Chapter Text
Yuuta has been in love twice in his life.
The first time was when he was ten, when his best friend affirmed his fluttering crush with a promise, then a curse that ruined his life. He thought he was done with love after Rika. Feelings are dangerous in the hands of Michizane Sugawara’s descendants, and Yuuta told himself he’d be perfectly content as a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, barreling into Jujutsu Society and carving a future for himself in this strange, new reality.
So love dawned slowly the second time around.
Happy with his new friends, his new teachers, and his new life, he didn’t recognize the signs he should have been warding against. If his heart fluttered, he told himself it was because his classmates brought him joy. And if the room quieted as his focus honed in on a head of dark green hair, it was because Maki Zenin was doing something interesting - but that's no surprise. She had always interested him.
The truth builds until it crests and washes over him during the most inopportune time: training.
It's midweek, days away from the weekend break. Overhead, the sun is a few minutes shy of its zenith. Sweat plasters Yuuta’s clothes to his skin, but he and his classmates grit and bear it without complaint. What’s life as a shaman without hardship?
A sweltering summer heat is standard discomfort; it’s nothing they can’t handle.
“Split into pairs,” sighs Gojou-Sensei with a dismissive flick of his wrist. Sensei turns towards the staff building, and Yuuta gets the smallest suspicion that his teacher, the strongest shaman in the world, is trying to hide indoors. On cue, Gojou adds, “I’ll be back in an hour. Ack - it’s so hot. Come inside if you’re not feeling well.”
Panda snorts. Inumaki mutters an obscenity implied amongst onigiri condiments, and Yuuta…
Yuuta throws Maki a soft, dazed smile as she leads him to a shaded part of the courtyard.
“Ready?” She drawls, twirling her spear gracefully. The wooden end grinds against the brick stones; a familiar sound that makes his gut jump.
“For you to kick my butt?” Yuuta unsheathes his sword. Sweat trickles down his neck as the heat picks up. He’s nervous, he realizes. Why else would his heart be pounding? “I’m getting better, you know,” he smiles. “It might take you longer to beat me this time.”
Maki smirks, and Yuuta swallows down the flare of nervousness-fear-excitement. She spins her spear yet again.
“We’ll see.”
She pounces forward, and Yuuta desperately tries to ignore the sheen of sweat that makes her skin shine in the light. He tries to focus on his footing, tries to predict where she’ll strike next. Then Maki feints to the right, grinning brilliantly, and understanding strikes him as hard as the hit behind his knees.
In seconds, their spar ends with the courtyard’s hot bricks pressed against his back. There’s a blade at his neck, and Maki Zenin’s legs are straddling his hips.
“Think I got you a lot faster today.” She winks, dangerous, and shifts her weight to her knees. Her hips roll forward, and Yuuta groans, half from the sensation and half from the realization that this bright, fluttering feeling in his chest is because of her .
“Maki…” he groans.
“You’re distracted, Okkotsu. C’mon, let’s go for round two. I'll show you how I did that trick.” She pushes up against her spear gracefully. By habit, his gaze follows her, tracing the lines of her legs, her hips...He used to tell himself it was because Maki was his friend. Shamans keep an eye out for their friends and allies.
In hindsight, it's a paper-thin excuse for letting his eyes linger.
He never let his gaze rest this long on Panda or Inumaki.
Yuuta pushes up on his hands, ignoring the heat from the stones searing his palms. His sword lies uselessly by his side, catching a painful glare from the sun overhead, but he doesn’t pick it up.
“You okay?” She cocks a brow. “You look dazed. Didn’t think I hit you that hard.”
“I-yeah,” he starts. She’s standing over him with her fist on her hip, and Yuuta realizes he cannot stop thinking about her weight over his. “Uh, I don’t- I mean-” At her frown, he adds, “I...I’m not feeling well.”
Maki’s speararm deflates; the weapon sagging towards its tail. “Ugh. Don’t be a sore loser.”
Yuuta drags a hand through his sweat-matted hair, pushing it over his eyes. “If I was a sore loser, I would’ve acted out by now. You’ve beaten me in every spar since I enrolled, not that it's unexpected, you know, since you're so much stronger than me."
