Chapter Text
In the godforsaken hole in the middle of nowhere where Nobara was born, her grandmother's brother had a potato field.
Nothing very big, barely more than ten furrows, but just enough for the boys at school to make fun of her by calling her a farmer or chanting her name every time mashed potatoes were served in their mediocre little canteen. As if they didn't each have at least one chicken coop in their garden. Nobara doesn't like potatoes, neither the taste nor the shape or the colour. So you can understand her reaction when half her classmates – that is to say only one of the two – turns out to be the spitting image of a potato.
Full cheeks, eyes too big for his face of the dullest shade of brown, under which twin scars do nothing to improve the potato look, and pink hair, of all odd colours. He looks stupid. He is, Nobara finds out soon enough. Too much energy trapped in a teenager's body right next to Sukuna – because someone obviously failed to warn her during registration that she'd be rubbing shoulders with the vessel of the King of Curses, ridiculous – bouncing here and there, sometimes clinging to Gojo's neck and sometimes leaning on Fushiguro's shoulder, always with the reactions of a five-year-old discovering the world of grown-ups. No, the moon doesn't follow anyone, no, the coloured reflections on the ground are not the basis of rainbows but gasoline, no ghosts don't exist. Although the last one can be questioned.
Nobara has always had a knack for ending up with the least buttery side of the toast: a teacher who believes that hiding your eyes gives you personality, a potato and a dark guy who pretends not to like potatoes. The only butter she can scrape off her toast is Tokyo. Finally, Tokyo. The trains, the shopping streets, the polluted air, the clothes, the restaurants. The backdrop of Saori's life has now become her own, the peaceful sounds of the countryside replaced by the cacophony of cars in the city that never sleeps. That's what she's made for, her hair shining honeyed under modern streetlights while her nails sink into a curse.
A boy applauds, another grumbles audibly, a man invites them to eat. That's what she's made for.
When she's told that he's dead, the first thing that comes to Nobara's mind is her grandmother receiving a pallet of potatoes from her brother.
“Stop giving me so many,” she said, “I don’t know where to put them anymore.”
"Anywhere is fine. Potatoes are resilient."
The memory is hazy at best. There aren't even any voices in it, just mouths with corners softened by time moving to the rhythm of words once spoken. There are colours too, green here, yellow there, but never anything consistent, just the knowledge of what was said hovering in the air so much clearer than Tokyo's. Nobara hasn't seen a star since she arrived and never will again if it means not going home. Because it's still home, this place with obnoxious people, or just the ones she deigns to recognise, the countryside where she let Fumi fade with the landscape until her long black hair could be mistaken for the branches of the nearby maple trees.
On one hand, potatoes are resilient; on the other, Itadori only lasted two weeks in her life before his own hand ripped out his heart, or so she was told.
Nobara doesn't really think about it, neither when she wakes up in the infirmary nor during her short convalescence. She must be the only one given Gojo's absence and Fushiguro's funeral silence. He seems torn between confessing to a crime and following Itadori to the grave, his eyes dark as they have never been in the short time Nobara has known him. She doesn't think about it even when she's eating the worst dinner that has ever landed in her stomach, since she made it herself, and still not when she's using the empty desk between hers and Fushiguro's to store her make-up bag, squeezing it between unfinished homework that will never be marked and manga magazines.
It was only much later, in the shower as the hot water trickled between her shoulder blades, that the thought caught up with her mind.
There, clear as day, nasty as night, a cut crosses her forearm. Nothing very long or deep, but located right in the middle of the forearm to be impossible to miss, an injury that demands attention to anyone willing to let their eyes wander. It's recent, still red and somewhat swollen, Nobara soaps herself first before giving it her full attention. She knows where it came from before she can even try to remember; perhaps from an imaginary blow of a curse, from debris thrown in his direction, a bad fall. But no, index finger running over the cut, measuring the extent of the swelling, pressing to get a response of pain or a gush of pus.
