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The drive to the sea is long enough to take a nap during it, teetering on the edge of two hours. Yuuji drifts between the world of sleep and the world of sobriety during the whole ride, his head resting against the cool window, drowning out Megumi’s yelps when Nobara harshly knuckles the top of his head and Inumaki’s quiet murmurs agreeing with Maki and Panda.
It’s not until they’re on the road right by the ocean that Nobara jostles Yuuji awake, firmly pulling the rug of sleep out from beneath his feet. The horizon swallows the sun slowly, the water below it mirroring the pale gold hue pouring out from the sun. Nobara’s rings glint softly under the sunlight as it pours into the car so thickly that Yuuji swears he can feel liquid sunlight dripping all over his hands. The car’s going so fast that he can barely tell one reed apart from another that they all blur together. The stunning sight leaves Yuuji breathless. It’s so stunning that Yuuji feels like he got the breath knocked out of him with a punch straight into his gut. He wraps his hands around his stomach and holds himself as they continue to the seaside, the gentle waves beckoning to him.
-
The cold has sharp, fanged teeth that nip hard into Yuuji’s jacket zipper and tear deep into his bones. The skyline still has its gaping maw wrapped around the sun, dragging it underneath into the ocean’s deep waters with each passing minute. The sand shifts restlessly under Yuuji’s feet with each step he takes, taking every opportunity to jump into his shoes and socks. He doesn’t mind it though. Not with the faint smile painting itself across Megumi’s face or with the reflection of crow’s feet fissuring itself into the area below Nobara’s eyes.
His phone is a steady weight in his hand as he takes pictures of his friends, their silhouettes darkened in the sunset. Yuuji can barely make out the matching dandelion yellow plaid scarf and earmuffs Panda has on or the golden tiger design contrasting against the deep royal purple of Maki’s jacket or the number of black clasps sitting on top of Nobara’s thick woolen coat, but he knows that their grins stretch from ear to ear as they pose for him, splitting their faces into halves, their pearly whites hidden by the shadows.
-
The water’s bitterly cold, but that's to be expected. After all, they are a couple of weeks into January, midway between autumn’s dying breaths and spring’s blooming birth. It laps at Yuuji’s feet, the coldness piercing its way through his veins. The sand gives easily under Yuuji as he wades his way into the ocean, the water kissing his ankles with freezing lips. With each step he takes, the sand melts under his feet like an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. The sunlight pricks into his eyes as it reflects and refracts across the water’s surface, and the seagulls shout their cackling caws into the air and skim their feet across the horizon.
Panda’s lying on the sand behind Yuuji, his arms crossed across his chest like an Egyptian mummy as Inumaki pulls down the front of his jacket exposing the blue and white flower mask covering his mouth. His breaths puff out into the air, crystallizing with each inhale and exhale. Inumaki drags a stick in the sand around Panda, making him into a fearsome dragon with little, fluffy wings as the sea sings serenely in the background.
Inumaki takes the same stick to poke a peacefully relaxing Panda in the stomach, resulting in tired groans croaking out of him like metal creaking under an immense amount of pressure. His eyes still crinkle into half-moon crescents though, and his lips still tug up in a smile though.
Yuuji can hear Megumi’s languished sighs falling out of his body and splattering into the seashore as Maki and Nobara squeal and run back into the warm safety of the sand the minute the frigid water pounces onto their feet. They crash into each other in their hurry to get away from the beastly temperatures of the water and land in a heap on top of each other, their giggles twinkling throughout the air clearly like bells.
Yuuji looks down into the water, hoping to see his face in the looking glass, and watches as the waves distort and marr his features. Each ripple that runs through the water changes Yuuji’s reflection ever so slightly, but he can still make out his face. In one pane of water, the skin near the side of his mouth is marred, right where his upper lip meets his bottom one. In another pane, the skin between his eyes traveling down to his cheek is browned, a darker shade than his usual one, like someone had taken a paintbrush full of tawny paint and dragged it down the side of Yuuji’s nose.
A wave comes crashing in, and when Yuuji looks at his face in the water, no scars run down his nose ridge nor down the left side of his lips. He looks in all of the panes, seized with desperation, as they change with each incoming wave, but to no avail. The skin beneath his fingers is as smooth as glass, and his face is clear, clear of any scars that could have been.
