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At 8:41am, Yuuji burns breakfast. It’s not the first time, but usually it’s because he’s in a rush and overheats the pan, not because he’s exhausted and spacing out and the rice cooker shorted out. Which sucks, because it’s the first day all three of them are out of the infirmary, and Yuuji kind of wanted it to be special.
Long before everything that happened in Shibuya, the first years had settled into a rhythm in the common room: someone cooks, someone cleans, someone gets to sleep in and/or run interference on Gojou-sensei. Normally, Yuuji’s fine at cooking, even good—he was living on his own with too much time to spare for those last months with Gramps in the hospital, and Gramps had been insistent Yuuji figure out how to serve a proper meal and not burn down the house before they could sell it off. The nurses had been pissed when they realized the Itadoris were using a travel stove to ruin omurice right in the hospital room, the smell of burning eggs threatening to set off the fire alarm. But it was maybe the last time he heard Gramps laugh, and Yuuji wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Kugisaki is only alright so long as she’s not trying another fad diet thing, which has happened often enough that Yuuji is kind of used to carefully poking through the fridge before eating her food. Fushiguro was almost entirely useless at cooking at first—Yuuji has taught him a few things, but at the pace they were going, they might get to basic curry by the time they graduate—but he cleans like every spill in the common area has offended his morals, his friends, and his dogs.
Neither of them puts up a fuss over the burnt vegetables or soggy eggs. Yuuji idly wonders if they even noticed the food was bad.
“You look like shit,” Kugisaki tells him as she shoves it all into her mouth and chases it with a massive mug of coffee. Yuuji’s not sure what they would have done if they hadn’t found the teachers’ coffee stockpiles tucked away next to Principal Yaga’s old office. “Fushiguro, tell him he looks like shit, he actually listens to you.”
Fushiguro glances up from his own coffee long enough to grunt, and goes back to his breakfast. At his feet, his shadow seems to gurgle, jagged and stretched far past what the morning light should have allowed.
Yuuji smiles, but all that gets him is a judgmental look from Kugisaki. Since it’s her default state, Yuuji doesn’t think much of it. He does try to make his smile a little less forced. “I had a hard time sleeping,” he says.
Her good eye narrows. “So you didn’t sleep at all.”
“I slept enough.” Enough for nightmares, at least.
“Dude, you burnt the rice. Using the rice cooker. That’s basically impossible.”
So she had noticed. It makes his insides squirm unpleasantly. “I’m fine! Don’t worry about me,” he says, and takes a sip of water.
“That’s not an option,” she says, arms crossed over her chest.
The unpleasant feeling intensifies, making his skin prickle. “Why not?”
“Because—because it’s not, okay? I’m not fine, Fushiguro’s not fine, you’re not fine—”
“I’m fine,” Yuuji snaps, and the glass splinters in his hand.
Kugisaki freezes.
It’s barely for a breath, and she’s back to scowling like normal, but it makes him feel gross, like he’d just kicked a puppy. Just as bad is Fushiguro’s stare, his dark eyes steady and shadowed, and Yuuji can’t look at him.
He takes a deep breath and sets down the remnants of his glass. There are shards in his hand, but he doesn’t really feel anything, not even the bloodstained water slowly dripping down his palm. “I’m sor—”
“Don’t you fucking apologize,” Kugisaki says. “I won’t accept it. I’ll just—Stay here.”
And she rushes off to the bathroom, grumbling about blood stains and hand infections and ignoring Yuuji entirely.
“I am sorry,” he mutters to Fushiguro, who frowns. It’s not an angry frown, just frustrated. He wears it around Yuuji a lot these days.
“Don’t apologize to me, either,” he says. “It’s just a glass. You’ve broken worse.”
Yuuji laughs a little, and it feels like he’s swallowed sandpaper. “Yeah, I guess I have, right?”
Fushiguro’s frown deepens, creasing his forehead. “That’s not what I—I didn’t mean that,” he says.
“It’s okay!” Yuuji says. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m not right, either.” Moving quickly, his shadow ebbing and flowing like waves, Fushiguro grabs a handful of towels and napkins and drops them onto the table where Yuuji’s blood is starting to pool. Weird, how it doesn’t actually hurt. It should hurt. Maybe this is shock? Or adrenaline? It shouldn’t be enough blood for that…
Fushiguro is saying something, for the third time if Yuuji knows that level of irritation. “What?”
“I said—ugh, nevermind. Just let me…” With that, Yuuji’s hand is carefully braced in one of Fushiguro’s, who sets to plucking the shards of glass out of his skin.
Yuuji swallows, and wonders if the heat on his face has anything to do with minor blood loss. “Oh. Thanks, Fushiguro.”
“Do not tell Kugisaki this, but I agree with her,” Fushiguro says. His eyes are focused on methodically removing the shards from Yuuji’s hand, one bloody piece at a time.
“Didn’t you once say you can’t ever agree with Kugisaki, or her ego will explode out her ears,” Yuuji says.
Fushiguro gives him a look of deep exasperation from beneath his bangs before going back to his self-imposed task. “Shut up and listen. You aren’t okay.”
The unpleasant anger shivers beneath Yuuji’s skin again, and the only thing that keeps him from reflexively balling his fist is Fushiguro’s fingers digging in and holding on. Fushiguro smacks him upside the head with his free hand. “Cut that out, or it’ll go deeper.”
He breathes, and tries to relax. “What’s your point, Fushiguro,” he says.
“Just—None of us are okay,” Fushiguro continues. “And I, we won’t let you get hurt here. We’re your friends.”
Yuuji wants to believe him. Somehow, Jujutsu Tech’s campus had been the best place for Yuuji to go after Shibuya. Hiding in plain sight, maybe, what with almost every shaman in the country wanting him dead. There are plenty of backup generators and clean well water, and as long as he doesn’t try to leave the main buildings, no one will think anything of another injured shaman taking refuge in the school’s hollowed-out shell.
Having Fushiguro and Kugisaki around helps a little, what with everyone else either too injured to see him or wanting him dead. The second years had snuck into his room while he was under lock and spell in the infirmary, more for his protection than anything else, but all of them have been sent away from school grounds for fear of exposing their hiding spot. Ieiri-sensei and Ijichi are around, making a show of the school being barely functional and absolutely not a hiding place for teenagers up for execution, but not here except when they’re making sure Yuuji hasn’t tried to leave.
It’s not their fault. Yuuji wouldn’t really want to be around himself either.