Nothing comes, or almost nothing, apart from Itadori's voice apologising again and again as the three of them sit in the training dojo, Gojo supervising them with the minimum of effort. Armed combat, he announced cheerfully that day, the one just before their mission to the detention centre, after ordering them to dress comfortably. Then he handed each of them a weapon. Fushiguro weighed his brass knuckles in disbelief while Nobara and Itadori had been dragged in the middle to fight, each with a sharp knife. It was a fiasco, of course, and maybe Gojo knew how it would turn out because he couldn't stop giggling the whole time. Nevertheless, they tried to make the best of it, dodging, parrying, cleaving the air with wide arcs and hard blows. Itadori was fast. Nobara was agile.
They danced between blows and sweat until Itadori got the upper hand, not without slashing her arm with his blade. He paled. He threw the knife away as if it had burned him. He apologised. Nobara was annoyed, of course, but it was nothing more than a small gash, wasn't even bleeding, nothing to make a fuss about.
She forgets about the wound, and the boy with it, until she no longer does. There, in the shower, her hair still coated with conditioner, Nobara traces the cut with her finger. Where her skin opens up to show even more skin, just darker, angrier, her index finger runs over it again and again until the red becomes even redder. Nobara ends up placing three fingers over it to stop the back and forth motion. Then four. Then her palm. Then her forehead.
From this angle, forehead on palm and palm on arm, the conditioner slides into her eyes like a child on a toboggan. It tickles her eyelashes before entering and leaves hand in hand with a few salty tears that it manages to collect along the way. It burns, just like the hiccups lifting Nobara's chest, just like the tightness in her throat that seems to have been wrapped in barbed wire.
The water has long since turned cold.
They meet their senpais the day after his death and between introductions, the start of basic training and the discovery that Maki is awesome, the thought that Itadori would have gotten along with everyone slips in like a book on a shelf. Quick, unobtrusive, if not for the scraping of the cover against the hardwood. He would have challenged Maki, would have cuddled Panda, would have tried to understand the meaning of Inumaki's words. He would have, simply. But he can't, not anymore, and Nobara has to stop thinking about a boy she only knew for two weeks. Besides, he was just a random not so long ago, someone whose negative emotions created monsters that killed her colleagues. And yet, when Fushiguro mentions him while they're waiting for the second years, her lower lip trembles with unshed tears.
The band-aid on her forearm rubs uncomfortably against the fabric of her uniform jacket. Every movement Nobara makes reminds her of what's there, a small gash caused by the clumsiness of a dead classmate. Normally, it would have irritated her that her perfect, well-nourished skin, which she spends hours caring for and waxing, was open like that. But these are clearly not normal times, because when she raises her arm to try her best to cushion the fall kindly offered by Panda, the scrape of her sleeve on the band-aid brings her a strange comfort. Nobara lands hard on the grass, vision a mixture of green and blue, and can almost hear Itadori's laughter giving her a headache as his shrill voice wraps around the words me too, me too! Throw me too!
Nobara sees pink, briefly through the blades of grass, but it's only Panda's armband. Fuchsia pink, not even pale.
"Four out of ten for the landing! If you can't control your fall, at least protect your head," Panda shouts at her from where he had launched her into the air.
She takes a few seconds to look at the sky, blue, vast, far away, until its clarity burns her retinas. The morning dew that had survived the summer sun begins to seep into her hair fanned out across the ground. Nobara then sits down, noting the grass staining her skirt and tights green, before standing up for another round of throws.
Her sleeve rubs against the band-aid.
One day passes, two days pass. Nobara gets up every morning and goes to bed every night, trains to kick Kyoto's students up the arse and goes on missions where she shines as she always does. She sometimes drags Fushiguro wherever she can, where he accepts with resignation. Nobara ends up stopping though. his dark expression casts a black veil over even the sunniest summer day. How he does it she doesn't know but she doubts that it wasn't just Itadori's heart that was ripped out that day, his followed without even leaving his ribcage. Fushiguro is constantly pale, gloomy, heavy-eyed and slow-limbed. His black dog shreds curses as if they were its last meal and his bird makes lightning roar in the sky, all rage and anger, so much so that Nobara feels it vibrate in her bones and make her marrow tremble.
