, watching Gojo leave the door open for your other newfound friends. He stuck his hand back into his pocket and looked down at you.

You blinked again. “Are you gonna show me the way?”

“Oh, right!”

Gojo turned on his heel in the other direction, walking down the hall with his lanky legs and his straightened yet somehow silly posture. You followed behind him, fiddling with random things on you, like the corner of your hood and the buckle of your satchel around your waist, the button of your shirt, and eventually rubbing the ends of your nails over the surface of your thumbs and nibbling on your bottom lip (and sometimes the inside of your cheek).

The walk was as far as Gojo made it out to be, surprisingly enough. It seemed he had a habit of exaggeration, but getting from your classroom to Shoko’s office took as long as you thought. Though the walls looked like they’d stretched each time you got a step closer, and at times the afternoon sunlight peeking through the windows became blinding.

Gojo made small talk on the way there. He asked you if you were liking the school so far. You told him you were still getting used to it, but you didn’t hate it. He also asked if you were making friends pretty nicely even though he watched you and the others get along throughout the week. He scrapped that question by immediately skipping the answer you were about to give him and asked if you were getting homesick. On one hand, you were; for a few days you woke up half expecting to be back in your hut with your mother and ready for another day in your everyday life. On the other hand, being at the school was a breath of fresh air—literally and figuratively; the breeze that blew across the mountain felt nice to breathe in— with a better excuse of a bed than your old bedspread and more than acceptable food (and also quasi-new faces).

Naturally, you told him just straight up ‘yes’ despite the slight trivial inner conflict.

Eventually, you made it to Shoko’s office. In reality, it wasn’t much of an actual office; more like a pharmacy, a doctor’s office, and an autopsy room all in one. The room was white from the light that bounced off the walls, but the tiles on the walls themselves were a few shades darker—a few of them were chipped, too. The ceiling lights were bright, one of them had started to fizzle out and flicker a while ago, so there was a flicker in one corner of the room that was quite spooky. In the back of the room was an empty autopsy table; gray and aluminum and shining. In another back corner was a closet door with precisely one (1) stretcher and an IV pole and bag and a heart monitor.

Along the walls were two rows of gray cabinets, two on each side of the room (one up top and one on the floor), that held a mystery number of things, presumably stuff like latex gloves and popsicle sticks and hand wipes or cotton swabs and bottles of hydrogen peroxide (or just straight up alcohol) and boxes of bandaids and bandages.

To the right of the room was a desk that stuck out from the row of cabinets on the floor (or, more accurately, the really long countertop). On it was a basic computer with a keyboard plugged into it and a mousepad (and, obviously, a mouse) on the left. Behind the computer was a woman with brown hair who you assumed was—

“Shoko!” Gojo chirped happily as he held the door open for you, letting you go through after you held your pendulum to your forehead. “I have my beloved student here with me like you asked!”

“As a result, making the both of you late,” Shoko commented and peeked her head out from behind her monitor. “You were supposed to bring her here an hour ago, Satoru.”

“She’s here now, isn’t she?”

“I’m late to my own survey?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Gojo placed his hands on your shoulders and guided you to a chair in front of Shoko’s desk, letting you sit down and get comfortable.

You looked between the two of them. “So, what’s the survey about?”

Shoko glared at him. “You told her it’s a survey?”

Gojo shrugged with his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t wanna scare her.”

“At least you’re considerate,” Shoko sighed, rolling her office chair out from behind her desk with her feet. “Alright. Gojo sort of lied to you. It’s not really a survey—at least not like a questionnaire or whatever. I just need a blood sample from you and a spit sample.”

You gulped quietly, looking between Gojo and Shoko again, noticeably more nervous than before.

Shoko raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever gotten your blood drawn before?”

You curled and uncurled your toes and fiddled with your fingers. “No…”

“It’s not too bad if you don’t freak out,” Shoko stood up from her chair and walked over to the closet, pulling the door open and looking inside. “Satoru, can you pull the stretcher out for me while I go next door and grab a blood pressure pump?”

“What a pain,” Gojo griped, but he complied anyway and moved to the closet and pulled out the stretcher, old and balding wheels quietly squeaking against the tile floor as he rolled it out. He left it next to the autopsy table away from the wall.

Gojo patted the cushion (said lightly because it wasn’t much of a cushion and more like cheap foam with plastic around it) with his hand and a smile. “Hop on, kiddo.”

“Does anyone else get this kind of treatment?” You questioned nervously as you stepped around Shoko’s desk and the autopsy table. You swallowed quietly before you eventually climbed onto the stretcher after staring at it and hoping it wouldn’t open up and swallow you whole as a trap.

“The others don’t have any mental issues that I know of,” Gojo began stroking his chin again and started brooding in an attempt to humor you. “So you are the only one who gets all this special attention!”

“I don’t see how this is special,” you extended your legs on the length of the stretcher, flattening and smoothing out your skirt. “I’m being drained of my blood!”

“It’s only a pint,” Gojo stopped brooding, removing his hand from his chin and resting it on the handlebar next to you. “It’ll be over and done with in, like, twenty minutes.” His smile widened into another cheeky, toothy grin. “And then you’re free! Although I think you’ll need lots of fluids and snacks after that.”

You pondered for a moment. On one hand it didn’t sound so bad when Gojo said it wouldn’t even take half an hour—but then it was about to be twenty minutes of an artificial vampire draining you through your arm. On the other hand, you were still thinking about how nobody else was getting their blood drawn. Your doubts were only reinforced when Gojo mentioned the others not having ‘any mental issues.’

You had to keep an open mind. You couldn’t let it cloud your mind like many other things.

I think I need another meditating session after this.

“I haven’t abandoned you,” the door opened, revealing Shoko carrying a blood pressure pump in one arm with a few juice boxes in her hand and two small bags hanging off her fingers and blue latex gloves on her hands. “You might need this before we start,” Shoko raised her arm and gestured to the juice boxes in her hand. “I’ll give you more once we’re done.”

“Mr. Gojo said it should only take twenty minutes,” you said as Shoko got closer. She circled the autopsy table and stood next to you on the stretcher, setting the bags beside you.

“Ideally, yeah,” she handed you the juice boxes. “But that’s if you have, like, a textbook vein and BPI. And that’s also if we can even find a vein.”

“So I guess there’s a chance you won’t be drawing any blood, then?”

“Sure,” Shoko shrugged and unstrapped the pressure pump. She asked which arm you wanted her to draw from and you chose your non-dominant arm.

“Alright. Lose the hood for me.”

You shedded your hood from around your shoulders and spread it across your lap, resting your hands on top of it.

“Alright, you’re gonna feel a bit of pressure around your bicep. That’s normal. Just relax and don’t move for me, yeah?”

You nodded briefly, offering Shoko a polite smile as she wrapped the strapping around your arm, sticking the velcro together and attaching a pump to the tube extending out from the strapping. Her hand squeezed the pump slightly, sending air to the wrapping around and squeezing your bicep.

There was a profound discomfort in your arm from the tight grip. It was hard not to move in an attempt to break free from the hold around you that simultaneously had you glued to the chair. The rest of your body felt hot while your arm felt cold, presumably because of the pressure Shoko was pumping.

“Not bad,” Shoko eventually finished, letting the pressure dissipate after she finished squeezing. “Alright. It’s time to roll up your sleeve, now.”

“At least you know you’re healthy,” Gojo commented, and it reminded you that his hand was still on the handlebar next to you. The thought was sort of comforting.

“The worst of it’s about to start,” Shoko took out a needle from one of the bags, attaching it to another tube. She fished through the same bag again and took out a small foam grip, placing it in your hand. “Squeeze this three times and hold on the last squeeze.”

You squeezed it as she said and watched as your arm flexed while you balled up your fist, clutching tightly onto the grip. Shoko’s fingers patted around, feeling for a vein and holding two fingers down while she looked through the bag again and pulled out a small pack of alcohol swabs. She ripped it open after taking her hand away from your arm and gently dabbed the swabs around your arm.

“I don’t suppose you have any hobbies, do you?” Shoko asked as her hand holding the needle inched closer to the now numb arm. You looked away and up at her.

“Some, yeah,” you nodded again. “Sometimes I like to read through my grimoire. I also like meditating and walking around the mountain and collecting herbs for teas and other things.”

“Witches always have fascinated me,” Shoko gave you a small smile, then glared up at Gojo. “Do you know any spells? Please tell me you’re capable of turning this guy into a toad.”

A hearty chuckle made its way out of you, and you felt a small prick in your arm as the needle slid in nearly unnoticed. Shoko’s smile came back as she listened to the lack of whines and the abundance of laughter coming from you. A stream of crimson filled the tube and flowed down into another bag that was plugged in a while ago while you weren’t paying attention, filling it slowly but steadily.

“Keep squeezing that foam,” Shoko tilted her head towards the grip in your hand. She took out a small Spiderman bandaid and taped it to the needle in your arm. “It’ll keep the blood flow steady.”

“Thank you for talking me up,” you glanced down at the tape stuck to your skin and gently squeezed the foam. “I barely felt it.”

“That was mainly the alcohol numbing it out,” Shoko plucked her gloves off from her fingers since the tips on one of the fingers had a hole in it from her nail poking through. “You’re gonna start feeling hot in a few minutes, so I’m gonna run and grab you a wet towel to lay on your forehead.”

“I’m assuming that’s lightheaded-ness?”

“Yup. Just lay back and relax.”

Shoko left the room again. It was silent for a bit, save for the sound of the foam groaning beneath the pressure of your fingers. You wondered what your other friends were doing—maybe they were in the common room or in their own dorms. Maybe Toge was outside in the garden he found and liked to take care of. Maybe Panda was running laps around campus or something. Maybe Maki was in the training room again using the time alone to workout or spar with a dummy—it seemed that was the only thing that girl ever did, because every time you went to the training room for something, she was in there either doing pushups or jump ropes or crunches or swatting at a dummy with a training stick. Sometimes you checked a few times a day and she was still there hours after you’d first looked.

The lightheaded feeling came like Shoko promised. Your head started to feel warm and simultaneously cold, too, swinging your it from side to side in an attempt to cool off and warm up. It almost gave you whiplash, switching between cold and hot and cold again. The warmth blended into a stinging cool that washed over your face and could’ve singed your skin if it were any cooler, and then the heat came back as ephemerally as it vanished, sending you in a temperature induced spiral. 

You weren’t quite sure if shortness of breath was normal, either, since Shoko hadn’t mentioned it. You made a mental note to ask her whenever she came back. Or maybe you didn’t—you’d already forgotten.

Regardless, you kept squeezing the foam thing in your hand and kept swinging your head to and fro like you were counting sheep and made yourself dizzy in the process (well, maybe that was bound to come, anyways). Shoko came back after what felt like forever with a small, damp towel placed on your forehead to cool you off.

Eventually, after staring at the ceiling for a bit longer than the twenty minutes Gojo had promised and watching weird patterns and shapes form in your vision (none of which seemed like hallucinations and more like straight up dizziness), Shoko finally plucked the needle out from your arm and bandaged you up and handed you another juice box. The other ones, you hadn’t been drinking; you weren’t really focused on that when you felt like your skin was being replaced with icy-hot chemicals and your life force was being drained from your body.

Soon enough, Shoko sent you back with her own assistance, of course, after you threw up in the bathroom and nearly passed out. Once you felt like you were feeling a tiny bit better, and the bar was extremely high so you still felt like your stomach was full of cotton, and finally drank all the juice boxes she gave you, she walked you back to your dorm since she didn’t trust Gojo to do it well enough himself.

“Drink plenty of water” this and “no heavy lifting for the next few days” that and stuff about “eat a good meal tonight”. Honestly you were paying more attention to the general direction the dining area was in more than what Shoko was telling you on the way back to your room. You’d passed Maki in the hall while you were walking, (she paid you no mind) and you kindly asked Shoko if you could walk with Maki instead. Naturally, you couldn’t, and Shoko dropped you off at your room and then you snuck out with tea leaves and a mug at the ready anyways.

“Maki!” you whisper-yelled like Shoko was secretly listening for you from around the corner. Spoiler: she wasn’t.

Maki stopped walking and turned around at the sound of her name, looking for whoever it was that wanted her attention. She spotted you and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Are you heading to the dining room?” You raised your voice back to its normal pitch, catching up with Maki by slightly picking up your walk speed.

“No…?” She frowned. “It’s not even four yet.”

“Oh,” you looked down at the tea leaves cupped in the pit of your mug. “I’m still going. I feel absolutely famished.”

Maki quickly glanced down at your arm, whose sleeve was still rolled up and had a red bandage wrapped around the ends of your forearm and bicep, then looked back at your face. “You got your blood drawn?”

“I did,” you sighed quietly. “My first time ever.”

“You look pretty okay after your first time getting blood sucked out of you.”

You chuckled sheepishly, your eyes drifting up towards Maki’s face. “That’s because you didn’t watch me vomit afterwards.”

“And you’re still hungry?” Maki questioned, and you would’ve thought it was judgmental if it weren’t for the humor beneath it. She had a knack for blending incredulity in with amusement and judgment into one canvas, it seemed.

“I can’t reject food if my brain says I need it,” you shrugged and started for the dining room again, shifting the tea leaves at the bottom of your mug. “Regardless, I’m not going for food. I’m just heating up some tea for myself because my stomach is, in fact, quite upset.”

Maki clicked her tongue and found herself following after you, nodding like she understood. “Are those leaves enchanted like the ones you gave Toge on Monday?”

You smiled and looked at her as she caught up. “No.” You gently shook your mug again.

Maki thought for a moment, then decided she didn’t care enough to keep asking, then changed the subject. “So that means no working out for you, then?” she gestured her head to the bandage around your arm.

“Not for a few days, no,” you carelessly shrugged one shoulder. You both turned a corner. “But I’m not really missing out. I’m in no rush to invade that training room now that you’ve basically dominated it.”

“Dominated it?” Maki frowned again, glaring at you. “I just use it often because I, for one, actually like to stay in shape. How is that ‘dominating’ the training room?”

You quickly turned your head to look at Maki and blinked, then swallowed quietly. “I’m sorry if that offended you,” you offered her an apologetic smile and furrowed your eyebrows. “I just meant that you’re very intense with your training, that’s all.”

“I guess that’s better than not taking it seriously,” Maki shrugged, then glanced at you again, less intimidating and more curious. “But if it matters that much, you could just walk in and join. I don’t really care.”

“That’s nice of you,” your smile changed and flashed into a brighter grin than the guilty look that nearly made Maki gag. “But I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Maki bit down on her tongue—a habit she developed when she didn’t know what to say—and stayed quiet for a moment. She thought and thought, and apparently contemplated long enough that the silence lasted until you both got to the dining area. She frowned when she found herself standing next to you at the sink.

“I’ve heard people complain about the beginning always being the hardest part,” Maki grumbled as she took a step away from you, effectively gaining her own space. “That wasn’t really true for me.”

“Well, then I suppose you’re quite lucky,” your smile that seemed neverending in that moment twinkled at her, watching her as she hopped onto the counter next to the sink and swung her legs. 

Maki sat quietly as the back of her feet repeatedly hit the cabinet beneath the counter. Lucky. You called her lucky. Her of all people. It made her blood boil for you to think of her as anything of the sort—lucky, gifted, fortunate, felicitous, fortuitous—in any way.

And you thought of her as lucky with a fucking smile on your face. She loathed how clueless you were.

She bit down on her tongue again. This time to keep her from saying something she wanted to say.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said as simply as she could. Apparently it wasn’t that simple, because you were side eyeing her while you were turning on the faucet.

“I can’t imagine a world where physical prowess is deemed unfavorable,” you murmured, bringing your mug to the now hot water and filling it up. Maki balled up her fists as she watched you.

“I suppose that does sound pretty asinine from an outsider’s point of view,” Maki retorted with a roll of her eyes, unclenching her fists and letting them rest on the edge of the counter. She muttered something under her breath that she didn’t care about whether or not if you heard it (truthfully, she thought you needed to).

You looked at her again and offered her a supportive look. “Well, regardless. I’m sure you’ll be proving the people wrong who are saying physical prowess is unfortunate.”

Maki closed her eyes and sighed sharply. If only it were that easy.

“Whatever, I’m going back to the training room,” she hopped off the counter, not even sparing you a glance as you picked up your mug by its tiny handle and gently blew on it.

You turned around carefully, making sure your tea didn’t spill, and watched as Maki started to leave. Then you got to the doorway, touched your pendulum to your forehead, and followed after her.

“Are you in need of a hobby?” You asked as you caught up with her. You took a sip of her tea and turned a corner.

Maki glared at you again. “This is my hobby.”

“Training is not a hobby, Maki.”

“Says who?”

“Says me,” you swallowed quietly and looked at her. “Do you do anything else?”

Maki clicked her tongue and let out a quiet exhale of exasperation. “I go to my classes.”

“And what else?”

Maki poked her cheek with her tongue, speeding up and quickly swerved another corner. “I read. Occasionally.”

You chuckled as you matched her pace, sipping your tea so that it didn’t spill. “First off, going to your classes isn’t a hobby, either. Second of all, what kind of books are you reading?”

“A book,” Maki corrected, opening a door once you both reached the end of the hallway and held it open for you. You thanked her and followed her outside and into another building of which you opened the door for her in return.

“So, what kind of book is it that you’re reading?”

Maki groaned. “Why are you so persistent?”

“Because I care,” you beamed at her from behind your mug. Maki swore she could’ve socked the smile right off your face if it didn’t mean an anti-bullying presentation from Gojo and Principal Yaga the following Monday.

“Right,” Maki nodded her head. “Cuz your heart’s just as big as can be, ain’t it?”

“I’m not sure being kind is something you’re supposed to chastise someone for…”

“Okay, fine,” Maki swung open the training room door and walked in, dragging out a dummy from the corner with one hand and bringing it out to the center. “What do you think I should make time in my schedule for?”

“A number of things,” you sat on the bench closest to the door with your mug still in your hand. “What sounds appealing to you?”

Maki grabbed a training stick from the collection on the wall mount in the front of the room. She paused as she thought for a moment, then kept going and stood in front of the training dummy. “Hitting things.”

“I suppose that’s a form of taking your anger out,” you leaned back and crossed your legs, smoothing your skirt out with your free hand and bouncing your leg slightly. “But unfortunately for you, you still need an actual hobby. One that doesn’t involve bludgering your knuckles, in particular.”

Maki frowned in confusion as she took the first swing at the dummy, watching it bounce back from the force of her hit. “But I’m using a training sword.”

“Right now, you are. But I’ve walked past when the door’s left open and I’ve seen blood stains on that same dummy,” you pointed your pinky finger towards the dummy on the mat.

“You’re very distracting.”

“Don’t you suppose that’s the point?”

Maki took a few more swings in silence for a moment, letting your words sink in as she pointlessly swatted at a dummy that couldn’t feel the anger behind her hits but still fell to the floor like a fallen soldier time and time again.

It wasn’t very often she gave up on something. She liked to brand herself as someone who was absurdly dedicated, not stubborn because that was a flaw, and someone who liked to stick to her plan and hardly ever took a different route. So her time spent training was very sacred to her, and having someone like you so whimsically blabbering and distracting her wasn’t very welcome. But she couldn’t very well throw you out because that would’ve meant proving your point. Either way, she was at a loss.

So she sighed, very, very loudly, and very sharply to the point the shrillness of her wind could’ve cut through the dummy before her, and put her training stick back on the wall mount. So maybe, she was stubborn. 

“Are you gonna suggest I take up gardening like Toge?” Maki griped and turned around to look at you and half expected a triumphant look on your face at the sight of her begrudging defeat. Instead she found a patient smile and a warm aura.

You shrugged lightly. “Possibly,” you took a sip and tilted your head back, finishing what was left of your tea. “Does that interest you?”

“Not really,” Maki murmured, watching you as you watched your tea leaves at the bottom of your mug. You frowned deeply for a moment, your eyebrows forming a crease in your forehead for a second before you looked up at her with a reinforced beam.

“Well, luckily the bounds of hobbies aren’t restricted to just gardening and reading.”

Maki flashed you a fake smile that earned a chuckle out of you. She huffed and brushed her hair back, adjusting her ponytail before starting for the door.

She walked back in once she noticed you weren’t following her.

“Are you just gonna sit in silence?”

“I was inspecting my tea leaves,” you uncrossed your legs and got up from the bench, walking towards the door.

Maki got curious and asked before you got the idea to call her out. “What’s in them?”

“It’s not important,” you shook your mug again, watching the tiniest drop of remaining tea swish around slightly. “I just like observing them.”

Maki didn’t comment on how closely you’d been observing them a few minutes ago the first time with a look that didn’t exude whimsy, but she knew it was probably nothing. But it was still probably something. Though it was probably none of her business.

Instead, she snorted quietly. “Is observing tea leaves a hobby of yours?”

“You’re quite the comedian,” you rolled your eyes lightheartedly. “No. It’s a thing some witches do after they finish their tea. Some of us read our tea leaves as a way to perceive the future.”

“So like, fortune telling?”

“Of the like,” you shrugged, then looked at her with a knowing gleam in your eyes. “I could teach you, if you’d like.”

“Are you gonna keep offering to rope me into your witchy crap until I finally cave?”

“No,” you chuckled softly through your nose and turned a corner with her. “I just like the idea of sharing my knowledge with others. A wise woman once said ‘if you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.’”

Maki nodded again, speeding down to the end of the hall and opening the door and holding it for you. You thanked her and stood outside, looking around.

The air wasn’t as hot as it had been earlier when Maki and the others were leaving the classroom. Panda thought he would’ve melted and Toge almost did. Maki prided herself in being the only one who didn’t actively complain about the heat, though she didn’t exactly appreciate the sweat tickling the back of her neck.

“Where are we heading?”

“Nowhere.”

“I have an idea.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do!” You hopped up and down excitedly, beaming right in Maki’s face. “Do you mind if we go back to the dining room, then to my dorm? I’d like to rinse off my mug first.”

Maki wasn’t sure if she wanted to decline. She heard through the grapevine that you had gifted privileges that allowed you to have all sorts of decorations in your room and that your room itself looked really cool. But she also heard you were placed in the back of the hallway for a reason, too. She wondered that if she went, her nosy tendency would’ve been satisfied.

“I suppose it’s not an inconvenience,” Maki started in the direction of the building across from her. “What are we gonna do in your room?”

“Come up with a list of potential hobbies for you, duh,” you answered simply like Maki wasn’t supposed to ask questions after that.

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Sounds really fun.”

“Don’t gripe!” you chirped as you opened the door for her and let her go first. She thanked you as you closed the door. “You’ll be glad later on in the year when you’re not training and you happen to not be bored.”

“Training doesn’t really bore me—” she looked back at you and noticed your walk speed faltering a bit. “Are you—”

“I’m alright,” you huffed and caught up to her, giving her a not-so convincing reassuring smile. “I’m just a little winded. Probably from all the blood loss earlier.”

“Right,” Maki narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Come on. The sooner we get to your room, the sooner you can lay down.”

“I said I’m fine,” you gripped your mug tighter. “It’s not like I’m about to pass out.”

“Don’t jinx yourself, now.”

“I didn’t think you believed in that stuff.”

Maki frowned slightly. “It’s just a saying.”

You grinned at her. “And I’m just messing with you.”

“It seems like that’s all you’ve been doing since you saw me earlier.”

“You’re entertained, no?”

“I guess… not really.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” your smile softened and you nudged her elbow with yours. “I’m not sure if anyone’s ever told you that.”

Maki glared at you as your elbows touched. She wasn’t all too keen on getting comfortable yet, and she had no hindsight to rely on but she knew she wasn’t going to be for a while. Regardless, she said nothing and just sighed quietly.

You quickly turned a corner and walked back to the dining room, touching your pendulum to your forehead and entered. Maki waited outside while you rinsed out your mug and listened to the faucet running quietly.