There’s a sharp pinch in his palm as Fushiguro uses tweezers to tease out the last few shards, dropping them onto the towel with the remnants of the glass. That’s a lot of glass. And a lot of blood. Fushiguro simply wraps it up and drops it in the garbage, like it’s an everyday thing that one of his classmates exploded a glass over breakfast.
Look at what you’ve done—!
“Do you regret saving me?” Yuuji asks.
To his credit, Fushiguro doesn’t so much as flinch. He presses a clean cloth against Yuuji’s still-bleeding palm, other hand bracing Yuuji’s so he can’t move if it hurts. But Fushiguro’s shadow goes unnaturally still. “I told you before that I didn’t,” he says.
Before Shibuya. Before Yuuji destroyed everything. “What about now?”
“It’s not your fault,” Fushiguro says. He doesn’t meet Yuuji’s eyes.
That’s not an answer.
Yuuji doesn’t want an answer.
“I can’t believe the med kit doesn’t have any lousy liquid stitches, it’s an affront to—” She stops herself short and glares at the way Fushiguro is still cradling Yuuji’s busted hand in his. “Fuck off. It’s too early. I’m still mad. Stop that.”
Yuuji’s cheeks burn. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.”
Kugisaki’s face softens, so quick Yuuji might be imagining it, only to sharpen into a snarl. “Do you have the memory of a goldfish? What did I say about apologizing? I’m not accepting anything of that sort from the likes of you, Itadori.”
“Toss me the bandages,” Fushiguro says like he hasn’t heard a word she said.
She hurls it right at his face, and curses violently when he catches it effortlessly.
“I can do it,” Yuuji says.
Both his friends turn on him with the exact same glare. “No!”
“It’s just wrapping a cut,” Yuuji tries to insist, but he’s steamrolled over immediately.
“I told you—”
“—you won’t even realize you’re bleeding until—”
“—being a dumbass, the absolute height of moronic—”
“—going to lose your hand and I will kill you again—”
“Okay, jeez, fine!” Yuuji says, letting out a little laugh that almost feels for real. It doesn’t stop the bickering—nothing short of Maki-sempai can stop Fushiguro and Kugisaki once they get started—but that’s okay. It makes the two of them feel better, and Yuuji will take that above anything else.
He doesn’t tell them that the wounds heal themselves before they have a chance to bleed through the bandages.
For the most part, Yuuji’d been okay with all this. The condemned to die part of his life, at least. He’s always been better off living for someone else, whether for Gramps or his friends or now the rest of humanity, so it makes sense that he’ll die for them all too. Sure, he’ll die young, and who knows what all he’ll miss, but that’s all the more reason to live with what he’s got.
The parts he’s not okay with leave him scrubbing blood out from beneath his nails for days, broken and cracked from suddenly growing out too long and too dark in the times when his memory is nothing but a blank. He wonders if it would be better if he could remember on his own what happens when Sukuna takes over, process it maybe, but since his dreams have become invaded with agony-soaked memories, he decides it is better to keep that under wraps.
Some of the nightmares are clearly Sukuna’s dreams, full of archaic kimonos and burning castles, and Yuuji spends the next day slightly disoriented without an extra pair of arms to keep him balanced, ducking under door frames as though he’s twice his size. Others are nonstop replays of what Yuuji missed in his own body: the cracking of bones under his hands, the impossible throbbing of power as he rips the world apart, the euphoric shudder down his spine as hundreds of people scream and suffer and die. All of these nightmares suck, they suck so hard, but Yuuji can distance himself from them, at least for long enough to fall back into uneasy but dreamless slumber.
But the rest, they’re all Yuuji’s. Sukuna actually seems impressed when he bothers to notice at all, and offers no consolation but the echoes of his laughter when Yuuji wakes up with his heart racing and the sheets soaked through with sweat.
Sometimes, Yuuji’s subconscious will give him a break from the endless death and bloodshed to remind him of everyone he’s failed. He’s always been pretty good with faces, and his nightmares use every memory to maximum effect. Usually, they’re people he’s only met briefly, in those stark seconds before they’re shredded into viscera or in the case files that make up everything that is left over afterward.
Lately though, ever since Shibuya, he keeps seeing people he knows reflected in the flood of everyone his body has slaughtered and maimed. Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Junpei’s face, distorted and helpless and still breathing but dead in the eyes, dead in his soul, dead in all the important ways to die. Other times, it’s Nanamin, his body thrown to the ground like refuse, used up and empty. Yuuji wonders if that’s what his death will be, lost inside of Sukuna.
Does it make him selfish, to see himself in the death of his friends? Is he a bad person for imagining what it will be like to die empty and alone? It doesn’t help that Sukuna’s incessant whispering grows ever louder at the edges of his consciousness, can’t you kill someone else you love, I’m bored with reruns.
It’s 2:14am when Yuuji gives up on sleeping altogether and goes to make a cup of something warm. It’s far from the first time he’s done this, spending the pre-dawn hours with nothing but his thoughts for company. He can’t convince himself that he likes the quiet, the loneliness, but it’s better than being caught between not sleeping and not wanting to dream.
He’s surprised to hear the gentle hum of the generator working, set up in the common room so they can charge Fushiguro and Kugisaki’s phones or to occasionally run the kitchen appliances. The television is playing an old American horror movie, the B-movie Cronenberg based his on, and Yuuji almost gets up and walks away entirely. Maybe during the daylight, it will be easy to look at the screen and see a comically constructed fly’s head on a man’s body, roaming the streets of America. But Yuuji knows the ending, can already hear the tiny man screaming help me help me as the spider looms, and he couldn’t save anyone in the end.
On the couch, the blob of blankets stirs, revealing a messy-haired and baggy-eyed Kugisaki. A half-eaten bowl of crisps spills across the table, more than a little on the floor, and something bright and sparkly that glitters in the flickering light of the television. It looks like one of her new eyepatches. When Yuuji attempts to pick up some of the mess, she lurches towards the bowl with the dexterity of a sea slug in the desert. “Th’ hell took you,” she grouses.
“I didn’t know you liked old horror movies,” Yuuji says instead of answering her non-question.
“I don’t.” She yawns loud and hard enough that her jaw cracks. She isn’t wearing her eyepatch, and the hole where her eye used to be crinkles a little with the movement. “The special effects are terrible and the plot is as stupid as the science is bad.”
Not that Kugisaki knows much about teleportation. Yuuji wonders if he should ask Todou, before abruptly remembering why he can’t. “Then why are you watching it?”
