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“I always wanted to get my nipples pierced.”
Yuuji blinked, fumbling with the lighter and nearly dropping it into the messy icing of the haphazard birthday cake he and Megumi had thrown together in the cramped kitchenette. “I’m sorry?”
Nobara propped her elbow up on the counter, watching as he lit each and every one of the candles. All twenty of them. Twenty. Fucking twenty candles. It felt like a lot when he’d been putting them in the cake, and it felt like a lot as he lit them.
“You know…” She began to elaborate with a wave of her hand. “I just wanted to get them pierced. But I never could when I was younger, I was underage.”
“You’ve… been old enough to go get piercings on your own for two years now,” Megumi pointed out. “If this is your roundabout way of telling me you want your birthday present to be nipple piercings—”
Nobara leaned across the counter to press her finger against his lips. “No. I mean, unless you wanna take me to get my nipples pierced. I’m not gonna argue against that. But if you would let me finish—”
“Candles are done!” Yuuji exclaimed with a triumphant grin, tossing the lighter onto the counter. “Better make your wish before they burn down and drip wax all over the cake.”
Nobara huffed, clearly unhappy about being interrupted from her nipple-piercing-tirade again, but straightened up and eyed the flickering candles, her face scrunching up in concentration. After a couple seconds of coming up with a wish, Nobara took a deep breath, and blew out the candles, slowly moving her head over the cake to make sure she got all twenty in a single deep breath.
“What’d’ja wish for?” Yuuji asked, already rifling through the cabinets for plates and forks, eager for his own slice of Nobara’s birthday cake.
Nobara rolled her eyes. “I can’t tell you that! It’ll spoil the wish!”
“Dumb superstition,” Megumi said as he reached to take a fork from Yuuji. “Come on, what was it? Or are you gonna finish whatever you were going on about with your nipples?”
“It’s not actually anything to do with my nipples!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms up in frustration. “Like I said, if you would let me finish!”
Yuuji tilted his head, admittedly a little curious over whatever Nobara was apparently trying to communicate, that supposedly didn’t have anything to do with her nipples, despite the bizarre way she decided she wanted to breach this particular topic. “Well… go on then.” He took a knife from the drawer, and began slicing up the chocolate cake, content to listen to whatever it was she had to say.
“Right, okay!” Nobara sat up straight and took a deep breath. “When I was younger, I wanted my nipples pierced. ‘Course, my family never would have gone for anything like that. And then I came to Jujutsu High, but I was underage, and no one here was a legal guardian, so they couldn’t sign off on something like that. And then… I dunno… things just kept happening, and we never had time.”
“Yeah…” Yuuji glanced at Megumi out of the corner of his eye, then back to Nobara, and the thick, rose-embroidered eyepatch covering most of the left side of her face, and the ropey lines of scar tissue spider-webbing out from underneath the fabric.
Things had certainly happened a lot over the years.
“I never got to do it. And honestly, for a while there, I never even thought I’d be old enough to do something like that…” She held her hand out, curling and uncurling her fingers as Yuuji scooped the first slice of cake out of the pan and onto a plate.
He handed her the plate and a fork, and couldn’t help but smile at her excited squeal over the cake. She’d always had the biggest sweet-tooth after all.
“Well, like I said, you’re old enough now,” Megumi said.
“Yeah, I feel goddamn ancient.” Nobara sliced into the cake, and shoved a massive bite into her mouth, leaving her cheek to pooch out. “Fucking twenty. We have an apartment. I signed a fucking lease. Isn’t that insane?”
“Yeah, crazy we could afford even a shit hole like this,” Megumi said with a shrug.
Yuuji nudged his shoulder. “Come on. You love our dingey little apartment.” They’d only moved into it a month ago, and the excitement over it still hadn’t worn off. Yeah, it was shitty, and honestly too small for three people, but they’d never cared about close quarters when it came to each other before. Why would they care now?
“Mm, sure.” Megumi snatched the knife from Yuuji to cut out his own slice of cake. “But continue, Nobara.”
“I mean, there’s not really some grand big point to it, I just… be honest, did either of you expect to make it to twenty? Eighteen and nineteen were shockers, but twenty…” Nobara shook her head. “Fucking bonkers.”
Yuuji stared at the cake, and the half burned candles sinking further into it as they cut through it. Twenty candles. One for each year that Nobara had been alive. It shouldn’t seem like a lot. Twenty was so, so young, but for them…
He understood what Nobara meant. “I mean, I’ve been waiting to be executed since I was fifteen, so…” He rubbed the back of his neck, unable to look either of his partners in the eye. “So yeah, I get it. Twenty feels like a lot.”
“It shouldn’t,” Megumi said.
“No, I know. I do. But it just—” Yuuji forced himself to look Nobara in the eye. “It’s still a lot.”
“Yeah…” Nobara’s hand drifted up to pick at the edges of her eye patch, and Yuuji fought the urge to run his fingers over his own scars. Even years later, it was still hard to believe they’d made it out of Shibuya alive, even after everything they’d gone through after it. “Have you thought about it? The offers to work out of Jujutsu High?” she asked, changing the subject.
