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Day 1
Nobara’s only been awake six hours when Yuji poses his first question.
“Kugisaki.” He turns in his chair by her bedside, angling his legs so he can rest his elbow against his knee with what he probably thinks is a scholarly affectation. “I have a question.”
She’d usually scoff and brush off whatever it is he means to ask, but Nobara is tired and disoriented and his comforting presence by her bedside is the only reason she’s not white-faced with panic now, so she dips her head in acknowledgement. He’s probably going to ask some inane question about what it’s like to have a brush with death; she can deal with that. It isn’t as if she remembers enough to give him a proper answer, anyways. “Sure.”
“Does a straw have one hole in it or two?”
Something tells Nobara that she might be hallucinating this entire exchange, but she’s always felt a little bit like that around Yuji – it isn’t new. So she rolls her eyes and resigns herself to the distinct possibility that that bizarre question was not, in fact, a figment of her imagination. “Why do you care?”
“Aw, don’t be like that!” He’s trying too hard to keep his tone chipper, and it shows. “I just wanna know, ‘kay? How many holes does a straw have?”
“Two, obviously.” Nobara scoffs, trying to hold herself up until the pounding in her head forces her to lie back against the pillows. “Idiot.”
“But it’s one!”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s the same hole all the way through, Nobara.” Yuji leans over to peer into her eyes with an intensity that is, quite frankly, entirely unnecessary. “One. The two holes are just the ends of the same hole.”
“I stopped listening after ‘two holes,’” Nobara says, though she didn’t. “So basically, you just admitted that I was right.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Does too.”
Yuji tries to look annoyed, but his eyes are so bright and his cheeks so strained with the effort it takes not to smile that he fails miserably. “I win,” he says, but he reaches over and takes her hand and holds it a little too tightly and she’s starting to think that he’d been asking more for a few moments of normalcy than he had been for an answer.
And damn it if Nobara wouldn’t do just about anything for the same.
“No, you didn’t,” she tells him, her smile soft (she knows that, somehow, even though her face feels fuzzy in some spots and feverish in others) and her hand almost limp in his.
**
Day 2
“Kugisaki!”
Nobara is entirely too tired for this and she has no idea what Yuji is doing in her room at ten on a Sunday when everybody knows that she isn’t to be disturbed before ten-thirty when she has the day off. But she can’t really bring herself to be as mad as she would’ve been a couple of months ago, and she only pulls a pillow over her face and curses under her breath for show.
“Go away,” she says.
(She doesn’t even sort of mean it. Yuji probably knows that.)
“Sorry, did I wake you up?”
Nobara peels back the pillow for long enough to turn and glare at him. “It’s ten.”
“Yeah. I figured you’d be…oh.”
“Sunday,” she reminds him.
“Sunday,” he repeats. “Oh. Right.”
He’d forgotten.
Nobara feels like she’s swallowed a brick, and she doesn’t even know why.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his face falling, and starts to reach for the doorknob. “I…it slipped my mind. I’m really sorry. I should-”
“No, ‘s fine.”
Yuji raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”
“I never go back to sleep once I get woken up.” Nobara sits up with some difficulty and crosses her arms. “What do you want?”
“I…had a question, but it’s stupid, and I didn’t realize you were gonna be asleep, so I’ll just go-”
“Idiot. How many times do I have to tell you to stay?”
“…do you think you can get drunk on mouthwash?”
Maybe Nobara should’ve sent him packing while she had the chance.
“You don’t even own mouthwash,” she says, unwilling to dignify that with a real answer.
“No, but, like, if I did.”
It’s Sunday at ten, she thinks, and he should’ve known not to be here.
Nobara’s face hardens. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Okay.” He notices the change in her expression and nods before he turns to duck out of the room. “Sorry for waking you.”
“Ten-thirty on off days.” She can’t decide whether her voice should be hard or soft now and it comes out neither. “Remember?”
“I’m sorry, Nobara.”
She’s still not used to that – ‘Nobara’ and not ‘Kugisaki.’ And she’s especially not used to the way he says her given name so gently, as if it’ll break if it catches on his tongue wrong and he’d rather let anything happen than that.
“Why did you forget?” she says hoarsely.
“I…don’t know.”
He shouldn’t have. Anyone who’d lived with Nobara – who’d loved Nobara, in whatever small way she’d allowed him to – would know something like that, for all the fuss she’d made about it. Had the two months she’d been out been long enough to wipe it from his memory? Maybe that’s what all of these idiotic questions are about – forgetting how much neither of them remembers about the way things used to be.
“What else did you forget?” she asks, hands curling in the fabric of her comforter.