She starts to gesture at something on the table, but abruptly grabs the crisps instead. “It’s what’s on,” she says, which is kind of true in that it’s on the screen, but Yuuji is becoming way too familiar with late-night TV broadcasts when he can get anything at all, and almost every night the only thing on is the news. He does his best Fushiguro I don’t believe you imitation at her, too tired to try to put it in words.
It must work, because she finally admits, “…I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmares?” Yuuji asks tentatively.
Kugisaki gives him a strange look. “I guess you’d know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no, I don’t want to talk about it. You’ve seen this movie before, right?”
Yuuji nods. “Yeah, it’s old but it’s good, only got punched when the machine—”
“Just shut up and get on the couch and explain why there’s an invisible cat.”
Yuuji sits on what he thinks is a pillow but turns out to be Kugisaki’s feet tucked under another blanket. She kicks him, but not that hard. “It’s not invisible, it’s—”
She kicks him again, harder this time. “Don’t spoil it either, jerkass!”
“I can’t spoil it if you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t even have subtitles turned on.”
“I don’t need subtitles, my English is impeccable.”
“Then why did you pick out a porno for Fushiguro’s birthday?”
“Oh my god just shut up and watch the damn movie.”
Which is how Yuuji and Nobara end up watching horror movies at terrible hours.
The unspoken rule is that whoever is first turns on the generator, whoever’s second makes snacks. It’s not like either of them is actively trying to avoid sleep—it would be so nice to actually get a full night, Kugisaki grumbles one night halfway through A Tale of Two Sisters, despite having claimed ten minutes earlier that she would never sleep again—but at least they might get a little rest this way, and as Kugisaki points out multiple times, misery loves company. Yuuji teaches Kugisaki how to make popcorn in a pan, and Kugisaki benevolently starts to keep extra soda and the good candy in the first year’s cabinet. It might have been a problem if Gojou-sensei ever finds out, but Yuuji tries not to think about that.
Every once in a while, they try something other than horror movies: they both like silly romance films, and Yuuji is delighted to discover that Kugisaki has a deep fondness for Hong Kong action flicks. (Yuuji suspects it has to do with buff women beating the crap out of each other, which he also appreciates alongside the wirework.) And that’s fun, but it doesn’t feel right. Romcoms are too sticky sweet, dramas aren’t visceral enough, historical movies bring a deluge of memories Yuuji shouldn’t have, Kugisaki nitpicks most scifi, pure comedies just feel wrong. Even the most brutal action movies seem too slick, too kind, because the good guys usually win at the end and there’s no one left with scars any deeper than their skin.
So they stick to horror, and Yuuji tries not to hear his friends’ screams wrapped up in styrofoam and green screens.
Some nights, Yuuji doesn’t even need to dream. Some nights, the memories are enough.
“You died,” Fushiguro had said. His tone was so bland it hurt, a riot in its absence of emotion.
Yuuji remembers how hard he tried to smile. “I got better, right? I’m alive.”
Furious dark eyes glared at him out of a too-pale face, and even now, unable to sleep, Yuuji stares at his ceiling and wonders if he could have ripped his own heart out to give it back, or if Fushiguro would kill him for that, too.
More often than not, Fushiguro tries to make it through the night in his room alone. He’s the only first-year allowed to leave campus, and he spends most of his days tracking curses in their immediate neighborhood, doing what Kugisaki's not physically ready to do and Yuuji no longer can. Yuuji would be jealous if he thought that meant his friend was sleeping peacefully, but he has bags under his eyes as thick and dark as the rest of them. When he does show up, it’s because he’s dragged in by bad sound mixing causing a too-quiet movie to become way too loud or an argument over set design or Kugisaki shrieking at the weakest of jump scares. He grumbles that they should shut the hell up, eats a handful of popcorn or candy, and then slumps against the nearest pillow until the sun comes up.
He doesn’t actually watch the movies, eyes half-open as he drifts in and out of awareness. But sometimes his hand lands on Yuuji’s, and it’s hard to keep from grabbing onto him like Yuuji is drowning and Fushiguro might help him breathe.
Tonight at 1:08am, Fushiguro appears right out of the shadows just as the old lady is meeting the samurai in the creepy han’nya mask, scaring Yuuji and Kugisaki so badly that Yuuji knocks over the table and Kugisaki throws the remote right at him.
He doesn’t even seem to notice it plonk off his shoulder and disappear into the darkness behind him. “Why are you watching old crap again?” he says.
“Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s crap—” Yuuji starts to say.
But Kugisaki cuts him off with, “Itadori wanted to watch the sex scenes,” and he shoves her into the couch face-first because that’s not why they’re watching this, it’s a classic and he really wanted to watch it without worrying about being punched by a stuffed animal or Gojou-sensei or Gojou-sensei with a stuffed animal. Kugisaki had even seemed to be getting into it, which usually doesn’t happen with the older stuff.
Fushiguro blinks slowly, and some of the shadows in his face clear. “Oh,” he says.
“That’s not—I didn’t—” Yuuji can feel his ears burning, he’s so embarrassed. “There’s not that much sex.”
“…oh,” Fushiguro says again. He glances at the screen, the old woman’s face frozen in horror, makeup stark and demonic and erotic only in the most aesthetic of ways. Kugisaki gives an absolutely unhinged giggle barely muffled by the couch cushions.
“She’s just mad because she’s scared and horny,” Yuuji grumbles, and all that gets him is Kugisaki trying to kick him in the balls. He shoves her back a little harder than necessary. “Mostly horny.”
Fushiguro looks between the two of them and sighs with the weight of someone accepting the end of the world. “I’ll make more popcorn,” he says, and heads to the kitchen.
“Bring us soda!” Yuuji calls, and releases Kugisaki so he can find the remote. She kicks him in the side for good measure.
(Once a kick like that would have hurt, but now it won’t even bruise. Yuuji deliberately swallows the instinct that he should kick her back, kick her through a wall and see what breaks first. It would be so easy.)
By the time Fushiguro’s back, bag of super sweet Gojou-sensei candy in one hand and a few cans of soda in the other, Kugisaki is trying to get Yuuji to rate how hot the movie monsters this week have been. That they’ve only watched two other movies and the other ones were about evil mermaids doesn’t seem to deter her, and Yuuji kind of sees her point even if the samurai tonight doesn’t actually count.