“I think I’m supposed to take this off soon,” you bent your arm and looked at the bandage still wrapped around it. “It’s starting to feel weird.”

“So take it off, then.”

“I can’t yet,” you looked at Maki and started walking. “I don’t think it’s been an hour yet.”

“Did Shoko explicitly say take it off after an hour?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Maki looked around for a clock that might’ve conveniently happened to be hanging on a wall nearby and found none. Neither of you had watches, so you were left to make a guess.

“I’ll take it off later,” you swapped your mug into your other hand. “Have you been thinking of potential hobbies?”

“Jesus, you’re still on that?”

“Why would I not be?”

“I thought you were joking!”

“What?! Why would I joke about my friends’ hobbies?!”

Maki stayed quiet for a moment, then she looked at you. “So we’re friends now?”

You shrugged. “I mean, yeah? Unless you don’t want to be.” You nibbled on your bottom lip, looking around the hallway nervously.

“I’d call it acquaintances for now.”

“Regardless, I do actually care, believe it or not.”

Maki didn’t say anything. She couldn’t really wrap her head around the fact you seemingly cared so much about what the people around you did with their free time—all the concern around them having hobbies and not being bored—after knowing them for not even a week. Maki wondered if you were raised like that, because there was no way in her mind that anyone was just naturally as selfless as you were.

You both walked to your room in silence the rest of the way there. The silence wasn’t really uncomfortable, just an active presence between you two, a third party. Maybe that’s when it became uncomfortable. Then Maki wasn’t so interested in seeing your room anymore. She figured she’d see it sooner or later, but she would’ve preferred if it weren’t in that exact moment when she walked in.

Her thoughts changed when she saw the textbook definition of a witch’s hut on the inside.

Basically everything that was explained in fairytales was in your room. You even had an altar! She definitely didn’t have one of those. There was only one thing missing.

“Where’s your cauldron?” Maki joked, hesitantly stepping in and looking around your walls. You had quite a few tapestries hanging, ranging in different colors like blue, green, purple, red, gold, black and brown. Honestly, it gave your room much more personality than hers.

“Ha, ha,” you laughed without mirth, then glanced at Maki with a smile. “Cauldrons are a cultural thing. I also don’t have the room for one.”

“That makes sense,” Maki nodded. She inhaled for the first time since she walked in and smelled the scent of burning incense—a woodsy, earthy, smoky smell filled her nose as she breathed in. She looked around and saw a stick burning on your nightstand.

“You just leave that burning while you’re gone?”

“No, silly,” you walked over to your nightstand, your hand hovering over the tip of the narrow stick. “Watch this,” you waved your hand slowly over the stick, and the ember went out instantly, leaving behind only a river of smoke floating upwards. You waved your hand over it again and the ember came back, a gentle glow on the end of the incense.

“So it’s magic?” Maki observed as your hand stayed hovered over the ember.

“Yep,” you nodded briefly. “One of the most basic forms ever.”

“What’s the fundamentals?”

“Making a leaf levitate. That’s from personal experience, by the way.”

Maki chuckled heartily. She looked around your room some more and noticed a book sitting on another nightstand on the other side of your bed. It was no small thing, either, nor did it look like it was released in recent years. It was large, with a crazy looking amount of pages after judging by how thick it was, the edges were discolored and other parts were faded. One of the letters was replaced by a hole in the velvet covering, and the pages themselves were sort of manilla looking, similar to the walls of the training room.

“How old is this thing?” Maki inquired, pointing to the book on the nightstand. You looked over and laughed quietly.

“Oh, the grimoire? It’s been around for centuries. One of the witches from my coven passed it down to me as a gift.”

“So this thing’s pretty darn sacred,” Maki commented. “That’s actually kinda cool.”

You stepped around her and walked over to the nightstand, flipping open the cover and revealing the very first page which was an index of previous owners that dated all the way back to sometime during feudal Japan. The most recent name was, obviously, your own, with several gaps left to fill.

“This grimoire will get passed down to someone else eventually, after the years pass,” you closed it and set it back on your nightstand. “I don’t imagine it’ll be through familial rights.”

“I wouldn’t want some snotty kid getting their grubby hands on something so ancient, either.”

You tilted your head back and barked out a laugh, your shoulders shaking with your momentum.

“You’re funny.”

“I try.”

You paused and looked at Maki again, knowingly. “Would you wanna try learning? Magic, I mean.”

Maki raised an eyebrow incredulously and looked at the grimoire with a suspicious eye, then back at you. “Can you seriously picture me wearing a witch’s hat and turning people into rats?”

You rolled your eyes and sat on the edge of your bed. “It counts as a hobby, you know.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “I think I’ll stick to training my ass off until you get any better ideas.”

You gave her another smile. Maki had a feeling she’d be seeing a lot of that throughout her high school career. “The offer’s always open, you know.”

“And I only have to ask, right?”

“Absolutely.”

Maki scoffed again automatically and shook her head. She turned towards your door and prepared to leave and stopped just outside the doorway. She shut her eyes and dropped her head, sighing sharply before walking away, closing the door behind her. 

She had a feeling you were going to be a nuisance for the year. And the other years after that. That thought made her blood boil again. She hated it.

She couldn’t let herself be distracted by such a nice thing again.

_________________________

awh! third chapter after a month and a half! yay! also is anyone going to catch onto the fact this entire story is going to be one giant yellowjackets reference.

APRIL 24TH, 2017. 7:34 AM. TOKYO JUJUTSU HIGH SCHOOL. JAPAN.

“So, Maki, what kind of music do you listen to?”

Maki, in her own socially inexperienced life (unless she counted her interactions with other members of the Zenin clan as ‘social development’, which she would’ve been sooner caught dead than ever caught calling it that), was quite aware that some people had some mystical ability to act normal after something really dramatic had happened just hours before. Irony or something, maybe it was a poker face or really good acting or whatever, she thought either of those were suitable answers so it didn’t really matter.

In some way, a really twisted and screwed up way, it was like that at Jujutsu High. The students there sort of acted like everything was normal while countless abominations happened around the country (and the world, no less) every day. Maki ate and slept and trained like any normal Jujutsu High student would. Panda chewed on bamboo, as one did, of course, and he also went to class and talked to his friends, and trained, too. Toge tended to his garden, started taking up sign language lessons on his phone after the first conversation about it, ate, worked out some, though his efforts to stay in shape paled in comparison to Maki, and also played games on his phone during his free time.

Of course, like with every other witch in the world, nobody really knew a whole lot about your normal activities.

Maki knew you liked to meditate, so she made sure to leave the training room open for you from time to time. She also knew you liked looking at your tea leaves at the bottom of your mug (which she noticed was your only one: a simple earthy green shade with a rune engraved in the porcelain) sometimes. She thought it went without saying that you practiced some sort of witchcraft on your own time when you weren’t learning about Jujutsu and cursed energy and whatnot. Panda and Toge knew those things, too, as everyone’s hobbies were brought up occasionally in conversation.

But as far as anything not witchy related, none of them really knew anything about you.

Maki didn’t care all that much just yet. She wasn’t in a rush to figure out everything about you, and she didn’t think Panda and Toge were, either, until you were pulled out of class again the following Monday after your blood test and came back twenty minutes later with an opaque bag of something that clearly wasn’t meant for everyone else to see and they asked her after class what she thought it was for.

Well, for one, she told them it was a mistake talking to them after class had ended, and two, she told them that the bag’s contents were nobody’s business but your own and that she didn’t care if they were smaller bags of coke and meth or if they were twelve different passports to twelve different countries. Of course, she was partially lying, because she was slightly curious about it but only because it was in her nature as a human, she also didn’t give that much of a crap that she had half a working brain cell to start gossiping about it and making guesses on what was in there. Toge and Panda stopped for a bit after she told them to mind their own business.  The rest of the week was kind of normal, or as normal as it could’ve gotten at Jujutsu High, at least. Toge got assigned his first mission on his second Wednesday at the school. It wasn’t much: it was a curse invading an abandoned park, it sounded pretty basic and bland when Maki heard about it. Maki trained outside for the first time on Thursday because it was too nice outside for her to spend her training time indoors with lackluster manilla walls and a tan training mat and matching colored dummy as her view. Gojo took you all out into the city for a bit as his treat (which none of you had a clue what the reason was behind the treat, but turning down a free trip to the city was nonsense) on Friday and let you all explore the impossibly and absurdly busy streets of Tokyo for a few hours. People fawned over the literal panda walking around. Toge went to several game stores and junk food stands (from some of which he brought back souvenirs for the group, like dango sticks and Pocky boxes). Maki didn’t want to spend her time with the boys so she opted to stick with you the whole time and consequently got lost a few times, stood in the middle of a bookstore for an entire hour while you looked around the whole five hundred square foot store, walked with you to the next bookstore you found, stood there for only fifteen minutes before you bought a journal and a copy of Wuthering Heights and Outlander with your share of the allowance Gojo gave to all of you, went with you to another store that was centered around coffee and herbs and tea and other stuff Maki didn’t care about, then got lost again.

Things that normal people did on a normal Friday.

Saturday was fine. You stayed in your room all day (probably reading one of your books) and only left when you were hungry and to shower in the morning and at night. Maki, for once, took the day off to rest after she learned she’d pulled a muscle in her leg and had a colorful gripe to give to the entire dorm building every time she had to walk more than a few yards (the trek to Shoko’s office that morning was hell to pay). Toge tended to his garden, and him coming back was pretty much the only time Maki saw him over the weekend. Nobody really knew what Panda was doing, but everyone liked to think they had more important lives to tend to, so no one asked or bothered to check.

Sunday was when things got a little strange.

_________________________

“Gojo announced a quiz earlier,” Panda sprawled out on the grass, laying in the middle of the sun kissed field and looking up at the orange and purple sky above him. He spread his arms and legs out like a starfish. “He said it’s tomorrow.”

“A quiz on what?” Maki inquired, her eyes following Panda’s and looking up at the clouds. She sat on one of the stands, a polearm on the inside of her arm. She looked back down at him. “We’ve hardly learned anything, and I think it’s nonsense considering we’ve been here for a few weeks now. You’d think we’d have at least learned something, but we haven’t, because he sucks at teaching.”

The door to the building behind the bleachers was pushed open, revealing you walking out with black jean shorts and your white uniform shirt tied at the waist and a cup in your hand. You waved to everyone else with a smile and jogged over to the bottom row.

“That can’t possibly be breathable,” Maki commented, eyeing your shirt. “Those things are, like, thicker than wool.”

“I think you’re being dramatic,” you sat down on the set of bleachers opposite from her. “Besides, I don’t think anything I wear would do anything more to keep me from melting.”

“Did you hear about Gojo’s announcement earlier?” Panda asked, lifting his head up from the grass.

“No,” you shook your head. “What was it?”

“A stupid quiz tomorrow,” Maki crossed her legs—careful to not put weight on her bad leg—and rested her chin on her palm. “With no material for us to study.”

“Has Mr. Gojo even taught us anything useful yet?”

“No, that’s what pisses me off,” Maki grumbled, glaring at you. A slight chill went down your spine when you were met with the immediate scrutiny of her gaze.

There was a gust of wind that blew past all of you. Panda closed his eyes, basking in the cool of the breeze. You fiddled with the knot around your waist for a minute, chewing on your bottom lip. Maki squinted her eyes and looked away from the sunset, instead opting to pay attention to her left leg, the one with the pulled muscle, and massaging (or at least, attempting to) her calf with her thumb.

You raised a curious eyebrow. “Did you hurt your leg?”

“Shoko said I pulled a muscle,” Maki answered without looking up. “She said I should let it rest, but I don’t wanna stay cooped up inside.”

“At least you’re getting your vitamin D,” you gave her a small smile that she felt even without seeing it. “I could make you something to help with it, if you’d like.”

Maki finally picked her head up, her thumb pausing its movements that weren’t doing much to help her. She quirked her own eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Some tea with a few enchantments. And a spell, if you don’t mind.”

Maki narrowed her eyes again suspiciously, backing her head away slightly. She wasn’t sure if she should’ve taken up on the offer, but last week Toge made a tea with some of those tea leaves you’d given him on the first day of school to help with his throat and he said they worked wonders, so she figured your medicinal skills couldn’t have been too bad.

“Sure,” she shrugged, but went back to rubbing her calf anyways (despite her last attempt being of no avail) in an effort to alleviate the pain sooner so that way when you hypothetically saw her again she’d have an excuse for you not to do anything. She looked back up just in time to watch the smile on your face as it turned towards the sun, watching the horizon.

The wind blew again. It stung her eyes and nearly blew a wound through your nose, but the air against your foreheads felt nice in the midst of the early comings of a brutal summer.

You brought a hand up to your head, holding it and sighing quietly. “I should be leaving,” you stood up. Maki watched with a confused expression.

“You just got here,” she noted, frowning slightly.

“I’ve got laundry to do.”

Maki’s frown deepened. Something was up, and she knew it. “You did that on Friday after we came back.” She knew that because you both did it together—you’d pressured Maki into joining you during your weekly routine of doing your laundry and encouraged her to bring her own.

She scoffed sharply. “If you don’t wanna hang out with us, just say that.”

“I meant my bedsheets,” you turned back towards the door, turning on the heel of your boot. “If it means that much to you, then I’ll make that tea and be at your door immediately after?”

“You don’t have to busy yourself with me,” Maki sat up straight, her posture fixing itself as she tensed. “I’m sure Shoko can do it.”

“Assuming she’s even sober enough for that,” Panda picked his head back up. “Didn’t you say you came to her about your leg the other day and she could barely answer you?”

Maki clicked her tongue and nodded her head. “Yeah. But I doubt it’ll be that bad today. I’ll just go to her later on.”

She turned to look at you, but you were already gone. She didn’t even hear the door open and shut, let alone the sound of your footsteps. The wind blew a leaf in your place, twirling it in the air until it floated down to the ground next to the bleachers.

“That was odd,” Panda commented. Maki didn’t even feel bad for agreeing with him at that moment. The air went back to normal as if you never came outside. Maki would’ve wondered if it was her imagination if it weren’t for the cursed corpse on the grass.

“Agreed,” Maki looked down at your spot and saw your cup next to it. She let out an exasperated sigh through her nose. “She even forgot the cup she brought with her.”

“I guess she was in that much of a rush.”

“Probably.” A small shrug left her shoulders as she pushed her polearm into her hand. “But it’s not like her bedsheets are going anywhere.”

“Maybe she’s just really into cleanliness.”

There was a moment of silence between them for a minute. The stretch of quietness was a nice combination with the soft and hardly-perceptible breeze blowing in the air, wafting the faint smell of incense into Maki’s nose. As fleeting as it was, coming and going the second she recognized the scent as something that was uniquely you, it was as clean as Panda said you were.

“Do you think she forgot it purposely?”

Maki narrowed her eyes and grabbed your cup. She looked at Panda when she stood up straight. “Why the hell would she forget a cup on purpose?”

Panda shrugged and sat upright, his paws on the grass. “I dunno. She’s not very forgetful.”

Maki couldn’t indulge in Panda’s nonsense. Although he had a point in your strange mishap of forgetting something, she wasn’t about to encourage his bullshit theory about you leaving your cup there on purpose. There wasn’t any type of scenario where you would’ve gotten something out of it other than simply having it brought back to you just for the sake of not having to come back and get it yourself (which was asinine, in Maki’s opinion)

“I’m sure she’ll come back for it once she realizes it’s gone.”

“I would bring it back to her, but,” Panda rolled over and sat upright with his paws on the grass between his legs, spreading them in a V-shape. “I don’t wanna go to the girls’ hallway.”

“Do you think it’s a war zone down there? It’s literally the same as the boys’ hallway, which you don’t even go into.”

“That’s no place for a panda!”

“It’s just me, her, and a second year girl!”

“Don’t care,” Panda raised his arms into an X shape, shaking his head. “Not doing it.”

Maki grunted and rolled her eyes, reluctantly getting up from her spot on the bleachers and leaving her polearm behind. “I’ll be back,” she called out, bending down to grab your cup. “And you’ll see that it’s not a war zone in the girls’ hallway.”

She went back to the building, opening the door and walking in and being blasted with cool air. It was a relief that the air unit had the strength of about ten bulls, she couldn’t imagine being outside in the heat and coming back to an infinitely more suffocating building.

A faint scent—no, scratch that, not faint at all, the aroma all but invaded her nose before the door even closed all the way—of incense was floating in the air. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply, coughing slightly as she breathed it in. The smell was different from the last time it was that strong. Last time it was an instant wave of charcoal smoke and burning wood and another scent she couldn’t quite name, but the only idea that came even a fraction of the way close enough was lavender. The hallway was clearly reminded of your presence with the thick vanilla and patchouli and honey. She felt like she’d just stepped into a crystal shop. She wondered how it didn’t suffocate her earlier when you were right in front of her.

She stepped through the invisible cloud of incense, pushing against the spice that stung her nose and walked down the hallway and turned down the right corner.

The smell still lingered even after she’d long since passed the hall. The patchouli and vanilla were unforgiving to her senses, and she wished to be rid of the sweets and spices that hung around the walls. Or, perhaps the smell had faded already, and it had already made itself at home with her. The air stilled as she crossed between buildings to the dorms.

Judging by the height of the sun in the sky, surely it would’ve been dinner time soon, so she thought at some point she was bound to see you roaming the halls again. But you were unseen, even with every turn of every corner she expected to be met with your face.

The girls’ hallway became eery. The lights were dimmed for whatever reason, but there were no ceiling lights or a light switch—only a window extending down the hall and small lights outside each door.

All the blinds were drawn. All the light the hallway could’ve possibly needed felt like it was drained and yet Maki could still see very clearly ahead of herself.

She stopped. Her grip around your cup stiffened as she felt the air turn cold enough to send a chill from her neck and down her spine. She brought her free hand up to the back of her neck, feeling the sweat that’d built up from being outside and the heat of her skin.

It wasn’t that Maki had never felt strange presences before. (She grew up in an estate crawling with creepy old men for relatives, after all) Her sister complained about actually seeing them all the time when they were younger and she never gave her the time of day, always saying nothing was there even when the weight was barely over her too-young-to-perceive-it-as-a-cursed-presence head. And when she got her glasses, she finally was able to see all the gross and scary things her sister cried to her about and stuck behind her in fear of. And though her lack of experience with curses despite hearing complaints and whines about them all the time wasn’t a very large scale for comparison, the cold striking through her bones and leaving her with a burning stillness to the floor wasn’t like anything she’d felt before.

It was unfamiliar. Unknown, unwelcome, uncomfortable. For a minute she thought about being uncouth and keeping the cup to herself until you came out for dinner, making you get it yourself. And then another minute passed and she heard the faintest sound of window blinds being snapped shut. The unbridled need to investigate dominated her need to flee (which the ratio was egregiously low for such a creepy scene) and she stepped further into the darkened spotlight of the hallway.

Maki didn’t tremble. Her footsteps were secure in their path that became more and more narrow the closer she got to turning around the corner to your room at the end of the hall.

The second to last door on the left side. It was the same as almost every other door in the school. Brown surface, bronze handle.

You set yours apart. The bland brown became an unsightly faded mahogany. The bronze became an unpleasant and weathered copper. All the other doors turned away in shock and fear at the face of a door set apart from all of them.

Unbeknownst there was a mere ghost in the room. A shadow of normality replaced by unorthodox silence rained over the rest of the building. The air was unsettling. Maki knew something unnatural was happening.

The hallway seemed as if it’d stretched. The walls elongated and the doors distorted themselves with them.

Everything was still. Creepily frozen. Maki should’ve felt fear but she didn’t, because as real as it all felt—the walls stretching, the light clouding up, the door withering in on itself—it also felt fictional, like something out of an old fairytale made to scare kids.

She was a kid but it didn’t scare her.

Your door flew open before she had time to stop herself and knock. Your lights (a little lamp and candles—you hated using the big light) were off. The wicks were quiet and black and your lamp had stiffened. The old, rotting book on the lingering nightstand opened its nonexistent eye on the surface and stared at the intruder. Your walls were petrified and your tapestries stood like soldiers facing the peril of war.

Your bed looked as solid as a rock, but you seemed to sink right into the mattress. You were still, the walls were still, the bed was still, but your mind was a squiggling mess and Maki couldn’t see behind your stiff shoulders and rigid muscles.

The scene above you was everything short of punctilious.

The night was moving with the stars that peered down at you, then to each other in confusion, worry, then back at you as if to examine you.

The ground beneath you was solid but you felt like lifeless mesh. You would’ve condensed into a dew drop if you could’ve.

There was something in your hand. Your fingers could barely twitch and feel around for its shape, the cold and sharp edges dug into the plush of your fingertips.

Something stared down at you as you stared up at it. Something so familiar and strange and something that wore different faces with every passing second. They all made up an inevitable pattern that connected everyone and everything.

The dust settled hesitantly. The wind crept by in a sneaky tiptoe past your unwatchful eyes. A suspicious warmth filled your chest as it spread to your stomach and your neck and soaked your shirt in its embrace.

The patterns and the warmth and the sky and the cold reflected your eyes as if they were real. The ground beneath you shook and crumbled as a shrill gust blew past your ears.

Someone had called your name—or maybe it was two voices—no… three? 

Your bed dipped where someone had sat. A flame licked at your cheek when a slap whipped across your face.

Maki was beyond confused. She couldn’t tell if you’d felt it because you were unresponsive and, in her eyes, in a dream-like state with your eyes open.

“What is your problem? Wake the hell up!” Maki slapped you again. She was sure if she was even gaining any progress with the way your head simply lolled to the other side. She sighed, shoving your cup on your mattress and raising her arm again.

Your hand shot up and caught her wrist in a near bone-cracking grip just before her palm could slam against your face again.

“Maki,” your eyes were still faraway, like you were looking at something beyond her.

She frowned and yanked her arm out of your grip. “So you can hear me?”

“I can feel you, too. Including those slaps you gave me.”

“I wouldn’t have had to do that if you answered me when I called your name.”

“You interrupted me,” you frowned with her and sat up. Your dream went away as your head pushed through the invisible cloud, your hand clutching the back of your skull and rubbing your fingers at the base. You looked at her again. “Why are you here in the first place?”

“You forgot this,” Maki tilted her head towards your cup as she stood up from your bed. “I didn’t want to. It was Panda’s idea, but he’s too much of a pussy to wander off to this hallway, so I’m only doing it to get a jab at him.”

You looked at the cup and smiled, chuckling quietly for a moment.

“What’s humorous about that?”

“That’s not even mine,” you glanced at her through your eyelashes. “It’s from the kitchen. I meant to take it back.”

Maki thought for a moment as she stood, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She was still reeling from watching you in such a state. Of course, she couldn’t let you know that it had such an effect on her.

“It’s dinner time soon, anyways,” Maki turned and started for your door, shaking off the chill that’d run up and down her spine. “So you might as well just take that thing with you to eat.”

“I’m not going,” you picked up the cup and stood from your spot. “I lost my appetite after… well, y’know.”

“Right,” Maki pulled your door open wider, standing in your doorway as you followed her. “I’m getting Shoko. There’s no way that shit doesn’t warrant her attention.”

“Maki, don’t,” you started firmly, grabbing her wrist again and stopping her before she got out to the hall. All the other closed doors watched. “I don’t need her.”

“You obviously do,” Maki pulled away once more and gained her distance, walking out into the hallway. “What even was that? A panic attack or something?”

“None of your business is what it was,” you hissed, your frown deepening. “Now I don’t need you making it everyone else’s business by going to Miss Shoko. This isn’t the first time I’ve been through that situation, and it won’t be the last. I don’t need her attention, either.”

Maki clenched her jaw and grit her teeth, staring at you as you stared back. You looked completely different from your dream state, you looked like you actually belonged to the land of the living, for one. You also didn’t look scared for your life.

She had no idea what you saw or what you were hearing, but what she did know was that it certainly wasn’t normal, and it certainly wasn’t something that was supposed to be left alone.

