Chapter Text
"Not Bad"
The sun was beginning to set, far away on the horizon. Nobara walked ahead of her three companions, leading the way after the exhausting fight with the curse on the school grounds.
“Hey, you, go fetch my things,” she said over her shoulder toward the boy, Itadori.
“I thought we were even,” he whined.
“We won because of my cursed energy. Got a problem with that?”
“What about my cursed strength?” he asked, jogging to catch up with her.
“Your cursed strength from eating weird shit?” she made a ring with her thumb and forefinger, annoyed.
He was a big help in the fight back there, but at the end of the day, it was her technique that exorcised the curse.
“That’s not all!” Itadori said. “Right, Fushiguro?”
The other boy, Fushiguro, rolled his eyes.
“Something wrong?” Itadori asked.
“He’s just sad he was left out,” Gojo-sensei answered on his student’s behalf. Itadori snapped his fingers, seemingly understanding.
As the three guys began to converse, Nobara looked straight ahead. Her first day in Tokyo was pretty exciting, all things considered. At the end of the day, she was glad that she was able to prove to herself that she had what it took to be a sorcerer.
There was an unexpected complication with the kid, but the curse was exorcised and no one got hurt. She spared a sneaky glance toward the pink-haired Itadori boy. She hated to admit it, but he came in clutch at the last moment.
His ridiculous, monstrous strength not withstanding, he made a good, intelligent decision in the heat of the moment. If he wasn’t there, who knows how things would have turned out?
Nobara still didn’t know what to think of their other companions. Megumi was reserved— a contrast to the louder Itadori. Their teacher was something else entirely. From the brief interactions she’s had with him, he came off as goofy and carefree. But she knew how monstrously powerful the man was.
She lifted her hands and held them to the back of her head. She was going to be stuck with these three for a while. Overall, her first impressions of them ranged from ‘good’ to ‘whatever.’ She couldn’t help but smile. She was looking forward to living in the big city, getting stronger and—
“We’ll meet at this park. Here, let me pin it on your map,” Gojo-sensei was saying, fiddling with something on Itadori’s phone before giving it back to him. “Don’t get lost now, you hear?”
“Yes, sir!” Itadori, said, giving an energetic salute and jogging off.
“Where’s he going?” Nobara asked, watching as the boy left.
“He went to Harajuku to get your stuff,” Gojo-sensei said, smiling.
“Ah,” Nobara said, squinting as Yuuji began to disappear behind a crowd of students.
# # #
Yuuji squinted at the locker, his lips in a straight line.
He forgot to ask Nobara for the combination of the locker.
“You forgot to ask for the combination, idiot,” Nobara said from behind him.
Itadori spun on his heel, his hands raised in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. Nobara squinted at him. She tapped her foot then pushed him aside, opening the locker herself.
“Sorry about that, I guess I forgot, ehehe,” he laughed, scratching the back of his head.
Nobara quietly look out her things one by one. She handed him one of her bags wordlessly before closing the locker and heading back to the front of the station.
“I gotta grab some things before we go,” she said.
Itadori nodded, lifting the large bag over his shoulder as if it were empty.
They walked through the Tokyo streets side by side in comfortable silence, the noise of the city blending together around them.
“I didn’t think you’d actually go,” she said as they rode an escalator.
“Eh? You asked me to pick up your stuff, right?”
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” she said, pointing at him. “But thanks.” She said, smiling. “You could be useful, Itadori.”
“Thanks, I guess?” Yuuji closed his eyes.
Nobara couldn’t help but stare for a few moments. He wasn’t exactly bad to look at. She still stuck to her theory that he probably ate his own boogers when he was younger. And he probably still did that today. But at the very least, he came off as someone reliable.
With some guidance from Yuuji, the two were soon able to meet up with Gojo and Fushiguro. After grabbing something to eat (decided via rock-paper-scissors that Itadori lost), the next few hours were spent on an impromptu tour of the city.
When the day was over, Nobara arrived at her new dorm feeling fulfilled and satisfied.
# # #
The trio’s first official mission was in a high school in Southern Tokyo. According to the Window stationed nearby, a low-grade curse, maybe a third or fourth grade, was seen walking the campus.
The school’s main clientele were rich, recognized families. Most of the students here came from prestigious families of doctors or lawyers, some worked for the government and most were owners of established small businesses. This made the school environment highly competitive.
“The guys here have a lot on their shoulders, huh,” Itadori said, inspecting one of the empty classrooms.
Nobara wasn’t talented enough to exactly ‘feel’ the cursed energy in the air, but she did feel a sense of tension in the campus. She pictured students pressured by their parents to be just as achieving as they were. She imagined students bent over their books, frustrated and tired with their lessons, but unable to give up because of the burden their parents put on their shoulders.