“Here,” Fushiguro says and drops the food unceremoniously on the table. Yuuji flashes him a smile in thanks—not that Fushiguro responds beyond ducking his head, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
“You want me to catch you up?” Yuuji asks. Kugisaki groans dramatically—which, come on, Yuuji’s summaries aren’t that bad, he just likes talking about the symbolism and the set design sometimes! Besides, it’s not like he’ll get the chance. Fushiguro doesn’t really care about the movies they watch. He just needs some rest.
But Fushiguro is always full of surprises. “Sure,” he says, and sits on the couch next to Yuuji, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin.
“Really?” Yuuji asks.
“Why?” Kugisaki demands.
Fushiguro doesn’t bother looking her way. “I like hearing you talk,” he tells Yuuji.
Yuuji’s brain shuts down a little. He swears he can hear Sukuna groaning in the back of his head, but he can’t really pay attention to much of anything other than how Fushiguro is slowly turning pink in the glow of the television.
“About…movies,” Fushiguro adds. “And plots. That stuff.”
He’s completely red, and all Yuuji can think is how cute that looks.
So he gives Fushiguro the widest smile he can manage and says, “Sure!”
“Why do I put up with this,” Kugisaki moans again, and flops over dramatically.
Ten minutes later, Kugisaki is loudly playing games on her phone while Yuuji’s explaining some of the setup (the claustrophobic takes through the grass are very important to show the relationship of the older and younger ladies!) when Fushiguro topples over, head drooping onto Yuuji’s shoulder. Yuuji pokes him gently in the arm, careful to avoid the fresh bruises. He must have gotten into a fight while he was out today, or some curses were acting up. “Fushiguro?”
He’s out cold, his face relaxed and calm, long lashes dark against his pale cheeks. His hair tickles the side of Yuuji’s chin with every slow rise and fall of his chest, but Yuuji doesn’t have the heart to move him. When’s the last time he looked so peaceful? It feels like months, maybe even lifetimes. At least this way, one of them can get some sleep.
Kugisaki jabs at Yuuji’s other shoulder, then his chest, using the sharp part of her immaculately trimmed nail. He tries and fails to bat her hand away. Undeterred, she curls up in her blanket instead, back leaning against Yuuji’s side. “How does he sleep like that,” she grumbles, but quieter than usual. “You’re at least 95% muscle. It’s not that comfy.”
Yuuji doesn’t know what muscle mass has to do with being a comfy pillow or how Kugisaki would know—is there a ratio or something? “Am too. Even Fushiguro’s shikigami like sleeping on me.”
“That has nothing to do with you,” she says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kugisaki opens her mouth to say something terrible, but seems to think the better of it. “It means you’re both dense, and you deserve each other,” she says, and presses play.
A blush creeps back onto Yuuji’s cheeks, but he doesn’t deny he wants this, wants to be someone that Fushiguro can fall asleep against, relaxed and open and safe. He’s not, but it’s a dream, that’s all. It’s nice to dream.
On screen, the older woman pries the han’nya mask off the samurai to reveal a grotesque misshapen face, and she contemplates a future she can’t possibly sustain.
They’re all scarred in new and different ways. Kugisaki especially, it’s hard to avoid the bandages on her face or the patch over her eye. She has started sparring again recently, but only against one of Principal Yaga’s old plushies, and even then she moves in fits and starts, limbs jolting as she pushes too hard or too fast, stumbling when she forgets to compensate for her lack of depth perception. Yuuji doesn’t mind slowing down for her—he always has to slow down, now—but he knows if he does, Kugisaki might never forgive him.
Of all of them, Fushiguro is the least physically injured. Ieiri-sensei let him go with a clean bill of health after less than a day in her infirmary, and the scratches and wounds that hadn’t vanished or healed in Shibuya had faded away with time. He’s usually the one that goes out for food and supplies when they need it, vanishing for most of the day and coming back with haunted eyes. But his shadows never stop moving, stretching overlong whenever someone enters campus or the walls creak in the wind, boiling over while he appears calm as ice. Sometimes Yuuji wonders what will happen if he steps on them at the wrong time, if they would wrap around him or swallow him whole.
Yuuji—well. He aches. Constantly. For how many fingers he’s eaten now, maybe his stomach should hurt, but his entire body thrums with energy, like he’s been laid on a bed of electrified needles. Yuuji should be scared of this new strength, how powerful he feels, like the world is made of tissue paper and all it would take to tear is a tiny little push in the wrong direction. He’s more worried that he’s not scared at all. It’s a strange counterpoint to the jagged scar between his eyes, or the half-healed fractures across his hands and arms, as if his body can’t decide if it should fix itself like a human or a curse. Maybe if he could get some shuteye, it wouldn’t be so bad. But he aches too much to sleep.
They could all use some sleep.
Instead, the three of them watch horror movies in the deepest hours of night and end up in a pile on the couch, squabbling over who has to sit on the lumps left by Gojou-sensei. It’s as close to rest as they’re going to get.
“When’s the last time you saw something in a theater?” Kugisaki asks at 3:38am. They’re watching something recent tonight, a low-budget zombie movie that Yuuji thinks is going to end with everyone dead, but Kugisaki bets that the makeup artist will survive.
(The usual bet is cleaning duty, a task that none of them really want to do but have collectively determined needs to be done. Fushiguro, despite showing up mid-betting procedures, does not get a say because he started the movie before the argument was finished. His couch privileges were revoked for the night. Yuuji would have felt bad, but now Fushiguro’s dozing with his head on Yuuji’s thighs, and he kind of doesn’t want to lose this just yet.)
Yuuji runs his fingers through Fushiguro’s hair as he thinks. For how spiky it looks, it’s soft, all the prickliness just for show. Fushiguro doesn’t so much as stir. Yuuji’s starting to wonder if he gets any sleep at all when he’s not on the couch. “It’s been awhile,” he says.
She makes a little humming noise. “A movie buff like you? You know how weird that looks.”
“I can’t exactly go now,” he says, and wow he sounds bitter.
“That’s not what I—shit, Itadori, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Yuuji waves his free hand dismissively. “It’s not a big deal.”
She smacks the gesture aside. “Stop that. Yes, it is.”
With anyone else, Yuuji could have forced a smile onto his face, ignored how wrong it feels to pretend to be happy. But Kugisaki’s never taken any of his shit, and she’s never stopped pointing out when he’s being stupid. It’s comforting, in a way, in how uncomfortably seen he feels. “I know,” he says. “But it’s fine. Really.”