“You started going here,” Maki daringly stepped closer to you, narrowing her eyes behind her glasses and glaring at you. “You made it everyone’s business as soon as you came here.”

“You didn’t have to come and fetch me!”

“I wasn’t going to ‘fetch’ you! I was bringing that damn cup back when I could’ve saved myself a trip over here!”

“I felt a change in cursed presence out here.”

The both of you turned your heads to find Gojo standing at the corner of the hallway. A shadow was cast over his face as he stood with his back to the sunlight.

“I hope I don’t need to intervene over there.”

“What you need to do,” Maki grabbed you by your sleeve. “Is get this girl to Shoko.” 

“Ieiri has nothing to do with this,” Gojo stepped towards you and Maki, looming over you both with his hands in his pockets. “She can’t help her.”

“I told you,” you turned your head and looked at Maki. “I don’t need her help.”

“So you just sit that whole process out until it’s over, then? Is that what this is?” Maki’s face turned dirty as she let go of your sleeve, wiping her hand off on her own shirt. “You just let creepy shit go down in there?”

“Maki,” Gojo called out sternly, tilting his head towards her. “Leave her alone. You shouldn’t have come.”

“Gladly,” Maki rolled her eyes and angrily stomped off down the hall, disappearing around the corner. You and Gojo both listened to the sounds of her heavy footsteps until they eventually disappeared, pitter pattering off into the distance.

Gojo sighed and let his shoulders fall. “She has a point, you know.”

“Didn’t you just say Miss Shoko can’t help me?”

“I meant that you made your condition everyone’s business by going here,” Gojo stood in front of you, looking down eerily but softly through his bandages over his eyes. “You have your own comfort zone. I get that, I have mine, too. But the whole reason you agreed to go here in the first place was to make progress with your illness. Part of that includes communal support, not just prescription medication Ieiri gives you every once in a while.”

“How am I supposed to gain this ‘communal support’ if that was the first reaction I got?” Your own shoulders fell as your face shifted from that defensive look to a guilty expression. You nibbled on your bottom lip for a moment with your teeth.

“Well, you only got such a reaction by lashing out.”

You let out a quietly irritated huff through your nose, fiddling with the ends of your shirt tied together. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t even angry!”

“I did some reading online the other day,” Gojo brought his fingers to his chin and put on another brooding expression, making you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from giggling. “That comes with psychosis. Emotional outbursts, I mean,” he let his hand fall back to his pocket as he shrugged. “Or something like that.”

“I know,” you looked back at your room, eyeing your nightstand. “I used to have all sorts of outbursts like that back in Shimane during my episodes.”

“There’s ways to cope with that, y’know. And I don’t mean putting leaves in hot water and hoping for the best.”

“It’s not just putting leaves in hot water…”

He shook his head as he gave you a small smile. “My point is, there’s other ways to deal with it. You came here for a reason. You came to get better. How do you plan on doing that if you stick to the same old mechanisms you’ve been using since forever?”

You couldn’t argue with that. Drinking tea only got you so far with… anything, really. You supposed it was time to branch out, to reach outside of your comfort zone and try things that weren’t witch-related. You hated to think that you’d lashed out at someone like that, or at anyone at all, and you were ready for a change. You were ready for some peace of mind.

“You’re right,” it dawned on you that you were nearly hunching over, so you straightened your posture and squared your shoulders. “I won’t get anywhere like this.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Gojo’s smile stretched into a wide, toothy grin that had a glint of hope for you shining off his teeth. “Ieiri’s working on getting you the right medication you need, rather than that crappy excuse Yaga told her to give you, cuz that shit clearly isn’t working, so you won’t have to keep wasting tea leaves for much longer.”

He reached over and ruffled your head with his abnormally large hand that could’ve squeezed all the way around your skull if he wanted to, preparing to make a quarter turn. “Come on, small fry. You’ll need to eat soon.”

He started down the hall, pulling his hand away from your head and sticking it in his pocket.

_________________________

It wasn’t very often that Maki was bewildered by something (or in some cases, someone). She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been truly appalled by something she didn’t already have the reaction drilled into her head with. 

Then again, she’d never met a witch before coming to Jujutsu High.

Now, truthfully, she hadn’t really given it much thought as to what kind of music she liked. She rarely ever got that kind of luxury at her lap while she was living at the Zenin estate, so it wasn’t a surprise to her when she found that it was such a low priority on her list and hierarchy. That wasn’t to say she didn’t like music at all, she just hadn’t been all that invested in it very much.

But she couldn’t find it in herself to focus on her music taste when the person asking about it also previously had an episode yesterday containing something akin to “prophetic dreams”.

Maki stared at you with a slight glare, mostly confused while also simultaneously looking freaked out all at the same time. She watched as you sat at your desk in the classroom, your body fully facing her as if to force all of her attention onto you. The both of you were there before the other guys, so it was only you two sitting there, and Maki was forced to listen to you.

She couldn’t grasp it. She didn’t think anything could ever possibly help her grasp it. You looked so casual. Light eyes, a smile, your elbow on the table and your cheek stuffed in your palm and a lax poise to your shoulders that made you come off as having a normal day. You weren’t pressuring her, weren’t rushing her for a reaction like she did to you previously. You were watching her patiently, probably thinking about the awkwardness of the silence she was giving you, and that made you all the more uncanny to her. She wondered if it was anything out of the ordinary for you to act completely normal after something like that happened.

Maki opened her mouth to say something, barely parting her lips, before she stopped herself almost immediately. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to indulge in your façade, because there was no way she thought you could genuinely say you weren’t thinking about the situation from the previous day and not be lying. She also just wasn’t sure if she wanted to associate herself with you period.

You’d let out a quiet sigh. It seemed your patience ran out, finally.

“You’re thinking about yesterday, right?” You asked, your hand moving up to sift your fingers through your hair before stilling them. “That’s why you’re so quiet.”

Maki clicked her tongue and stiffened her shoulders. “You could say that.”

“I’m sorry,” your eyebrows knit together slightly to form a softer version of a frown. The only thing missing was a jut of your lips to make a pout. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you. I feel really bad about it.”

Maki gave you a real frown. “That’s not what this is about,” she shifted in her chair, crossing her legs. She straightened her posture and looked away from you, swallowing quietly. “I meant that weird shit. Before you lashed out.”

You blinked, and in that half-second interval, your expression changed to something on some other side of the spectrum, raising an eyebrow at her. “You mean my episode?”

“Episode?” Maki questioned, sparing you a side glance she thought you were hardly worthy of. “I thought you were having a stroke.”

“It was an episode,” you shook your head gently. “And you were right yesterday.”

“About?”

Maki half expected you to give her a deadpan look, some sort of hint that you were annoyed. A side eye or a glare or a frown to mirror her own. A shadow of a scowl never graced your face. Instead, you shut your eyes for a second, then smiled, looking at her again.

“About me making it everyone’s business, of course,” another small grin flashed at her in all its kindness and an effort to keep the warmth around it. “And… I should’ve told you and Panda and Inumaki together. I’m sorry.”

“You said it was an episode?” Maki repeated rather dumbly, and she internally sighed at her own words. “What kind?”

“The psychosis kind.”

Maki never would’ve guessed. Of course, it was also rude to assume anything about anyone (and most times she didn’t even care). You did exude something taboo and unwonted to your energy: a chill entering a room accompanied by incense in an attempt to compensate for your cursed energy presence. There was a car-crash-that-you-can’t-look-away-from vibe to you, something that drew stares and questions and mumbles from people around you and spurred theories and rumors about you. You were a blunt force and a small knife, but the edge of the blade was everything short of blunt: sharp with an abrupt turn from one surface to another with a mystery waiting on the other side.

Maki supposed that other side of the knife was the psychosis part of you.

She pretended to not care, like she wasn’t even the tiniest bit curious about it, and brought her hand up to push her glasses back up the slope of her nose and to brush part of her bangs out of her eye.

Either she wasn’t a very good actress, or you were some all-knowing divine genius, because you gave her a knowing look while she tucked her hair back behind her ear.

“So you’re, like, what, crazy?”

You exhaled deeply, leaning into your palm supporting your head and scratching your scalp with your nails. Your eyebrows pushed together slightly, causing a crease in your forehead. You nibbled on your bottom lip with your teeth and shrugged your shoulders. “No.”

Maki scoffed at that. “You have to be. No one would be at this school if they weren’t at least a little coockoo.”

“What does that say about you, then?”

“This ain’t about me,” Maki frowned, leaning sideways in her chair, and lightly kicked her leg back and forth over her knee. “Are you crazy?”

“If I was any more crazy than ‘a little coockoo,’ then wouldn’t I be in an asylum, rather than here?”

“That’s a pretty high bar to surpass.”

“True,” you shrugged your shoulders again and blinked away the cross look on your face and brought back the familiar pleasantness that highlighted the backs of your fingers with the sunlight peeking through the room. One of your fingers tapped the top of your head. “‘Anything that can happen, will happen.’ It’s bound to come to fruition at some point.”

“And you think you’ll be the one to pass that bar?”

“Maybe,” Maki thought your face must’ve brightened with the way it got her attention after a beat of silence. There was something up in the air left for you to add, and for whatever reason, she knew, too.

If I live long enough, that is.

You avoided that topic. “But someone’s gonna do it, eventually.” You hummed, continuing your tapping of your finger on your head. The wall behind Maki—to the right of her desk, really—almost glowed with the brightness of the sunlight shining through the windows. Maki was thankful that your silhouette blocked most of it from getting in her eyes save for the tiniest bit of light that was angled in such a way that any twist and turn of her neck wouldn’t have done her any favors.

“I don’t really want it to be me, though,” you shrugged—your signs of unknowing were something quite common for someone originating from a mystical, all-knowing region of witches—and looked down at your lap and eyeing the material of your skirt. “I didn’t come here to get any worse.”

Maki nodded—so clearly, you came to get better, something pertaining to your ‘condition’ or whatever you would’ve preferred to have called it, so that you wouldn’t have been burdened with it so much—she respected that. She knew a few people, in all their pompous ways, who should’ve had half a brain to follow that same principle, but one, it wasn’t boot camp, and two, she also knew that those people weren’t nearly as self conscious and benevolent as you.

“I don’t blame you,” she finally answered, throwing you a casual glance over the rim of her glasses. You gave her another look, curiously raising your eyebrow. She blinked her gaze away from you and at the surface of your desk. “I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be plagued with something as horrific as that all the time.”

A beat passed.

Another beat passed, and a thought came to her in a fleeting breath she took.

Maki clicked her tongue. She wondered if it was a normal thing for you to be avoiding talking specifically about your episodes and the aftermath of such. As heavy a topic it was, it also made a great elephant in the room for the two of you. Or anyone, for that matter.

“Where the hell are they?” Maki turned her head around to look at the door at the front of the room, glaring at it as if willing it to swing open and reveal her classmates (and teacher) hiding behind it. She imagined each of their heads peeking past the doorframe one at a time like cartoon characters.

“We’re both quite early,” you glanced up at the clock on top of the wall above the chalkboard at the front. It was hardly past 7:45. You hadn’t expected Panda or Toge to be in such a rush as Maki was (and usually you were on time, but you hadn’t slept at all in the previous night, so you came out early to fix yourself a cup of green tea before going to the classroom), and you had even lower expectations for Gojo now that you and the others had caught onto his penchant for being borderline unfashionably late (if the first day wasn’t enough of a warning).

“I guess we are,” Maki narrowed her eyes and sighed sharply. Her options were limited: she either stayed with you and waited in silence (with occasional uncomfortable small talk) or left for almost forty-five minutes before coming back. The majority of her wanted to leave. A smaller part wanted to discuss the elephant in the room.

You let out a small, quiet yawn, but loud enough that it caught Maki’s attention again. She raised an eyebrow at you.

“Did you not sleep last night?” She questioned, watching you slip to the desk and laying your head down on the hardwood surface.

“I hardly ever get any decent sleep, so I usually stay up. It rarely ever catches up to me,” you closed your eyes, crossing your arms underneath you. “But when it does, it’s—“

“Hell to pay,” Maki nodded, giving you the tiniest hint of a smile on the corner of her mouth. She knocked her knuckles on the surface of her table. “Via falling asleep on these hard ass desks.”

“And then waking up with a massive headache later on,” you replied, smiling back at her like you knew of the minuscule simper she was trying to hide. “I’ve fallen asleep with my head on tree stumps before, back home. If you don’t have anything resembling a pillow, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise when you wake up.”

“You’ve got that hood of yours,” Maki pointed to the hood around your shoulders, stopping just past your elbows from the way your arms were folded up. “Bet you could ball that up and use it as a makeshift pillow.”

“I could,” you shrugged, opening your eyes again. “But then I’d be leaving you to your own devices, and I don’t want you to be lonely.”

Maki sharpened her gaze, narrowing her eyes and watching you as you watched her. She felt a flash of annoyance flicker through her as she gave you a questioning stare. She wanted to tell you she was just fine on her own, and that she had been long before going to school in Tokyo. You were nice enough to stay awake for her despite having the worst bags under your eyes that looked like they weighed a ton and she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad just yet.

Seconds passed, and you both were still watching each other like hawks.

You created an opportunity to change the subject, probably because of the discomfort. “Does your leg still hurt?”

Maki finally tore herself away from the staring contest between the both of you and glanced down at her leg, flexing her calf muscle slightly and hissing quietly at the dull pain that shot through her muscles. “No.”

“Lying’s a bad look on you,” you chortled softly, a quiet snort leaving your mouth a second later that Maki found oddly endearing.

“I’m not lying,” Maki muttered through a very dishonest sigh.

“A witch always knows,” you flashed a smile at her, and as sly as it was, it was clear to her that it wasn’t just witchy-intuition. “You still haven’t gone to Miss Shoko, have you?”

“It’ll heal on its own,” Maki grumbled, shifting away from you and facing the front of the room.

“It will, yes,” your eyes followed as she shifted slightly, watching the sunlight create a glare in the lenses of her glasses. “But that would take a while. And if you never get any help, it would take weeks, and that would hinder your training schedule, would it not?”

Maki bit down on her tongue roughly, hard enough to draw a bit of blood, tasting the warm iron and scrunching up her face with a small grunt. She half expected you to laugh in the face of her minuscule pain, and was only half disappointed when she heard not even a shadow of a giggle.

“I suppose it would,” she mumbled, leaning forward and resting her elbow on her desk and holding her cheek with her palm. “But I’ll push through the pain.”

“Miss Shoko told you to let it rest, did she not?”

“I think I’ll be okay.”

Your smile morphed into a curious look. “Has no one ever taught you anatomy?” (no) “Putting strain on an injury like that can make it worse.”

“I know that,” Maki tapped her cheek with her index finger and eyed you morosely. “But I’m not frail. I’m not composed of noodles for bones.”

“Perhaps this isn’t about bones, then,” your lips split in a droopy grin that actually reached your eyes and tilted sideways towards your desk.

She frowned. “Stop splitting hairs, you get the point.” she sighed quietly through her nose, exasperated already even though the sun was still rising and the air was still dry and fresh with a stilled yawn.

She remembered the day before, thinking back to the offer you made her: giving up some of your free time to help her with something she could’ve helped herself with by stealing an ice pack from Shoko’s ‘medical fridge’ (or making one herself with ice from the kitchen freezer, ziploc bags and several napkins). Of course, she hadn’t thought of doing that until the fresh memory came back to her early into her day in the form of benign eyes staring at her (which also simultaneously sent a small chill up her spine) and a breeze that seemed to have followed you at your very whim.

She sighed again, clearly irritated, and glanced at you again, watching you as your eyes were shut loosely, as if prepared to jump back into the day if needed.

“Hey.” Maki called your name. “Are you still up for using your witchy shit on me to pull a fixer-upper on my leg?”

One eyelid pulled itself open, and it should’ve sent a similar shiver up her spine like it did whenever you stared, but it didn’t, and it felt quite liberating to no longer be affected by the scrutiny of foreboding irises watching her. “I never did come by your room yesterday, did I?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“It was purely an accident. I’d never turn down an opportunity to help someone.”

“Right,” Maki brought her hand out from underneath the weight of her cheek and scratched her eyebrow with her fingernail. She didn’t bother noting to you that you appeared to not have put your bedsheets in the laundry, either, but she wasn’t about to get into that. She returned back to her former state and stared up at the clock on the wall, internally groaning when only several minutes had gone by.

She sat in the quiet, droned minutes that dragged by. The soft tick of the wall clock filled the silence, shifting and stilling the air every second that passed.

The air was dry. Hushed in the way that the tick of the second hand, as faint as it was, like it wasn’t trying to disturb anyone, echoed like a scream reverberating from the empty walls of a canyon.

A thought crossed Maki’s mind again. (She imagined it as someone running laps around a track ring and only crossing the forefront of her mind when it passed the proclaimed starting line.) The same thought she had a few minutes ago just before, and it irritated her upon realizing it was her third time thinking about it in just a few minutes. But then, she supposed, she couldn’t be blamed if it was about something that would’ve kept normal people awake and a wall between those they had relationships with.

The very, very deep, and very, very sharp, and very, very low sigh that came from the depths of her chest almost startled you if you hadn’t already sensed a change in her mood.

“Do you just not talk about it?” She questioned, eyes staring like they were their own separate entity interrogating you as they sharpened like spearheads.

You blinked once. “About what?”

Her eyes stared you down with an incredulous glare. “About your episodes. What else?”

You sat in the quiet for a beat, looking around at anything other than Maki—at the walls, plain and waxed hardwood holding them in the confines of a classroom all-too silent for the question hanging in the air to be something you felt comfortable looking right in the eyes of. You stilled, you pondered, and you dwelled in the moments you took to answer her, seemingly ignoring the signs of impatience she exuded.

The air unit turned off, leaving the air dead silent. The slimy sound of you swallowing your own spit felt louder than an earthquake.

The clearing of your throat was almost deafening.

“Sometimes I don’t talk about them,” you started, glancing at Maki. “Sometimes I don’t even think about them. It makes me feel like there’s nothing to dwell on, and that I’m a normal person with nothing out of the ordinary about me.”

Maki had only expected a simple yes or no (or maybe even straight up refusing to answer), as she thought her question was as basic as that, not a wish for a miracle she thought would’ve never come to you simply for being on that mountain with her. For the quickest and most daring moment, it was inconceivable that you should’ve even thought of having such a privilege, lest you’d already forgotten that one way or another, you had been, and always would be, part of the small outlier group in the world.

But, she supposed it wasn’t her place to judge. If a life where you weren’t even a toe out of the normie-line was what you wished for, even grasped at the tiniest of split ends of the opportunity rope ladder for it, she wasn’t anyone to disrupt the genie’s magic lamp.

It wasn’t lost on her that you gave no resistance to answering like she thought you would’ve. Barriers were nonexistent in your world, it seemed, and the layers and complexities flowed out from a gash like blood from a deep cut: freely and with no restraints until it dripped and stained the floor.

“That’s deep,” Maki said plainly as compensation for her expectation. Another epiphany dawned on her. She supposed there wasn’t really any shallow or casual or one-dimensional way to answer a question of that nature.

“You could say that,” a soft breath that resembled the early beginnings of a laugh left your nose. “But that’s the simplest I could have put it. I’m sure you don’t want the full story so early in the morning.”

“Story?” She quipped, the subconscious tapping of her shoe against the wooden floor faltering, instilling a mute atmosphere once more. Funny that she should have thought that there wasn’t anymore you had to tell her beyond your wish. 

“Did you think it was as simple as that?”

“No, but I didn’t think it’d be like gathering around a campfire, either.”

“Good thing the rest shouldn’t be for the ears,” at the wry smile that crossed your face, Maki’s eyes narrowed into a displeased look that directly opposed you.

“I’ve no means to burden you with that sort of thing,” (you weren’t sure if you had the words to describe the ‘story’ anyways) “At least, not in the manner of ‘gathering around a campfire.’”

Her eyes rolled at that. “Is that supposed to be an attempt to baby me?”

“Not necessarily,” you shrugged your shoulders in response and closed your eyes again, pressing your cheek to your white-clothed arm and effectively squishing it. “But if it were, it’s not just you.”

“So you’re passively attempting to baby all of us by keeping quiet about your ‘story’ or some shit?”

“I just don’t think that some things should be said out loud in the schoolroom.”

Maki couldn’t argue, but that didn’t negate the vexing part of it that meant you felt the need to keep something about you from everyone else in an attempt to not cause anyone discomfort when Maki was willing to bet her left pinky toe that everyone else had their own horror stories to tell. 

Her cross look deepened. The back of her neck felt hot and she was way above denying the real reason behind it.

“That’s essentially the same thing,” she sat up and folded her arms over her chest. “Hasn’t it dawned on you by now that we go to a school centered around fighting literal paranormal beings for a living? What part of whatever it is you have to say is considered ‘not part of schoolroom discussion criteria’?”

“Then I suppose if I should feel pressured to spend the day spilling my guts out because of that, doesn’t that incline you to do the same? Inumaki? Panda?” You pulled your eye open again, staring at her a little more sharply yet never losing that tolerant glint in your iris that you’d first greeted her with. “You, especially, since you appear to have such a distaste for your own backstory, given that you fuss over others referring to you by your family name.”

Maki’s teeth wanted to nibble on the inside of her lip, just to give herself something to focus on other than the absolutely mortifyingly casual way you looked at her whilst uprooting her whole argument. She wasn’t about to avert her gaze anywhere else because that was a one way ticket to the odyssey-level emotional journey of admitting that she was wrong, so rather than looking away like any normal person would (because again, nobody there was necessarily normal), she doubled down and stared at you even when her eyes burned after a while.

And another while passed. You humbly took it upon yourself to look away first (possibly as a mercy-kill to save Maki from the grueling process of doing it) and looked up at the clock.

Maki could’ve strangled you when you glanced back at her with a newfound teasing glint.

“We’ve gone a whole five minutes without talking,” the corners of your mouth pulled into a smile, “you put up a good staring contest.”

Maki didn’t say anything; she didn’t think it was a good idea to indulge in your gloating, though subtle, as clearly you weren’t rubbing it in her face that she was wrong.

You blinked again, glancing to the side and sat up, shifting in your spot. You looked at her again. “Your silence is quite telling, Maki.”

“I guess you have a point,” she rolled her eyes, pushing her glasses up her nose as she reluctantly pointed out the truth of your rebuttal. 

Impartial to your words, though she hated someone else being right, she gave up on the idea of sitting around with the rest of the class and listening to you tell the psychological horror story of your life and describing in your mystical modern-day-Shakespeare-as-a-teenage-girl language the vociferous and spine-chillingly ominous things you once swore were standing in front of you that turned into dream-like plagues of the mind’s eye.

“I’m glad we could agree, then,” you uncrossed your arms underneath your head and sat upright, stretching your arms over your head and bunching up your hood at your shoulders in the process.

“I’m going to go out to one of the breezeways outside,” you stood up after getting an urge for another drink—though actually making one yourself would’ve taken longer than simply walking outside and getting one from a vending machine—and started for the door at the front of the classroom. You sensed Maki’s confusion from behind you staring into your back, and you made a half turn once your hand rested on the doorknob. “Y’know, the one with the vending machines?”

“We have vending machines here?”

You nodded. “I saw them last week while I was going on a walk after school.” Your hand twisted the knob gently, a soft ‘click’ coming from the lock. “I’ll be back before class starts, I just want to see if they have anything good over there.”

Maki wanted to question if you actually thought there was anything above the point of decent on the good-bad-ugly scale in those vending machines—in any vending machine, really—but then it dawned on her once again that a lot of the things she and many others were used to seeing and talking about and using quite often, were things you probably had only heard about in stories (if ever) that witches around your coven had presumably told.

“Do you even know how to use that thing?” She quizzed, watching you pause with one foot out the door. She monitored the way your mouth twisted into a scrunch and the slow turn of your head and the morphing of your wry look into a neutral plane of expression.