Maki opens her mouth, as if to start another one of their arguments, like how she's not stronger, or how she lacks cursed energy, so what does it matter if she's stronger?
Maybe it’s pity, or maybe it’s the heat, but the fight goes out of her.
“D’you think the heat got to you?” Maki asks, raising a brow. "It's messing with your head. You’re saying nonsense again," she tacks on, because of course she needs to have the last word between them.
Yuuta snorts. "Yeah. Something's messing with my head." He swallows as she holds out a hand to help him up. She's always been strong, but this, pulling him upright as if he weighed nothing, twists his gut in a new way.
Calm down , he tells himself as his face burns.
Maki's eyes are still on him and her expression doesn't shift.
"I should walk you to Ieri," she says.
“No, no, I'll be fine. I, uh, I think you're right. I'm just dazed cause, um…" he shrugs and gestures towards the air. "...Just suffering from the heat."
---
It takes days for Yuuta to come to terms with the depth of his crush and days more to talk himself out of a confession, because of course she wouldn’t say yes and he can’t ruin the one good thing he has.
Maki Zenin makes it easy to be himself. She was the first among his friends to see through him, and one of the first in his new life to accept him. It’s that aspect that helps him hold back his feelings. To throw away this - to lose her strength and her friendship and ruin it on a desire is unimaginable.
The decision is easy, because the alternative isn’t an option Yuuta could imagine.
Days trickle by quickly, like sands in an hourglass. Yuuta learns to tuck away his want, and he learns to bury his feelings under a mountain of logic. He learns to hide his glances, to school his dreamy expression when she talks about her ambition, and to steer clear of the courtyard when she gets her hands on a new weapon and transforms into a flurry of agility and strength.
Maki Zenin is incredible, and because she insists on being incredible, he simply needs to learn to deal with it.
---
Another heat wave hits weeks later, but this time, Maki and Yuuta have the luxury of relaxing. The weekend was shaping up to be a wash; Inumaki and Panda were sent on a mission while Maki and Yuuta were left to stew on campus. The elders’ spiel is one they're long used to. Something about Yuuta's instability with Rika and Maki’s lack of qualifications - and so, they squat in an unused classroom to kill time.
Maki pushes a bento between them. The wooden bottom slides against the open windowsill. She cocks a brow. “Did you bring the goods?”
Yuuta pulls bottles out from his knapsack and places them around their meal.
“Yes! Lychee Calpico,” she exclaims.
Yuuta smiles, secretly proud because he knows it's her favorite. “I caught them restocking the vending machines earlier. We’re lucky, I...”
A breeze flows in, tousling her hair. So pretty , Yuuta thinks, his attention lingering on the curl of dark bangs cradling her ear. The wind picks up, filling the comfortable silence with the rustle of their uniforms, and Yuuta realizes he’s staring. Forcibly, he turns away and looks beneath them. He studies the trees moving with the wind. On the horizon, Tokyo’s skyscrapers glint in the sun.
Maki’s elbow taps his. “So deep in thought, Yuuta,” she teases. “Wanna finish your sentence, or at least tell me what’s running through your head?”
You’re running through my head, he doesn’t dare say. Instead, Yuuta gestures to the skyline. “The view distracted me,” he tells her. Then because it feels too close to the truth and his face is heating, he adds, “I can’t believe I get to call this place home. You know, I didn't think I’d have a home again after Rika. Now, I can’t imagine ever leaving this.”
Maki hums. “You mean Tokyo? You don’t think you’d ever leave besides for work?”
Yuuta nods. Maki takes another bite of onigiri and leans further out the window.
“Eh. I’ve left. I lived in Kyoto before,” she admits. “As a city, Kyoto wasn’t bad. It helped that I knew going in that it wasn’t forever. The stay was...some dumb experiment. There’s a Zenin branch there and my clan head thought a distant relative could help crush my dreams.”
Yuuta snorts. “You’ve defied your clan head - kinda silly that they thought you’d listen to a long-lost aunt or uncle.”