She looks like she wants to argue, but they settle into an uncomfortable silence instead, the movie ticking along through the opening scenes. Five minutes in and no one’s dead, just some weird foreshadowing to an inevitable doom. It’s something to focus on, to wonder when someone else is going to die—
The remote is ripped out of his hand, and Yuuji tries his best to shield Fushiguro’s unsuspecting sleeping head from Kugisaki’s assault on the couch. “What the shit,” he splutters, probably too loudly but fuck.
“No,” she says, and slams the pause button. “No, it’s not fine.”
“Let’s just watch the movie, okay?” he tries to protest, but Kugisaki’s having none of it.
“I know you have nightmares,” she says, and Yuuji’s mouth clicks shut. “I can’t even imagine…No, don’t tell me, mine are bad enough. Every time I close my eyes, I see someone I know dead at my feet, or that monster with the patchwork face grinning at me through my own disembodied eye. Fushiguro won’t even sleep at all if he can avoid it. And I think it’s fucked up that the only school staff who know you’re here are pretending that everything’s going to be okay while you aren’t even allowed to leave the dorms because half of Japan wants you dead.”
“They’re trying to keep you safe,” Yuuji says.
“They’re trying bullshit. The school’s only safe until literally anyone comes nosing around. Nothing’s the same. Nothing’s going to be the same, except that we’re your friends. You don’t get to take that away from us.”
“But I—Sukuna killed so many people, with my hands,” Yuuji says, and the words feel like they’re ripped straight out of his chest. “I thought I could keep him back, but what if he does it again? What if he kills you? ”
Kugisaki’s frown turns into a scowl. “That’s not the point, Itadori. We’re staying with you.”
“You should have left me alone.”
“Fuck no.”
“It’s my fault!”
“It is not.” Kugisaki gestures at Fushiguro, who remains unconscious to the world. “When we got back from Shibuya, I was out of it for most of the time, but he refused to leave you alone with Ieiri or Yaga or even Ijichi if you weren’t awake, and that was before the higher-ups decided they wanted you dead. They had to move me in with you to get him out at all, and then he stalked Maki and Inumaki and Panda-sempai until they came too. They would have come if he’d just asked them instead of being a creep, too.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Yuuji says. His voice sounds small to his own ears.
“Sure we did,” Kugisaki says like she’s talking about the color of the sky or her dominance of the fashion world. “Last time you fake-died, you got stuck in the basement for two months. Now, you’re stuck in the basement again for who knows how long. We’re not taking any chances. We agreed, it’s better this way, and I’m not sleeping, and you’re not sleeping, and Fushiguro’s not sleeping, so we can all not sleep together. It’s not like Maki’s sleeping much either, she told me last time we talked she wishes she could be up with me—”
“She does, does she?” Yuuji says in a desperate attempt to diffuse Kugisaki’s ranting, and ducks the attempt to whap him on the head.
“Not the point, Itadori,” she says, but her cheeks are pink, and she has to take a moment to calm down.
With all the words gone, Kugisaki seems to deflate a little. She’s probably been holding all this in for days now, if not longer. Maybe she felt like it would worry him more to say something. Yuuji isn’t sure how he feels about that. He doesn’t want to worry anyone about him. It would be selfish. Right?
He pats her on the head, deliberately messing her hair. “You good?”
She nods sharply, and Yuuji grins. It actually feels like a real smile, too.
She prods him once right between the eyes, hitting the sensitive skin of his scar. Yuuji couldn’t ignore her if he tried. “Get this straight, Itadori. If you die again and make me cry, I’ll kill you. Slowly. Before Fushiguro can get his hands on you and kill you again. We’re your friends, and we’re not losing you.”
Yuuji’s not sure he can die, not without Sukuna making a fuss about it. That’s a horrible thought. “But—”
“I’m only going to be this sappy right now because it’s 4am and I want to actually watch this zombie movie, so shut up and listen to me for once in your life.” Her eye locks on both of his, all but gleaming with promise. “You’re not alone. We won’t let you be.”
As the movie starts again, Yuuji wants to say it might not be her choice. Between Sukuna, and the school, and everything happening now, Yuuji doesn’t even know if he’ll have tomorrow. He used to be fine with that. Then again, it used to feel like he could still live until he died. It felt like he could still make a difference.
At least right now, Kugisaki’s right. A momentary thing, but Yuuji will hold onto that as tight as he can.
“You should take him to a movie,” she tells Yuuji, voice thick with sleep. “Fushiguro. When this is done. He wants to go with you.”
On his lap, the teenager in question shifts slightly in his sleep, his shadow crawling up the couch and over Yuuji’s skin. “How do you know?” Yuuji says. “Wait, how do you know I want to ask?”
She somehow manages to sniff down her nose at him while lying curled up on the couch. “Consider it benevolent matchmaking as much as an act of self-preservation,” she says, and Yuuji coughs out an unexpected laugh. She smirks in self-satisfaction. “So? You do like him, right?”
Yuuji knows he’s blushing, even as he glances down to make sure Fushiguro is still asleep, still dreamless. “Yeah,” he says, and it feels like a confession. “I do.”
“Ha! Inumaki owes me lunch, he didn’t think you’d actually say it,” she says, which Yuuji should probably have felt offended by, but he’s too busy being fondly embarrassed that his friends were betting on him at all. “Then you’ll take my advice?”
“I’ll think about it,” Yuuji promises.
Kugisaki nods and sinks deeper into her blankets, lets them swallow her whole. “You’ll be glad you listened to me. You two might be the most disgusting creatures in the entire world, but you deserve to be happy.”
Kugisaki snores through the entire second half of the movie. Yuuji doesn’t tell her about the twist, but does her chores anyways. After all, she’s not wrong. It’s hard not to wonder what would happen if he could ask out Fushiguro. If they could go on a date. Would he even make it through a movie in the theater, or would he end up asleep halfway through the first act, breathing deep and steady into Yuuji’s shoulder?
Yuuji can’t. But maybe Fushiguro will find someone, someone who’s worth what Yuuji isn’t.
“I died,” Junpei says. Yuuji can’t look at him. His voice sounds right, lilting with that same pitch black humor. If Yuuji looks, maybe he’ll be fine, mocking smile on his face and eyes soft where his words are biting and hard. But this is nothing but a dream, and if Yuuji looks, he’s going to be wrong.
Yuuji has had this dream before. He knows what’s going to happen, like watching a movie he’s seen a thousand times. There’s no way to change what happens, what he does. All he can do is dream.