“I’m taking that as a no.”

“It’s… the same principle as a times table, is it not?”

Maki frowned and her confusion grew. “How in the world does that correlate?”

“How would it not? On a times table, you put one finger on the x-axis row at the top and another finger on the y-axis to the left and follow the row from the top until you meet where your finger was at on the y-axis. Is it not a similar, if not the exact same process as using a number-letter combination on a vending machine?”

Maki stared lamely at you with lidded eyes and an unimpressed look.

At that, you simply smiled. “You’re welcome to join me and witness my thought process in person, if you’d like.”

“I wouldn’t like that, actually.” Maki relaxed her face and kicked her leg over her knee, swinging it back and forth. “Where’d you even get the money from? I know you haven’t been assigned a mission yet.”

“I’ve plenty leftover from that allowance Mr. Gojo gave us on Friday,” you shrugged (you’d only bought two books, both of them being paperback, but even if they’d been hardcover, you doubted it would’ve made any difference in your leftovers). Twenty thousand yen seemed like a hefty amount from someone who lived off a teacher’s salary (then again, it wasn’t like regular teaching, either) to hand over to four teenagers. 

(Realistically, you thought Panda wouldn’t have had anything to do with the money Gojo gave him, but nature had its way of proving you wrong by bringing him back to that creepy old corner you all promised to meet up at with the least amount of money left from his allowance and quite a few chunks of some unidentifiable vegetables stuck in his teeth)

“Anyways, I’ll be back,” you finally moved out into the hall, closing the door behind you.

For Maki, the room finally seemed to be dimmed to her liking as a cloud passed underneath the sun in the sky.

_________________________

To get outside, you had to pass through two other corridors, which were considered where the upperclassmen went for their learnings. The second corridor you passed through finally led to the dirt-gravel-sand mixture of a pathway of the great outdoors.

The air had been colder that morning for late April–the breeze you walked into brushed your cheeks and your hair and sent your hood flapping and soaring behind you as you sauntered, but it was pleasant and welcome and a break from the incinerating heat of the sun from the recent weeks.

Those who were still getting ready that morning were lucky all the same. Despite the rather chilling breeze that reached beyond the seams of your shirt sleeves rolled up to your elbows, the humidity clung to your skin and your hair and stuck to you all the way to the vending machine and back (which lacked all the basic criteria needed for it to have been deemed as “tolerable” by your standards (even with your open-mindedness)) and left you feeling like a mass of rogue dew drops by the time you came back to class.

On your way back, which the walk proved to be overall pleasant, you passed an open door that certainly hadn’t been opened on your first trip. Beyond it was an office-like background with all the classic icons you’d read in books: a bookcase on each side of the room (filled with their own books and things), the center showing off a rather dapper, rich mahogany brown desk (definitely not supplied by the school itself) with a mason jar at one of the corners full of pens and markers and clad in tacky stickers, a black rug in front of the desk, a somehow even more rakish office chair behind it, and an open window at the back of the room with a potted chia sitting on the sill and soaking the early sun. Somehow, when considering the context of whose office it was, there wasn’t a single speck of dust to be found.

Of course, the only person you knew who could afford such opulent things and still hand out eighty thousand yen to four teenagers willy-nilly, was none other than Satoru Gojo.

You couldn’t see him from the corner of your eye, so you walked right past him without so much as a simple “good morning” for him. He didn’t mind. He was going to see you anyway in a little over fifteen minutes, so he figured he’d say good morning to you and the others then. For the moment, he stood in front of one of the bookcases with a filing cabinet at his feet pulled open and a manilla file in his hand probably an inch thick with insolent papers that already sucked the energy out of his brain.

Another file had been stuffed loosely in the cabinet, the top sticking out slightly before folding when his foot kicked the cabinet shut.

The file in his hand was flipped open with his free index finger, and a deep, grotesque, crunchy-like sigh made way from his lips before he cleared his throat and stepped closer to his desk. The digital clock on the corner across from the one with the tacky mason jar read 8:11. His bandages were down and from behind his sunglasses his eyes darted across the page ahead of him. 

Something about a request for an update on administered medicine to a student, something about blood test result records, something about dates of birth and full names and even parents names. The gist wasn’t lost on Satoru that there wasn’t any sort of easier way for his students to take better-suited medication for their disorders and whatnot than filling in a whole inch-thick file of unnecessary paperwork that took longer than needed, and that was under the assumption that the request even got approved at the end of it all.

Satoru figured the file could wait. His procrastinating tendency reared in its lazy head as he plopped down in his chair, tilting his head back with his hair strung across the leather and pushing the much-too-tired-for-his-weight chair back that groaned and begrudgingly complied under the mass of muscle that was him and kicked his feet up on his desk. The sole of his shoe nudged his laptop further towards his monitor on his desk (because who was Satoru Gojo if not extra?) and made room for his other foot, crossing his legs at the ankle and staring at the ceiling.

He stared in almost-silence. The breeze outside blew into the room. He inhaled the smell of morning dew and faint herbal-mint.

The tint of his shades darkened everything above him; even the up-and-coming glare of the rising sun was dimmed to a tolerable point, and for him, it was easier to give himself the time of day to be late to his own class on a quiet April morning like that when the shadow above his eyes made the insipid confines of his office a little more admissible.

_________________________

In her room, the corners waited patiently for the open and slam of Maki’s door to rattle the walls and the nightstand next to it, sending her somehow stood-upright falling against the dark brown surface.

Her bed awaited her, welcoming her with thrown open sheets and the tiniest dip in the mattress from where she usually crawled into.

Her dampened towel that was slung over her shoulder eventually found itself hanging over the edge of her hamper and halfway inside with her accumulated laundry from a three-day period. Her ceiling fan swung gently and slowly as it hung, blowing the smallest gust of wind against her bare arms.

That Monday morning wasn’t as taxing as she thought it was. Gojo still passed out that quiz he’d announced a while ago and everyone still took it—he told each of you not to cheat, but it was very fortunate for his four current students that the quiz was about basic properties of cursed energy and objects (cursed spirits were the next unit), which, foolishly, none of you paid attention to but those properties of cursed energy and objects had similar principles as magic and enchantments and hexes and whatnot, so the four of you passed with flying colors because you were nice enough to mutter the answers under your breath and pass it off as talking to yourself from anxiety about the quiz.

Since that quiz was all Gojo had planned for the day (and he couldn’t start a new unit right in the middle of lesson time), you all were let off extra early by the grace of his kindness. Of course, everyone went off to their self-proclaimed curriculars. Panda agreed to spar with Maki for a while before he eventually called it quits and left the training room. Maki trained by herself most of the day even though she had internal complaints about her leg that Panda called her out on. Toge did his daily check on his plants and then went back to his dorm for a nap. You disappeared to some other part of campus and came back to the girls’ hallway two hours later with a bowlful of herbs and such.

Maki’s leg muscle twitched and nearly pulled her to her bed, ushering her to sit down before her fascicles gave out and blasted her leg to hell. She cursed at the pain, sitting on the edge of her bed and pulling leg over her other knee. Her thumb pointlessly rubbed at her calf, feeling the throb of muscle underneath the futile weight of her finger pressing against it. The pain came in sparks that reached through her shinbone, something that to her she imagined as red and pulsating with newer waves, knocking through her tendons and bones and echoing back to her muscle through a two-way torment-oriented tunnel.

Though the affliction ached and the red she envisioned grew darker, she kept pressing. She occasionally took her thumb off her leg just for her to put it back in the exact spot where her nail dug a crescent into her skin, forming a tiny, darkened semicircle in her flesh that grew more obscure each time she pressed. Her glasses were starting to slip to the tip of her nose and the pain began to ebb and for a minute she thought she might’ve finally pressured it into dissipating.

A knock brought her back to the reality that touching where it hurt only made it worse.

Maki sighed. She took her thumb off her calf and adjusted her tank top strap over her shoulder and brushed her hair behind her ear and pushed her glasses back up until the lenses almost pressed against her eyelashes and she pretended she never tampered with her pain. She bravely walked to her door and ignored the pang in her leg every time her left leg took a step.

The door swung open with a small gust that blew against her face. In front of her was you with a mug with a jar filter in it in one hand and a water bottle and two small, black and opaque pouches pinched in your other hand. The smile on your face went without saying.

“Hi,” you announced, fiddling with the pouches in your hand.

Maki looked at the pouches with narrowed eyes. “Hi,” she parroted lamely. “What’s that?”

“These are just oils and leaves I took with me on my trip here,” you shook the pouches gently, a muffled clinking sound coming from inside one of them.

Maki hummed and nodded along. She looked away from the pouch and looked right into your eyes. Without looking, she examined that your usual white uniform undershirt was gone in place of a similar dark shirt done all the way up until the last two buttons. Even with the sleeves rolled up to your elbows and your shirt only somewhat neatly tucked into the waist of your skirt and noting the tiniest wrinkles in your shirt at the shoulders, Maki concluded that you didn’t have much in the way of looking casual in any way even if you were simply visiting someone else’s dorm.

You looked down and at your boots, wiggling your foot slightly at the edge of the threshold of  Maki’s door before reaching down, dropping your pouches into your mug and holding your bottle under your arm before tugging your boots off of your feet and leaving them by the door.

The frame left Maki out of center as she stepped aside, giving you the unsaid notion that you were welcomed. “You look like you’re going to a job interview.”

“Is this my interview?” You quizzed, stepping in and becoming acutely aware of the fresh smell of lavender in the room, standing off to the side and waiting for Maki to shut the door. 

You looked around and took note of the rather stale display of her room—though you supposed it wasn’t much of a shock when considering her dry personality, too—and saw that she only had the basics: her bed, her closet, a nightstand, and a hamper.

“Not really,” Maki brought you back with the click of the handle and the light scuff of wood against wood for a brief second. “It’s just a favor, isn’t it?”

“Fortunately for me, it appears you have a penchant for not working within your best interest,” you eyed the towel hanging over the edge of her hamper, then at Maki with a knowing look and the tiniest bit of a simper on top of the halfhearted disappointment in the back of your throat. “Seriously?”

“What?” Maki questioned, her shoulders shrugging defensively as she waddled over to her bed, a little more steady than someone with a pulled calf muscle should have been. “A girl can’t shower anymore?”

“Good thing no one said that. What’d you do earlier?”

Maki took the shift in your stance from an awkward cross of your arms over your stomach to the one hand on your hip and the other arm limp at your side with your mug against your leg as an opening to get smart. Sitting on the edge of her bed again and scooting towards the center, she clicked her tongue and pretended to disappear into deep thought.

“Well, I… went to class this morning.”

A light scoff left your lips. “Well, thanks for reminding me of your whereabouts this morning, but I meant post-quiz.”

Maki stared at you, watching from the corner of her eye as you tapped your mug against your thigh and listened to the soft tapping of your foot against the floor. For the moment she took to say something, she contemplated why she let you in her room to begin with—she couldn’t ask Toge or Panda because she wasn’t quite sure how well-versed either of them were in medical practices and Shoko wasn’t much much help since her only advice was to let it rest. Maki thought that that in itself was “against her best interest”, one didn’t even have to know everything about her to know that rarely anything got between her and her time spent training.

Well, Shoko wasn’t the one making the offer, so.

Maki crisscrossed her legs and folded her arms over her chest. “I went to the training room again.”

“Right,” you nodded briefly, cautiously stepping towards her bed and waiting for her to give the green light.

Soon enough, her bed dipped at the end where you sat. In the gap between the two of you was the water bottle, the mug, and your pouch. Maki’s eyes lingered on the small collection of small things sitting on her bed, examining them as she did with all other things and analyzing them like they could’ve ever possibly done any harm to her.

Your black socks—no, your toes—curled and uncurled as you gazed around again, idly glancing at the uneventful manilla of her walls. Your shoulders rose and fell to the rhythm of your breathing. Your nails tapped against the porcelain of your mug and clinked quietly, yet it rang like church bells in Maki’s ears and she sat up straight.

“Is sitting in silence part of the process?”

“Only for the unguided.” Your eyes landed on her again, your eyebrow raising slightly as you tilted your head just a barely perceptible angle to the left. “And I certainly am aware of my place in that regard.”

“You think I’m unguided?” The shadow of a frown appeared across Maki’s face, her eyes narrowing into slits behind her glasses, the glare in the lenses from the sun making her tilt her head towards you.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” you took the pouches out from the mug and set them next to it. You stood the mug upright with one hand hovering next to it, keeping it up with some phenomenon Maki was apparently blind to. “I just mean that you aren’t even a little bit experienced with the ways of witchcraft,” you took the water bottle, warm in the palm of your hand, and carefully opened it using only the mystical force given to you, cautious not to spill any on Maki’s sheets, and poured it into the mug. The filter laid bare next to your knee. “For some, it seems like a daunting experience.”

“Should I perceive it to be in this moment?”

“Not quite,” you shrugged, the stream coming from the water bottle transforming into a stilled stream as it steadily filled the mug. Your hand pulled away and let the bottle float a few inches in the air. “But it’s something that bewilders most people upon first encounter. Usually their first response is questioning if it’s real.”

But Maki knew it was real—she knew from watching that water bottle pour its contents on its own and from the empathic air-cleansing you did for her on the first day and from your incense embers igniting and dissipating at the wave of your hand. She knew from the things her sister once complained about and from the whole school being built around the sole purpose of getting rid of such phenomena as curses and other ghastly things.

Maki supposed witchcraft and Jujutsu were similar, not that she could’ve ever used it, though.

“I’m aware that it’s real,” she watched the stream of water as it came to a halt, the bottle pulling away from the mug and the cap screwing it shut. A faint steam emitted from the waterline.

Your mouth twisted into something of a wry-looking smile that held an affectionate mirth at the corners. “Well, that’s because it’s in front of you, silly,” you took one of the pouches and held it in your palm, looking up at Maki. “Leaves or no leaves?”

Maki’s eyebrow quirked. “Aren’t those, like, essential to tea-making?”

“I meant do you want them left in the mug or not?” Your other hand grabbed the filter with your fingers, holding it up. “Some people don’t like the leaves at the bottom.”

“Would it change anything?”

“Nope. This is solely for your personal preference.”

Maki contemplated on just keeping the leaves at the bottom simply because it would’ve been more work for you if you left them in the filter and had to clean it out afterwards. She figured cleaning a mug was easier than cleaning a whole mesh filter.

“Keep them at the bottom.”

You set the filter back down and pulled the bunched opening at the top of the pouch, reaching in with pinched fingers and pulling out a pinch full of leaves. You sprinkled them in the mug and gently waved your hand over the edge, and the water began stirring slowly on its own.

“Alright, I’m gonna let that sit for a minute,” you sat up straight and took your other pouch in your hand, pulling it open and dumping out a small bottle into your palm before dropping the pouch to your side. Maki watched rather curiously as you opened it and left several drops on both hands, rubbing them together.

“May I see the injured leg, please?”

Maki stuck her leg out for you without knocking anything over—she doubted it would’ve made a mess anyways, since your magic probably would’ve cleaned it up as soon as anything spilled, but it wasn’t right to be careless—and leaned back slightly. Your knee knocked with her ankle slightly, and you apologized briefly before moving your hands closer to her calf.

“This does require physical touch,” you warned, eyes flitting up to meet intense golden hues boring holes into your face. Maki’s expression didn’t change from its quite unreadable tone as her shoulders shrugged. “Is that alright with you?”

She clicked her tongue. “It’s not like I have a choice in this regard.”

“It’s just common courtesy to gain permission before taking action.” Your eyes wandered down to her half again, watching it closely as it twitched slightly, and you doubted it was of her own accord from how brief it seemed. You met her gaze again, staring into pinpoint pupils surrounded by liquid gold. 

“Is this okay?”

Maki looked at her own calf as well, tilting her leg just an inch and sighed quietly. “Yeah.”

You hummed, and the mug in front of her began floating to her chest. Her hand—against her instincts to keep her limbs to herself—reached out and nimble fingers wrapped around the curved handle. Cold porcelain met warm hands as her other palm came up and cupped the bottom of the mug. She brought it up to her face, tentative, but taking a sip anyway because she knew it was more than probably necessary if you had to bring it on your trip to her room.

And, to her surprise, it was actually really tasty. She’d expected some sort of earthy-potent-green tea taste, something that wasn’t quite distasteful but not overly enjoyable for her tastebuds. Rather, it was more like a sweet and syrupy flavor that had her eyebrows perking up ever so slightly.

“I sense it’s to your liking?” You commented, feeling the shift in Maki’s attitude and listening as her quiet sips became longer. Your hand was already on her leg by then, rubbing over her calf and searching for a sensitive spot, which you’d found when your thumb pressed harshly into her muscle and her foot flexed against her sheets.

“It’s agreeable,” Maki took her lips off of the edge of the mug and held it to her chest, warming her up and leaning back some more.

“I figured you’d like it,” you smiled as you took your hand off of her calf and grabbed your small bottle from earlier, squeezing a few more drops of the cold liquid onto her calf and screwing it shut again. “I’ve never once seen you eat a single vegetable. It seems you have an eye for sweet stuff.”

Maki rolled her eyes and looked away from your hands. “So you’re watching me?”

“I watch everyone,” you shrugged and lathered the oil over her leg, watching her watch you as your fingers dipped into the thickness of her calf muscles. The minty smell of the oil that infiltrated her nose strongly contrasted the sweetness left in her mouth.

“You all seem to have strange eating habits.”

“I bet you snacked on chicken feet back in the sticks.”

“And yet you have no issue eating hen’s eggs that pop out of their vaginas,” you eyed her knowingly from underneath your eyelashes. “I don’t even eat chicken feet, by the way. But if I did, that’s no less normal than eating eggs.”

Maki’s jaw set as you continued rubbing the oil into her skin, leaving the smell of mint settling in her nose. She looked back at your hands and noticed the newfound glint that the sun had cast onto her calf and your hands from peeking through her window. Your fingers glided across her muscle, rubbing against it with your knuckle and easing some of the tension that’d built up during the day.

A breath left her lips and her ankle flexed as your knuckle passed the sore spot again, dragging slowly, thoroughly and deliberately as if to stretch the pain thin.

Your palm soon rested flat against her skin, pressing softly into her leg.

A warmth grew from her shin and swelled to the back of her leg. Your mouth moved inaudibly, though Maki guessed she’d already drowned out the sound surrounding her.

And then, as if you’d only just touched her for the first time, she became hyper aware of your fingers around her calf. Skin against skin, even just a tiny bit, had never felt so incinerating and relieving at the same time. Maki thought her leg surely would’ve melted from the shin down when the heel of your palm pressed down, squashing the pain and red appeared clouded in her mind’s eye again. Red and pulsating and growing darker each moment that passed. The pain knocked through her tendons again, fainter and fainter the more you pressed until your palm surely felt it would’ve reached the bone.

Red dissipated into black, and then nothing, and then something clear that was staring back at her. Her eyes opened—she was never aware they had closed in the first place—and she saw you sitting up with a cloth you’d pulled from somewhere on your person and drying your hands off.

“All done,” you smiled brightly at Maki, studying the changing looks on her face from confusion to expressionless to the faint relief in her eyes.

“Is that it?” Maki questioned, pulling her leg back and feeling her spine crawl upon the realization that someone had just lathered oil and rubbed—rather intimately, a bit more than she would’ve liked—their hands over her leg. Her shoulders squared and went lax briefly, her fingers pushing her glasses back up the slope of her nose.

Another question popped up in her mind. “Was that oil necessary?”

“It is,” you answered lightly, tearing your eyes from the bewildered-mixed-with-relieved look on her face and focusing on filling your pouch with the oil bottle, pulling the drawstrings with your fingers and sealing it shut. “And the oil was just to get my hands smooth and to avoid any friction. Wouldn’t want to irritate your skin while I’m supposed to be healing you, right?”

Maki nodded silently and waited for you to get up and leave.

You exhaled quietly and looked up at her. “You did well. More than I expected.”

Maki’s eyebrow raised again. “You had expectations for me?”

“Well, beyond not completely freaking out, not really. But you went above and beyond, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

Maki hummed in response. She wondered what happened beneath her skin when you were healing her—probably her slightly ripped muscle sewing itself back together like nothing ever happened. At least then, she wouldn’t have had to worry about the trajectory of her leg days, unlike what Shoko had told her—something about her calf muscles being less flexible and weaker. 

Weaker muscles, my ass.

“Now you don’t have to wait weeks for it to heal,” you got up from Maki’s bed with your pouches stuffed in your hand. “And you can keep that mug,” you tilted your head towards the mug in Maki’s lap with her hand around it. “It’s one of my own, but it looks good in your hands.”

Maki looked down at her half empty mug and examined how it fit in the curve of her hand; it did suit her pretty nicely. The dark green glaze on the porcelain complimented her hair and pleasantly contrasted the pale-olive skin of her hand. She nodded slightly, bringing the mug to her lips again.

“Thanks,” she murmured, letting her mug rest in her lap again.

You stepped over towards the door and placed your hand on the knob. You turned your head back to look at Maki and flashed her a bright smile, “You’re quite welcome, Maki.”

You almost turned the knob and pulled the door open when a thought crossed your mind, one that softened your lips into a more gentle and toned-down variant of the bright beam you’d given her. You glanced at her once more. “You know, if you wanna do stuff like that, so that you won’t need me every time you get hurt, you need only to ask.”

“Ask and I shall receive,” Maki reiterated, getting up from her spot on her bed and resting her mug on her nightstand next to her door. She stopped and turned towards you as you opened the door, and you mirrored her, your eyes locking together.

Maki’s eyes studied yours, watching the light shine naturally in your irises and the sun reflecting the never ending glossiness in them. Though, in the midst of the golden sunshine that glimmered in the slightly bloodshot whites and irises and was swallowed by your pupils, there was a profound sinkhole that sucked in the rays that gave everyone your friendly image. She was sure it wasn’t imaginative, because she blinked once, twice, three times and it was still there.

“Thanks,” Maki repeated, stepping away from the nightstand that she’d been subconsciously digging her hip into the corner of. Your eyes brightened as you pulled yourself away from the haze made of her eyes and the sunlight shining right into your retinas.

“You don’t have to thank me, Maki,” you pulled the door open, giving her one last look. “I wanted to do this.”

Maki thought to herself that you were nice. Nicer than anyone had ever been to her without a mean streak under their belts as well. And so far you hadn’t started one—you’d never been mean to anyone at that school thus far anyway—but for her it’d been like a breath of fresh air away from the swamp and smog of the breaths and words of rage and distaste and disappointment.

That bewildered her. Such kindness had been extremely hard to find in Maki’s world—born in the epitome of patriarchy and absolutely filthy oppression that broke backs and minds. The weight of the Zenin clan’s Kukuru Unit uniform was a heaviness still remembered by her shoulders that made her shudder.

Maki couldn’t wrap her head around it. How anyone had the capacity to be so selfless.

She blanked and stepped to the center of her doorway, stopping before she could follow you out. “How noble,” she narrowed her eyes. “But such charities from you aren’t a necessity. At least, not to me.”

“Oh? Should it not be a favor anymore?”

Maki’s hand came up to rest on her doorframe, and her eyebrows furrowed slightly into an irritated frown. Her agitation only grew when she saw that you seemingly thrived in the face of her annoyance.

“It’s not charity work, Maki. It’s called being nice.”

“Charity work is being nice, just with public praise slapped over it.”

“I suppose you’re right, but this isn’t the general public, is it?” You gave her an inquisitive smile with a lifted eyebrow. You waited a moment for Maki to answer, and reveled in the realization that she had none.

You sighed quietly. “So your consensus was to water down my offer to help in order to persuade me into not doing it again.”

Maki’s hand left her doorframe and went to slam her door shut.

“I applaud your efforts to sway my philosophy, but I’m afraid the sentiment will stay strong for as long as I may live.”

