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Gojo’s laughter is still ringing in his ears when he hangs up, the sound following him not unlike a curse. Nanami will have to get used to him again, a prospect that doesn’t fill him with as much dread as it should, given that Gojo doesn’t seem to have mellowed out significantly from the last time Nanami saw him.
Some things change. Some things don’t. Some things go slinking back to where they were before, with the knowledge that if they’re going to have a shit job, they might as well have one that means something.
It’s done, then. All arranged. Tomorrow at the school he’ll look at the paperwork and sign whatever contracts he needs to and get beaten black and blue as he works to get back to his semi-grade one status – and then past it. Nanami can see the road ahead of him, gruelling and doubtlessly cut short, but he’s never been one to shy away from hard work, just roll his sleeves up and get it over with.
Funny, how light it makes him feel.
He stares down at his phone screen, his eyes catching on the contact just after Gojo.
There’s no reason to call. They don’t have that kind of relationship. But he’s quit his miserable salaryman job, he’s going to have to break his lease and move somewhere cheaper, he’s going to fling himself back into a career that’ll weigh on him like nothing else can, and there’s only one person that he wants to tell the broad strokes of it to.
Nanami hits the call button before he can think better of it.
The phone rings for what feels like an eternity, punctuated by Nanami’s refusal to just hang up or leave a voicemail, underlined by the knowledge that it’s two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, well within normal working hours.
He’s surprised when Higuruma picks up.
“Nanami?” is the first thing that comes over the line, a little urgent. Nanami doesn’t preen at the note of concern, just lets it warm him through the rest of the way, the tail end of a thaw that started months ago.
“Yes. Sorry to bother you, Higuruma-san,” Nanami says, sincere. And then he stops, because – why did he bother to do this?
The last time he decided to change careers, to leave an entire life behind, he’d done it thoroughly. A clean break. With more years and only one more friend of sorts under his belt, Nanami realizes abruptly that he doesn’t want to do that again.
He didn’t call to say goodbye.
“You’ve called in the middle of the day,” Higuruma says, cautious. The ‘that’s unlike you’ goes unspoken, along with the answer of ‘it’s unlike you to have answered in the middle of the day’ that Nanami would give. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Nanami tells him; that answer is easy enough. He’s smiling before the faint ache in his cheeks catches up with him.
“I see.” Silence follows, but the living, breathing kind, the kind that blankets them both as they breathe heavily in the dead of night, at an hour no decent person should be awake because it’s the only time they’ve managed to carve out for themselves.
“Do you remember what you asked me when we first met?”
Nanami does. He’s too close to it, even now, to be able to tell if that was the first step taken to where he is now or whether it was just another thing piling atop the rest, not yet enough to tip the balance on its own.
“I asked you whether you thought it was worth it,” Higuruma says over the line. His voice is quiet, but not soft with nostalgia. “I also asked you how long you could keep turning a blind eye. Are you calling me to make a confession, Nanami? The case was thrown out in the end. I doubt that I can put your employers in jail where they belong.”
Nanami bites down the urge to say that jail is nothing, that there are other, more permanent options, things that he’d considered on the back end of too many late nights in a row and numbers that seared themselves into his eyelids, but never so strongly as when he watched Higuruma’s back as he walked away eight months ago, defeat carved into his shoulders.
It’d have been too much trouble, even then. And he remembers what he’d thought, that Higuruma-san probably wouldn’t have appreciated that method anyway.
“A shame, but that’s not why I’m calling.” Nanami takes a breath. “I just wanted to say that you were right. I’ve decided to open my eyes again.”
“Again,” Higuruma says. A prompt, a question without asking one. They aren’t facing each other over a deposition table, sweat caught in the starched collar of Nanami’s shirt as the too-frank lawyer stares him down with stark, calculating features. Nanami doesn’t have to answer this.
“Again,” he confirms. “You could say I’m returning to my old profession, Higuruma-san. What I went to school to do.”
“I’d ask if it was better than being a salaryman, Nanami, but the bar is very low.” A hint of dry humor in that. “
“It isn’t worse.” Nanami dislikes lying to Higuruma, and not just because the man has a sixth sense for it. Despite everything, Nanami hasn’t outright lied to him yet, and he’d like to keep that record for as long as possible. Before Higuruma starts asking questions Nanami can’t answer.
They don’t have that kind of relationship either, but Higuruma is who he is. Calm, sharply analytical, deeply and unsustainably righteous in a way that’s waiting to implode.
“That’s not encouraging either,” Higuruma says. There’s some rustling, quiet. He’s moving papers around, Nanami thinks, and just like that it’s easy to picture him in his office, phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, eyes skimming through briefs and depositions and mountains of files.
Nanami is excruciatingly aware that he’s keeping Higuruma from work. He’s also aware that Higuruma wouldn’t have answered if he was doing anything important.
“You could always come work for me,” Higuruma offers. “You’re smart, paralegal work would be easy. We could get you your certification if you wanted.”
It’s the first time Higuruma has been so explicit in the offer, but only the second time he’s made it – and Nanami knows that he means it, the same way he meant it outside his building, deposition over, cigarette smoke hanging over Nanami like a cloud of despair. He’d seen Higuruma through that haze, mouth curling into a half-smile, features not softened but sculpted into something closer to pity than derision or accusation as he’d pressed a business card into Nanami’s slack hand.