So he stares at the empty school corridor, clean tiles too white and empty windows open to a shadowless void. “I didn’t want that to happen to you,” he says.
Junpei laughs, and the sound rings like a bell in Yuuji’s head, pure and clean. “It has never mattered what you want, Yuuji. You’re just one kid, and so was I, and neither of us chose to change in the ways that we did. That’s part of being human.”
The corridor is an unblemished white so stark it hurts to see where the edges of black and red have bled out from beneath his sneakers, a stain he can’t stop from spreading. “You shouldn’t have died,” Yuuji says. “It wasn’t…You didn’t have a chance. You deserved to live.”
Footsteps, hideous and squelching, lurch their way across the corridor, closer and closer. “Everyone deserves to die,” Junpei says, and he still sounds fine, he still sounds the same, and Yuuji still refuses to look. “It’s why we’re fascinated with death, prodding at the edges and wondering when it will be our turn to fall. That’s part of being human, too. We all die alone.”
“But you could have lived!” If you—
If I—
The corridor is bleeding now, gashes torn out from where he stands, deep and dark with untreated wounds, leaking into streets overflowing with the twisted bodies of the dead and dying. Something warm drips onto his hands, sinking beneath his nails and up his arms, dyeing his hands the same shade as the lifeblood oozing out around him.
And through it all, he can hear Junpei smiling.
“I wanted to help,” Yuuji says.
“And yet I died anyway,” Junpei says, and his voice is echoed a hundredfold by familiar screams.
“Look at what you’ve done—!” Sukuna whispers, and Yuuji’s own hands dig into his cheeks, fingers twisting his neck forward and needle-sharp nails prying open his eyes to make him see—
It’s 2:49am and Yuuji might be cursed. Or cursed again. Kitchen cursed, which is kind of ironic all things considered. Because the salt has vanished, it took five tries for the stove to turn on, Kugisaki forgot to wash the best popcorn pan last night so he’s stuck using the old wok with the too-thick bottom, and it’s been at least fifteen minutes but none of the kernels have made so much as a peep.
Kugisaki’s not even around. Yuuji hadn’t realized he’d gotten used to her company between nightmares and movie nights, and the kitchen feels emptier than usual. He’s fine with it, he is, but if she’d been around, or Fushiguro had wandered in…
She’d said he’s not alone. And he’s not, he knows in his head that his friends are just down the hall, that they’d be here in a minute if he asked. But he doesn’t want to bother them with something as minor as another sleepless night.
Yuuji’s about ready to give this up as a lost cause. He’ll have a can of soda from Gojou-sensei’s cabinets or something. So he lifts off the lid and is immediately attacked by violently popping kernels.
“Shit shit ow shit—”
“Itadori?”
He spins, throwing a punch by pure reflex, but just as he recognizes Fushiguro his elbow clips the wok and it flips off the stove and onto the floor. The oil hisses on the stove, the floor, even on the ceiling. Yuuji stares at it for a long moment, something terribly dark and angry simmering under his skin, and it takes every bit of sleep-deprived control to not smash the wok into pieces.
It’s just popcorn. He’s fucked up popcorn more than once, it’s not a big deal. It’s not.
Pale hands, long and calloused, pull his fists away from where he’s balled them at his sides. “Do you feel this?” Fushiguro says, and runs a finger from his knuckles to his forearm.
“Feel wh— ow.” Part of his arm is splattered with oil, turning his skin an angry red beneath the tan. When did that happen?
Fushiguro lets out a long-suffering sigh. Translating Fushiguro’s grunts and glares takes time to learn, but Yuuji has gotten pretty fluent. You need to be more aware of your surroundings, it says, as much as it says, stop hurting yourself and why are you like this. Sure, some people probably think it’s off putting, how he can seem so uncaring, but there is a ferocious heart buried beneath only for the chosen few to know about. Yuuji doesn’t know why he’s one of those people Fushiguro chose, doesn’t think he deserves it, but he’s so glad.
“I’m fine,” he says instead of any of that, and smiles. “It’s just a burn.”
This sigh’s a little different, don’t lie to me edged with you’re being stupid. Which—yeah, Yuuji’s not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, but he works really hard to not lie to Fushiguro.
“…burn cream and bandages are behind the ramen packets,” he says, and Fushiguro’s moving before the words are out of his mouth. Not that Yuuji has much of a chance to protest, because he’s dragged across the kitchen by the elbow. It’s not like he’s going to run for it. Where would he go?
He lets himself be shoved into a chair, pouring a bottle of cool water over the burn while Fushiguro rifles through the cabinet with a flashlight in his hands, haphazardly placing ramen and spices and a few random candy packets on the counter until he comes up with the first aid kit. It hurts, but really, Yuuji’s had much worse. If he wasn’t thinking about it, he wouldn’t even notice.
“Give me your arm,” Fushiguro says.
Yuuji doesn’t even have to extend his arm before Fushiguro’s patting it down with a dry cloth. “It’ll heal by tomorrow, maybe the day after that at worst,” he says.
Fushiguro grunts in acknowledgement, but that doesn’t stop him from slathering a thin layer of burn cream across the blistering skin. His fingers leave behind a trail of goosebumps that have nothing to do with the burns.
“Really, it only hurts now, I’ll be fine tomorrow,” Yuuji says.
“You’re hurt, and not taking care of this will make it hurt more before it gets better.” To emphasize his point, he wraps the first layer of gauze, and Yuuji can’t hold back a hiss of pain. Fushiguro gives him a judgmental look, because of course this hurts.
But his pain isn’t the point, so Yuuji tries again. “You don’t have to waste supplies on me. I know there aren’t enough if something goes wrong, and I’m the last person you should be bothering with—”
The room darkens for a split second, inky black darkness splintering across the flickering lights. In the movies, this sort of thing is supposed to be horrifying, full of scare chords and jittery cameras. But coming from Fushiguro, it feels strangely comforting. Fushiguro scowls down at Yuuji’s arm, and most of the shadows recede. Is it weird that Yuuji misses them?
“This isn’t a waste,” Fushiguro says.
It’s quiet after that. Fushiguro’s movements are steady, winding the bandages up from wrist to elbow and back again a little slower. He’s never this patient, neither of them are, but he takes his time with wrapping up the burns, fingers a gentle presence through the ache.
