Chapter Text
11:36 pm. Way to go. Nanami must think I’m an obsessed freak. One that forces situations to happen, so he’d think about me. You thought to yourself if he didn’t think you were clumsy before, he should now. You’ve been goggling at his phone for the past twenty-two minutes, which had already lost power. Yours, however, could be a saving grace right now. Taking it out of your tote bag you texted Shoko, the only colleague at Jujutsu Tech you were acquainted with. The message was split into multiple inane short texts: Hello. I know you guys are busy right now, but please let Nanami know I’m sorry I took his phone! I promise I only realized, like, right now and-
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Your mother’s contact appeared on your screen, previewing messages that contained videos. She called right before departing to wish you safe travels and the promise of funny videos to help you stay entertained, so you swipe away her texts assuming they were just unfunny skits from somewhere. Continuing your imploring to Shoko: Please just say that first. That I’m sorry. Also, he can meet me on Monday, November 5th. I’ll return it and then fly back to Denmark. Tell him he’ll get lots of pastries and souvenirs! After hitting send, it did register that the last bit of the message was unnecessary, but the nerves of the situation got to you. Going into your mother’s chat, you see an influx of exclamations. “Shibuya is being destroyed!”, “Are you still in the plane?”, “Answer me!!”, “Your uncle sent me this one”, “Please be safe out there, love you”. You watch a low-quality video, hearing your family member’s voice in the background crying out in fear. A plane was being set ablaze mid-air, hurling a roar as it dropped from the sky into Shibuya. The tragedy was clear as day, even though the video was taken at night. Highlighting the combusted object. Your hands tremble. Were you safe? Unable to hold the phone upright, you felt like this was wrong to watch. He’s on call, but where? No. stop thinking like that, he’s obviously saving civilians right now. Nanami’s far too competent to be a victim of that destruction. A thumping tortured your head as you catastrophized.
“Miss. Are you feeling ill?” The flight attendant sounded like she was under a body of water. “Hold my hand and follow my breathing.”
The video continued playing, showing a city turning into hell. The lens turned to reveal the shocked faces of people witnessing the horror. It never stopped playing until a pair of hands whisked your device away from a weak grip, then lightly turned your head so you could meet a calm woman’s face.
~
8:00 am, November 5th, Monday, Tokyo. You hug Nanami’s blazer tighter against your layered outfit when the breeze enters the cafe. A cold gust sings alongside the sounds of old espresso machines. Elevating the emptiness and lack of conversation in the room. How could anyone start a conversation? It feels like the moment anyone utters a word; we all expect the events of Shibuya to pour out. No one wants to talk about it. At least for a little while. Not while the wound is still fresh. In your peripheral, you see the screen of a phone turn on, next to you on the leather couch. The red dusk of the sunset on your friend's lock screen includes a notification, telling you it's fully charged. You unplug it and bring it to your face to have a closer at the photo, but the phone unlocks from detection. Taken aback you immediately turn it off, shutting your eyes. You hold a tighter grip on it because it’s a reminder of how you aren’t ready.
Not yet.
You decide to lean into the couch, to stay longer at the establishment. The jetlag is kicking in and it doesn’t help that you ran into an unwanted conversation with a coworker when you walked in. The one-sided chat consisting of the only depressing topic everyone is taking part in. It left your coffee cold, and now you needed to rest for a bit. If not, you could walk out of the café without a clear mind. Looking either drunk or sleep-deprived. Most likely the latter. The insurance company was next door and the possibility of running into more people is a headache. To call your flight back to the city a miracle, would be an understatement. From October 31st, flights coming in and out of Japan were prohibited, just when you desperately needed to come back home. Only five days have passed since the incident.
For four days, you found yourself alternating between locking yourself up in a Denmark airport hotel, and then running around pleading with the airport’s many front desks about when you could leave. Not caring if you’d get fired for abandoning your work trip. Your mothers’ yells across the phone would be a comforting reoccurrence, in which she is begging you to stay in Denmark since the situation was getting worse back home. For four days, only your mother would call, while you unfortunately entertained the thought of your loved one’s death once you came back. Even as you arrive back, the chaos resumes. No warm hugs from a worried family greeted you.
Your colleagues were radio silent, dealing with their grief. Your mother and uncle were evacuated to a different city. Leaving you with one more fear. No sign of Nanami. Shoko didn’t answer your calls from Wednesday to the early mornings of today, until the dreadful call. The call you had with her just one hour ago, somehow led you to instinctively catch a taxi to this very café.
Just as you settle into drifting asleep, a ring awakens you. It’s coming from your phone. “Shoko”, is displayed on the lock screen, and hesitantly you pick up.