The door stopped just a few inches before the scuffing noise of wood against wood became relevant, Maki pausing in her door slam and effectively killing the finality of it. She groaned, shutting you off from her and her room and ignoring the feeling that you were out there sharing a chortle with the walls about the satisfaction of successfully vexing her.

And as much as she liked to think she was right, she’d been far from it. You’d already been halfway down the hall, in a hurry to scurry off to your room to sit on your bed and journal and read and pick apart the silence and reflect upon Maki’s words and philosophy—something that obtusely intrigued you and found its way into your journal just minutes after you’d already closed it in your drawer—and finished it off by grinding a lone and defected leaf you’d plucked from your back patio and pasted a small green dash at the bottom of the page.

_________________________

i realized last week that this is like the 3rd chapter in a row about the teen timeline, so the next chapter is gonna be adult timeline stuff.

JAPAN, 2040

Bad things happen to good people. Usually. That was the way the world worked. It had always been that way since the dawn of time.

Either they died or they experienced a hell on earth so abhorrent that death seemed like the light at the end of their dreadful tunnels.

Whether they fought for the good life they deserved or they submitted because they thought their purity did not make them worthy of grace was up to their own discretion, but the mirror was always waiting for them whenever they wished to face the truth and see in the background the ugly world behind them that they swore was good.

If a firefighter saved a girl from a burning house, they would then die later from the thing they worked to save people from.

If a military medic saved a soldier from gangrene by amputating their limb, they’d die from a quick yet painful death they could’ve prevented.

Spite worked in many ways and against many people. It was a phenomena to few that it usually worked against people who seeked out the bright side of things.

Sometimes, those good people’s ghosts wandered the land they tried to save and watched from the sidelines their consequences for having once dared to have a bigger heart than their corrupt counterparts. They watched with tired eyes and emptied chests heavy with their fragile plane of existence the aftermath of the world that marched on without them.

In the wake of their sorrows and grief and regrets, it turned into matter. That matter snowballed until it manifested physically.

It was ugly; unsightly; hideous. It attacked and harmed and destroyed and killed. It caused chaos, seen and unseen, everywhere. It riddled the world and infested the soil with its own evil. It was haunted, it twisted reality and made it into something infinitely darker.

They were curses. They formed from the negative thoughts and feelings from humans and terrorized other people in light of those feelings.

Nobody knew exactly how long they’d been around—thousands of years, at the very least— just that many have originated in Japan, mainly from things like war and chaos. 

Though, with every dark tunnel, there was always a light at the end. That light was the people who’d been sent to stop those curses for an unprecedented number of years. Extraordinary people gifted with other-worldly powers and talents strong enough to defeat the curses.

Of course, not all of them succeeded in their fights against curses. Some were lucky—born with exceptional techniques among those inferior— some were not so lucky. Some had to make do with what they were given, though they were never completely useless. Some of them died in a fight for humanity, others died from more mysterious and ominous causes.

Those people—Jujustu Sorcerers—were not the only ones who fought against curses.

Witches were more common than those Sorcerers for a time. Simply because witchcraft was easier to grasp, and nobody had to be born with it to learn it; some people were born with not a single trace of magic or cursed energy in their blood, and yet trained to become marvelous witches.

As time passed, the number of male witches dwindled, until it became a rare recessive gene in males; in correlation, lady witches were more common. And when women were strong, they were shut down. They were captured for their “evils” and rendered no better than curses, and they were tortured, stripped of their freedom, their rights, burned, hung, beaten, drowned, and had a thousand other discriminations against them.

Yet, they prevailed.

Their numbers were even smaller in present-day Japan than they were thousands of years ago. They prevailed, and they lived amongst regular people and other Jujutsu Sorcerers in something less chaotic that wore a mask of peace.

That didn’t change the fact that witches were still remembered as nothing more than a stain.

_________________________

DECEMBER 16TH, 2040, 11:37 PM. JAPAN.

The air is stiff and cold, as usual. It weighs heavily with something dead and unspoken. Something so deeply ingrained with regret that it drags like a ball on a chain, though not so heavy that it impairs anyone in the room from noticing it dragging through the walls like nails on a chalkboard.

The silence is more than deafening. Beyond that, actually. Maki’s ears ring like a cracked church bell at noon. The silence did nothing to alleviate the tension—the ball dragging from a chain that she can’t be bothered to address.

Her husband addresses it for her, but in a way she doesn’t like.

“Those new higher ups are pieces of work,” Yuta sighs as he plops down on the cream-colored couch in the middle of the living room. Across from where he sits, some yards away, the kitchen island stands independently and sandwiches Maki between that and the opened fridge. She’s digging through it for leftover yakitori and onigiri from the previous night that Yuta had made.

“You should’ve taken the spot they offered you if you didn’t want blockheads like them ordering you around,” she calls out and stands up straight with a rice ball in her hand. The ceiling light from the kitchen fan being turned on casts a glint against the silver ring that sits oddly on her left ring finger.

“I know,” Yuta sighs gently. “But that means I’d just be sitting in an old room day in and day out. There’s other things I’d rather be doing for a career.” He runs an exhausted hand through his hair. He waits for a few moments, thinking Maki has some other witty remark already pre-made for him. He speaks again when she proves him wrong. “Being this exasperated with them takes me back to when Gojo complained about them.”

Maki hums while she chews on her rice. Her voice voluntarily fails her, but in her mind, she’s telling him that Gojo’s exasperation was so vicarious that it even branched out to Yuta as his successor and impaired his conversational skills.

She never says it even after she finishes her rice ball and plucks out estranged grains between her teeth with her tongue.

She walks over in a flash to the couch in the middle of the room and sits on the cushion across from Yuta. She curls her legs and leans against the arm and rests her head on her palm, but she doesn’t look at him. Despite having proved her “undying love and devotion” to him several years ago during their wedding, she makes a barely perceptible effort to minimize how many times a day her eyes fix onto him.

The TV in front of them shows the news for the evening—nothing new, except for another missing persons report from all the way out in Sendai Miyagi. Upon that, Yuta momentarily glances at Maki carefully with a cautious look in his eyes before he goes back to staring at the screen.

“Another disappearance,” Yuta clicks his tongue. “It’s only a matter of time before the higher ups assign a mission for someone to investigate the city.”

“I estimate a week, tops,” Maki remarks as her thumb rubs her temple and her fingernails scratch her scalp.

There’s something Yuta wants to ask her, she knows it. She also knows what he wants to ask. There’s a lump in his throat that keeps him from opening his mouth where the words tie a knot around his tongue. He shifts awkwardly in his spot as he crosses his arms and leans back against the cushion. Maki sighs sharply.

“Out with it,” she demands. “I know you’re curious.”

“You’ve always been good at reading my mind,” Yuta nervously chuckles as he squares his shoulders as if he’s preparing himself for an earful.

“It’s certainly a useful trait of mine,” Maki murmurs, impatient.

Yuta swallows and uncrosses his arms, leaving him defenseless. “Do you think it’s about…” he trails off as if Maki’s hypothetical ‘mind reading’ skills are of utmost potency. She turns to him with a lifted eyebrow and a sharp glare in her eyes.

“Do you think it’s about her?”

Maki stays silent. Now that implication isn’t anything above her hypothetical sixth sense. Anyone from their inner circle would’ve known who Yuta is referring to, and if they had any bone in their body to underestimate Maki’s patience, they would’ve scolded him for bringing up such a sensitive topic. But, nonetheless, Maki understands he’s only curious, and she also understands that she’s been putting off discussing her for over twenty years. She’ll have to face it at some point.

“Maybe,” Maki answers dryly and with a shrug of her shoulders. “I have no doubt that her death would’ve accumulated a few cursed spirits in the area.”

Yuta clicks his tongue again in acknowledgment. A shiver runs down his spine at the thought of potentially reliving seeing what happened that night. His throat runs dry, and he swallows in an attempt to wet his mouth.

“If that’s the case,” he starts. “It’s a wonder how those higher ups haven’t dispatched a sorcerer to investigate it yet.”

“You said they’re new, right?” Maki inquires, to which Yuta nods slowly. “They might still be working things out. They probably haven’t gotten to files related to Sendai Miyagi yet.”

“She wasn’t from Miyagi, though,” Yuta frowns slightly, and looks to the wooden floor deep in thought. “I can’t remember what she said—“

“Shimane. Out in the country,” Maki corrects just as Yuta opens his mouth again to suggest that “she” was from the city. “Witches don’t typically live in overpopulated areas.”

Yuta blinks and he looks at her. His lips press together; he barely remembers where his other old classmates are from (though he feels bad about it) and needs a reminder from time to time, but Maki can easily remember where “she” was from and can even tell others in case they forget. Does she even remember where he’s from? Does she even know?

“That’s right,” Yuta nods briefly and forces a small smile on his face. “I bet they’re going in alphabetical order, so I’m sure they have a long while before they get to her, assuming they already passed Sendai Miyagi.”

Maki nods with him in agreement, though she knows that those lousy excuses of higher ups are only stalling. That file Yuta’s talking about under the Sendai Miyagi category holds some pretty horrific information—dark, morbid, tragic, even. She’s sure such a file wouldn’t be such a low priority, especially when it’s potentially related to those disappearances in the north.

She doesn’t say anything when a figure appears in the empty space between her and Yuta.

The figure looks like a student from Jujutsu High— same concept of a uniform. Dark blue and white and black color palette; black boots and black stockings and a dark blue skirt that sits over her knees, though the texture seems flowy and isn’t a hindrance when in a fight, the usual white undershirt button up all the way until the last button and a black corset over the figure’s stomach with the strings tied into an impossibly tight knot that looks like it could only be undone with a hex, a dark blue hood that is currently pulled off with a matching colored cape that stops at her waist. 

Yuta doesn’t see her; he isn’t the one she’s haunting.

“One would think you two would’ve divorced by now,” she speaks, lowly, as if not wanting to risk her voice being heard through her fragile plane of existence. Yuta can’t hear it; he can’t hear anything she says, Maki concluded that on their wedding night when the figure gave a speech to the guests that nobody was paying attention to. “You don’t seem happy.”

Maki still doesn’t say anything. She can’t, because while Yuta might not be able to hear or even be aware of the figure’s impaired existence, he’s still aware of hers, and her speaking to the figure means talking to herself. She doesn’t feel like explaining to him that she’s been talking to a ghost for the last sixteen years. She stays still, pretending she’s as blissfully unaware as Yuta is and mentally promising she’d find some sort of way to abolish this ghost from her periphery in the near future.

“Oh, come on,” the figure shifts and faces Maki, her arm resting against the top of the couch and her legs curling on the cushion. “You can’t ignore me forever.”

Maki clenches her jaw and stares ahead. Now it looks like she’s straining something, like she’s trying to keep herself together with hopes and dreams and a shred of self control. She wonders if Yuta can see the indent in the couch the figure is making.

“Fine, I see how it is,” the figure grunts and faces forward, then looks at Yuta. “He certainly hasn’t changed a bit—“ a pause. “A few gray hairs here and there… nothing a little dye can’t fix,” she finishes, lower this time, with her eyes hooding and looking him up and down. She isn’t sure how much she can keep that up.

Maki looks at her, and if Yuta were to look back at her he would clearly see that she’s looking past him and towards somewhere he can’t follow. The figure clicks her tongue before she goes back to looking to her left.

“You really know how to pick ‘em,” says the ghost. She shuffles around a bit and reverts back to her position from a few seconds ago with her feet tucked under her thighs and leaning against the cushion of the couch.

Maki lifts a daring eyebrow, and the look in her eyes shifts. She has to bite down on her tongue to keep from saying something out loud. She has no idea how Yuta hasn’t yet clocked that she’s looking in his direction with an interested glimmer to her irises that reflect the glow of the TV. The ghost laughs as she senses Maki’s reluctance to speak.

“Cat finally got your tongue?” The ghost asks smugly, and it annoys Maki to think that she’s being taunted by a ghost right now. Despite the teasing that she can hardly stand, which is currently working her nerves, she looks away and stares at the TV again.

Maki wants to ask if the ghost is behind those disappearances up in Miyagi, if she’s been stirring up all sorts of drama and spawning curses with the negative memories Yuta associated with that spot in the city. She hates to think about it, but she finds it ironic that some of the current heaviest masses of disappearances might be because of a witch, fitting perfectly into the narrative that others have been making about witches for thousands of years. Or even worse, create a new kind of narrative about witches: that their spirits haunt and terrorize the city which they died in as revenge on the mortal realm, and paint them into vindictive monsters.

Now that’s a little out of hand, Maki.

Maki takes a breath, quiet, as to not disturb the apparent catatonic state that Yuta is currently in on the off chance that he hears it.

The ghost dissipates into thin air, and Maki feels a weight over her shoulders (that she hadn’t perceived earlier) lift up suddenly, and her whole body feels a few pounds lighter. The air doesn’t feel as hefty as well. Maki bites on the inside of her cheek and thinks that the reason for such tension in the air so thick she could’ve cut it with a plastic knife being the ghost that makes a job out of taunting and bothering her is something so creepily in character for her spirit that it makes Maki feel a little dumb for having almost forgotten that feeling she used to get when she entered a room.

Hell, the evidence of a noticeable weight lifting in the air shows that she still gets that feeling.

Something nags at her to disappear into their massive backyard just so she can finally talk to her own personal ghost.

She isn’t sure why the ghost bothers her. It’s not necessarily haunting her— she’s never scared of it and it never does any harm— but it lingers and it likes to get on her nerves. Usually it’s when other people are around; Maki thinks the ghost does that on purpose so it can drive her up a wall and she can’t do anything about it. But sometimes, when there’s no one else around, the ghost comes out and it’s different. It’s not as pestiferous as it would be on any normal occasion. Maki noticed a while back that it seemed to just… watch her. It never creeped her out; there was such a time when the spirit was actually a human, and its human form used to watch her observationally in peaceful silence, like she was trying to study her. Maki didn’t mind. Now whenever she’s being studied, she just feels melancholic.

The noise of the TV goes in one ear and out the other until Yuta’s cellphone rings. Both their heads turn to the right towards the nightstand that was next to the right arm of the couch where Yuta’s phone vibrates and rings on the surface. Yuta reaches over for his phone while simultaneously grabbing the remote and turning the TV volume down.

He looks at the caller ID: it’s one of those new higher ups he mentioned earlier.

“It’s Sukeyori,” he says to Maki. She assumes this Sukeyori is one of the higher ups. “I need to take this.”

“You know I can’t stop you,” Maki answers. She doesn’t watch Yuta as he gets up, she just stares at the wall and waits until she’s sure he isn’t able to hear her if she speaks. Maki gets comfortable on the couch, finally, and she leans back into the corner between the cushion and the arm and she slouches because she’s got nowhere else to be.

She half expects the ghost to come back now that she’s alone in the room. The window of time being slid open just a bit would be the ideal time for the ghost to appear and watch her again like it’s the first time.

She’s a little disappointed when Yuta comes back a few moments later and the ghost is a no-show. Maki has an idea of what the conversation between Yuta and Sukeyori was about when he walks back in with a look on his face that tells her he didn’t hear anything good.

“I think you manifested it,” Yuta begins as he sets his phone on the surface of the nightstand closest to him. “That call was about the disappearances out in Sendai Miyagi.”

“Are they formulating a mission for it?”

“They already asked me to take care of it.”

“Yuta,” Maki starts, and she doesn’t have any pre-orchestrated plan on what to say next. She sits for a moment and chews on her bottom lip like she’s sixteen years old again and, on the off chance, was nervous about something.

“Yeah?” Yuta tucks his hair behind his ear. “What is it?”

Maki thinks for a moment. She knows she shouldn’t be rash and sentimental—the safest option would be just to let Yuta handle it since he has the highest survival rate out of anyone else available. But something in the back of her mind, like a voice that very much isn’t her own, nags at her and makes her think that those disappearances are related to the ghost. And if her theory is true, she’s willing to go as far as saying she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she didn’t take over the assignment on her own.

“This sounds like a gamble,” she mutters under her breath and thinks about how impulsive she’s being and how it’s so not like her. She tells him her thoughts and asks him to ask the higher ups if they’ll let her do the assignment instead. He doesn’t take it too lightly.

“You’re right, it does sound like a gamble,” Yuta remarks as he brings a hand up to scratch his jawline. “I’m confident you can do it either way, but what if, by some chance, it isn’t her?”

Maki doesn’t say anything. She looks back at the TV and knows that she’s asking for too much. She can’t bring herself to care that much so she doubles down.

“There was nothing interesting about Sendai Miyagi before what happened,” she states matter of factly, because it’s true. Aside from what she’s referring to, there’s virtually nothing else in the Sendai Miyagi category. “What else do you think it could be?”

Yuta opens his mouth to say something, but he knows Maki is right. He also knows it’s dangerous and that there still is a chance that it might be something completely different, however small it may be. He assumes it’s coming from sentimental value and that’s why she’s being stubborn about this. He figures he can’t argue, so he just sighs in acceptance and he nods.

“I’ll call Sukeyori in the morning,” Yuta says quietly as he picks up his phone and pockets it. “I’m heading to bed. You coming?”

“Not yet,” Maki answers plainly. “Can’t sleep.”

Yuta nods understandingly before he shuffles off and starts for the hallway. He stops just before he disappears down the corner and turns to look at Maki.

“Goodnight,” he calls out softly and with a smile. Maki feels it on the back of her head and it makes her scalp crawl. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” she answers, almost too quickly to be considered natural. One of her friends would refer to it as the speed of a Google search with the way she knows what to respond with before Yuta’s even done saying it.

Yuta disappears down the hall and it isn’t until Maki hears the click of a door shutting that she relaxes again. She finds herself hoping for the ghost to come back so she could quietly whisper to it all the while she can’t fall asleep, just like she used to when she was younger and when the ghost was still a human.

She leans back and she thinks and the ghost still does not come.

It disappoints her, yet again.

_________________________

Maki finds herself coming to consciousness with her head leveled on a couch pillow. She doesn’t remember putting it down before she dozed off at one point or another, she figures Yuta must’ve done it when he woke up a bit before her. An unusual event, since Maki is typically up at the crack of dawn.

She looks out the small window with the white curtains pulled open slightly and concludes that it’s past dawn. The smell of eggs on a skillet floats through the air, as well as a few different spices that Maki can’t differentiate from one another.

She sits up, green hair still a miss from her night of sleep. Her hand wipes away the crust from her eyes and she blinks away the sensitivity from the glow of the kitchen ceiling light behind her. She gets up from her spot, her blanket, which she didn’t process was even there, pooling around her ankles until she steps out of it and walks over to the kitchen. Yuta stands at the oven with a white tee shirt and short shorts with cats all over them as the design, a sight which humors Maki for a moment. She sees him trying to multitask by working the skillet and also talking on the phone, presumably with Sukeyori again because he’s talking about “Sendai Miyagi” this and “Maki” that.

Maki gazes out the window that looks out to their backyard which is covered in snow. The small pond out in the corner closer to the acacia colored fence is frozen and Maki could probably stand on it without a single crack in the ice. She glances back at Yuta when he makes another mention of her name, and she steps towards the fridge and opens it in search of the carton of orange juice sitting in the back.

“Yeah, yeah I can pass it to her,” Yuta answers and he turns to Maki, who’s grabbing a cup from the cabinet and pouring the orange juice into it.

“Sukeyori wants to speak to you,” Yuta says once she’s done closing the carton and puts it back in some other random spot in the fridge different from its original location in the back. Maki closes the fridge and takes Yuta’s phone after he hands it to her and puts it to her ear.

“Morning, Sukeyori.”

“I assume you’re Zenin?”

Maki lightly bites her tongue at the mention of her last name. “I am.”

“Okkotsu tells me you’ve expressed interest in the mission I’ve assigned him.”

Maki lifts an eyebrow as she glances at her husband, who’s sporting his natural guilty look on his face while he works the skillet. “Yuta told me he was only asked. He didn’t say anything was official.”

There’s a grunt on the other end of the line. “I’ve already assigned it to him specifically. Why do you want to take over this mission? Okkotsu himself won’t answer, so I figured you will.”

Maki spares another glance at Yuta, this time a little less nice, and adjusts his phone against her cheek. “You guys are still going through locational files, right?” She asks, and she hears a hum of approval for an answer. “I’m assuming you’ve reached Sendai Miyagi since you’re assigning a mission to Yuta covering the area?”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m saying that I don’t think Yuta is fit for the mission.”

There’s a profound silence for the next few moments that tick by, save for the popping of grease on Yuta’s pan. On the tv in their living room, the time reads 9:17 AM. The clock’s second hand at the top of their wall in the dining room ticks all the way up to the thirty second mark. Maki stands and thinks about how bold and presumptuous she’s sounding right now, but even though she’s being arrogant, it’s the truth.

“And you think you are?” Sukeyori asks with a condescending tone. Maki’s long since grown used to it, though it still works her nerves to a near blinding degree.

“I do,” she answers confidently. She can already hear the degrading laugh that Sukeyori won’t let out over the phone. She clenches her free hand into a fist and thinks to herself that she didn’t make such backbreaking efforts to step on the patriarchal Jujutsu society just to get internally laughed at by a younger man who only just entered the higher order.

“If you think you can handle it,” Sukeyori’s voice is smug and Maki wants to reach through the phone and sock the smirk she knows is there right off his face. “Then I’ll dispatch you. You leave at noon.”

Sukeyori hangs up and Maki passes the phone back to Yuta. She sighs as she turns back to her cup of orange juice.

“What did he say?” Yuta asks as he looks at his screen that says ‘call ended.’

“I’m leaving at twelve,” she speaks into the cup before she takes a long sip. A drop of juice rolls down to her chin before she sets her cup back down on the surface of the counter and wipes it off with her finger.

“So soon?” Yuta asks as he sets his phone down on the other side of the stove. He frowns softly. “I was supposed to leave at eight this evening.”

“I think it’s because I sounded so eager,” Maki answers as she taps her finger against the counter. “And you were right. Those higher ups really are a pain in the ass.”

Yuta chuckles as he flips the eggs cooking on the skillet and folds it into an omelette, smushing it with the spatula. “I’ll leave this to you, then,” he offers as he lifts the pan up and moves it over the plate next to the stove with a fork and bacon strips that he made before Maki woke up. The spatula slides the omelette onto the empty space left on the plate. “I originally made it for myself, but you’re leaving in a few hours, so I figured you need it more than me.”

“You don’t have to, Yuta,” Maki starts, but Yuta’s already picking up the plate and taking it to the dining room and setting it at the table.

“It’s fine, Maki. I’ll just make something else for myself,” Yuta flashes Maki a smile, and he thinks it sends butterflies batting their wings around her ribcage. She ignores it and walks to the table anyway because she doesn’t want to waste the omelette Yuta gave her, and because it actually looks pretty appetizing.

She thanks him before she sits at the chair Yuta pulled out for her. The omelette in front of her stares and makes eye contact. She thinks it looks like it’s judging her for something can’t name before she looks up from the plate and she sees the ghost again. She’s sitting in the chair across from Maki, and she’s got her elbow on the table and her cheek in her palm. Her other arm rests on the table and her fingers tap the white cloth that veils the wooden surface. Maki glances at the clock on the wall again— 9:24. She looks at her dish again.

“That’s quite an intrepid decision to make, you know,” the ghost says, and it’s not even half as condescending as Maki expected it to be. It sounds genuine, for the first time in forever. “Those schlepps for higher ups already asked four other people to take the case and they refused. Yuta was a last resort.”

Maki glances back up at the ghost and her eyebrow furrows and her first instinct is to ask how she knows that, but she keeps it to herself. If four other people had already declined the mission, then it’s either not worth taking in the sense that the pay’s too low, or not worth taking in the sense that it’s too high of a safety hazard for any sensible First Grade sorcerer to take. Maki thinks she must either look dumb or courageous or both.