Yuuji feels like his heart is taking up permanent residence in his throat. Maybe it would have been easier to ask before, to say what he feels about Fushiguro, about anything. He wishes he’d realized earlier what he wanted. But he knows what his hands did, even if it wasn’t him doing it, and it clogs up his words worse than glue.
“Done,” Fushiguro says, and pats Yuuji on the arm. It’s a little awkward, like he remembers halfway through the gesture that there are burns under the bandages, but he’s determined to follow through with it anyways. What a silly thing to be so committed to. It’s stupidly endearing.
“You want to watch a movie with me?” Yuuji blurts out.
“That’s what we do every night,” Fushiguro says.
“No, I mean—” Yuuji swallows heavily. Come on, it’s not that hard, he just needs to borrow a little bit of Kugisaki's ego. But Fushiguro’s still touching him, hands running almost absent-mindedly across bandaged skin, and it's making his head feel like it's surrounded by marshmellows. “If we could, would you want to see something? With just me. Not Kugisaki, or Maki-sempai, or the others, just…me.”
Fushiguro gives him a strange look. “There’s no one else here, Itadori.”
Yuuji can’t help but deflate a little. “Yeah. Just us, right?”
“Yeah.”
Fushiguro is still touching him. He touches his arm in the spaces between the fresh bandages, where the edges of the burns peek out. He touches fingers that have remained soaked in blood long after the stains have been washed away in water. He touches the dips of his wrists, pressing at the veins where Yuuji’s lifeblood throbs just beneath the skin. Every touch is deliberate, a conversation Fushiguro appears to be having with Yuuji’s skin, but the meaning is lost in translation.
He wants to ask why, but Yuuji knows with bone-deep certainty that if he does, the moment will shatter and they won’t ever get it back.
“What are you doing?” his hears himself ask, and for once it’s not Sukuna taking over, just his big stupid mouth overriding his own stupid brain.
“Do you want me to stop?” Fushiguro asks. He sounds weirdly hesitant.
“No! No, I…” Yuuji swallows heavily. “I like it.”
It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but Fushiguro’s pale cheeks seem to darken a little. “Okay.”
“But why?”
Fushiguro pauses and studies him with shadowed eyes. This close, they’re incredibly green, like dappled leaves in a dark forest. There’s no judgment in them, no pity. Yuuji is grateful for that. Almost everyone else, they slip sometimes, catching him out of the corner of their eyes when they think he’s not aware. Yuuji can’t blame them, even if it hurts. He’d feel bad too. Pity the boy condemned to die, it’s only his own fault in the end.
Live a long life, he’d told Fushiguro as he bled out and died on the concrete. But even if he wanted to, Yuuji can’t possibly follow his own advice.
“None of our hands are clean,” Fushiguro says and runs calloused thumbs over Yuuji’s knuckles, first one hand, then the other. “No shaman’s can be, not with what we do. Not yours, and not mine.”
Fushiguro presses a hand to Yuuji’s sternum, the warmth sinking through the thin cotton shirt and straight into skin and bone. “But your heart is, Itadori. That’s all that matters to me.”
Yuuji kind of wants to cry. The tears prickle in his throat, worry at his eyes. It’s all he can do to grab onto Fushiguro’s hand and hold on. “My heart isn’t that great either,” he says. “It got ripped out. I died.”
“You got better.”
“I don’t think I did,” Yuuji says quietly. “I don’t think I can.”
Fushiguro is silent for a long moment, turning Yuuji’s words over in his head. “Maybe,” he finally says. “But maybe you’re still healing like the rest of us, and are such a noble-minded dumbass you refuse to let yourself try to get better. I guess that’s part of why I like you.”
Yuuji’s breath catches in his chest. “Fushiguro—”
“You wanted to know if I regret saving you,” he says. As he does, he traces the scar between Yuuji’s eyes with his free hand, across his forehead and down his nose until he’s cupping the side of Yuuji’s face. The shadows in his eyes are boiling over, and Yuuji wants nothing more than to throw himself into them and drown. “You’re still alive, so I don’t regret anything.”
With that, he presses a firm kiss to Yuuji’s lips.
Fushiguro kisses like he does everything else, confident and steady, sure in his decisions in a way that Yuuji has always admired. But this close, it’s hard to miss the nerves that make his eyelashes flutter against Yuuji’s cheek, or how his fingers curl possessively against Yuuji’s jaw, like he’s worried that Yuuji will leave. Yuuji does his best to meet him kiss for kiss, trying to prove in every clumsy movement that he wants this just as much. That he wants to heal, if Fushiguro thinks he can. That he likes Fushiguro.
The kiss tastes strangely bittersweet.
But through it all, Yuuji’s heart pounds in an arrhythmic cacophony, and he can feel Fushiguro’s pulse answering in harmony, singing back alive alive alive .
When they break apart, Yuuji leans their foreheads together and lets himself breathe for the first time all night. Maybe the first time in weeks.
“You’re alive,” Fushiguro says, as out of breath as Yuuji. “Despite everything. And so am I.”
After so many restless nights, it’s strange to be left alone in his dreams. Stranger still to feel so lucid, laying on his back in an ocean of blood and staring up into blackness. The ocean’s not so deep that he risks going under, and after so many nightmares, he’s more than used to the overwhelming metallic smell. Sure, this is probably Sukuna’s domain, judging by the blood and the lack of sky and the mountain of bones, but it’s kind of nice? No one’s dying, no one’s screaming, Yuuji can relax for five seconds—
“About time,” his super evil nightmare-wielding doppelganger grumbles from atop his throne, and Yuuji almost wishes he were back in his nightmares.
“’About time’?” Yuuji splutters, scrambling to his feet. The blood drips right off his uniform without even leaving a stain. That feels even more wrong than everything else. “If you were so worried about time, you could have, I don’t know, not brought me here?”
The curse rolls his eyes so hard Yuuji swears the bones tremble. Everyone always talks about how powerful and terrifying Ryoumen Sukuna is—and he is, Yuuji knows that better than most. But he also knows that Sukuna is a petty obnoxious shit. “You brought yourself, vessel,” Sukuna says. “Would that you were spending the evening fumbling around in the dark with the other shaman instead.”
Yuuji turns bright red. Of course Sukuna would know. “What, you have a problem with me and Fushiguro? You don’t get an opinion on that.”
The derisive snort sets Yuuji’s nerves on edge. “That would be like being jealous of your own hands. Never forget, you are my vessel. When you touch Fushiguro Megumi, he feels me.”