Megumi scoffed. “No.”
“Yeah… Part of me thinks it would be nice,” Nobara said as she took another bite of her cake. “The familiarity and stuff, you know? And we had some good memories there, but…”
Yuuji poked at his own piece of cake, scooping the candle out of the ice with his fork and settling it on the side of the plate. Part of him didn’t quite get Megumi and Nobara’s reluctance. After all, the three of them didn’t have a lot of prospects outside of jujutsu, and he did still want to help people by exorcizing curses, but…
But after everything they had gone through…
He was only barely dodging execution sentences as it was. Five years of narrowly avoiding them, whether due to Gojo or someone else who decided to help him out, not usually because of anything he specifically did.
Maybe that was why Megumi and Nobara didn’t want to go back. For his own sake.
“Yep.” Megumi took a bite of his cake. “I’m only going back there if you two are dead set on it.”
“Yeah, can’t say I really am.” Nobara leaned against the cabinet. “I wanna do all the shit I never thought I’d be old enough to do.”
“Like… get your nipples pierced…” Megumi said.
“Got a problem with it?” she asked.
Megumi raised his hands in surrender. “You can do whatever you want, Nobara. I just… don’t really get why you fixated on that.”
“I also want a tattoo,” she said. “And to go out and get hammered in a bar.”
“Well… those are technically things we can do.” Megumi took another bite of his cake.
“You’d look good with face piercings,” Nobara said as she gestured to him with her chocolate covered fork. “Like snakebites or something! Don’t you think, Yuuji?”
“Mm…” Yuuji leaned closer, examining his face. “Yeah, probably. But Megumi would look good with just about anything.”
“So you guys really want to go out and do a bunch of dumb shit, just because you were convinced you’d never be old enough to do it?” Megumi asked with a tilt of his head. “That’s kinda self-destructive.”
“No.” Nobara leaned over to jab a finger into his chest. “It’s fun, and celebrating that despite the odds and how much we were convinced we’d be dead by seventeen, we’re not. We have a shitty apartment we got all on our own. Yuuji’s not executed. We’re alive. And we can go get dumb piercings and tattoos and drink and smoke and do whatever the hell we want. Isn’t that amazing? We’re old enough to do stupid shit!”
“We’re young enough to want to do stupid shit. We’re not old,” Megumi stressed.
“Megumi, listen.” Yuuji slung his arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Whether we’re old or young so isn’t the point. The point is we did get this far, so we should do what we want!”
“We shouldn’t be grateful just because we didn’t die as teenagers,” he said.
“Well… No…” Yuuji agreed, because that certainly was sad and pathetic. No one should have to be grateful like that, even jujutsu sorcerers. Even the vessel of Ryoumen Sukuna. “But we never know how long we have, so we should live life to the fullest! That’s what you mean, right, Nobara?”
She shrugged. “I mean, I guess. But I’m sorta with Megumi? We shouldn’t live life expecting to die. I don’t wanna end up all old, and realize how much shit I missed out on, because I always kept assuming I’d be dead within the next month or two.”
“Oh…” Yuuji looked back to the frosting coated candle. “I—Yeah, that makes sense. I guess that would be a pretty sucky life, huh?”
He’d spent so much of the past years constantly thinking about death. Not just how he would die, but how everyone would die.
It… really wasn’t pleasant, now that he truly considered what that mindset meant. Now that Nobara and Megumi had begun to spell it out for him.
“I want to have fun because it’s fun, because I am still young, and when I have gotten old and lived a long enough life to spite everything and everyone who ever tried to kill me, I want to look back on life and think, wow, that was a good time. I liked that. Not just… I’m okay with dying because I didn’t hate every second of it, you know? Is that… is that depressing? Do normal people think about this kinda stuff?”
“We’re not normal,” Megumi said.
“No…” Nobara agreed. “I just… Oh, never mind.” She waved them both off and settled for scraping the chocolate icing off her plate to lick the fork. “You know what I mean. Let’s change the topic, this is fucking depressing, and tomorrow we can all go get dumbass piercings.”
“I never agreed to that,” Megumi said.
“Trust me, it’ll suit you,” Nobara said.
Yuuji tuned out their petty argument, his eyes trailing over each and everyone of the candles again. All twenty of them. “Hey Nobara, what did you wish for?”
“I told you, it’s bad luck to tell you!” she huffed.
“Yeah, but just… we’ve accumulated enough curses over the years, I doubt one more will matter, so humor me,” he requested.
Nobara’s gaze softened as she looked between him and Megumi. “I wished that we all made it to thirty. All three of us. Just to prove we can.”
Five years ago? Yuuji never would have thought such a thing would be possible. Twenty sounded like a fantasy, let alone thirty. But now…?
Now, he thought they just might be able to do it. They would live, and living was the most insane, shocking thing they could pull so far.
“Yeah, we’ll make it to thirty. And every other decade after that.”
Nobara held her fist out. “Hell yeah we will.”
Yuuji bumped his fist against hers, his smile never fading.