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“Alright guys, mail call!” Gojo called cheerily as he entered the classroom tooting off an acapella trumpet sound with his voice, waving back and forth a small pile of letters in hand.
Maki was handed a few letters with an overly formal bow. She huffed as she accepted them, but didn’t seem to have gotten anything particularly interesting. Panda received a small package that was flung at him across the room, much to his duress. It seemed to contain some sort of fragile panda-themed product he’d won in an online auction and he quickly opened it to assess any damages.
“Sorry, Yuuta, nothing for you this time,” Gojo said, holding his hand up in a showy apology.
“I didn’t really expect there to be,” He responded with a smile that served more as a space filler than anything. Yuuta had left his family on less than stellar terms after the locker incident. Yuuta figured they'd come around but they were all still adjusting to the abrupt, um… changes in all of their lives.
“Toge,” Gojo called over to Inumaki, who was sitting at his desk, looking out the window, disinterested in the whole song and dance being put on by the mail distribution, “C’mere. You've got something too.”
Yuuta watched as Inumaki blinked before his face twisting into a look of confusion. Gojo waved a thick envelope in his direction. It was larger than a normal letter, it looked like something clearly meant to stand out against the rest of the mail. Inumaki pushed his chair out and got to his feet, walking cautiously towards Gojo.
“There you go...” Gojo said, holding it out to him. "Wait, no--Over here!" He pulled it quickly up, holding the letter just out of reach above Inumaki's head.
Inumaki had his collar up but Yuuta could tell he was frowning by the way his eyes flattened out. Gojo grinned, completely unbothered.
After a few more rounds of Gojo's overly enthusiastic keep-away, Inumaki finally managed to snatch the letter. He turned it over in his hands, expression shifting from annoyed back to a mild confusion as he walked back to his desk.
“Fantastic. Look at that, mail call all done,” Gojo clapped his hands together, “That means class begins now!”
Maki and Panda groaned, turning towards the front of the room. Yuuta looked over and saw Inumaki tuck the letter he’d received into the back of his notebook, unopened.
○○○
“Panda, does Inumaki often get mail?" Yuuta asked Panda after class.
“I mean, he buys shit online from time to time, we all do.” Panda shrugged, “So I guess.”
“No, like,” Yuuta shook his head. “From his family. Birthday cards, well wishes... I dunno anything like that.”
“His family?” Panda paused. “No, he doesn't. I don’t think he talks to his family that much. And they don't really talk to him, at least, they haven't for the entire time he's been here.”
“None of them?”
“Hmmm… Maybe his father?” Panda hummed tapping his chin with his claw. “He's the only person Toge’s ever directly mentioned, but it was only once or twice.”
At that, Yuuta realized something.
“But they’re an established sorcerer family, right? The Inumakis? Maybe I’m off on something but, uh, I don’t know much about them? They never seem to come up?”
Yuuta knew about the Gojos and the Zen'ins… he'd even heard discussion of his own lineage brought up a few times (Michi...Michizan…? Yuuta couldn’t actually recall the exact name, but he knew it was some big deal or at least that’s what people keep telling him). They discussed a variety of other families in their classes too. But… never once had the Inumaki clan come up.
“I don't really know how to best explain but,” Panda looked over at Yuuta sympathetically, “No one really talks about the Inumakis, especially Toge.”
○○○
Like with many things, once Yuuta’s mind started thinking more and more about Inumaki’s family situation, he found himself unable to stop thinking about it.
What was his family like? Could he even ask Inumaki? Why had he never talked about them before? Why hadn't anyone else? What had Panda meant by that, exactly?
Yuuta watched Inumaki poke a few different buttons on the vending machine, the two of them having retired to the breakroom after training together. Yuuta had been hovering around him more than usual that day, likely due to his mind’s own subconscious preoccupation. Inumaki didn't really comment on it.
A few different snacks vended and Inumaki leaned down to grab them, pulling his bag over to store them. He huffed slightly as he shuffled it a bit, attempting to find a place to stash them while simultaneously preventing the other contents from crushing them too much. A few moments later, satisfied by the rearrangement and with snacks now acquired, Inumaki turned towards the dorms and began to leave.
Then Yuuta noticed something. His eyes widened.
The letter had fallen out of his bag.
He felt his feet moving instead of his mouth opening as he walked over and picked it up off the ground. It was still unopened.
The handwriting on it looked like it had been done with a very fine ink pen, the strokes were perfect, and the textured paper felt thick in his hands. It gave all impressions of formal and important and high-class . It even had a seal stamped on the back in wax. The seal looked mildly reminiscent of the symbols on Toge's face, a few sets of concentric circles that interlocked and overlapped at points with a swirling line that reminded Yuuta of a snake. … A family crest maybe?
“Oh, Inumaki you, uh…” Yuuta called out, holding up the envelope. “Dropped this.”
Inumaki looked back and saw the letter in Yuuta’s hand. He quickly opened his bag, scanning the contents before doubling back. Approaching Yuuta, he reached out his hand before pausing, looking at the envelope like it might be a snake. After a few seconds of hesitation, Inumaki snatched it back and held it in his hands.
“I see you still haven't opened it,” Yuuta pointed out, trying not to be too obvious about his interest in the whole situation.
“...Bonito flakes.” Inumaki shrugged his shoulders in half-hearted dismissal that Yuuta felt looked far too stiff to be genuine.