No. Nonono. Gross. No. Sukuna is not, he’s not touching, Fushiguro wouldn’t, there is no touching. Yuuji drops his face into his hands, rubbing at his forehead like he can scrub that image out of his brain. “That is so many layers of wrong,” Yuuji says into his palms. “You’re not the one kissing him, he doesn’t…We’re not—”
“You’re not?” Sukuna sounds genuinely surprised. “Then perhaps you’re the one with the problem, brat. There is an easy solution, of course. Give your body and Fushiguro Megumi to me.”
“He’s not yours,” Yuuji snaps.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever!”
Sukuna gives no answer but to laugh, a rumbling cackle that grates on Yuuji’s very bones, reverberating from the base of his spine to the back of his skull, like Sukuna is using him as an amplifier for the world’s worst mixtape. It would have been great to get a break inside his own head, but since when has Sukuna respected something like Yuuji’s brainspace.
“Is this what you wanted?” Yuuji asks, mocking laughter still echoing inside him. “To be stuck in my head, lurking on me and my friends and screwing with my dreams until I snap? Because I won’t.”
“If I wanted to toy with your dreams, brat, you would never wake up,” Sukuna says. “I’m not the one waiting in a basement to die like an obedient pup with a hateful master.”
After this long, this many nightmares, Yuuji shouldn’t be offended by anything Sukuna says. But it’s hard not to get pissed. “That’s not what I am.”
The King of Curses doesn’t bother looking down. “Even your delusions are boring,” he says, condescension dripping so thick Yuuji can feel it on his skin.
“Then why do you even bother?” Yuuji snaps. His voice echoes in the emptiness, ringing back to him like he’s accusing himself.
And maybe he is. Why bother, indeed. Yuuji has so much death on his hands, and he’s unlikely to get a good night’s sleep ever again. He doesn’t really deserve it. And sometime soon, someone will kill him, or Sukuna will devour him from the inside out. Even if he survives, he could never save enough people to make up for the blood. The person Yuuji thought he was will be gone, and it is only a matter of time.
You’re not alone, Kugisaki had told him.
You’re alive, Fushiguro had said.
Maybe that’s enough.
Yuuji is terrified that it is not.
“Why, indeed,” Sukuna says. “You are…a reminder.”
“Of what?”
Yuuji never thought about Sukuna as haunted—if anything, he is haunting Yuuji, a malevolent whisper in the back of his skull. But it’s the closest word he can come up with, seeing the King of Curses stand on his throne of bones and stare out into the empty black sky, a nightmare stark against a landscape of death.
Blood-red eyes flicker down to Yuuji, catching and holding him as easy as a wolf circling a rabbit. “They once thought me as human as you, boy. You may flounder at the remnants of your humanity, the threadbare connections to others you claim to love.”
Sukuna’s voice is nothing but a quiet echo in the gaping darkness when he says, “I will never be so weak again.”
Yuuji doesn’t wake until dawn. Despite his layers of comforters, he feels cold.
It’s 12:53am, and Yuuji’s making caramel corn.
It took him a few days to realize what he could make that both his friends would like that wouldn’t require extra supplies. Fushiguro mostly likes anything he can munch on for the ten seconds before he passes out in front of the TV, and Kugisaki is always talking about how she prefers fancy or exotic things. Not that popcorn is either of those things, but he got this recipe from some English language cookbook he found in the library, so it’s the thought that counts.
Kugisaki announces herself by trying to stick a finger right in the still-bubbling caramel, and Yuuji instinctively smacks her hand away. “You’ll burn yourself!” he says.
She gives him an extremely dirty look only emphasized by her eyepatch. “You have no right to talk to me about kitchen burns.”
“Wait five minutes, I’m almost done.”
Her groan borders on vulgar cursing, but she takes a step back and lets Yuuji finish. It probably helps that he dips a spoon into the caramel and, once it’s cool enough, gives it to her.
He’s dumping the whole lot into the popcorn bowl when she asks, “Well, what’s the occasion? It’s not my birthday, which would warrant at least a cake and ice cream parfait anyways, and my streetwear is too impeccable for any stylist to pick me up off the street, so…what?”
“It’s a thank you,” Yuuji says, and offers her the bowl.
She daintily plucks a single kernel out and munches, eyeing him suspiciously. “If I learn you and Fushiguro hooked up on the couch, they’ll be finding bits of your intestines scattered from here to Kansai.”
“You don’t even like the TV couch!” Yuuji counters, his face burning. “You complain about the lumps constantly.”
Kugisaki’s eye narrows dangerously. “That’s not a no.”
“No more caramel corn for you if you keep threatening to disembowel me,” he says, and swipes the bowl above his head and out of her reach.
The affronted gasp she gives is almost enough for Yuuji to ignore her stepping on his toes.
They settle onto the couch, threats and execution of violence aside, and Kugisaki appropriately pacified with soda and snacks. Yuuji thumbs through a movie list he’d written out in an old notebook—kaiju movies might be a good change of pace, right?—when Kugisaki says, “You never said, what’s the thank you?”
“Oh, yeah.” He glances at her, a little grin on his face. “It’s a thank you for staying up with me. You and Fushiguro planned this, right? The movie nights and stuff.”
She blinks. “Well, duh,” she says. “Fushiguro noticed you weren’t sleeping, and he was too gay to be around you all night without making a move, even though he shouldn’t have worried because you’re about as perceptive as a rock when it comes to romance—”
“Kugisaki.”
“—and I wasn’t sleeping either, so I said I’d wait up for you. Misery loves company, and you make good popcorn. The movies are just a bonus.” She thumbs through the stack of movies with the flashlight, a blast of brightness in the dim common room. “I hope you know that when the second years get back, they’re joining us. Maki promised to make Panda-sempai help move some furniture from the staff room too. How’s this one sound?”
Yuuji squints a little at the Korean title, and decides not to rib her about Maki just yet. “Thanks, Kugisaki. For everything.”
She gives him a small smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
Ten minutes into the movie and seven minutes into a hushed debate over whether or not monster movies count as horror, Fushiguro drops onto the couch without a word and curls up on the lumpy pillow, long legs squashed awkwardly against the armrest and head pillowed on Yuuji’s lap. Kugisaki can’t resist giving them a little eyebrow waggle when she catches Yuuji dropping a kiss into the middle of Fushiguro’s spiky black hair, who doesn’t even have to open his eyes to flip her off.
They’re alive. All of them, together. It has to be enough.
For however long Yuuji has left.