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Dead center of a small, round table sat the most horribly foreboding fishbowl Nanami had ever encountered in his life. Inside were dozens and dozens of slips of paper, all folded in half to conceal whatever horrors awaited. Nanami thought it looked like the sort of thing that might bite his hand off if he was stupid enough to reach inside—all jagged shadows at sharp angles like teeth from the pair of studio lights overhead fighting it out with another close to the camera.
A less experienced man might compare the fishbowl to a heaping of fortune cookie fortunes but Nanami knew better even before he caught sight of the slightly crooked but no less forboding sticker on the front of it: Nanami Kento Reads Thirst Tweets.
Nanami didn’t know what a thirst tweet was and he did not want to. Nothing good would come from that fishbowl, he felt it in his bones.
“Excuse me, I agreed to do the Google Auto-Correct Challenge, not…” Three wrinkles scrunched Nanami’s nose. “Whatever thirst tweets are. Is that like a story? I don’t have”—air quotes—“The ‘Gram.”
“Auto-Complete Interview,” the director corrected with the bored annoyance of someone who had been warned and chose not to listen. To his right, a tired, gangly-looking assistant juggled three clipboards trying and failing to get his attention. “And we can’t say ‘Google.’”
Nanami’s eyes narrowed. “Yahoo?”
“Yipee!” Gojo said, taking a seat on the other stool. He propped one foot on the footrest but was so tall the other rested comfortably on the floor. “We’re filming a few things today, this is just the first. We’ll do the auto-complete thing after. Then one more—something about taking quizzes to see which character from the show we are.”
“I’m Nanami,” Nanami said.
“But maybe not, deep in your soul,” Gojo argued. “We just don’t know until we take the quiz.”
Nanami hated doing press for exactly this reason. The marathon was always twice as long as they told him and there was always something weird and embarrassing snuck in somewhere under the philosophy that asking for forgiveness was easier than asking for approval. Like that time they made him answer questions about himself on the internet or when he had to go correct his own Wikipedia article. Or that interview with the water balloons, though Nanami was still convinced Gojo made that entire thing up, it had never even been posted online and none of the entire rest of the cast had been subjected to the disrespect of being doused in water on camera.
“Are you at least doing this, too? Where are your thirst tweets?” Whatever the hell that meant, Nanami had long given up on understanding the slang. Best to just accept the weird names for things with confidence. He was already far too much of a “meme” without throwing more gasoline on the fire.
“Nah, this one is all you, buddy,” Gojo said.
“So then why are there two stools?”
“I negotiated for a front-row seat.”
Every word out of Gojo’s mouth was more ominous than the last.
“That doesn’t seem fair, why am I the only one picking tweets out of a fishbowl?” Nanami asked. Gojo was more popular by far. He could easily fill at least three fishbowls if Nanami was deserving of one.
“I don’t know why I don’t get any, ask management. I’m not happy about it, either,” Gojo added, sounding like he was, in fact, unbearably pleased.
Sometimes, blunt and direct was the only effective way to communicate with Gojo. “Why are you really here?”
“Emotional support,” Gojo said.
That was— That was kind of sweet, actually. Nanami’s bullshit radar went berserk. Something terrible was about to happen. A girl milling around with her eyes glued to her phone, pretending like she wasn’t paying attention hid a giggle behind her hand. “No, you’re planning something. What is it?”
“Nothing!” Gojo held both hands up, surrender plain on his face. Too bad he was slathered in six inches of bullshit, too. “I’m just trying to be a good friend and colleague.”
“You’re being weird and suspicious.”
“Am not—”
“We’re ready to go whenever you are,” a voice cut in before Gojo could devolve into outright name-calling.
“Sorry.” Nanami offered what he hoped came across as an apologetic smile to the crew and the show’s press liaison standing next to the camera, looking amused but ready to get on with it. Nanami sympathized. “I’m ready.”
Gojo crossed his legs and planted his elbow on his knee. Cheek cradled in his palm, something rapturous and anticipatory twitched along his lip. He stared directly at Nanami’s face. Unblinkingly. Uncomfortably. “I’m ready, too.”
“Well as long as you’re ready,” Nanami drawled. He took a breath and squared his shoulders. Right. How bad could it be? Thirty minutes of mild embarrassment, tops, and then they’d move on to the Yahoo Auto-Correct thing.
The director counted off the mark and signaled for Nanami to begin.
“Hi everyone, I’m Nanami Kento and I’m here to—” God, Nanami should have at least found out what any of these individual words meant before trying to string them all together. “I’m here to read thirst tweets?”
The noise erupting from Gojo had Nanami strongly considering getting up and walking out of this closet-sized studio. Get in the car, go home, pack up his life and move. Best to get it over with fast.
“I guess let’s just get into it.” Nanami fished one of the papers out of the bowl and unfolded it, tugging the ends taut until the crease from being folded was nearly invisible. He read the paper. Read it again.
One more time.
“What?”
“Go on, Nanamin,” Gojo said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. “What’s it say?”