“Oh, they knew I wouldn’t listen to any elders there,” she muses. Maki takes another bite from her onigiri, and adds, perfectly casual, “But they were hoping I’d listen to my husband.”
The words take a second to register, and for a long, terrible moment his brain tells itself he heard wrong. The idea of Maki being married , specifically to someone else, freezes his blood. Deliberately, Yuuta clears his throat.
“Y-you’re married?”
“Of course not.” She rolls her eyes dramatically and raises her left hand, wiggling her bare ring finger. “But they were hoping to fix that.”
“They...” his mouth struggles to form the words. “They tried to marry you off?”
“ Tried ,” she stresses. Her expression sours, as if the memory brings a bitter taste, then she sighs, shrugs, and adds, “Tried and failed. Obviously.”
“Yeah...obviously.” He parrots. “So, I guess you didn’t like the men…?”
Maki shrugs. “The guys were fine,” she says casually. Her words dig like claws to his chest. Yuuta barely has time to reel before Maki goes for the kill. “I think relationships shouldn’t be a priority in a sorcerer’s life, but I guess that was my family’s goal, right? Marry me off so I’d drop my Jujutsu schooling and stop embarrassing the family. Go be happy with a man of their choice and turn into the housewife they wanted. It’s ridiculous.”
“...Ridiculous,” Yuuta echoes.
Maki nods solemnly, and that should be the end of the topic. The Zenin introduced her to other men - men she found alright , and she said, in semi-certain terms, that she’s not interested in a relationship. If he was smart, and knew what was good for him, he’d change the subject, or let this one die. Yet there’s a question at the tip of his tongue, one that he asks before his brain can catch up to his heart.
“You...you can’t do both?” Yuuta asks quietly. “Not the marriage part, but...you don’t think you could be in a relationship and be in school? What if...what if the guy supported your dream?”
“Probably can’t do both.” Maki sips her drink; she’s perfectly calm as she studies the campus beneath them. “Plus no guy in Jujutsu Society is gonna let their non-shaman girlfriend run around This place is filled with conservative sexists snobs.” She grins suddenly. “Except, Inumaki and Panda. And you.”
The weight of the sky falls on him. Yuuta hears the ocean in his ears, and for a moment, he forgets how to breathe. Maki goes wide-eyed from his reaction. “I-it was a just a joke,” she starts.
He’ll fix this. He tries to swallow, but his mouth feels too dry; his tongue too big. “Yeah, we’re just friends,” he manages, because that’s what she wants to hear.
“Yup.” Something flashes in her eyes, gone in a moment. “Friends forever, man. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make things weird.”
It’s unfair how at ease Maki looks as she shrugs this off. How unaffected she looks. How stunning she looks in the clear, bright sunlight. Like it truly means nothing.
Suddenly, her expression shifts. “All I have ever wanted was to prove to the Zenin that I decide what my future is. I’m not letting anyone take that away from me, and that means: no distractions.”
Her words feel like a coffin. He should have left the topic alone. Yuuta knew his chances were nonexistent, but hearing her conviction first-hand twists his chest.
His meal sits on the windowsill, barely touched. Any appetite he had flew out the window and splattered onto the concrete below.
“Hey.” She elbows him softly. “Are we okay? C’mon, let's not be weird about what I said.”
“No…it’s not that,” he starts. Yuuta balls up his hurt and his want and stuffs it deep inside of him. He can do this. He can divorce himself from his wants and he can be a supportive friend.
Yuuta can’t be much for her, but at least he can do this.
“You...you’re right. It’s good that you let nothing stand in the way of your dream…even if it’s your family. ”
“Oh?”
“I mean it,” he says, and because it’s the truth, he continues speaking from the heart. “You’re amazing and...I...I’ll do anything to help you. Everyone would.”
“Not everyone,” Maki says with a soft, sly smile. “But I know you would. Thanks, Yuuta. You’re a good friend.”
“Of course,” he tells her. He forces himself to look away from her warm eyes and her smile and studies the buildings in the distance. He wonders if this is what dying feels like. “Friends forever, right?”