“I can see you from here. I’m crossing the light pole to the café entrance.” Shoko says as you see her tall figure approach, dressed in a lab coat. She stops outside the door to throw her cigarette into a bin. Chimes can be heard as she walks in. You stiffen. Staying seated on the couch, you can’t help but feel nauseous as she walks up to you. She stops above you, striving for her best smile. “So quiet in here. Wish it were like this outside.” She gets comfortable next to you on the couch. She makes sure to observe the blazer as she continues, “You must have been in disarray; your luggage is here.”
You face her in silence, nodding your head in acknowledgement. The two of you stare at each other, competing to see who will address the matter. Inhaling deeply, you try, “Thanks for meeting me here. Why’d-“
You clear your throat to not get choked up. “No.” You straighten your back to speak clearer, “What were you doing when you called me?”
“Sorry?” Shoko inquires, and you stay silent, reading her eyes. “I was…sitting at the park.” She says pointing in the direction behind her, confused.
“So, you weren’t occupied with something urgent or intense?”
“Not really.”
“You didn’t think to wait for my arrival or ask us to meet somewhere. You were just going to causally call me and tell me that “I’m sorry. Nanami didn’t make it”, hang up on me, then leave me to go with the rest of my day!” You shakily burst out.
Shoko looks at you with widened eyes and observes around the room self-consciously. You two were the only customers in the café, now filling the silence. She places her palm on your shoulder, to ease the tension, but you non-aggressively remove it.
“I admit, you didn’t have to hear it that way. I just didn’t know who to call. Everyone was pestering me. They still are and I couldn’t handle it. I only saw your messages yesterday and the burden of telling you the news was too much. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just…a lot.” Shoko was now tearing up. The pressures of her position were breaking her, as each day passed by, with more wounding alerts of her dying colleagues.
You stand up from your spot. “Let’s talk outside, I’m getting dizzy in here.” You respond half-heartedly.
Shoko follows you into the chill winds hoping for a smoother flowing discussion.
“Where is he? I know I’m a non-sorcerer so I can’t even enter your facility, but at least tell me-“
“Even if I could. I can’t let you see that- him I mean.”
“That? Shoko help me out here, please! It’s the least you could do. God, this is so unfair.” You lament to her.
“There’s nothing I can do. He’s- it's bad. His lower body is the only remaining part we can recover from Shibuya.” Shoko winces and covers her mouth, shocked by her own blunt words.
You bit your lip as tears marked your face. His lower body. Her mechanical way of describing things made sense in her occupational context, but this was too harsh. With staggered breaths, you ask, “Where is he?” You ache as you reiterate. You now know the answer. He was still in there. That hell. It was never a possibility in your mind. Nanami not making it back home. While the world had just begun to know about sorcery after the massacre, it wasn’t unfamiliar to you. In detail, he’d go over his workday like it were any other mundane job. The stories of the students he so greatly cared for, the loss of his dearest friend in high school, and all the dangers of the mystique of this world he was in. Never, did you imagine you’d have to worry about his potential death. In his eyes, he is someone who simply strives to do the best he can. You wish he could see himself in your eyes.
Jujutsu Sorcerers are shit. He’d boldly reaffirm that to you with sunken eyebags, every time you two would talk about your workday in the café. Yet, he never left sorcery. Every day you’d be reassured of how hard-working he is. That same attitude that you admire in him, is one of the many traits that made you want to be a permanent part of his life. Whether he accepted your affection or not, wasn’t the point, everyone deserves to have such a dependable force in their life. Now, you cannot accept that this is happening.
“I understand him now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hate how the higher-ups do things. What’s happening right now is showing their true colours.”
“You can do unimaginable things compared to most doctors. The ability to reserve techniques, right? That’s what Nanami told me.” You ask her, not expecting a response. Maybe this was a way for you to cope with the fact that even people as powerful as her can’t fix everything.
“Yes. I know there’s nothing I can do to make you feel better. I can’t even begin to tell you why we can’t save the rest of his body right now. I don’t want to hurt you more. I know how much you mean to him, it’s only right that I informed you.”
You chuckle at her words, “The damage has already been done. No?”
She looks to the ground in defeat. Agreeing that nothing was going to assist the emotional affliction.
“You want to know what hurts more? That I’ll never know why. You could try to explain it to me, though I doubt you would. Still, I’m too far removed from it all. I don’t want to know who did it, or what.” Wiping your face, you make your back into the café, the atmosphere reading that you are done with the conversation. Not looking back, you head straight for the bathroom. Hiding yourself in one of the stalls, you drop down to your knees. One hand on the stall wall, and the other to open the toilet seat while you begin to hurl. His lower body is still there. It’s an unsettling scene. You hurl and cry simultaneously. The chronic exhaustion was making a physical appearance, yet the object of your sorrow was thinking about how tired he must have been. Meeting his end, without getting to grow old, but the pressures of his sorcery.