“Is it about the Shigemo thing?” Nanami couldn’t think of anything else it might be. When else had there been hair pulling? Nanami was getting memed again, he just knew it.
“It is definitely about the Shigemo thing.” Gojo was already laughing, that couldn’t be good. He didn’t even know what the little paper said.
“And all I have to do is read it out loud? I don’t understand what the “thirst” part is.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. I believe in you.” The look on Gojo’s face was downright worrying but Nanami had learned way back, mid-season one, that the best way to deal with Gojo’s nonsense was to ignore it.
“Fine. It says, ‘Bro can pull my hair any day.’” Nanami set the piece of paper down on the table behind the fishbowl, out of view of the camera. “Thank you, I guess? But I don’t really make a habit of pulling people’s hair. I was just following the script.”
The noise erupting from Gojo sounded like he’d hacked up a violent laugh and then ran it through a cheese grater.
Nanami steeled himself and reached for another tweet.
Now Nanami was twice as confused. A Hulk reference?
“Um, yes,” Nanami said before the silence could draw out into something awkward. “I suppose I did ‘smash’ as you call it. Gojo, why are you laughing?”
“Because this is the best day of my entire life.”
The guy working the camera muffled a laugh, too, but not very well. That was sure to get picked up by the mics. Fabulous. Another meme moment and so early, too. This was going to be a long day.
Nanami grumbled and grabbed another slip of paper. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t.
Two thoughts immediately occurred.
Oh, Gojo was right. Nanami was starting to figure it out.
Oh, that’s why Gojo was laughing so hard.
Then, one more. Nanami glared at Gojo. That jackass. “Why would you not warn me what this is about?”
Gojo only laughed harder.
“There’s not even any variety, everyone is talking about the same episode,” Nanami muttered. To the camera, “I was in season one, you know. And the movie.”
“But you didn’t pull anyone’s hair in season one or the movie,” Gojo said, sounding utterly delighted with Nanami’s fresh, enlightened perspective. “And they definitely didn’t spend half as long lighting you back then, either.”
Nanami aggressively grabbed another tweet from the bowl. The sooner he read through them, the faster it’d be over.
The next few went about the same, just vaguely horny thoughts about hair pulling and yelling—god, he was going to have a reputation for this. This was how he’d be remembered: for pulling Shigemo’s hair on JJK and this awful internet interview with Gojo cackling hysterically through the whole thing.
“What in the world is a ‘fic and art exchange?’”
Gojo leaned over to look at the paper in Nanami’s hands and snorted. “Ahh, that’s a good one. It’s from the shippers.”
“The shippers?”
“Fans who want our characters to get together.” Something starry and wicked went alight in Gojo’s eyes. “I’ll explain later.”
Out of this whole bizarre day, the only thing Nanami knew for certain was that he absolutely, one hundred percent, did not want Gojo to explain anything.
“Go away, Gojo.”
“No. Read the tweet.”
Goddamnit. How was ‘hrrnnnnngggggggggg’ even supposed to be pronounced?
“New JJK has me like—” Nanami the best he could with it, trying and failing to ignore the warmth in his cheeks, trickling down his neck. The flush was probably twice as obvious under the bright studio lights. “What does this second one even mean? Am I supposed to say that part, too? Won’t you just have to bleep it all, anyway?”
Off camera, the crew’s perpetual giggles tumbled louder and more overt. Nanami glared until the director conceded. “Just one more, please, Nanami-san.”
Nanami steeled himself and drew one final slip.
“I could have a ponytail,” Nanami read in a slow, dirge-like tone soaked in despair.
The worst part, though, was what was written right below: Liked by RealNanamiKento.
“How could I have liked this, I don’t even have a… Tweeter?”
The show’s PR rep said, “Everyone has a Twitter, Nanami-san. It’s part of your contract requirements to have a social media presence.”
Nanami cocked his head to the side and scowled. “Who’s running it then?”
Gojo lifted both arms in the air, bunny ear salutes on each hand. “Yo.”
“So you liked this tweet.” The proverbial lightbulb went off: blinding, horrific, and mortifying. Nanami’s gaze swiveled from Gojo’s ecstatic face to the slip of paper in his hand. His attention snagged on the account name.
Six eyes. The front row seat. The best day of Gojo’s life.
Oh, god.
Something dreadful and electrifying churned in Nanami’s gut. The worst part was how he should have known immediately. “Gojo, we will be discussing this later.”
“Promise?”
“Not like that.”
“Fine,” Gojo agreed, too easy, then he immediately validated Nanami’s suspicious instincts. “You’re right, I deserve dinner before you start pulling my hair and talking mean to me.”
Nanami would not dignify that tone with a response. Instead, he turned to the camera and adopted his best no-nonsense, no-negotiating, Gojo put down the Twizzlers voice. “Thank you for your interest, this had been fascinating and”—ahem—“educational.”
A beat.
“And I swear if Gojo wrote all the Auto-Correct questions, too, I’m going home.”