He's frustrated. What for? She doesn't know. But what she does know is the feeling of hatred towards villagers, towards a grandmother who doesn't understand that the choice is quickly made between dying of a curse and dying of boredom in a village as old as the world, hatred towards oneself. Falling asleep dissatisfied and waking up even more so. The presence of absence heavy in the air, so thick it sticks to the palate and floats in the back of the mouth, the cacophonous sound of silence in rooms and corridors, the coldness of summer and the bitterness of pastries.
But more than frustration and rage, hatred, there's the inexplicable guilt that stagnates in the depths of his gaze, lingering long enough to have decanted and returning to the surface at every mention of Itadori. There's also the haunted reflection that appears here and there before leaving as if it was never here in the first place. Fushiguro looks like someone who hides a corpse under his mattress and doesn't know what to do with it, on the lookout for anyone ready to catch him. A predator having hunted the wrong prey, teeth still red with blood.
When she tells him, he looks into her eyes for the first time in a long time. Big, blue, wide, perhaps a little too wide, contrasting with the dark circles bluing his skin. She wouldn't admit it with a knife to her throat, but Nobara was scared at the time. They'd stared at each other like that for a moment, for seconds, until the air in the room thinned to the size of a thread.
Nobara had stepped back. Nobara had been scared, if only for a moment. But the thread never broke. Fushiguro had just frowned and turned away, grumbling about her bad temper, leaving the classroom where they had sat to do some homework.
Whatever. What a weird guy.
She finds herself rubbing the sleeve of her uniform where just underneath lays the band-aid more times than she wants. That damn band-aid. She's changed it twice now, although it's no longer necessary to wear one. There's no more swelling, no colour, not even a pale pink, just a thin line of crust that you wouldn't even doubt existed unless you ran your hand over it. You can't even see it any more, it's gone, has disappeared just like the one who placed it on her arm in the first place. Just as ephemeral too, lasted the the time of a blink. The time to realize its presence, the ah it's here before it vanishes without leaving anything behind, no trace of its stay.
Nobara thinks about it in the light of days and the shadow of nights, thinks about it between bites of mediocre breakfast, the sweet taste of brown sugar pancakes now a mere memory just like him, when her sleeveless top lets the band-air on her arm press against the cold wood of the table. Nobara thinks, thinks, thinks. It's not like her. She's not like that, she never looks back, she leaves the only friend of her age rotting in their nameless village to seize more opportunity somewhere else, she has no problem killing a human if it means a winning point in the exorcists' side. And yet.
She's still thinking about it now, lying on her bed, head buried deep in pillows. Her brown eyes riveted on the cut. Or rather what's left of it. The band-aid was ripped off on impulse and carelessly thrown on the floor, leaving the skin underneath painfully red. But it doesn't matter, does it? Because no matter how much Nobara mistreats that fucking scratch, her skin will eventually return to being smooth and soft and everything it was before Itadori inadvertently cut it open. An expressionless blank canvas. Empty of the only proof she has that this boy ever existed.
Because he left her with nothing, okay? Nothing, no trinkets or friendship bracelets – he seemed like the kind of guy to do that with seashells – or even a single photo. Nothing. Just brief recollections not long enough to stick in her memory, flashes of pink and laughter the moment of a blink. Soon his voice would become more and more distant in these memories, before they became mute like the films her parents still watched from time to time, nostalgic of a time when everything was better than what they have today. Then will follow the features of his face, the big brown eyes and their scar, the easy smile that always stretched the skin of his cheeks, the red of his uniform, that pink, that damn pink that Nobara's mind tries and fails to find everywhere.
But it's never the right one, too light or not enough, too dark or just not Itadori's. It's never enough. Never enough. She'll forget his voice, his face, the humour of his jokes, even his name, and when, years from now, someone will ask her about her classmate who died in his first year, Nobara will have no idea who they are talking about. She'll be reminded of his name and Nobara won't have a face to put under Itadori Yuuji.