“Nothing. I promise.” Yuji scratches at the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Uh…I don’t think I forgot-forgot. It just…slipped my mind. I wanted to see you. I wasn’t thinking. Don’t…don’t read too much into it.”
“Don’t read too much into it.” Nobara frowns, then tsks so he’ll know exactly what she thinks of that. “’Kay. Fine.”
**
Day 3
“Hey, Kugisaki, what is the current temperature?”
Nobara shoots Yuji a dirty look out of the corner of her eye. “Am I Siri now?”
“Sure.” He laughs, reaching over to ruffle her hair, and she wants to complain but she wants to melt, too, at the simple warmth of the gesture. She hadn’t realized she could miss things when she was unconscious, but she finds herself glad to rediscover the forgotten perks that come with being alive even so. “Kugisiri. ‘s got a nice ring to it.”
“Hilarious.”
“Right?” Now he sets his forearm on her shoulder like she’s a piece of furniture, which is sadly far from abnormal Yuji behavior and earns him only a disgusted scoff. “Anyways. I actually do have a question.”
“Hib mhub,” Nobara says through a mouthful of pho. She’s against mouth-full talking on principle, but Yuji deserves it.
“Hah?”
She swallows, glares, and lets out a world-weary sigh. “Hit me.”
“Oh. Okay, okay.” He removes his arm from her shoulder so he can face her and leans one of his elbows against the table, head cocked like a curious puppy’s. “So. Kugisiri.” With a self-satisified grin, he pauses, then starts over. “Hey, Nobara. Why are fire trucks red?”
“Because they are,” she says drily. “Go away.”
“Nope!”
She raises her chopsticks. “I’m gonna stab you with these.”
“But Siri always answers that question.”
“I’m not Siri, though.”
“Yeah, y’are! Kugisiri!”
“Will you just drop that?”
He does not, in fact, drop it.
“Hey, Kugisiri,” he says.
Nothing. He waves a hand in front of her face.
“Hey, Nobara.”
“This better not be the fire truck question again.”
“No, no, I got a better one.”
“Spit it out so I can eat my pho in peace, then.”
“Right, right.” He smiles again. “Why is water wet?”
Nobara jabs her chopstick into his arm and smirks at his indignant yelp.
**
Day 4
“Hey, Kugisiri!”
“No.”
“Aw, come on!”
“I’m tired, Yuji.”
“Want me to carry you, then?”
“No, I want you to quit ambushing me with stupid questions on the way back from rehab.”
“They’re not stupid.”
“Right. And I hear it’s been pretty frosty in hell lately.”
“You’re so mean sometimes,” Yuji says, pouting for only a second before he smiles. “It’s really good to have you back, y’know that? It got way too quiet around here.”
Suddenly the temperature in the hall is about fifteen degrees colder. “That would be Gojo’s fault, not mine.”
“Hey,” Yuji protests, his voice softer now. “Don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?”
“We missed you, ‘Bara.”
Guess I have a nickname now.
Oh.
Nobara’s cheeks feel hot. She doesn’t hate it as much as she’d expect to.
“Also, Panda and I have this theory that Gojo can feel people talking about him in the Prison Realm. So you can’t say anything mean or he’s gonna hear you and come smack you when he gets out.”
She’s glad of the distraction from the flush in her face. “Isn’t that all the more reason to say something mean?”
“…you know, I probably should’ve known you’d say that.”
Nobara grins. “You should’ve.”
“Anyway. I was trying to say that it’s just nice to have you back.” He shrugs. “That…that was all.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t really know what to say, so she doesn’t. “Thanks. I guess. So…question?”
Yuji visibly flounders before he replies, “well, you never did answer when I asked you if water was wet.”
“It’s not,” Nobara replies.
“You know that means I have to argue that it is now, right?”
“Or you could just agree with me and be right for once.”
“Damn,” he mutters, and his smile is as fond as Nobara has ever seen it. “I really did miss you.”
**
Day 5
“Hey, Kugisiri?”
Nobara still isn’t exactly at the peak of her strength, but she still manages to dig her elbow into his arm hard enough to make him wince. “I told you to quit that.”
“Yeah, but I have a question.”
She turns her face towards him and already misses the heat of the unseasonably warm November sun on her skin. The ground is cold where they lie in the grass, but in direct sunlight it’s nice out, and she really doesn’t appreciate the loss of its gentle warmth. “Can it wait?”
“It waited two months already, Kugisiri.”
“I’m gonna deck you.”
“Go ahead.” Now he turns his head so they face each other and smiles lazily. “Try.”
Nobara pulls a face. “What was your question?”