~
7:00 pm, November 12th, 2018, Kuantan, Malaysia. The ocean sends shimmering beams of light into your bedroom. You sit on your bed in a daze, taking in your flat’s perfect view of the ocean’s peaking sunset across the horizon. Now it’s been twelve days since the Shibuya massacre and the beginning of a new era of havoc. Other than frequent check-ins with family, you haven’t spoken to anyone else since your last conversation with Shoko. Most of all, you won’t bother yourself with the current events taking place in Shibuya. This isn’t a retreat. You were abandoning your duties to escape, with the illusion of closure. It made you worse. Your way of grieving is running away to the place Nanami raved on about. Where is the closure?
Jujutsu Sorcerers are shit.
His words echo when you think about home, but not in a negative way. You just can’t help but recollect these words because they represent your overall memory of him. Nanami always had this weird way of saying bold and sometimes controversial statements but in a well-informed manner. You miss his politeness. How much of a gentleman he was to you and all women around him. You miss the safety. You loved knowing that your coworkers thought he was boring and uptight, because with you the formalities would drop, and you’d be left breathless from his jokes. You would give anything to hear his dry jokes again. You loved knowing that you saw that side of him. When he was not burnt out by work and had the energy to send you two out and about in town to shop, try food, or take aimless walks in the city. You love him, and he will never know.
I think I’m ready.
You grab Nanami’s cream-white blazer from next to you, to take out his phone. He trusted you enough to be another recognizable face on his device. Claiming he had nothing to hide and whatever he had on it most likely was cleaner than yours. You only used this privilege to take pictures of yourself and make it his wallpaper. Now and then, those same pictures of you would remain on this lock screen. You think back to when you asked him if he wasn’t worried his sorcerer friends would ask who you are, then he’d reply that they wouldn’t ask because they already know you. Such memories now cross your mind. That comfortability is missing.
You used to doubt your importance to him. Having each other’s extra apartment keys and phone passwords was not enough for you. When his reason for these two instances was to ensure you both have someone to depend on in case of emergencies, your mind was clouded with romance. You face the front camera to unlock the phone, revealing a typical home screen. Organized and easy to navigate. Since you’ve had it you never opened it. Where would you even begin? What was the point? Would you forget him that quickly without his phone? His camera roll consisted of you, screenshots of songs, meals and a substantial number of sunsets. Chime. A reminder displays on his screen. It has two exclamation marks indicating it is a high priority. Deciding you didn’t want to go into his apps anyway, you read the reminder:
Send the birthday message on notes tomorrow!!
Tomorrow is your birthday. Without thinking you navigate to the notes. You scroll down completed grocery lists and to-do lists to reach one note titled, “Her birthday plans”. In bullet points, he writes Returns from work trip November 12th. Haneda Airport. Plan A, surprise flowers? Cook dinner for her at my place (might seem to be pushy if she doesn’t feel that way).
If Plan A fails, aquarium. Obsessed with stingrays. Early Christmas presents! Christmas plans?
Weeps escape your mouth as you read the notes. These notes started to make you feel less insignificant to him than you thought you were before. You didn’t just lose Nanami. You lost a potential future of longer city walks, Christmas dinners, and more nonsense-bred conversations. His relatives probably don’t know what has happened. You may have felt unimportant in the midst of his complex and action-filled life, but this circumstance would force you to introduce yourself to his family in the worst way. You aren’t merely an ex-coworker. You are his dependable companion and friend during an emergency. Those emergencies may be mundane compared to the danger he faced daily, but he still trusted you to follow through.
How would you introduce him to your mother? If he was also merely the ex-coworker her daughter hangs out with, can she understand this profound grief?
You hang around the note app, noticing one more titled, “For her.”
There is no one else more deserving of delighting in this day than you. You tell me you do not care much for today, which I understand the reasons, but I am grateful for another year of you. Every time you feel like abandoning it all because you’re so tired I want you to remember your birthday. Yes, a reminder of the gift of time. When it all becomes too exhausting for you, there is my door. Waiting for its only other owner to arrive when she’s ready.
We are becoming so much more. I sometimes wonder if I carry this desire of wanting to become more with you, a bit more than you. With the gift of time, I will try to express my feelings better.
You bring ease to those of us around you. You are lovelier and more perfect than tranquil seas. A calming force that the drifting autumn leaves cannot try to compete with.
I love you. Wholeheartedly.
You hug at the blazer on your lap. Staining it with tears. Picking up your cell phone to walk to your bedroom balcony, opening the camera app, you hope. As you take an image of the rosy horizon, you hope. You hope that these memories won’t become such a painful occurrence in the future. With every passing day, signs of a day turning into an evening would make it difficult for you to forget him.