He just appeared one day, looked around for a chair like the one she reserves for those worthy of staying in her life, found none and left again. Only to come back smiling brightly and noisily dragging his own chair behind him. But Itadori never sat on it, just set it down firmly, and probably looked at it from a distance like a bricklayer at a well done work, before disappearing.
And now Nobara has an empty chair forever gathering dust in her mind.
It's ridiculous. It's laughable. It's hilarious. It's driving her mad.
Kugisaki Nobara doesn't back down in the face of adversity. She takes the bull by the horns with her bare hands, rises to the challenge with her head held high and remains resplendent throughout. There is toughness in her beauty and grace in her impulsiveness. It's that same impulsiveness that makes her sit as she often does now, cross-legged on the sheets of her bed, arm stretched out in front of her. Her skin glows under the lights of the ceiling as it should, she wouldn't have it any other way. The only barely visible flaw is that little line of crust, the same beige as the rest of her skin.
Itadori had left her nothing. The only thing Nobara has of him is this tiny imperfection and even that will disappear in a day or two. That sounds like defeat. And since when has she ever declared herself defeated? Since never.
Her fingers run over it one last time before scraping off one end. The crust comes off easily and slips under her perfectly rounded fingernail, painted green just a few hours before. But the crust is so old that it doesn't take any skin with it. Nobara frowns. Truly, until the end Itadori did not make anything easy for her. And he expects her to let him go so easily? She's trapping him here and now for as long as Nobara has breath flowing in and out of her lungs. Serves him right.
She pushes the tip of her fingernail into the thin line, pink sinking into beige like a decoration on a cupcake, and when the pressure isn't enough, digs into the skin. Slowly at first, then more ferociously, more angrily. Angry at herself for ruining the skin she has worked so hard to maintain –what artist tears up their own canvases?– angry at Itadori for staying so little but so strong at the same time, angry at herself for tasting the sweetness of spring in its full swing, the equinox when the day is perfectly split in two, and for taking it for granted, let alone getting used to it. She digs, she scrapes, she pierces. Until the pink of her fingernail comes out as red as the cut and the skin around it. It's back to what it was in the beginning, maybe worse: a vermilion smile drooling down her forearm, contrasting in authentic brilliance under the lights of the ceiling lamps. The pain is there, but barely registered.
There is, for a moment, a brief moment, shame. Heart beating in her chest, blood pulsing vigorously through veins, soiling the sleeve of her shirt ever so slightly, there is shame. There's what Saori would say or even Fumi wouldn't have approved but also Saori had left me hair clips and Fumi wouldn't have stopped me though.
People come and go in Nobara's mind, her parents' indifference, her grandmother's annoyance, the villagers' gossip, Saori's hair clips, Fumi's silent disagreement, Gojo's curiosity, Fushiguro's disbelief, Maki's confusion—
Itadori would have stopped me.
Itadori's gone.
Nobara does it every day.
She has a principle: if she undertakes something, she either does it well or she doesn't do it at all. And if her impulsiveness has made her bleed, then her rationality will make it worthwhile.
It's almost routine, comes as naturally as spreading your day cream on your cheeks. First a shower, then shaving, hair care, skin care; cleansing, toning, serum, moisturising, eye cream, sunscreen, picking the crust off the cut, disinfecting, bandaging, make-up, vanilla mist and a final look of approval in the mirror.
Get out, be amazing, whether in class or on a mission, a bit of shopping, come back. Take off the uniform, sticky with summer sweat and curse residue, take a shower or not, maybe save it for the evening, but in any case take off the band-aid and rip off the crust once more.
It's the best way of ensuring that a scar will form. Nobara refuses to use a blade or anything else to make the wound deeper or bigger, she won't go that far. Not a question of pain, she's an exorcist who throws nails at monsters, but more of pride. Dignity. Whatever this feeling is called. A little bit too because Itadori would be rising from the grave at breakneck speed if he knew what she was doing to keep track of him. Just a little bit.
There's also this paradox or philosophical experiment or whatever— Theseus and his fucking boat with planks that aren't really his anymore and a boat that isn't really his anymore.