She can’t seem too eager, though, so she adds, “it’s definitely stupid, but I might as well enlighten you.”
“You gotta promise not to laugh this time.”
“You know I’m not doing that,” Nobara says, wondering how she hadn’t noticed his stupid questions and careful warmth breaking down her defenses ages ago.
Yuji’s always been sneaky like that – he’s about as subtle as a freight train, but he knows just how to worm his way into people’s hearts before they even know he’s there. She kind of hates it, but it’s hard to muster up any real animosity when it feels so good to be wanted. It’s warm and soft, and Nobara is neither; perhaps she wants both and can’t quite admit it.
“Last Sunday,” he says. “Why’d you get so upset?”
Oh.
Nobara had been prepared for a rehash of the wetness-of-water debate, not that.
“You forgot,” she says plainly. No point in pretending that isn’t it.
“It’s been a rough two months, Kugisaki.”
“I almost stabbed you for waking me up at nine on a Sunday like, twelve times. That isn’t the kind of thing you forget.”
Yuji rolls on his side, and Nobara, without meaning to, does the same. Both lie with their arms as pillows, facing each other; Yuji’s not smiling, and Nobara can barely bring herself to look at him.
“How much more would you have forgotten if I hadn’t woken up when I did?”
Yuji studies her for a few seconds. “And would that have bugged you?”
“Of course it would’ve.”
“Really? Huh.” He shifts uncomfortably. “I would’ve thought you’d just yell at me never to do it again. You’re not really the sentimental type.”
“I’m not.” Maybe for you. “But who told you that you were allowed to forget about me?”
“I could never just forget about you.”
“But you were starting to.” Badly as Nobara wants to be angry, she’s only listless and sad. “You forgot something I practically beat into your brain. And if you forget those little things…well, you’re probably never going to forget that I was alive, once, but I’d just be a shell, y’know? Like, a name and maybe a face, but…none of the stuff that made me Nobara.”
“You…you really think I could ever forget you?”
“Well, you say that, but maybe no one is too memorable to get forgotten.”
“You hate strawberries.”
“Sorry?”
“You hate strawberries,” Yuji repeats. “So much that you went around complaining about your chapped lips all day once because the only lip stuff we had was Gojo’s strawberry Chapstick and you wouldn’t use it.”
“Yuji, why-”
“You say your favorite season is summer, but I know from the way you look when it first starts snowing that it’s really winter.”
“Yuji-”
“You cried during the last episode of Crash Landing on You and tried to pretend you weren’t when I walked in.”
“I did not!”
“Case in point.” Yuji closes his eyes and somehow that makes it easier to notice how flushed his cheeks have become. “Your best friends back at home were named Fumi and Saori. You can’t study without music. You love season three of Hologram Invasion, even though you go along with it when everyone says it sucks. You want to go to Paris one day, but also Singapore and New York and a bunch of other places I don’t really remember, sorry, that was kind of a late-night conversation, and…um…oh! Inumaki dared you to kiss Maki once and you didn’t because Panda said she’d sic Yuuta on you and you didn’t know who that was, so you didn’t want to risk it.” Now Yuji is smiling in earnest. “Your favorite running shoes are, like, neon pink.”
“Bubblegum pink.”
“Oh, sorry, bubblegum pink,” Yuji says mockingly. “Sorry, princess.”
“Don’t you dare call me that.”
“I remember that you like roses,” he goes on. “’Cause your name means ‘wild rose’ or something. Specifically the red ones. You know something else?”
“You don’t have to prove that you remember me, Yuji.”
“I got some,” he admits. “While you were recovering. And we were all in this safehouse thing ‘cause I was supposed to be dead? Anyway. I made the second-years take them. So you had this vase of red roses by your bed for a while. It was really dumb, but I guess I kinda hoped you’d wake up and see them before they got all dead-looking.” Yuji shrugs. “Didn’t, though. Oh well.”
“You bought me flowers.” Nobara’s voice comes out strained. “Why?”
“Good question.”
**
Day 6
“Hey.” Yuji pokes Nobara with his chopstick. “Hey. ‘Bara?”
No response. She stares at her phone, maybe willfully or maybe just too lost in her Twitter feed to notice his attempts to get her attention.
“Hey, Kugisiri,” he tries again, jabbing his chopstick into her bicep again. “I have a question.”
“No.”
“Nobara…”
“No.” She slurps up a noodle and glares at him. “I’m eating.”
“Okay, and?”
“I’m eating.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Yuji.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
They’re silent for a moment, but Nobara isn’t quite ready to be quiet yet.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” she offers.
“Okay. Go for it.”