Maki looks around the room for anything she can write on, and she finds nothing. She sighs before she gets up from the table and marches down the hall and to her shared bedroom with her husband. Yuta doesn’t question it when he spots Maki coming back into the dining room with a sheet of paper from one of her journals and a pen.

She scribbles on the paper: ‘Are you responsible for the disappearances in Sendai?’

The ghost looks at the sheet as she slides it over to the other side of the table. Maki cranes her neck to check the kitchen and see if Yuta’s still in there cooking something for himself. She faces forward when she hears the ghost talk again.

“Why would I tell you that?” She frowns and pushes the paper back towards Maki before she crosses her arms.

Maki grumbles quietly before she writes again: ‘Because I asked nicely. And it’s beneficial to me’

The ghost stares at the paper before she laughs at the words in front of her. Maki figures she should’ve known the genuine tone from the ghosts wouldn’t have lasted long anyways. She rolls her eyes and snatches the paper back and crumples it up into a ball and clicks her pen. She takes the fork and stabs it into her omelette, rough and scraping the edges against the porcelain of the plate.

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” the ghost says and uncrosses her arms, leaning back in her chair. The front two legs lift from the ground and Maki thinks it looks like the chair is moving on its own to the naked eye. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll help you out with this.”

Maki narrows her eyes and gives the ghost a look as if to ask why.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not about to spoon feed you information you’re getting paid to find out on your own.”

Maki thinks the ghost has a good point, although she has an annoying way of getting it across. She chews on her chunk of omelette before she swallows, she thinks to herself that Yuta knows how to cook up a good omelette before she stabs out another chunk.

_________________________

Once Maki’s done eating the breakfast Yuta gave to her, she leaves to disappear into the bedroom for a good twenty minutes. It doesn’t take long for her to come back out with a bag packed ahead of time. She sets it on the couch in the living room and goes off to do other things for the next few hours: taking care of financial things—taking money out of her account to pay for hospitality expenses while she’s away since those privileges are gone once students graduate from Jujutsu Technical College; she visits her storage unit on campus and takes out a few things she needs (a few extra kunai knives, though she’s confident her Soul Split Katana will suffice plentifully, but one can never be too careful) and a few of the new students there say hi to her when they spot her. Her last stop isn’t a necessity, but she makes it into a ritual anyway to stop by the cemetery every once in a while to visit a few graves of people she lost. She visits her sister’s grave and leaves a prayer and a light, familial kiss to her headstone. She visits Gojo’s grave (whose headstone finally got put in the cemetery two years after his death) and simply pays her respects in silence. Her final visit is at a certain grave she isn’t quite sure if she should even say anything at all to.

She chooses to speak anyway, because it’s the right thing to do and she might look weird for just standing at some headstone and then leaving after fifteen seconds.

“I know your spirit doesn’t actually rest here,” Maki starts, crouching down to touch the base of the stone with her hand. Her finger traces ephemerally along the sharp edge and wipes off a bit of dust and snow that’d built up over time. “But this is where your body resides. So think of this as me shining my lighthouse every now and then to call you back.”

Maki thinks it’s stupid to hold out hope that the ghost she’s talking about will eventually go back to her casket. That ghost probably hasn’t seen the inside of it since the day she was buried with how long she likes to stick around and annoy Maki. There’s something in the air that surrounds the headstone that tells the visitor that the spirit of the person buried beneath it isn’t done with the human realm yet. 

Her eyes run over the markings in the stone. She reads the ghost’s name to herself and the epitaph underneath it: “To live in the hearts of those we love is to never die”. A simple epitaph that was probably chosen by someone else. Maki knows the ghost never would’ve accepted such a vacuous choice of words for her headstone. Maki doesn’t even think it makes sense in light of her own personal experience with the spirit—she still hangs around and yet Yuta was the one she loved. But Maki also doesn’t know if Yuta sees the ghost as well, just on another plane of existence.

By the time she goes back home, it’s already pushing 11, and Yuta’s sitting on the couch and lounging around with Maki’s bag next to him. While Maki was at the school, she got a call from Sukeyori and he told her she had to be at the train station close to 11:30, so she’s coming back to grab her bag from its place on the couch and to tell Yuta she’s about to head out.

“I told you, I’ll be fine,” Maki reaches her hand up to pat Yuta’s back in an attempt to relent his grip around her. His arms tighten their circle of attachment around her waist for a moment, then he finally lets go and steps back from her.

“I know, I know,” Yuta scratches the back of his head with his fingers awkwardly. “I just can’t help but worry. It’s in my blood.”

“Right,” Maki adjusts her bag strap over her shoulder and looks at him as she steps back towards the door. “Well, I’m off,” she says like she’s announcing it to the whole house and possibly to the ghost which may or may not be eavesdropping. “I’ll be done in a week. I’ll probably be back the day after, so the twenty-fifth. Don’t burn the house down while I’m gone, yeah?”

Chuckling, Yuta follows Maki out the door and stands on their doormat with his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants that he changed into while Maki was out. “Goodbye, Maki,” he says once she turns to face him. He takes his hands out and gets ahold of her hands and he brings them up to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “Be careful, will you? I love you.”

Maki hums in response to the gesture of Yuta’s goodbye. He’s always been dramatic like this whenever the two of them have to part for a mission. It’s sweet, it makes her feel loved and appreciated. She’s still anxious to step off their porch already and make her way to the train station.

Maki turns away and starts for the gate of their complex, the snow crunching beneath the weight of her boots pressing down. The air around her is crisp and it makes the apples of her cheeks feel tender and her knuckles frigid. She walks her way down the small mountain—it’s not a far walk, it’s only twenty minutes before she reaches the window car that’s waiting for her at the foot.

The window drives her to the station, where she’s let out and given instructions to wait until noon. A part of her is confused because the window doesn’t say anything else before he drives off, as well as the fact she doesn’t have a train ticket so she can’t just waltz into a bullet train. Sukeyori didn’t mention anything about a ticket, so she assumes she’s supposed to get one for herself.

She’s about to get up to approach the ticket stand when a voice calls out her name.

“You’re Zenin, right?” The voice is masculine and familiar. Maki turns around to face whoever is standing behind her.

The man is younger, probably in his late twenties; he’s standing in traditional robes that Maki was used to seeing when she still lived at the Zenin Estate, with his feet slipped into sandals and the rings around his fingers glint in the ceiling lights of the station; Maki isn’t a huge fan of the hue of gold his eyes stare at her with and how they’re full of cockiness; she thinks his hair compliments them, nonetheless, with maroon curls around the top of his head and a singular streak of white (she assumes it’s a genetic thing) which sticks out where his bangs part; and she thinks facial hair doesn’t suit him after getting a look at the small, light red mustache sitting beneath his nose. She glances at the small pentagram sigil tattooed on the back of his left hand and the ear piercings in his lobes before she makes eye contact with him again.

He looks like a hippie.

“I am,” Maki answers and steps toward him. “And you may be?”

“The voice over the phone this morning,” the man answers, just as smugly as Maki heard earlier, and she internally cringes at the sound. “Sukeyori Katsura. I looked through your file earlier and thought I’d personally escort you to Sendai Miyagi.”

Maki lifts a daring eyebrow. “What’s with the luxury?”

“I like to think of you and your old classmates as veterans,” Sukeyori lazily shrugs his shoulders. “You guys fought Ryomen Sukuna and lived to tell the tale. It’s not every day you get to meet such an honorable legend like that.”

Maki stares and thinks for a moment. The silence grows to an awkward degree as people brush past them to get to their trains.

After a moment, she breathes. “It’s certainly a miracle to be alive after that,” Maki starts, and then her voice transcends into a heavier tone. “It was grueling all the same. Many people lost their lives that day. I don’t appreciate being honored in the face of their sacrifices.”

Sukeyori clicks his tongue. “Nevertheless, your strength is something to be admired. I deem it unfit to send such a skilled sorcerer on a mission only for her to be forced into proximity with such…” he looks at the non-sorcerers around the two of them, and he curls his lip in aversion for only a second before he turns back to Maki. “Lower level life forms.”

Maki feels her own sense of repugnance upon hearing Sukeyori talk down on regular people like they’re vermin. She wonders if he knows she lacks cursed energy, and she debates bringing it up before Sukeyori starts again.

“Enough chitchat,” he waves his hand dismissively as if shooing the previous topic away. He leads Maki away from the ticket stand and towards the exit of the station after she grabs her bag. “You’ve a mission to get to, and I’ve a city to escort you to.”

“Are you driving?”

Sukeyori snickers like he’s holding in a laugh after hearing the funniest joke he’s ever heard in his life. “Me drive? Of course not,” he laughs heartily, and it almost seems fake. He steps out of the station with Maki and takes her down the sidewalk until they reach a giant black SUV that no average-pay earning sorcerer could afford.

Sukeyori opens the backseat door for Maki like he’s trying to convince her he’s courteous. She steps in and slinks her bag from her shoulders and onto the floorboard next to her feet. Her katana leans against the edge of the car seat next to her. The door opens on the other side and Sukeyori climbs in and he snaps his fingers in the direction of the driver’s seat. An apparition materializes into the form of a mannequin in place of where a typical window driver would be. Sukeyori hands the keys to the mannequin and the car starts a moment later, pulling into the road as soon as it’s empty and driving away from the station.

“Witchcraft,” Sukeyori crosses his legs and relaxes in his seat. “In my opinion, it’s easier to grasp than Jujutsu.”

“Are witches becoming more popular?” Maki asks after turning to look at him. 

“Somewhat,” Sukeyori answers with a shrug, then he glances at Maki curiously. “You know one?”

Maki sits in silence for a moment, her bottom teeth chewing on her bottom lip while she thinks on how to answer it. She goes with a safe option. “I used to.”

“I see,” Sukeyori nods and clicks his tongue. He looks to his left and glances out the window and he speaks again. “I’m the only one in my whole family, aside from my grandmother. The rest of them are plain Jujutsu sorcerers. I think it’s rather boring.”

Maki nods like she cares and she pulls her phone from her pocket out of boredom. She lets Sukeyori talk because it became apparent to Maki that he likes the sound of his own voice and he doesn’t really care if she’s not paying attention. She much prefers the quiet with the occasional dumb small talk and the never ending conversation that comes a few minutes after in which both parties are paying attention. But she thinks whatever unexciting thing Sukeyori has to say is only worth her peripheral attention.

The drive from Tokyo is long and winding and boring. Maki notes at one point that the car has yet to stop for gas; she wonders if the continuously full tank is witchcraft as well. The sky is dark by the time they reach Sendai Miyagi city limits. The streets are near empty, save for a few stragglers that Maki assumes are college kids or a freshly graduated class and other irresponsible parasites who like to roam the streets for less ethical reasons other than getting their spirits high. There’s fewer cars and people along the sidewalks the closer they get to where Maki needs to be; she thinks it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Sukeyori drops her off a few blocks from where she feels a massive pressure in the air. By now, there’s no one around except for Maki herself once the car turns around and speeds away like both Sukeyori and the mannequin are in a hurry.

“Jeez,” she mumbles and squints her eyes. There’s virtually no lighting around the street, save for one semi-working streetlight that has an erratic flicker and is looming over the street like it was nearly upended from the sidewalk. The rest of the streetlights are either straight up broken or tipped over and laying on their sides.

Maki thinks to herself that the scenery can definitely be worse. Some of the buildings look a little old but it’s most likely because only a few people ever really dare to wander off to this area with a weapon on them, but at least it’s not disease-ridden and it’s not a closed off part of the city. Not yet, anyways, but she figures it might just be only a matter of time before some dumb teenager comes out on a ¥1,520 dare and scrapes their knee on a rusted nail or trips and pricks their hand on a rogue needle from the greenery sticking out from the sidewalk and contracts tetanus and claims it’s actually some new extraterrestrial pathogen that everyone needs to be hysterically cautious of.

The December air feels heavier than it normally does. Typical for a potentially cursed environment. The atmosphere also feels particularly humid, like it’d just rained prior to Maki’s arrival. Her footsteps are damp with the moisture in the ground, and she wonders if it’s always like this or if Mother Nature decided to make the environment into a gloomy greenhouse for curses just for the occasion.

The further she wanders, the more potent the smell of mud and death and something sinister becomes in her nose. She’s long since passed the flickering streetlight and Maki thinks that for a moment her old glasses would come in handy because she literally can’t see anything and she’s just going off of the rest of her senses.

Maki feels around for her pocket and eventually pulls out her phone and turns on her flashlight and starts moving again. She frowns when she still can’t see anything around her.

“Hey,” she whispers, even though she knows there’s not a single soul around except her. “I know you’re here. I need you to do something for me.”

The ghost appears behind her. Maki can feel her presence even though she can’t physically feel her—and that’s not an occurrence between them that only happens because one of them is a ghost.

The flashlight shines in the ghost’s face. “You called?”

“I did,” Maki gruffly answers, then she nudges her head and gestures to the scenery. “Can you light this place up?”

“Nope,” the ghost pops the ‘p’. “I have no effect whatsoever on the human realm.”

“That’s bullshit,” Maki’s frown deepens. “You’re the one who’s been causing all sorts of trouble in this city and now they want me to take care of your mess.”

“But you did it without a second thought,” the ghost shrugs and gives Maki a knowing look. “Don’t tell me about your troubles like you didn’t choose this.”

Maki bites down roughly on her tongue until she can taste a drop of iron on her tastebuds, and she sucks the small wound and ignores the slight sting that continues after.

“Are we still talking about your bullshit lie?” Maki lifts an eyebrow and stares coldly at the ghost.

“Maybe,” she then smiles. A moment later, she loosens up and her smile dips a notch until her face is something that looks genuine and something Maki actually recognizes.

“I can’t bring light, that’s the truth,” the ghost glances around the area, and a sad, familiar glint takes over her eyes. Maki feels a familiar, fuzzy warmth in her chest like a cotton ball at the sight. “But I can improve your vision for a short period.”

“That works for me,” Maki glances at her phone’s flashlight and mutters something about how ineffective it is, then spares another glimpse at the ghost that moves in front of her and catches the downtrodden face, but doesn’t say anything. “Do your thing.”

The ghost furrows an eyebrow and narrows her eyes. “Do my thing?” She repeats incredulously and with attitude. “This isn’t one of those things that I can simply perform an incantation and it falls into your lap. I need resources, Maki.”

“What, like herbs? Chicken feet?”

“Herbs, among other things, yes,” the ghost sighs and rubs her eyebrow with her middle finger in exasperation. “And I need an eyelash.”

Maki blinks once, twice, then her face twists into a confused frown. “From me?”

“No, from Yuta all the way back in Tokyo. Yes, you, Maki!”

“Alright, alright,” Maki huffs in annoyance and fixes her stance. “What kind of herbs do you need?”

“Nothing you can get from the store,” the ghost walks ahead of Maki and crouches down at the greenery sticking out here and there. “It’s gotta come straight from the soil. You gotta look for them yourself.”

“Me?” Maki scoffs. “This is a we thing, like everything else has been.”

“How is this a team effort?”

“You know what herbs you need. You know where to find these herbs. Then you can have me fetch them, but I’m not doing it entirely on my own.”

The ghost sighs dramatically and rolls her eyes, then she stands up straight and walks back towards Maki. “I need mugwort, for starters, because that’s probably the easiest to find,” she starts. “It’s for stuff like psychic prowess. And althea root. Now that’s not gonna be so easy.”

“Well, that’s great,” Maki flashes the ghost a sarcastic smile before she lets out a sharp sigh. “Would it be easier to just wait until morning?”

“If you don’t feel like trudging out into the forest at this daunting hour, then yes.”

Maki sighs again, this time out of exasperation. She feels that this place quickly drains her energy despite only having been here for twenty minutes or so. Her flashlight is useless, she can’t gain any enhanced eyesight on an easy bargain, and her ghost friend is only semi-cooperative. The mission barely just started and Maki’s already having a hard time. She wonders if Yuta would have a better time on this mission than she currently is.

She thanks her lucky stars she brought money with her for hospitality reasons. She doesn’t want to have to spend her first night out in the area until the sun comes up when who knows what is waiting for her to take the wrong step and take the chance to lunge at her.

The ghost looks around the area— empty terrain that looks like something that was once an unconventional graveyard underneath a highway bridge. Several yards away, next to one of the pillars supporting the highway bridge, is a small stone dug into the ground with moss and dirt and other grimy things covering it here and there. Engraved in it, like the words were carved with a knife done by amateur handiwork, is the phrase “beloved witch” on the face of the stone. Next to it is a perpetually dead flower that not even the wind has blown away since it was first placed there.

There’s an air of profound glumness that surrounds the stone. The air is also eerie and strange, and all things taboo. It’s filled by something dark and perilous, like it’s waiting like a snake in the bushes. It makes the ghost sad, almost like a weeping lady, until her thoughts dissipate like smoke being waved away when Maki turns on her heel and starts for the opposite direction.

“Are you going to find hospitality?” The ghost asks once she catches up to Maki, walking beside her with her hands behind her back. Maki doesn’t spare her even a side glance.

“I am,” she answers coldly, like she’s remembered something bitter on her tongue. “There can’t be a hotel very far from here.”

“Sukeyori didn’t appoint one to you?” The ghost inquires, lifting a confused eyebrow. “That’s strange, normally we’ve already been given assigned places to stay during long-term missions.”

“That expires when you graduate from the technical college,” Maki murmurs morosely, knowing she’s only explaining it because the ghost’s past human body never even finished high school. “We’re adults now. It’s not the same as it was when we were kids. We have responsibilities now.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence between Maki and the ghost. For a minute, they both look like ghosts wandering around through the city, lost with nothing but each other to guide them.

But uncomfortable was always their thing. Awkward silences, strange gestures like beating the other in a spar or waiting for water to heat up in a kettle and standing next to each other while trying not to disturb the slight tip in the balance between them, Maki pretending not to notice the way ‘she’ used to only ever leave a tiny flower on the small plates next to her cup of tea and never leave any flowers for any of ‘her’ other friends, ‘her’ confiding in Maki about ‘her’ troubles and never anyone else and Maki letting ‘her’ tell her because it was the only way for her to actually see ‘her’.

A frivolous thought is one that brings Maki back to reality. She thinks about what kind of tea she wants in the morning when she wakes up (if she gets any sleep, that is), and wonders if the ghost would annoy her about it if she got it from some chic coffee and tea shop that all the trendy people on the internet love to go to just to get matcha (which Maki will certainly not be getting) and take pictures with them without ever actually finishing the cup. She wonders if the ghost would yap in her ear about how because it “comes from an urban business in the middle of the city”so  it “doesn’t taste good and natural” all because the ghost herself used to prefer her tea bags from out in the country where all the witches she knew ground the tea leaves themselves.

It’s a dumb thing to think about. Maki knows she shouldn’t give a shit what the ghost thinks about the kind of tea she drinks or where she gets it from. She dwells on it anyway, because she knows very well that tea was (and still is) an important thing to the ghost, and what’s important to her is important to Maki all the same. If she can hold onto it and use it as a tool to feel any portion of an inch closer to the relief of having her old life back like that of stepping inside an air conditioned room after a hot day, it is imperative.

The hotel she finds (after an hour-long walk, of which she spent a small chunk of it sightseeing and holding her phone to her ear while she talked to the ghost to not make it seem like she isn’t schizophrenic) isn’t bad. It’s not crazy expensive despite being a whole block down from the literal heart of the city where everyone flocks to to see the boring Christmas lights with the warm, rich-people-white hue hanging around the trees and tied around the streetlight poles and the occasional few orb decorations that hang from the tree branches (as if the city doesn’t already have enough lighting). The walls of the hotel are a lazy cream color with a dark brown lining the interior where the walls meet the floor and the ceiling. There’s a young girl sitting behind the front desk and looks much too tired for her ripe age of what Maki assumes is either twenty or twenty one.

Maki checks in. Despite the convenience it would provide for the ghost if she ordered a double, she asks for a single, and the time lapse between her getting the keycard and her flopping onto the bed is a blur.

The ghost complains in the corner of the room. “And where am I to lay?” She eyes the bed of which Maki is resting flat on her back with her arms spread out. “Do you expect me to sit in this corner and wallow?”

“I expect you to leave me alone,” Maki answers gruffly, and turns her head to the corner of the room. “I’ve had enough of you for one night.”

“You cease to convince me,” the ghost fires back like it’s a joke she’s been holding in for a while, and she chuckles at the sound of it. “Much less yourself.”

“I think your empathic abilities are getting rusty. Maybe it’s from your time in the afterlife?”

The ghost laughs again and Maki looks away from her mockery. “You’re funny, Maki.”

“Thank you, but I’m not trying to be.”

“And your poker face has weakened as well,” the ghost ignores her and continues with a coy smile, then she leans against the cream painted wall on her right shoulder. “So I guess the standards are lowered for the both of us, making it easier for me to read you regardless.”

Maki frowns– it looks more like a grimace. “Isn’t this, like, an invasion of privacy?”

“In theory, yes,” the ghost starts with the inflection of a student feebly answering a question in class. “But you don’t fool me, Maki, I know you like having my spirit around.”

Maki feels a bittersweet thorn poke out in the tissue of her heart. She chews her lip because she can’t reach in her chest and pluck the thorn out to be rid of her sentiment and her fingers impatiently tap the firm comforter beneath her. Pricking her thumb on an actual rose thorn feels better than this, because she can retaliate, and act like the crumpled petals fix the drop of blood it cost her, but she’s yet to find a real rose.

She ignores the thorn that starts as one and will eventually become a vineyard in her chest come dawn. Soldiering through the sting is what she’s always done–except now she pretends she can use it to grow a defense against it when she knows that one thorn is her weakness.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Maki murmurs as she gets up and takes her bag from the edge of the bed. She starts for the bathroom. “I’m sure your ghost buddies in the afterlife will hype you up with that delusion.”

She leaves the ghost alone, and they don’t say another word to each other the whole night. The stars are left long and restless, but they wish nonetheless and leave the knight and her ghost to their devices.

_________________________

APRIL 10TH, 2017. 7:07 A.M. TOKYO OUTSKIRTS.

Maki once thought she didn’t have time for nice things. She thought she could wait for her shiny rewards until after she earned them, and that she’d never be tempted to stare for too long at the couthy things displayed through transparent glass shop windows.

But Maki could’ve only described the other girl as something tempting her to peek through the glass.

It was like the things she used to never care for: a dewdrop from a blade of grass; the sun lighting up a room during the midday; a flickering lightbulb and a moth right by it; a dying fire; a honeycomb; clay being molded into a shape before quickly changing to something else. Those were the things that Maki never gave a second thought about, but she was reminded of those outwardly boring and mundane things and their existences and places in the world when someone she met valued those things just as much as they valued the people.

Though as she stood in front of the towering red gate to the entrance of the Jujutsu High School with nothing but a uniform over her back and a band in her hair, the sky seemed to clear, the clouds made way for the sun, and along with it came its daughter in the style of a witch’s corset with a shirt and a skirt. Maki hadn’t immediately seen it, but she felt it, and she thought it was impossible for anyone within a mile radius to not have felt it. It was the radiant smile which beamed with the rays of the sun which shone supportively over their heads. The kind of smile that only came from people who tried too hard to convince others of something.

The trees and bushes that surrounded the stoned walkway, which had bits and pieces of grass blades poking out through the cracks and gaps between the stones, had loomed and peeked over them and craned their trunks to watch the sunshine girl with her hidden sunspots.

The rest of the walkway led to a wooden building that looked older than dirt, though there wasn’t any sign of dust that collected on any of the supporting pillars that held the roof and the exterior upright from where Maki and the girl could see. Around it were several other pathways, each leading to different places around the secluded, mountain-based school in which Maki would’ve had the chance to discover once her teacher–who was unfashionably late–finally got to the gate. Along with them were supposed to be a few other students, no more than two, which was an underlying statement about how few people with cursed energy occupied the global population, much less actual sorcerers, and even less the amount of people like Maki.