So there she is, picking on it everyday until it leaves a fairly visible scar. It's been a month. You'd think she'd get over it by now.
"You stupid potato," Nobara curses under her breath as she presses a tissue to her forearm, the skin having been ripped off with too much force. Blood blooms on the fabric.
Turns out Itadori did actually get out of his grave.
Nobara empties a whole bottle of disinfectant into the raw wound. Her whole arm pulses with pain in response. Fuck him. Fuck the Kyoto's students. Fuck Mai and her witch cosplaying friend. Fuck the curses that attacked them, but most of all fuck her for being so naive, so weak. While she was tearing off her skin he was watching movies in a basement with a stuffed toy. The worst thing? She only has herself to blame. That's what you get when you don't want to forget some random guy you've known for barely two weeks. Nobara should have just cried a few tears and bought flowers for his grave, been normal. But normal doesn't apply to sorcerers, just look at Fushiguro who seemed to come back to life at the mere sight of their respective idiot. You'd think he'd just risen from the grave too.
There had been this air since Itadori's death –his non-death– a silence that neither Nobara's complains nor Fushiguro's exasperated answers and even less the ruckus that the second years brought with them could fill. This silence deepened in the dark circles around his blue eyes, painted on his alabaster skin with harsh brushstrokes.
She made Itadori kneel down while holding a funeral frame. Even took a few pictures. Next time he dies she'll have his stupid sorry face framed in her photo gallery.
"This is a bad idea."
"No, it's not." Nobara presses too hard on the bottle in her hand. The disinfectant drips onto the cotton wool and spills onto her fingers. She swears, turning her hand from left to right to stop the disinfectant dripping onto the carpet while the other holds Itadori's ear firmly. "Ow, ow! Stop pulling it!" He complains.
"I'm not pulling it," Kugisaki replies, pulling on it.
They are sitting on the floor of her messy bedroom. More clothes than usual litter the floor and her desk chair disappears completely under trousers and tops. A few skirts lay here and there, along with a grey sneaker, its twin missing. Nobara wouldn't, under any circumstances, even with a gun to her head, let any XY chromosomes into her room and pollute her air, dirty her walls, desecrate her sanctuary— but the trendy new café she saw on Instagram only serves their colourful latte at half price if the customers are wearing their sponsor's earrings. And Nobara wants the pink and purple one, she can already imagine the incredible photos it will make. Not to mention that this korean influencer made a story with one.
But here's the thing: going alone will show the people there that she's only here for the discount like a scavenger, no matter how popular the place is. Nobara has to go with someone but Maki flatly refused, preferring to practice knife throwing, she's not really close to Inumaki, Panda isn't even an option and Fushiguro would scare away the clientele with the look on his face if she dragged him into town again. Five successful attempts out of thirteen so far.
The only option left to her was the resurrected man. And, as Nobara mentioned, wearing earrings is a must to get the discount.
"This is a very good idea," she declares. She passes the cotton over the whole ear, front, behind, the cartilage and its curves, before taking a needle out of the bowl of boiling water where it was resting. Nobara points with her chin to the lighter near Itadori's crossed legs. "Bring the flame clo
"This is a bad idea," Itadori repeats but lights the lighter on the needle anyway. He stays like that for about five seconds and then turns it off. "It's a very good idea," she retorts. They've been having this conversation since Nobara invited Itadori in her room ten minutes ago. He'd followed without question, too happy that she'd finally deigned to speak to him after his surprise entrance to the Sister School event, and didn't notice the disinfectant, needle and earrings until it was far too late. A rabbit caught in a trap before he even realised it. Nobara would have been proud if he hadn't made it so easy, just repeating every two minutes what a bad idea this was. He wasn't wrong though.