“No, you first.”
“Ugh, why?”
“Because I need a minute to think up a good question. Now go.” She circles her chopstick rapidly in the air as if telling him to hurry up. “Go on. You’ve gotta know what you wanted to ask.”
He smirks. “What’s your type?”
Nobara shakes her head. “Useful, hot, and a better person than me. And stop hanging out with Todo so much, you dunce.”
“Dude. I literally have not seen him in a month-”
“Point stands. Now you answer me.” She takes one more bite before she asks, “what’s with you and your questions?”
Yuji shrugs. “I just wanna talk to you.”
“You could start by debriefing me about what’s been going on since I almost died, you know. No need for questions.”
“I wanna talk to you and not think about how you almost died.”
“Why, though? It happened.”
“I…I don’t want to talk about this, Nobara.”
“Then you probably need to.” She turns to face him. “Why?”
“You shouldn’t need to ask me that.”
“Well, I get it. I almost died. But why…why this avoidance?” she holds her hands out, face-up as if waiting to accept his answer. “Why the stupid questions?”
“I…don’t like thinking about it.”
“About me almost dying?”
“About everything I felt when I thought I was going to lose you.”
It’s an impressively honest answer, and she leaves it at that.
**
Day 7
It takes Nobara all of twelve hours to realize that a boy doesn’t buy red roses for a girl on her deathbed for no reason and sixteen to realize that he especially doesn’t do it for no reason when he remembers that they’re her favorite. And it’s an uncomfortable thought, but not an unwelcome one.
It explains the avoidance, the annoying string of questions, the teasing, the color in his cheeks when she teases back. It explains the way he’s been hovering around her since she regained consciousness in a way that simple concern can’t, and she wonders with a pang how much it must’ve hurt him not to know if she’d ever wake up.
This time, she’s the one who finds him.
“Itadori,” she says flatly, taking his wrist when she sees him in the hallway. “I have a question.”
“Water is definitely wet,” he answers.
“No.”
“No?”
“Not that question.”
“Oooooh.” He nods and trails along behind her. “What question, then?”
She isn’t sure why she backs herself against the hallway wall when she next speaks, but that’s where she finds herself. Yuji hovers so far back that he’s almost against the opposite one. It’s unbearably awkward for about fifteen seconds before she bites the bullet.
“You like me.” It’s not really even a question. “You don’t want to talk about everything because it made you realize that you like me.”
“…what?”
For a paralyzing second, Nobara fears that she’s read this all wrong, and then the confusion clears from Yuji’s expression and he squints.
“Uh,” he says, a little dumbfounded, “I don’t want to talk about everything because you’re my best friend in the world and you almost died in front of me, so let’s just, uh, get that out of the way first-“
“Oh. Right.”
“I mean, I do like you. That’s…that’s definitely a thing. But it’s…it’s deeper than that.” He meets her eyes now, and she’s almost scared to hold eye contact. “I wasn’t devastated when I thought I was going to lose you because I think you’re hot – which, I mean, I do. But still. That’s not why. I just…I guess I just didn’t want to think about how close of a call that was.”
“I see.”
“But, seriously, you were totally right. About me liking you. ‘Cause I do! A lot, Nobara. I mean, how could I not? You’re beautiful and you could kill me and really, what more could I want in a girl, right? But you’re my friend first. That’s what matters. So don’t worry. I wouldn’t ask you to-”
“You bought me roses.”
He looks surprised to have been cut off for a moment before he nods slowly. “I did do that.”
“Because you liked me.”
“Because they were your favorite,” Yuji answers.
“Because you liked me.”
“And because I guess my stupid lizard brain thought maybe they motivate you to wake up faster so you could see ‘em before they died. I told you that.”
“That literally makes no sense, Yuji.” She smiles, ear to ear and totally uncontrollable. “You’re so stupid. It’s…it’s really sweet sometimes.”
“Well, that’s a thing I never expected to hear you say,” Yuji mutters. “You’re…taking this surprisingly well, actually.”
“I am?”
“Well, yeah. Before, you would’ve clocked me if I called you hot.”
Nobara rolls her eyes. “You’re being nice, so I’ll allow it.”
“…who are you and what did you do with Nobara?”
“Wow. Yet another stupid question.” He had better know from the way that she’s smiling that she feels so inexplicably excited that she thinks she might burst open. It’s the kind of thing she shouldn’t admit to but will anyway. “Can I ask you one?”
He’s smiling back – he has to know. “Shoot.”
“What would you do if I said I did, too?”
“Well.” He’d already been elated but now he looks positively giddy. “Why don’t you try it and find out?”