“Don't you want to?” Yuuta pushed a bit, curiosity winning out over tact. “It's from your family, right?”
Inumaki looked back at him, unsure.
“Um, well,” Yuuta offered what he thought was the simplest solution, “If you don't want to read it, you could just throw it away.”
Inumaki clutched the letter tighter in his hands. That didn't seem like the option he wanted. But he didn’t seem keen on opening it himself either. Like there was an unspoken barrier there.
“Or...if it's not too weird for you…” Yuuta offered, not sure what else to say. “I could open it for you?”
Inumaki thumbed back and forth at the edges of the envelope for a few moments before stiffly walking over and taking a seat on a nearby bench. He plopped his bag down at his feet and held the envelope up in Yuuta’s general direction in a silent Here .
“Okay,” Yuuta said, walking over and sitting down next to him, taking the envelope back from his outstretched hands.
Yuuta felt Inumaki’s eyes follow his every movement as he turned the letter around and peeled off the seal holding it closed. He flipped the flap up and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which also seemed to be a heavier weight than a regular letter. He took a breath before opening it and skimming the contents.
Toge, Congratulations on advancing rank… It seems Gojo Satoru's tutelage is proving to be as beneficial as he had explained to us it would be...We expect you are maintaining a high standard of self for the good of the family since you are the last…We cannot remind you enough that refusal to cooperate with the society to give the family the most prestigious impression will result in… Your stay there is only by the allowance of… Don't make us regret the choice… You would do your best to remember…
Yuuta paused, eyes rereading words like continued usefulness, your place, and bindings which came up more than a few times throughout the letter. As he read, it quickly became less than cordial… No, that was too kind. Some of this language was downright threatening .
A chill washing over Yuuta as he started to realize the exact nature of what he was reading.
“This…”
He looked back over at Inumaki who had switched from staring intently at Yuuta to staring intently down at the floor.
Inumaki’s face was hidden behind his scarf collar but he looked bored, stoic even, eyes downcast in a mask of indifference… but his hands were balled up into fits on his lap, clutching at the fabric at the edge of his shirt so hard it looked like he might tear it.
Yuuta's eyes widened.
The thing about Inumaki was that he was actually one of the most expressive people Yuuta knew. Small movements could hold the meaning of entire sentences if the time was taken to learn how to understand them. Inumaki was cheeky, highly opinionated about certain things, absolutely hilarious at times, and also prideful. He had so much more to convey about so many more things than people gave him credit for. However...
This reaction was probably the most uncomfortable looking Yuuta had ever seen him.
Yuuta was acutely familiar with trauma, his own being an ever-present part of his life. He had no idea exactly what Inumaki had been through with his family life but Panda's past words He hurt a lot of people accidentally. Echoed back through his mind as he looked down at Inumaki's hands which were starting to go white in the knuckles. They were similar in that sense but, unlike Yuuta, Inumaki seemed to have a much, much deeper web of experience and expectation.
Whatever had happened to him had been very, very bad. And it was very, very tied to something his family had done. Or continued to do. Or was threatening to do again. This was growing more and more clear by the second as Yuuta watched his friend’s increasingly agitated body language.
“This is garbage,” Yuuta said, trying to hold back his own anger, folding the letter back up and shoving it back in the envelope with far less care than he had opened it. He put it next to him on the side of the bench that wasn’t near Inumaki and turned his body towards the other boy.
“Junk mail. Trash. Definitely .”
Inumaki looked back up at Yuuta.
“Listen,” Yuuta said, reaching over and grabbing Inumaki's balled-up hands, pulling them off his clothes. Yuuta held them in his own and then began rubbing his thumbs over Inuamki’s knuckles, a small act of comfort, willing the tension in them to relax just a little, “I'm stupid about this stuff-- jujutsu stuff, just all of it-- and I don't know what your family is like but, um…”
Inumaki's hands began to unfit themselves and Yuuta laced his fingers through them in a show of the smallest, smallest reassurance. He squeezed Inumaki's hands. Inumaki squeezed back weakly.
“If they...if your family decides to do something, anything to you that you don't want again. Tomorrow. In the future. Whatever...” Yuuta looked at him directly in the eyes, “I'll stop them. I promise.”
Inumaki blinked wide eyes back at him and squeezed Yuuta’s hands again, a little harder.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Yuuta wondered if that sort of declaration might be overstepping some sort of line, some sort of Jujutsu rule, some sort of taboo about… something. But as he looked into Inumaki’s eyes, which looked back at him with a growing sense of hope , he felt his heart speed up a little.
He decided he didn't care.
“I mean, I'm already marked for death so…” Yuuta blushed and started to ramble, the extended direct eye contact and his own increased heart rate kicking off his own anxiety, “Since they were just going to take me out anyhow, I think making sure you’d never have to worry about getting letters like that in the mail again might not be the worst way to go.”
Inumaki blinked at him again and nodded, slightly, just a little , but it was enough that Yuuta noticed. Yuuta nodded back at him in return.
“We should throw this away. Or burn it. I actually think I'd prefer to burn it,” Yuuta said definitively as he stood up, pulling Inumaki up with him, “Then we should go see what Maki and Panda are doing. They're probably expecting us to show up soon anyway. C’mon.”
Yuuta released one of Inumaki's hands and reached back to grab the envelope from the bench. His other hand remained clasped to Inumaki’s, fingers still interlaced, holding firmly as they started to walk back towards the main campus together.