"This is the best idea I've ever had," is all Nobara gives as a warning before piercing the lobule. The skin resists until she applies enough force to break the resistance, the needle sinking like a knife into butter. Not the softest butter, but butter nonetheless. It sinks and sinks until it emerges on the other side. Itadori wriggles slightly, but Nobara knows it's just for show— she's seen him break walls and run headfirst into them. She quickly pulls out the needle and pushes in the disinfected earring. It doesn't take more than five minutes, and even less for the other ear. Once the job is done Nobara inspects both ears with an expert eye, her hand turning Itadori's jaw from right to left.
"Looks good enough," she settles for, satisfied. Itadori doesn't seem to share her opinion. "What if it gets bad?" he asks as he turns Nobara's little mirror in all directions. His earrings move with the motion, two small red dragons tinkling against dangling stars. Nobara's are purple, to match the latte she's a hundred percent having now.
"Then Ieiri-san will take care of it."
"She won't be happy."
"She won't give a fuck," Nobara replies as she stands up. They don't have all day. She makes Itadori clean up the mess this operation has caused while she picks out her clothes, then kicks him out when he suggests she wear more colours for once. Ugh, just because warm colours look good on him doesn't mean they look good on everyone.
Nobara finds him waiting for her in the hallway, stupidly shaking his head to hear the dragons and stars jingle together. She did well picking them in red since Itadori seems determined to wear his red shoes until the fabric dies on him. However, Nobara almost has to tie the boy's hands behind his back when they move towards his pierced lobes for the umpteenth time. "But they itch!" Itadori complains, back pressed against the train door while she sits next to a group of high schoolers. They whisper among themselves, looking from Nobara's earrings to Itadori's, sparkling in the yellowish sunlight that the windows let through. His hair seems lighter like this, and with the sun in his face, his eyes are more gold than they've ever been. They're looking. Perfect, Nobara thinks. She crosses her legs, places her hands on her knee, puffs out her chest and for once the pride spreading on her face is not a product of herself.
A peacock is good. Two peacocks is better.
“Take a red latte,”she orders once they arrive at the cafe. The queue is ridiculously long and despite the generous number of tables, none are free. Nobara carefully scrutinizes the slightest gesture of getting up: picking up a coat, rummaging through a bag, scraping a chair.
“But I don’t like coffee!” Itadori complains, again, and sometimes Nobara wonders if she's going out or babysitting. The latter seems to be the most accurate given how he looks bewildered at the decoration of the café, stars in his eyes with a perpetual smile. She almost commented on it if not for the couple—ugh—who just got up from a table in the back. Well, he did spend two months in a basement. "Did I ask?” she retorts and sends him to take the place. He goes with a sulky step. She tries not to smile when it's her turn to order.
One order and a dozen selfies later, Nobara is dragging him from shop to shop with the rest of the latte still in her hand. She can feel her phone buzzing with Instagram notifications and can't help but smile, pleased with the result of the earrings matching their drink. Even took a photo of Itadori when he wasn't looking, his gaze glued on a dog on the other side of the shop window. Red really suits him, even Gojo seems to have realised that by touching up his uniform with it. Or maybe he had no idea and just wanted to show his infinite favouritism towards the idiot.
Said idiot who trails behind her as if the bags he carries are heavy for him. This boy can lift a truck but cries over six bags, unbelievable. As Nobara expected, the discount on the coffee left her with still enough money to go shopping and increase the number of clothes in her wardrobe. The more arrows the better right? She looks, she tries on; skirts, dresses, tops, pants, shoes. She's sublime in one, a little less in the other, but every time Nobara draws the curtains of the dressing room brown eyes light up as if they were seeing her for the first time.
She missed this, she thinks as he rummages through hangers to find the blue version of the long, sequined dress she's holding, she missed him.
The way back is calm. Itadori is still talking, when is he not, but his voice is lower than during the day, his tone a gentle mixture of all the feelings that can describe happiness. He is happy. Nobara is too, in a way, her feet burning in flat heels, body sticky with sweat and a slight headache. Happiness sounds like dragons and stars.