If you get tired of this place , he’d said, you could always do some good elsewhere. The ‘before they drag you down with them’ had gone unsaid then too, but Nanami felt it like a blade at the nape of his neck.
Nanami still has the card.
“Work is shit,” Nanami tells him instead. “But this is a job I can do some good in.”
“Ah.” A staticky exhale, there’s no trace of disappointment in the single syllable, nor the others as Higuruma continues. “I’m glad, then. I wouldn’t have wanted to see you in handcuffs.”
“Liar.”
“I’m at work.” There’s a hint of admonishment there, enough to make Nanami smile.
“I know. I appreciate you taking the call,” Nanami tells him. It’s more earnest than he means to be, but he doesn’t regret it.
“Nanami.” Higuruma rarely uses honorifics for him, no matter how conscientious Nanami is about it. Nanami likes the weight of his name on Higuruma’s mouth, likes to kiss it from his lips, likes that it’s said with purpose, like it belongs to a person rather than just another cog moving money around. “You sound happier already. I look forward to seeing how you wear it.”
Nanami already knows how he’ll wear it: Poorly, through bandages and blood and hours eked out with adrenaline pumping through his veins. Not everything will be as easy as the flyhead he exorcised from the girl at the bakery, not everyone will be as grateful as she was.
“It’s not a nice sight.” That’s more than Nanami should say, but he wants Higuruma to know this. To expect this.
Silence again, contemplative this time.
“Will you be careful?”
No such thing in this world , Nanami almost answers. What comes out of his mouth is: “I’m a careful person, Higuruma-san. I’ll do my best.”
It’s not the reassurance that Higuruma is looking for, but he doesn’t push it.
“That’s the best I’ll get,” he says. Sighs, more like. Higuruma sounds every bit his age right now, worn down with it. “Just tell me: It’s nothing illegal? I meant what I said about the handcuffs, Nanami.”
“And I meant it when I called you a liar for it,” Nanami replies. “But no. It’s not illegal. Only more hazardous than being a salaryman. Physically, not morally or existentially. My teacher always said that it was fulfilling work, Higuruma-san, and I understand now that he was right.”
“Almost anything is more hazardous than being a salaryman, Nanami. But we don’t need to talk about your work at all,” Higuruma offers. It’s an easy way out, a lifeline that Nanami seizes because it’s the only possible option that will leave him future recourse, that will stop him from sitting here and spilling why he left to begin with, or that one day Higuruma will stop hearing from him altogether and it won’t be anyone’s fault but Nanami’s for not being strong enough – or worse yet, it won’t be anyone’s fault, because the luck of the draw just wasn’t in Nanami’s favor that day.
“I would appreciate it if we didn’t,” he agrees. Simple, not quite a lie but taking a step away from the truth.
“I asked why you ended up as a salaryman to begin with,” Higuruma starts carefully. “And you didn’t answer.” Nanami had, in fact, done many things that weren’t answering that question. He’d been smarting from a slew of sleepless nights – the usual – and the grating mannerisms of a boss who didn’t give a shit about anything that wasn’t the company’s bottom line – also the usual – and he’d wanted nothing more than to forget about work for a single, glorious second.
“There were extenuating circumstances, as you’d say.”
“Very funny, Nanami. But if I asked you now, would you answer?”
Nanami considers this for a moment.
“It was the easiest way to make enough money to retire to a beach somewhere. Malaysia, I thought,” Nanami admits. It feels like pressing on an old wound, the scar a little numb to the touch. “For a while, that was what happiness meant to me.”
“You wanted it enough to look away from a lot of things,” Higuruma says. He’s not happy with the answer; judgement tinges his voice. “I forget sometimes how naive the youth can be. Or maybe that’s just you, Nanami. You’re no ingenue.”
“Far from it.” Nanami closes his eyes for a moment. “Like I said, Higuruma-san. I’m not looking away anymore. I’m not like you, but I intend to do what I can. Even the smallest things matter when adulthood is one tiny misery on top of another on top of another.”
“This is why I can’t call you naive, Nanami.” The judgement has vanished, as it always does. Nanami’s not sure that he’ll see it again, hear it again, with his new career choice. “You know too much about the world for someone your age.”
Nanami doesn’t think that makes him special; all sorcerers know too much, too early. Even the ones who don’t make it; even the ones who leave. Perhaps especially the ones who leave.
“My experiences are not as unique as you think, Higuruma-san,” Nanami counters. “But I should let you get back to work.”
“Probably. This latest case – it’s a mess.” Higuruma exhales sharply, air hissing between his teeth. Nanami can picture the furrow between his brows, the frown lines bracketing his mouth, the way his hair falls, unkempt, from a hand that’s running through it in frustration.
“It was still good to hear from you, though,” he adds on, as if worried Nanami will think he’s upset at having his time wasted. It’s a strange reassurance, not one Nanami would’ve expected, but he appreciates it anyway.
“You too. And – my schedule will be more irregular from now,” Nanami says, on an impulse. “But if you have time this weekend, I’d like to see you.”
He can almost hear the smile.
“I’ll let you know. And Kento? I’m proud of you.”
The line clicks, but Nanami stands there with a new litany running through his head.
I’m proud of you .
That’s not the gratitude every sorcerer gets, but it’s the praise that only Higuruma can give.
It settles low and heavy in Nanami’s stomach, buzzes gently under his skin.