-
Nobara dips her hand into the ocean, cupping the cool water in her open palms. She glances at Megumi for a second with a sly grin worming its way onto her face and throws the water onto him with a laugh trapped in her throat. Megumi curses at her, the words coming out of his mouth so filthy that if Yuuji’s grandpa was still here, he’d throw a slipper straight at him with unparalleled ferocity and unparalleled accuracy, the slipper hitting him smack dab in the back of his head.
Gold and pink stripe through the sky like spilled ink and traipse sloth slowly into the blue behind Yuuji. The wind ruffles Maki’s long hair, the faded, quiet sunlight illuminating her hair to be lighter than the forest green that it is. It whips in front of her face, her hands stuck firmly in her jacket pockets in search of warmth in the freezing cold, as she watches Nobara kick the water and Megumi curse her to hell and back with fondness laced in every feature of hers.
Eh? Didn’t Maki have short, cropped hair? Didn’t she have bandages clinging to her right eye and burn marks that wrapped themselves around her face and throat and body?
He opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again, the words dying in the nasty gnash of his teeth. Should he say something? Yuuji’s throat is a hallowed graveyard, full of dead words and sentences that never made it past the confines of his mouth, that will never grace the world with their brief existences, but the image of Maki with short hair and burn marks cling to his eyelids like slimy, stubborn oil slick sticking to the top of the water’s surface, and he decides to exhume the question he was going to ask, the wooden color of the opened coffin a stark contrast to the blackness of the dry graveyard dirt.
“Maki-san,” Yuuji calls out. “I thought you cut your hair.”
“Huh? My hair’s always been long.” Her gaze flits butterfly quick from Nobara to him as her hand plays with her hand, splaying out the green strands between her fingers. “I haven’t cut my hair since I was a kid.”
“Oh, sorry for asking then,” Yuuji says and laughs a little, awkward laugh that only comes out when he flushes salmon pink with embarrassment. He buries the next sentence that was threatening to barge through his lips in his little graveyard of words and places white roses on its tombstone.
He turns to the ocean, awash with the golden sunset, but the Maki with rectangular glasses and blunt-cut bangs in front of him refuses to reconcile with the Maki with short, cropped hair and burn marks in his head. He squints at her hazy figure in the distance, her feet sinking into the sand and her hair falling around her shoulders. The closer Yuuji tries to look at Maki and her blackened figure, the blurrier she becomes. It’s like she’s a desert heat mirage, all hollow air that he can cut down with a simple flick of his hand.
-
When the blush pinks and dandelion yellows start charring into deep purples and indigo blue, Panda and Megumi start picking up the bags and shoes littered over the seaside. The cold multiplies upon itself with it biting into Yuuji with a deeper ferocity, and there being no sun to illuminate their way nor heat up the day with its burning rays.
“Aw, is it time to go back already?” Nobara pouts with a little whine in her voice, and she kicks the seawater towards Maki, the water spraying everywhere.
“Gojo-sensei told us to be back before dark,” Panda says, ever the voice of reason, dropping Maki’s shoes into the bag slung over his shoulder.
“What are you talking about, Panda senpai?” Yuuji cocks his head to the side in question as his breath catches in his throat like a fly trapped in amber. “Gojo-sensei is stuck in the box.”
The feeling of something being so viscerally wrong resonates throughout his bones.
“Eh? Gojo-sensei’s on an overseas business trip and told Geto-sensei to take us here.” Maki jabs her thumb at the bank ahead of them where the car they drove in is parked.
There's a tall man with jagged, black hair leaning against the front of the car. The man waves, the sunset light glinting off his black earrings, and the wind playfully ruffles his navy blue gojo-gesa , so dark it could be black, as it starts to pick up.
Yuuji’s throat closes up some more, and his hands shake. The feeling worsens into something physical that he can start to feel, tickling him in the back of his throat.
Nobara sidles up to him, concern lining her mouth and worry imprinting into her eyes. “Itadori, are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Yuuji murmurs softly, still staring at the man, his heart beating like a war drum in his mouth. All he can pay attention to is the black stitches on the man’s forehead that stand out starkly against the pale cream of his forehead in the burning sunlight. The man smiles at Yuuji with an edged familiarity, his lips stretching uncomfortably over his teeth as if smiling is a movement that he’s still not quite used to. “I’ve never been better.”