Fushiguro was quiet. He was as reserved as always, but this time he had a look of concern on his face, as if the tension he felt in the air was familiar to him.
“There’s already a veil over the campus,” Gojo-sensei said, raising a finger. “So there’s no need to worry about being seen. We’ve evacuated the area to ensure that no one will get caught in the exorcism, so feel free to let loose.”
Nobara glanced at their teacher. She didn’t expect him to accompany them, but she figured he had his reasons.
“Alright, time to look around, I guess,” Itadori said, marching off at a random direction.
Megumi nodded to no one in particular before going the opposite way.
Nobara frowned before deciding to follow after Itadori.
She absently followed him for a time until they reached a staircase.
“You go up, I go down?” he asked.
“Sure,” she replied, walking down the stairs.
# # #
Nobara absently walked through the hallways and empty classrooms for what felt like a few minutes. Just when she was about to give up on this particular section of the school to go somewhere else, she heard the distant sound of a woman crying.
She blinked and followed the noise, reading her hammer and nail just in case.
As she approached the noise, she felt the atmosphere turn darker, the lights in the hallway seemingly becoming more and more dim. At the end of a particularly long hallway, she found the bent figure of a young girl, sobbing against a wall.
Nobara relaxed, before suddenly feeling ill— the telltale sign that what she was looking at was a cursed spirit.
The figure slowly turned its head, but its shoulders and torso remained unmoved. The sound of crushing bone and twisting flesh accompanied the motion. Eventually, the spirit’s head was reversed, facing Nobara, but its body remained facing the wall.
“It’s y—you! You took my Keiji away!” the cursed spirit spoke? That was strange.
Nobara had never heard of spirits who could talk.
This could mean that the creature was particularly powerful. She channeled cursed energy around her body, and took out her hammer and nails. The spirit didn’t seem dangerous based on its look alone, but she didn’t want to risk holding back. The spirit could have been capable of some absurd cursed technique that—
“It’s just a girl,” Itadori said beside her. “But huh, it’s head is twisted all wrong.”
He took out the cursed weapon that Gojo-sensei lent him and narrowed his eyes, taking on a combative pose.
“Alright, let’s go.”
“Oi,” she squeezed his shoulder. “You can’t just show up like that out of nowhere.”
“Eh? I was here all this time, it’s not my fault you didn’t notice,” Itadori said.
Nobara swiped her hand away and scoffed.
“Fine,” she said. “Just don’t get in my—”
Itadori ran ahead with inhuman speed.
The cursed spirit contorted its body so that it was now on all fours, but the torso faced the ceiling. It let out a monstrous yell and charged Itadori. Itadori, using athleticism that bordered on superhuman, leapt over the creature. He landed opposite of it and charged, driving the knife into the spirit’s stomach.
“Got you— eh?” the creature spun like a fan blade, sending Itadori crashing against a window.
With Itadori temporarily out of the equation, the creature cursed and charged toward Nobara.
She cursed, spinning a nail into her palm and tossing it into the air. With practiced precision, she struck the nail, sending it flying toward the curse.
The curse sensed the lethality of the attack and it moved low, dodging the nail. Nobara produced two more nails and struck them one after another toward her target. The second nail missed, but the third struck the curse right between its eyes.
The attack sent the creature stumbling and crashing through the ground. Its momentum carried it toward Nobara, but she rolled away, letting it hit the far wall.
“M—My—Keiji—Keijiiii~” the creature whined as it tried to dig the nail out of its body.
Nobara looked at the curse pitifully. The curse was whining about some guy. Was it born from the collective sadness of the students here who didn’t have a love life or something? Tragic. Not that Nobara had a love life of her own.
With a sigh, she closed her eyes and snapped her fingers.
“Hairpin,” she said.
Cursed energy exploded from the creature, controlled in a way not cause too much destruction. Blue flame bounced off the walls, engulfing the area and breaking a few windows. It obliterated the spirit from the inside. Soon, all that was left was the spirit turning to dust, scattering in the damp indoor air.
Itadori had rolled onto his back and was staring at her, upside-down.
“You’re amazing, Kugisaki,” he said, smiling.
His smile was so pure.
Guh.
What was that?
It felt like her heart skipped a beat.
Nobara blinked.
“Oh,” she thought. “So it’s that, huh.”
She walked over Itadori, folded her skirt and sat on her haunches.
“Hey, idiot,” she said, watching as he rolled over to sit up.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I’ve realized that you’re not half bad,” she said carefully.
“Okay?” Itadori said.
She nodded, more to herself than to him. She didn’t like the idea of letting her heart be swayed by people who she didn’t have a direct connection to, but she also wasn’t the type of person to deny the things she felt.
Nobara didn’t know why her heart skipped a beat. But she figured, there was nothing wrong in finding out why.