She takes pity on him when they have to climb the hundreds of steps to reach the school grounds and carry four bags out of the ten he is holding. Maybe she overdid it a little today. Or maybe not, it's not his fault that everything suits her. That's what Nobara thinks when she almost bumps into Itadori's back in the middle of the stairs. "What the—” He stopped walking suddenly without warning, one step higher than her. Nobara watches perplexed as his back increases in size, as if he's taking a deep breath, shoulders reaching up to the crimson sky, before he suddenly reaches out an arm towards her.
Nobara nearly receives the bag he's holding in her face.
"What's with you?" She asks after narrowly dodging the small brown paper bag. Her hair moves in the motion and sticks unpleasantly to her forehead.
"I bought you this," is what Nobara receives in response, soft and low and nothing like giving a gift sounds coming from Itadori. He's always loud about it, calling Fushiguro every time he stops by the bookstore because what was the name of the book you liked again? and shouting to anyone who will listen that there are tartlets in the oven but the pistachio ones are reserved for Gojo. Nobara squints at the bag and notes that it's from the store she bought two oversized tops on sale.
"It's long sleeved but light for summer. I think. That's what the saleswoman said anyway." Itadori continues, eyes looking everywhere but at Nobara's confused face until it gives way for a beat, and that's when she sees it. The blame, the guilt, the desolation. The wind rises and caresses Nobara's bare arms, naked by the sleeveless top she is wearing, brushes the scar on her forearm that Itadori tries and fails not to look at. "I didn’t think it was going to scar,” small, low. "Sorry.” Even lower, fragile.
Nobara blinks. Takes the bag in both hands, the straps of the others digging into the flesh of the back of her elbows, and pulls out the cloth. A cotton cardigan greets her, soft and silky and of an orange like her grandmother's pumpkin soup. Warm, thick, tasty.
"Looks a bit like your hair, right?" He looks at her at last, tired, sweaty, smiling. Dragons and stars tinkling together.
Nobara blinks again. "It's so ugly."
She wears it the very next day, with high-waisted black jeans, and can't help thinking that she looks dressed for Halloween.
"It doesn't suit you," Maki comments when she sees Nobara in the common room, her fir-green hair down for once. This is why she likes Maki, for her hard honesty and transparency. Now if only she'd let Nobara choose her clothes once in a while.
"I know," Nobara replies and goes to see what today's breakfast is made of. It's a Sunday, so no classes, no uniforms and, for the lucky ones, no missions. She finds Fushiguro sipping black coffee at the kitchen counter while pretending not to listen to what Itadori is saying to him as he prepares omelettes for Inumaki. Their eyes meet and his face lights up like a Christmas tree, or like the sky on New Year's Eve, radiant and noisy in its joy.
"Pancakes," Nobara orders, taking a seat next to Fushiguro.
"Pancakes?" Fushiguro arches an eyebrow.
"Pancakes!" Itadori is already getting out a bowl to crack eggs in.
She keeps herself busy while waiting for her breakfast, bickering half-heartedly with Fushiguro, looking at the comments under her Instagram posts from yesterday. One photo shows two lattes, one red and one mauve-pink, another shows Nobara in all her glory, another shows them both, dragons and latte and smiles making breathing easier just like that. Liked first by Fushiguro, of course. In all of them, you can still see her arm where the scar stands out like a sore thumb, contrasting with the softness of their surroundings.
Nobara still wears it proudly, the sleeve rolled up so that it's visible to everyone, the best bracelet she's ever worn. One that will never go. She wears her scars as well as her clothes, embellishing them effortlessly, although this orange cardigan raises the challenge very high.
Itadori says nothing, his hands busy juggling bewteen Inumaki's omlettes and her pancakes, however his smile going from ear to ear speaks enough for him. He's obviously happy that she wore it, pleased, content, touched, every synonym you can find, but knows very well that he should keep his mouth shut about it. A single comment and Nobara will lash out, burn the sweater at the first given opportunity for the sole pleasure of proving him wrong and maintaining a certain pride. A cat stroked the right way.
Good. He learns quickly.
"You chair takes too much damn space," Nobara finally says after the fifth knowing glance Itadori throws in her direction, all in poorly contained puppy-like excitement.
The puzzled look he sends her makes Nobara burst in laughter.