The girl behind Maki was standing surprisingly patiently. Maki had been waiting nearly forty minutes by the time her unexpected company finally arrived. She knew other people would be arriving– but she expected to have been in the school by then. Or, at best, all of them having arrived on time. The others were tardy–the students, and her teacher–it already gave her a first impression without ever having met them.

That said, Maki hadn’t bothered to turn around and spare a glimpse at the ray of sunshine dressed in black and blue standing some feet behind her. The thought was within her crosshairs, of turning around to meet one of her soon-to-be classmates, but the majority part of her was uninterested.

A while after the girl had arrived behind her, who now sat with her legs crossed along the line between the length of the pathway and the dirt surrounding it, with a surprising lack of insects around to have crawled up her skirt that formed a small puddle around the height of her legs, another person came. He had white hair, though nothing gave Maki the impression that it was her teacher, as he wore a uniform similar to hers, though he had a teal cowl over the bottom half of his face and pants instead of a skirt. He looked around as he approached the gate with his hands dug deep into his pockets and glanced between Maki and the girl.

“Tuna?” He asked, which earned a curious head turn from both girls. For once they looked at each other instead of the environment around them, and they looked to ask each other if either of them knew what he meant.

The girl’s eyes flashed between Maki and the strange boy. “Tuna?” She repeated dumbly, and brought her hand up to lightly scratch her cheek. “I’m not quite sure there’s any tuna around here…”

The boy shook his head, then he pointed to the cowl covering his face. “Bonito flakes. Tuna mayo?”

The girl parted her lips again, but dead silence came out, then she looked at Maki for some sort of divine guidance. “Do you… have any idea what he’s saying?”

“Not a clue,” Maki placed her hands on her hips and eyed the boy judgmentally. “Where’s the rest of your vocabulary? Just talk like a normal person instead of just listing food ingredients.”

“Hey!” The girl swiftly stood up from her spot and dusted off her skirt, then stepped closer to the boy in a defensive manner. “I don’t think it’s good to judge someone and be rude based on their speech. If speaking in food ingredients is his thing, then what’s it to you?”

“We can’t understand him,” Maki narrowed her eyes behind the glasses that sat on the bridge of her nose. “Which brings me back to square one: talk like a normal person.”

The girl glanced at the boy with a lifted eyebrow, then she looked back at Maki, this time with the slightest bit of attitude in her eyes. “If you want him to ‘talk like a normal person’, then perhaps you should, too, instead of just being a jerk from the get-go.”

“Tuna, tuna,” the boy interrupted Maki before she could say anything else, then he pulled out his phone and started typing something. When he was done, he showed it to the girl first, then Maki, both of which stepped closer to see.

Cursed speech, losers. Words with curses placed on them so i have to limit my vocab to rice ball ingredients

Maki felt a little dumb, but all it took was the tiniest shred of pride for her to adamantly refuse to admit her wrongs, so instead of apologizing, she simply stepped away from the boy’s phone. “Cursed speech, huh?”

“I’ve heard of that,” the girl commented, then stared off into space with a curious look for a moment. She looked back at the boy, “Is there some sort of code when you’re talking in rice ball ingredients?” She asked as she flipped the side of her cape back and searched her satchel—which carried a plethora of items—for something.

The boy watched pryingly, then he nodded. “Salmon cod roe.”

“It’s hard on your throat, isn’t it?” The girl asked, still ruffling through her satchel. Maki and the boy stared as she pulled something out—it was a small bag of ground, dried-up leaves, and Maki assumed they were tea leaves.

The boy nodded again. “Tuna.”

“Take this,” the girl stepped closer with the small bag pinched between her fingers and held it in front of him. “It works way better than that throat medicine you can get from pharmacies,” she said once the boy took the tea leaves and she stepped back with her free hand clutched around the strap of her satchel.

Maki watched—quite curiously—and stared at the bag of tea leaves in the boy’s hand that went into his pocket. She glanced at the girl again with a lifted eyebrow. “What even is that?” she asked suspiciously and with narrowed eyes. She didn’t trust it, even though the other girl looked as if she didn’t have a single malicious bone in her body.

“They’re just green tea leaves,” the girl answered lightly as she pushed her satchel back into the veil of her cape, then she looked up at Maki. “Of course, they’re enchanted slightly,” she added because she didn’t expect a stranger to already have known that. “Regular green tea is useful, but on its own, it isn’t as potent for external forces. The enchantment does more to help with such external forces, like a torn up throat, for example.”

“Enchanted?” Maki questioned, almost with the mirth of a laugh she was trying to hold back. She glanced at the boy who only shrugged under the scrutiny of her judgement. “So what, like, cursed energy imbued into tea leaves or something?”

“That is what we call a hex.” The girl shook her head and smiled a bit, the corner of her mouth tugging gently into a dimmed version of the beam that lit her face just moments before. “You can’t enchant something with negative energy, silly. The whole point of a charm is to fill something with benevolent energy.”

“So, reverse cursed energy? That’s positive, isn’t it?”

“In theory, yes,” the girl shrugged, then she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But it’s not that, either. In fact, it isn’t even cursed energy related at all.”

Maki frowned, her forehead creasing as her eyebrows pushed together. “So then how are you doing it?”

“Witchcraft, duh!”

“You three must be my wonderful new students this year!” A voice came from the other side of the red torii gate, which earned a head turn from all three of them. They all looked to find a much, much taller man in something similar to the uniform the other boy wore—except the man’s uniform was purple and had a longer neck cowl with bandages over his eyes— with platinum white hair that stood up like the strands were excited as his face looked just from his grin alone.

“I heard there’s supposed to be another one?” The girl asked as she stepped towards the torii gate. “Are they late?”

“Technically, you all are,” Maki interjected with her loud voice that the boy and the other girl were already getting used to. “You guys were supposed to be here almost an hour ago.” She looked at the girl with a glare. “What a first impression.”

“Well, it was a long hike up this mountain. I actually got lost for a bit on the way up,” the girl shrugged her shoulders as she looked at Maki; the boy chimed in with what sounded like an agreement. The girl smiled softly at Maki. “But I do admire your getting here on time.”

“Actually, the fourth student arrived last night,” the man started as he made a quarter turn towards the pathway that went to the left. “So he has you all beat by a mile.”

“Last night?” The girl asked, looking at the man as she and the others followed after him. “But weren’t we given specific instructions to be here this morning?”

“He lives on campus,” the man answered swiftly. “As will you, my precious students!” He made an abrupt 360 to face the three kids following behind him. “You guys are gonna be staying in dorms for as long as you’re enrolled at this school!”

The three of them looked at each other with blank looks before looking back at the man.

“You two,” he pointed at Maki and the girl. “Will be staying in the girls’ dorms! And you,” his arm swayed to the right and pointed at the one boy next to them, “will be staying in the boys’ dorms.”

“Mustard leaf,” the boy lazily held a thumbs up.

“Follow me, and I’ll show you guys to your individual rooms and your soon-to-be homes!”

The girl leaned closer to Maki. “Do you think he’s always this chipper in the morning?” She whispered. Maki didn’t take it as gossip or shit-talking of any kind like she would’ve assumed if it were literally anyone else on the planet.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Apparently that’s supposed to be Gojo Satoru,” she whispered back before she distanced herself from the girl. “And stay in your lane.”

“Sorry!” The girl took her own step to the side and widened the distance between herself and Maki. The man ahead of them heard their whole conversation, but he said nothing, as he felt the spark of a friendship trying to be lit at that moment.

“So, lemme give you guys the memo about this school,” the man announced a little too loudly for Maki’s liking— as a matter of fact, for any of their likings— and with a toothy grin on his face that they couldn’t see but they definitely knew was there.

“This is a school for sorcerers much like yourselves to learn, grow, and awaken. The Jujutsu world isn’t very kind, so many of us attend the school here or the school in Kyoto to train and learn how to fight curses and reach our full potential. Fighting isn’t the only key, though, and nor is it very easy to grasp. We also need to learn how to utilize our techniques strategically so that we don’t break ourselves in the process. More importantly, we practice teamwork, which is why a chunk of the missions you guys will be going on will be in groups. Although, if and when you each get strong enough, you’ll be sent on harder, tougher missions that you’ll have to finish on your own.”

By the time their teacher was done talking—which certainly went on longer than any of the students would’ve liked and it was evident on their faces (despite the witch girl’s efforts to look interested) with their long expressions and wandering eyes—they’d miraculously already reached the boys’ dormitory hallway, where the teacher (who introduced himself as “Gojo-sensei” even though all of them already knew who he was) showed the singular boy to his dorm. He told each of them that they’d get their school IDs sooner or later, where they’d discover what grade they were within the Jujutsu society (which Gojo explained ranged from Grade Four to Special Grade).

Gojo eventually detoured from the boys’ hallway and went to the girls’ hallway, which not only carried a much lighter air, but the walls looked better, too, which the walls in the boys’ hallway that were slightly discolored in comparison. Maki’s room was at the very beginning of the hallway, and the other girl’s room was around the corner and the very last door on the left. Maki wondered why there was such a vast distance between their dorms when the other boy’s dorm was right next to the other mystery guy who supposedly lived on campus, but her thought was brushed aside when Gojo completely ignored an explanation as to why the distance was necessary. Something told Maki the other girl knew exactly why.

Their rooms were nice— Maki didn’t have a backyard like the other girl did, but they both had bathrooms connected to their dorms, which made it a relief that they didn’t have to go down an entire hallway just to use the bathroom (though they still had to go to the girls’ shower room). Their closets were spacious; they couldn’t quite walk in, but they were wide enough that they fit their few pairs of uniforms as well as other clothes apart from them. Their beds weren’t terrible—Maki definitely had worse and the other girl preferred the school beds over the one she had before she left. Maki had no intentions of overly decorating it (perhaps a few things here and there in the future but she wasn’t going to hang fairy lights and staple fake leaves and vines all over her walls, which she was pretty sure was against a secret rule Gojo hadn’t mentioned). The other girl thought of a few ways to make her room feel a little more like home— a few candle holders, an incense holder, a lava lamp for funsies, maybe, a shelf in the corner of her room for her books, a desk for a mini altar (which was already provided with the table in another corner of the room).

Eventually, an hour later, they all got their IDs. Maki looked at hers and saw a bolded “Grade Four” on the bottom of her card and rolled her eyes at it. She figured it was because she’d only just started at the school a few hours ago and would’ve had to work her way to the top. She came out of her room on her way to go to the classroom Gojo instructed them to be at before he left and saw the other girl about to put her own ID in her satchel and demanded to see hers.

“You’re probably a Grade Four, like me,” Maki grumbled, still salty from seeing such a low grade below her photo (they all got their photos taken for their IDs a week prior). She snatched the card away from the other girl and stared at it.

Age: 16

Grade: Two

“Two?!” Maki shouted, her eyes widening as she looked closer at the card. “You just started—“

“They don’t immediately grade you on experience, silly,” the girl gently took her card back and put it back in her satchel. Maki watched with an irritated look as the girl started to walk ahead of her. “They grade you on the strength of your technique.”

Maki nibbled on her bottom lip as she started walking, catching up with the other girl as they turned the corner and strolled down the hall together. “I thought you used witchcraft and stuff,” she remarked suspiciously as she gave the other girl a side eye. “Wouldn’t they render that an outside force of power?”

“Yes, technically,” the girl started. “If I only used witchcraft, that is,” she looked at Maki with a grin and warm glint in her eyes. “I also have a technique. I’m the only one in my coven.”

“Coven?” Maki asked dumbly, then she clicked her tongue and nodded once the dull realization clicked in her head. “Right. So you’re a real witch? I thought you only existed in fairytales.”

“It certainly feels that way,” the girl says with a quiet sigh like being a witch was something she was exasperated by. “But you only think that because we don’t typically live in overpopulated areas like Tokyo.”

“So why are you here then?” Maki raised her eyebrow. “You’re wandering into one of the busiest cities in the country. What are you doing here if you don’t like high population density?”

The girl chuckled and shook her head briefly. Maki frowned and thought she was making fun of her, but then the girl looked at her with the same expression as before. Maki’s suspicion went away and was replaced by indifference.

“It’s not that we don’t like it,” the girl started, then she pursed her lips together and scratched the back of her head. “Actually, some of us don’t. Some of us are reclusive and restrict ourselves to our coven and nothing else. My coven wasn’t like that, but they were never too appreciative of me interacting with non-witches.”

“Is that why you left?” Maki questioned. They both stopped for a moment and looked between two hallways that split to the left and the right and they looked at each other for some sort of intuition before the other girl eventually went to the left.

“Not really,” the girl answered with a small shrug of her shoulders. “But they treated me like I was something to be fixed. My mother, especially.”

Maki’s face shifted, along with the air. The curiosity and interest between them was interrupted by a sudden burst of melancholy and something darker. She couldn’t lie and say she wasn’t curious as to what the other girl was talking about, but her gut feeling told her that it was something she shouldn’t pry about, especially since they’d only just met an hour ago.

She swallowed awkwardly, looking out the window as they passed and saw a slope that led to a field outside with a track ring and a football field within it—except there were no yard markings and it was just grass. The air cleared up as quickly as it thickened, and Maki turned back to find the girl muttering something under her breath for half a second.

“I know you’re curious,” she started and spared Maki a glance, putting on as happy a look as she could’ve mustered. “About what I was whispering, I mean.”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s all over your face,” the girl gestured with her finger towards Maki’s face and a genuine smile came across her lips. Maki frowned again and looked away.

“So, what was it?” She murmured as she restricted herself to only looking ahead.

“It was an incantation,” the girl twisted her body to look through her satchel again, ruffling through it before she pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper (Maki assumed it added to the aesthetic of being a witch) and held it up between her pointer and her middle fingers. “It comes from the rune written on here. It clears negative energy out from the air.”

“So you just whisper some shit and all the bad stuff goes away?” Maki asked with a teasing grin like she didn’t believe it even when the paper with the runes was in front of her (which she was only looking at from her periphery). The girl scoffed out a chuckle before she folded the paper and put it back in her satchel.

“Something like that,” she answered with amusement in her voice. “I could teach you, if you’d like.”

“I’m good,” Maki declined as politely as she could.

“Suit yourself,” the girl shrugged casually. “But the offer’s always welcome. You have only to ask.”

“Is this it?” Maki asked—they’d stopped right in front of a door with a small sign above it that said E1 which stuck out from the side. She pointed her finger towards the door before she looked at the girl again. “Or did he say a different door?”

“He said it’s on our IDs,” the girl dug through the front pocket of her satchel and pulled out her ID again. She looked at the side of it, then tilted her head up at the sign. “This is it.”

“You’d think the door for new students would be open on the first day,” Maki grumbled as she reached for the doorknob and twisted it, pushing the door open. She went in and held it for the other girl, which she thanked Maki for with a polite nod, then they both walked in and found the boy from earlier sitting at a desk already.

Along with… a panda. An animal. An animal that stood in the middle of the room.

Maki stared for a moment as she became acclimated to her surroundings— a regular classroom with windows and four desks, a chalkboard behind her, a boy in front of her, a witch right next to her, and a panda. She thought about how ridiculous it was to be sharing a class with a literal panda, then she also figured that the Jujutsu world was full of strange and unorthodox things (despite its inhabitants efforts to maintain old fashioned habits like they were regular people) that she was bound to see at some point, so she let it go and simply walked to an empty desk. She still glanced at the panda in her peripheral vision from time to time.

Some twenty minutes went by since Maki and the other girl came in. Some of those minutes were spent in silence, but a chunk of it was spent with the girl and the panda (whose name was literally Panda) talking to fill the gap.

The girl, as expected from her seemingly naturally kind attitude that appeared to be never-ending (despite her very first interaction with Maki, though she also couldn’t lie and say it wasn’t a mishap on her part) and her equally perpetual patience, welcomed the others with open arms and an enthusiasm that made Maki want to vomit rainbows and sunrays. She couldn’t wrap her head around how the girl didn’t seem to express any emotion other than serenity and joy (even after the infraction Maki discovered, the girl hadn’t gotten heated like Maki was before the other boy stepped in)– more so how she made it look real. Nothing about her sincere eyes or her warm smile looked backhanded or two-faced– but Maki knew all too well that some people played nice to rope others in for manipulation.

Maki concluded in her mind that she saw something about the girl that the other two boys (boy, and a panda, literally speaking) didn’t. While they were busy chit chatting with the girl and enjoying the charisma she gave them, Maki ignored all the pretty and positive things the girl seemed to have indirectly reflected onto them. Instead, she thought about what the girl said earlier– something about “something to be fixed” and that was how the girl’s coven had treated her. Maki thought it was safe to assume the girl had something wrong with her if her own coven had treated her like she was a broken object–maybe a vase or a Fine China plate or an important seal. Then, to make a bit of a higher reach than it already was to assume something was up with the girl, Maki’s mind wandered to what might’ve been in the girl’s satchel. She knew her ID was in there, along with random tea leaves in tiny bags and crumpled small parchments with unintelligible runes written in chicken scratch. From what Maki saw earlier when the girl had her satchel out, that thing was much too large to only carry a school ID, tea leaves, and paper runes, unless the girl liked to have her large supply for whatever reason that might’ve been similar to simple hoarding. The rest of the satchel was a mystery, if nothing else pertaining to leaves and paper remained confined.

Plus, the girl was from the countryside. A rural area with a bunch of witches for supernatural fairytale presences instead of Jujutsu sorcerers. She hadn’t even mentioned which part she was from!

Eventually, Maki’s thoughts dissipated when the force of a door opening sent an invisible gust of wind to wave them away. In the doorway stood none other than Gojo Satoru, the child prodigy of the Gojo clan, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age, the first year student teacher at Tokyo Jujutsu High School, and the man who was supposed to be there twenty minutes ago.

“Behold!” he shouted, a little too loud for the students’ likings at eight thirty in the morning. “The beginning of your journey at Tokyo Jujutsu High Schooooooool!”

To Gojo’s disappointment (though not surprised), neither of them gave him the reaction he wanted. They all stared like he had two heads instead of growing sugary sweet smiles and joining hands to sing kumbaya.

“Right,” Gojo leaned back against the chalkboard and he stared between the four students underneath the bandages over his eyes. “Forgot. Moody teenagers.”

“It’s kind of early, sir,” the girl rested her elbows on the surface of her desk and planted her chin on the palm of her right hand. She looked at him like she felt bad for giving him silence instead of cheering with utmost joy. “But I’m very excited, Gojo-sensei.”

Gojo stroked his chin with his fingers and squished his own cheeks for a moment– a gesture that earned slightly bewildered looks exchanged between the students before him, and looks that only grew more profound once they heard him talking to himself.

“Yes, yes, I see,” his voice rose a little louder. “I see. It appears you’re gonna be my favorite this year.”

The girl looked at Maki to her left like that would’ve provided her some sort of divine reassurance that she wasn’t in fact going to be the teacher’s favorite for the year. Maki wanted to tell her that Gojo probably wasn’t being serious, but she was interrupted before she even said anything. 

“Right. Well, it’s still a little early…” Gojo turned and looked out the window. The blinds were pulled up and gave him a perfect view of the blue sky that’d started to take over the dome above them. He turned back to look at the students. “We don’t value your typical classes around here like science and math like other schools do,” his grin matched the enthusiasm of his statement. “Though you still have to take those courses for us to qualify as a ‘really religious school,’ those subjects aren’t necessarily your top priorities– of course, unless one of you is a nerd and really likes the periodic table or the quadratic formula, then I guess that might be a priority to you.”

Gojo waited for any of the students to make an interjection and confess that they did in fact like the periodic table. A few moments went by and no one said anything about it.

“Moving on, you’ll be spending more time learning about curses and how to handle cursed energy and techniques and such. Martial arts and all that junk is optional, but it’s not a bad idea to just take the class. Missions and stuff, blah blah blah, you’ll sometimes be sent on missions that are acquainted to your sorcerer level and below, so that you’re not in total danger or you’re not in a situation you can’t handle and all that stuff. But if I were you, I’d take the risk,” Gojo shrugged his shoulders casually. “I’m just playing, I wouldn’t give you guys something I know you can’t handle.”

Gojo seemed lost in thought for another few seconds before an invisible lightbulb went off in his head. “Oh, right! First and second years have a curfew: eight o’clock. You don’t have to go to sleep by then, you just can’t leave campus after that unless instructed otherwise.”

For the next ten minutes, Gojo droned on about other things that he seemingly didn’t care about, but the students sure did, so it annoyed them a little when he brushed on certain subjects like mission ethics and classmate ethics like they were afterthoughts to him. By the end of it, he finally dismissed them to their first period classes they were supposed to be at fifteen minutes before his rambling eventually stopped.

Before all four students left, he stopped the girl before she walked out, and she already knew what he was stopping her for.

“Principal Yaga told me about your, er…” Gojo started quietly, peeping his head around the corner of the doorway and looked down the hall to make sure the others weren’t eavesdropping. He turned back around when he saw and felt no one.

“My…?”

“I don’t wanna say condition, cuz that’s just rude, but–”

“It’s alright, Gojo-sensei,” the girl chuckled sheepishly with an equally rueful smile as her hands subconsciously gripped the strap of her satchel. “Condition wouldn’t be the wrong word to use. It’s been called worse things than a condition.”

“Good thing that’s cleared up,” Gojo cleared his throat as if to emphasize what was ‘cleared up,’ then he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Anyways, I wanted to stop you before you went to your class to tell you that this school is completely judgment-free,” he stated, to which the girl simply raised her eyebrows curiously and waited for him to continue. “Meaning you can always come to me or your peers if you ever need help. And if they do wind up judging you, I’ll force them to run laps around the field until they collapse.”

“Thanks… Gojo-sensei,” the girl looked down at her boots ephemerally and chewed on the inside of her cheek before she looked back up at him. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

Gojo flashed her a smile before he ruffled the girl’s head. “Now get to class, you rascal.” He opened the door and led the girl out into the hall, where she power walked to follow after her classmates who were already around two different corners.

_________________________

DECEMBER 18TH, 2040. 8:24 AM. JAPAN.

It becomes prevalent to Maki, an hour into her official investigation underneath the highway bridge, that the night time makes the underside of the bridge much darker than it does with any other part of the city. It makes sense to her for both logical and practical reasons. This part is unofficially closed off (city officials can’t be bothered to put yellow caution tape around the area) and therefore the lack of funding results in a lack of lighting. The part of her that believes in the practical reason is because there’s a nearly opaque curtain over the area.

The sun still shines in the daytime and it’s useful nonetheless. Maki doesn’t need to use her next-to-useless phone’s flashlight. She also doesn’t necessarily have to deal with her annoying ghost at her side; it’s a choice she makes anyways, to informally summon her back to the human realm for assistance.

Uncertainty tickles the back of her neck for a second when Maki beckons the ghost to the overworld and nothing happens for a few minutes. She thinks that maybe she’s finally gotten rid of her as a result of their conversation last night. The uncertainty increases when she considers that that might actually be a possibility.

And then her uncertainty turns into something neutral. A little less neutral than someone like Maki would want to admit, but she’d sooner be roasted over a fire than say out loud that she actually needs to be around the ghost.

“You’re quite needy,” is the first thing the ghost says upon materializing behind Maki. She says it like it’s a complaint when there’s a warm, teasing undertone in her voice and she steps around and stands in front of Maki like she’s experiencing real muscle memory. “This is the second time in less than twelve hours that you’ve called me to the mortal realm.”

“You’re more reliable here than you are at home,” Maki tells her as she reaches around her belt and pulls out a small piece of paper from a tiny compartment at her hip. “Especially when these are involved.”

The ghost ignores the implication that she only serves as a nuisance when Maki is confined to the walls of her home in Tokyo and observes the paper between Maki’s fingers: it’s pale white and crumpled like it’s been in her belt for a while. There are runes written on it that look like, to the ghost, that they’ve been written in chicken scratch. The ghost wonders if Maki copied the runes straight from a stolen grimoire; that would explain the less-than-amateur handwriting.

“A hex,” the ghost remarks with a smile that looks like it’s graced her face a thousand times; the edges worn but so grand. “You need me to curse something?”

“You can only fight curses with curses,” Maki reaches around again with her free hand this time and grabs a knife from the other side of her belt and holds it in her fingers in front of the ghost. “This isn’t to exorcise anything. I just need it as a messenger of sorts to let me know when I’m in the presence of a curse.”

“Of course you couldn’t exorcise anything with that,” the ghost’s smile widens into a shape that looks like it’s supposed to be letting out a laugh. “This is a pocket knife.”

“I’m quite aware of what kind of knife it is. I got it myself.”

“I didn’t know you had the emotional capacity to own something so mundane,” the ghost taunts as she takes the paper and the knife from Maki’s hands. “Usually you only wield the grandest of weapons.”

Maki frowns— she finds she’s going to be doing that a lot during this mission. “Again, it’s just for miscellaneous purposes.”

The ghost hums, then she turns around and takes another look at the rune. “You could’ve done this yourself, you know,” she comments offhandedly, like she has no intention of dwelling on that thought. Then she thinks about it again. “I know you aren’t entirely fruitless.”

Maki sighs quietly as she wanders around the terrain in small steps. “You do it better than I can,” she murmurs. She looks to the sun whose light was fractured from the edge of the highway bridge standing in front of it. The light still gets in her eyes, but it doesn’t hurt, her retinas don’t beg her to look away.

She hears the ghost whispering under her breath, and she knows what she’s getting up to. She lets her do her thing even though hexing something so small as a pocket knife is a low effort task. Maki prefers not to give the ghost an active audience and rather passively glances at the magic going on in her periphery in silent admiration.

“Just so you know,” the ghost starts as she watches the paper rune crumble away and turn into ash and holds the knife loosely in her other hand. “You can’t use this anymore,” she wiggles the knife to emphasize its existence.

Maki makes a quarter turn to fully look at her. She raises a curious eyebrow. “Why not?”

“It’s a part of me now.”

“What do you mean ‘a part of you’?”

“The rune you gave me was a hex, as you must already know,” the ghost shrugs casually as she swings it side to side with the bottom of the handle between her pointer finger and her thumb. “And while it’s true I have no effect on the mortal realm whatsoever, as soon as you hand me something, it leaves your plane and enters mine.”

Maki narrows her eyes suspiciously. “So how do you know it’s gonna work like it’s supposed to?”

“Only if I’m the one holding it. A warning hex placed on a paranormal object can’t work if someone from the mortal realm is using it.”

Maki clicks her tongue in annoyance. She gets over it, then it comes back twice as harshly once it dawns on her that she’s going to have to keep the ghost around her at least until the hex goes off, or however it works. Maki doesn’t feel like asking. It’s not like an explanation would help her understand, anyways, so she’d rather not know at all. 

“Keep it, then. It’s not like I spent money on it.” Maki responds morosely like she doesn’t care. She knows that the ghost knows she’s bluffing, and she half expects the ghost to make a comment on it the same way she did last night. Maki’s only half surprised when she gets silence in return. She knows the ghost is thinking about it, though.

“So, where are you gonna start looking now that the sun’s out?”

“That headstone of yours, maybe.”

The ghost bites down on the inside of her cheek. She quickly glances over to the headstone against a pillar several yards away, adorning a head of moss over it. She grimaces. Maki can tell she struck a nerve—or maybe something of the like; she isn’t sure if ghosts really have nerves or not.

“How do you know it’s mine?” The ghost questions like the spot isn’t nagging at her from behind like a problem she should be handling, but isn’t for reasons beyond her. “That could be anyone.”

Maki narrows her eyes and shoots the ghost a look that very clearly says she’s not buying the bullshit. “How many other people have died here?”

“Many, for all we know. Isn’t that the whole point of why you’re here?”

“If that many people have died here, then why just place one headstone when there could hypothetically be a hundred?”

The ghost twists her mouth in defeat. Her shoulders fall and she turns again to look at the headstone like she expects it to move. It disappoints her when it stays in its respectable position. She gazes back at Maki. “You won’t find anything there.”

“Then why does it feel like I’m breathing swamp air?” Maki gripes as she walks to the other side of the terrain. “It’s heavy around here. It gets worse the closer I am to it.” She likes to think it has nothing to do with the possibility that it might just be herself that plays a factor in the thickening of the air. She isn’t quite sure if she wants to ask the ghost if it has anything to do with their symbiotic relationship that extends beyond the mortal plane because she knows she’ll either get more bullshit or a blunt truth.

And again, she doesn’t know which answer she would prefer.

The ghost shrugs. “That’s beyond me,” she answers truthfully and wistfully skips towards the headstone and ignoring the atmospheric pressure she feels even from her lack of an actual physical presence. Maki supposes it’s just like her to put on her whimsical face and ignore what’s looking her in the eyes.

“It feels like I’m at a funeral.”

“I think that’s just sentimental value and bitter memories.”

“You’re probably right,” and Maki hates it, because the ghost is right every time and always has been when before she was a ghost. It makes her question her own speculation and at the same time gives her the incentive to admire the ghost—and in past events, the girl—like she could’ve been made into a role model for all.

The ghost senses it, Maki’s distaste for her fruitful intuition. Maki hates that, too.

“You don’t have to doubt yourself,” the ghost tells her softly like she can see through her. It only serves to piss Maki off.

“I never said I was,” she lies through clenched teeth. She releases her jaw once she reaches the headstone. The words “beloved witch” are still engraved in the stone like they had been last night. That solidifies Maki’s belief that it belongs to the ghost even with inadvertent confirmation.

“Boom,” Maki points with her finger to the carvings in kanji. “‘Beloved witch.’ Wonder who that could be.”

“You’re such a child,” the ghost smiles humorously.

Maki clicks her tongue. She wants to talk back and make a comment about the ghost’s lack of adulthood and maturity and how rich it is to hear something about childishness from the ghost of a teenager, but she decides that’s just as childish, and she’s learned in the past to be less cruel with her retorts, so she keeps quiet and hopes the ghost doesn’t magically sense that Maki’s holding back a mean retort, too.

Maki crouches down in front of the headstone and touches her fingers to it. The surface is as cold and grim and lonely as she thought it would be, maybe even a little more extreme. She all but wonders about the things this stone has seen, all the lives it’s probably taken.

A thought comes to mind. A thought becomes a hypothesis, then it becomes a theory, and then her theory becomes an outwardly spoken statement.

She stands back up and touches her Soul Split Katana sitting at her hip. “I have an idea,” Maki announces while the ghost is wandering off somewhere else that isn’t anywhere within three yards of her.

Maki whips her head around and looks for the ghost and finds her crouching over a small bed of nearly-dead flowers. Her fingers graze the petals, and for a split second they come back to life, then they vanish. Maki wants to think it’s a vain attempt to bring some life back into this place, but she can’t find it in her to bring the ghost down for her positive tendencies.

“You said you have no effect on my world,” Maki murmurs as she steps over towards the no-longer visible bed of flowers.

The ghost turns her head up to look at Maki with that unsettlingly familiar warm glint in her eyes. “It’s true. But I only used the negativity pouring off of you to put them out of their misery. There was nothing anyone from the mortal realm could’ve done.”

Maki can’t quite grasp it, but she’s sure there’s some sort of system with caveats in the afterlife or wherever the ghost goes to whenever she’s not pestering the overworld. She scraps that thought in favor of dwelling on the ghost’s perpetual kindness even for the littlest things.

Her heart wants to burst. For some calming reason, it doesn’t. Maki can let herself breathe again.

“You say that like it’s a regular thing,” she comments offhandedly. “‘Using my negative energy,’ I mean.” She pauses and makes a face, then pokes her tongue to her cheek. “Well, I guess it really is. I dunno what I’m saying.”

“That’s not like you,” the ghost stands up straight with a small frown. “Is something on your mind?”

Maki rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue. “A lot, actually,” she murmurs like she’d rather not talk about it. “But we don’t really have time to turn this into a talk circle.”

“We have six days,” the ghost cocks her head to the side as a small smirk takes place on her face. “That gives us ample time to talk it out.”

“Ample time that’s been given to me probably because this mission is supposed to take a while,” Maki grunts, irritated, and she steps away from where the bed of flowers used to be. She turns back towards the headstone and the theory comes back to her after being previously replaced with doting on the kindness coming from the ghost.

“Anyways, I have an idea,” Maki pulls herself back on track. She thinks to herself that the ghost is right, but only in the way that it isn’t like her to get distracted so easily. “It’s about that headstone.”

“You could at least refer to it as mine,” the ghost sighs quietly as she follows after Maki, who already started for the pillar. “‘That’ just takes away the sentiment.”

“It’s a little easier to think of it as just another rock than something that belongs to you,” Maki emphasizes the last word by lowering the inflection of her voice; not like it’s a curse or something to be offended by, but something she wished never happened. “Now shut up. You’re about to get me off track again.”

“I’ll leave you be,” the ghost starts to take a step back before Maki’s right hand flies up to reach out for her, only for her hand to go right through the cloak adorning the ghost’s shoulders like a hologram.

Maki turns around when she doesn’t feel anything touching her fingers except a profound emptiness and sees the bewildered look on the ghost’s face. She swallows quietly, embarrassed.

“I need you close by for this,” Maki avoids acknowledging the ghost’s lack of a molecular structure. “It’s an experiment.”

“What’s your hypothesis?” The ghost wanders back over, their bodies so close to one another that Maki should feel the brush of a shoulder against her own, but she doesn’t, and it upsets her and the cold feeling against her arm that should be warm.

So close, yet so far away.

Maki lets out an exasperated huff as she reaches for her Soul Split Katana, drawing it out from the sheath Yuta had gifted her one year for Christmas after Maki had complained about not having her hands free while she has the sword on her.

“I’m thinking, since there’s a pretty good chance this headstone is cursed,” Maki fully draws the sword out and points it closely towards the face of the rock, the tip of the blade just inches away from the surface. “That if I blast it to hell, then that’ll break the curse.” Maki pauses and waits for the ghost to interject in some way. 

“And you think that’s realistic?”

Maki bites the inside of her cheek. “Not really,” she swings her sword anyways and raises her arm. “But I won’t really know until I try.”

The tip of the blade raises high in the air, a glare coming from the sun’s reflection and shining a bit of light onto the headstone. Maki inhales deeply and takes another look at the ghost; she prepares herself by tearing her eyes away, and then her arm drops.

The sword doesn’t even make a scratch on the rock.

Maki looks at her blade and frowns. “That’s odd,” she glances back down at the headstone before her; there’s a bit of steam coming from where she struck it, but there isn’t a single dent or crack made in the stone.

“It’s emitting steam,” the ghost observes the stone closely, crouching down. Maki crouches down with her and runs her fingers over the stone and watches the steam flare in the trail of her touch.

“It must be only from real human touch,” Maki concludes, her frown deepening when she sees there is no such gas coming from the stone once the steam from her striking it dissipates. “It must be cursed.”

“It might be from the negative memories associated with this place,” the ghost stands back up with her hands on her hips, looking at Maki.

“No, if that were the case, that warning would’ve gone off and we– I would’ve gotten jumped by a curse by now,” Maki corrects herself and bites her tongue and sheathes her sword, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “And so far, this place is as dead as a doornail.”

The ghost gazes around the underside of the highway bridge curiously, looking for any signs of runes hidden in places people can’t easily see from the ground.

“Surely Sukeyori didn’t send you out here for no reason,” the ghost tilts her head back down towards Maki. “There have been disappearances going on here, yes?”

Maki turns her head and narrows her eyes suspiciously. “There have.”

“Surely you would’ve encountered a curse by now,” the ghost looks around again, this time at the greenery that surrounds them. The bushes truly don’t make an amazing hiding spot.

“Or maybe there are some, and they’re just hiding,” Maki rips out her sword again and holds her free hand out. “Pass me my knife back.”

The ghost looks at the pocket knife in her hand, now darkened like a shadow has been looming over it and with faint amber-glowing runes along the edge of the blade. “I can’t.”

“Cuz it’s a part of you now, right?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, make it un-part of you.”

The ghost frowns again, her grip tightening on the handle. “I can’t,” she emphasizes by holding the knife in Maki’s face between her fingers and dangling it. “It’s paranormal now. You can’t resurrect a paranormal object.”

Maki narrows her eyes again, her lip twitching slightly. “A paranormal object? Like a cursed object?”

“Yes, except you can’t use it, Maki.”

“I know I can’t, you said that earlier.”

“Then why bother asking?” The ghost furrows her eyebrow in confusion; she doesn’t seem to pick up on Maki’s annoyance, which only irritates her further. “You know it’s unavailable to you, and yet you’re asking.”

“Damn it, and I only brought one,” Maki mutters under her breath as she checks her pockets and her belt. She runs a hand through her hair, slightly warm with the sun glaring down on the top of her head, but cool enough that it doesn’t burn.

She inhales deeply through her nose and closes her eyes. She’s pissed, getting worked up so easily, and she knows she’s acting like a child and it only pisses her off even more.

She exhales and opens her eyes. “I need you to, like–” Maki cuts herself off in search of a way to ask without sounding rude. She’s aware the ghost can easily control her presence in the real world like the flip of a switch (or so she thinks), but she can’t bring herself to just demand the ghost to “go away” when it wears the face of someone still so dear to her.

The ghost leans closer slightly. “Need me to what?”

Maki pinches the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “I think I need to do this by myself. At least, just until I know there’s an actual curse around here.”

“That’s all you had to say,” the ghost chuckles lightly. Maki could never get tired of it. “I didn’t even have to use my so-called ‘empath abilities,’ the inner turmoil was written all over your face.”

Maki’s eyebrows furrow again and she groans. “Just go.”

“Alright, alright,” the ghost turns on the heel of her boot. “I’ll be here when you need me. You have only to ask.”

Maki has the feeling it’s not as easy as she says it is, but she believes her anyway because it’s nice to know that she can come back at any time just from the simple call of her name.

And just like that, the ghost is gone again. There’s an indefinite volume of emptiness that replaces the air like it was just Maki all along and that she was talking to herself the whole time. She’s certain that she was not.

Maki walks around the unofficial graveyard. She keeps her head up and her eyes open for any sign that even a miniscule Grade Four curse was hiding (although, given that the place has been “haunted” for reportedly the past sixteen years, it’s extremely unlikely that any curse lingering around there would be anything less than a Grade One, but it humors her nonetheless and gives her something to chuckle about).

There’s a slight breeze by the time she makes her third lonely loop around the underside of the bridge. She goes all the way down three pairs of pillars before circling back to the graveyard and then back again. The breeze blows her hair in her face, but there’s a warmth in the air that’s quite unusual for a December morning.

Maki takes out her Split Soul Katana and simply carries it at her side whilst she walks another lap down the six total pillars she walks past. She begins to wonder if sending the ghost away was a pointless decision to make—as well as if the whole mission was pointless altogether.

Then, it finally makes its appearance.

It’s quite an unsightly curse, just as they always are. It’s big, standing just short of the height of the highway bridge, it’s blue and shaped like an oversized blob with large hands (or what Maki thinks look like hands, anyways)— no arms, only hands, and one of the hands isn’t even a hand, but the shape of a dagger’s blade edge. It has perforations at the top of its build where it looks like the eyes should be, and it has no mouth, either.

Maki definitely thinks this is no Grade Four curse—definitely Grade One, at least.

“Jeez Louise,” Maki comments as she swings the sword in her hands, watching the curse fade in and out of existence like it’s trying to decide if it wants to stay or leave—or rather, if it can stay.

The curse stands right in front of the headstone, almost like it’s guarding it. Maki makes a note in her mind that it must be related to the ghost, then she lunges for the curse, her sword’s edge cutting through the air and she makes a jab in the side.

Or at least, she thinks she does. Only, the sword does nothing but bounce off of the curse like it’s made of rubber. For a moment, she thinks it might be a curse placed on her sword, but then she runs her fingers over it quickly and feels nothing but the solidity of iron.

The curse’s actual hand makes a swipe for her, its fingers extending down to the ground and trying to knock her off her balance. She leaps away, landing several yards away from the fingers, sliding a little bit before she stops. She curses under her breath about how much of a nuisance it is that her Split Soul Katana is effectively useless as far as fighting that curse goes. She raises her arms with the sword in front of her defensively as a reflex, expecting the curse to make a move, but it never does. It stands there, silently, motionlessly, like a statue or a gargoyle.

It’s gotta be guarding something.

Maki watches carefully as the curse dissipates into thin air. She frowns, thinking that she can’t let it get away like this, but then she thinks again: it only gives her time to ponder and come up with a solution rather than simply staring as it goes back into its default guard-mode.

Maki finds that she can’t concentrate much on the curse, and it becomes apparent to her when she hears her stomach growling. She thinks back to her foolish decision to skip breakfast when she woke up a few hours ago. She sheaths her sword, thinking that she won’t quite be in need of it while she fixes her feeling of nearing starvation.

Maki gets the urge to beckon the ghost back—she made an observation during her “fight” with the curse that it didn’t appear whenever the ghost was around, and that it only materialized into existence after the ghost had left. She isn’t sure whether there’s an intrinsic connection between the two, but just in case there is a correlation, she summons her back.

_________________________

“So, how’d it go?” The ghost speaks immediately after materializing next to Maki. There’s an eager look on her face that’s all too familiar to the both of them.

They’re both back in Maki’s hotel room. Maki got a look from the receptionist (the same one who checked her in last night) that was questionable, but Maki didn’t really care; she learned a long time ago that it wasn’t worth explaining the world of Jujutsu and curses and whatnot to a non-sorcerer. She went about her business (and stopped in the cafeteria for breakfast, which she found was very mediocre) and went back to her room, which is the only safe space for the time being where Maki can freely talk to the ghost without standing in that godforsaken cursed site and is why Maki left in the first place.

Maki plops down on the bed and leans back against the headboard, her shoes kicked off and her legs extended in front of her and her arms crossed. “Very odd.”

The ghost steps over and slips her boots off as if they can ever possibly get anything dirty, then she sits crisscrossed on the corner of the bed facing Maki. “‘Odd’ is part of the norm here, Maki. Although, if you’re saying it’s odd, and you’ve spent pretty much a lifetime in the Jujutsu world where everything that’s considered “haunted”, then I guess that truly speaks volumes.”

“I meant to say it was unusual,” Maki corrects herself, biting down on her tongue immediately after to keep herself from smiling at the ghost’s rant. “It was acting weird. Curses are already weird, but this one was out of the ordinary,” her brows push together and her forehead creases slightly. “There’s clearly something that sets it apart from all the other curses I’ve encountered.”

The ghost cocks her head to the side and leans her weight onto her right arm, leaning into her palm. “What was it?”

Maki thinks for a moment. There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to tell her simply because that’s what she’s always done—avoiding telling the ghost—and at one point, the girl—about her problems in favor of some other topic or just straight up chickening out and walking away. Maki supposes that fact means she hasn’t changed much throughout the decades.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

“It’s probably nothing,” Maki taps her finger on her arm. “Was it easy getting back here from…wherever it is you go to when you leave?”

The ghost makes a face. She can tell Maki’s avoiding it—picking up on her unfashionable avoidant behavior and letting her face fall flat—but she goes with it anyway. Arguing with Maki about her avoidant behavior has, historically, never led to any changes being made.

“It’s a process,” the ghost answers bitterly. Maki expects it, the thorniness in her voice and she knows the ghost doesn’t like it when she hides things from her. “Sometimes it’s easy, like the bat of an eye or a heartbeat. Other times it takes a while.”

“Is there a reason? Like, an influx of passage or something that can clog whatever path you take to get here?”

The ghost chuckles dryly and it never reaches her eyes. “Something like that, yes.”

Maki nods briefly. “So I guess that’s why you took a little longer earlier to get here? If that’s the case then I’m probably better off doing a seance or whatever.”

The ghost lets out another laugh; more real and deep, this time and it reaches beyond her eyes. Maki doesn’t quite get what’s so funny, but the ghost has always been strange with her humor.

“A seance is when you’re just trying to make contact,” the ghost says after she stops laughing, letting out a pleased sigh and looking at Maki. “Like you’re talking to Kugisaki over the phone.”

Maki thinks it’s just like her to know exactly who she talks with on the phone the most. She needs to stop thinking about stuff like that.

“So, whatever this is,” Maki gestures with her hand towards the ghost, “is different? Like actually meeting with her in person?”

“Yes!” The ghost chirps. “But still not quite. Cuz, well, y’know.”

“Right. Dead and stuff.”

“You don’t have to be so blunt about it,” the ghost frowns like she doesn’t like the idea of acknowledging her mortal status. Maki thinks it’s a little ironic and hypocritical of her.

Maki narrows her eyes. “What would you rather me call it? Your deceased-ness?”

“I’d rather not talk about it at all,” the ghost’s eyes look weaker, upset at the fact she’s being forced to face the reality of her lost life. She tears her gaze away from Maki and looks down at the bedding, feeling an invisible thorn poking out her heart.

Maki feels it, too, unbeknownst to them that the vineyard growing in their chests is a mutual thing. It pricks and it stings and it’s as venomous as it is sharp against the tissue, but it makes the both of them feel something and they suppose it’s better than nothing at all.

It’s a repeat of last night, they both know it, where one thorn will rear its head in their chests and by dusk, vines and thorns are squeezing their ribcages and trapping their lungs. Maki’s older and the vines are catching up to her. The ghost is young and can break free of the thorns and it should be liberating, but it isn’t.

“You’re burning daylight. Shouldn’t you be back out there?” The ghost asks, breaking through the thorns and changing the subject like it makes them all go away. They can’t, no matter how hard the two of them try to pluck them out, they’ll only end up with scabbed fingers and each other’s blood in their nails.

“You’re right, I should,” Maki sits up, pulling herself away from the headboard. “I don’t even know what I’m doing sitting here.”

Maki stands up from the bed, walking over to her shoes near the door and putting them on. She gets back up to put her belt through the loops and slips her katana sheath on as well. She feels like she’s walking on a bed of roses and her feet are getting pricked with each step she takes, but she pushes through the pain like she always has.

“Where do you think I should look? Since that graveyard seems to be occupied with a curse at the moment.”

The ghost turns around, standing up at the foot of the bed with her hands behind her back. “Maybe ask around the area? Ask if there’s been anything strange going on? That’s what I always did on missions.”

“I know you did, I was there sometimes,” Maki answers gruffly, reaching for her katana which was leaning bare ( because Maki can’t stand the thought of suffocating it in that leather sheath longer than it has to when it can breathe and embrace the beauty of its blade)against the corner closest to the door and stuffing it into the confines of the sheath. “And I know there’s weird shit going on around here. Why do I need to ask?”

“So you can get more info than what you get from the news and what Sukeyori told you, silly,” the ghost steps closer, standing next to the door and waiting for Maki to open it. Maki half expects her to just walk through it like ghosts are usually depicted to be. “Those news channel outlets don’t spout out enough information about it because they all assume it’s by accident, and Sukeyori doesn’t give you enough because he’s just as clueless as you are. It’s all about getting the locals’ perspectives.”

“Thank you,” Maki murmurs, reaching for the door handle and resting her hand on the cold metal. “And here I thought you’d be a nuisance on this mission.”

The ghost frowns slightly. “Did you not mention that I’m more useful here than I am back in Tokyo?”

Maki pulls her phone out from her pocket and holds it up to her ear. “Yeah, but one can be annoying and useful at the same time; they’re not mutually exclusive.”

The ghost rolls her eyes. “I thought you would’ve learned from last night that you don’t fool me, Maki. I see right through you.”

“And conversation’s over,” Maki puts her phone back in her pocket, power walking down the hall and over to the elevator, pressing the down button.

The ghost smiles once the doors open to an empty boxed-in elevator, stepping in with glee and standing next to Maki as they go down the building and starting the next step in their investigation.

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