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The first years’ floor feels empty.
Dim moonlight peeks through the curtains, offering little light in the darkness that swallows up the kitchen. The stillness of the night’s silence is pierced by the sharp whistling of the kettle before being stifled when Nobara’s shaky hand closes around the handle to lift it from the stovetop.
Her hand won’t stop shaking.
It won’t stop shaking.
She sets the kettle down on the countertop, breathing heavily in the quietness of the night. Nobara stares down at her twitching hands, chest heaving. They’re an unnerving pink, the skin chapped and raw from being scrubbed insistently underneath the sink.
Yet, there’s still blood on her hands. No matter how hard Nobara tried to wash the blood from them, it doesn’t go away. They taint her hands permanently, living underneath her nails and staining her chapped skin.
It won’t go away.
Why won’t it go away?
Because it’s all her fault.
A sudden rush of wind passes the window by the first years’ floor, almost blowing its shutters open. The abrupt sound snaps Nobara from her trance as she gulps, wiping the sweat off her her brow with her forearm.
If she uses her hand, it’ll stain all her over face.
Not that it hasn’t yet.
She woke up a few hours ago. The mission ended a few hours ago. Nobara hadn’t thought about it. She hadn’t thought of the possibility that not all of them would’ve returned alive from the detention centre.
As Ieiri tended to her wounds and healed them, Nobara hadn’t thought about it. Her hands had been clean then. There wasn’t any blood of them at all, because she hadn’t thought about it.
She’d thought of what a pain it would be to constantly feel these pains under her skin for a while. She’d thought of how laughable it was that she almost died to some kind of mushroom curse that got her by her legs.
She hadn’t even known they were fighting a special-grade curse.
Maybe that’s just how useless Nobara was, the fact that she had to be brought back to the hospital before she was able to even see the curse womb. She was so weak that she was beaten by a few shallow cursed spirits while Fushiguro and Itadori were barely hanging onto life.
Fushiguro had to come get her.
Of course he had.
Nobara’s weaker than he is. She couldn’t even defend herself or get herself out of that situation. She’d always needed to be saved; by Itadori in her first exorcism in Tokyo and then by Fushiguro in the detention centre.
She’s so pathetic.
Fushiguro came an hour after she’d woken up and been tended, in way worse condition then she’d been. With blood trickling from his brow, his dark eyes barely able to stay open and his body looking like it’d been twisted in all the wrong angles, Fushiguro had croaked a sentence before he’d collapsed on the floor of the infirmary.
“Itadori is dead.”
Itadori is dead.
Fushiguro’s blood pooled beneath him as Ieiri had to call for some of the assistants to help her haul him onto one of the infirmary beds.
Itadori is dead.
He can’t be.
Itadori is dead.
He’s only fifteen. He’s her age, for god’s sake. How could he be dead?
Itadori is dead.
He wouldn’t lose. He–
Itadori is fucking dead.
Nobara looked at her hands then, chest heaving rapidly as the assistants counted down to flip Fushiguro onto his side.
Itadori is dead.
And his blood is all over her hands.
She’d sat there, dazed as Ieiri worked diligently to heal an unconscious Fushguro, who’d sustained horrendous wounds all over his body. He looked like he’d been thrown through several buildings with several broken bones and torn ligaments.
There was so much blood on Fushiguro’s bed.
All the other beds were empty.
Because Itadori is dead.
Nobara had left then. She’d taken a stroll, trying to come to terms with it. He couldn’t be dead. It was Itadori, the most physically strong out of all three of them. He was headstrong, resilient and determined.
How could he have possibly died?
She ended up outside the morgue.
Gojo and Ijichi were inside, sitting by the window inside the morgue. Casualties weren’t uncommon in the jujutsu world but to see and feel it from a perspective of someone who knew the guy, it felt different.
“He’s dead?” She can hear Gojo’s voice.
“By the time I came back, Megumi was barely conscious while dragging his body to the entrance.”
“What happened?”
“I told them not to fight a special-grade curse if they encountered one. I told them to run.”
“This was all a ploy set up by the higher-ups, wasn’t it?”
“Pardon, Gojo-san?”
“Damn it, I should’ve known. I should’ve known when I saw that mission assignment for the curse womb with the first years. This is my fault. When the request to have Itadori’s execution postponed went through, some of the higher-ups weren’t happy.”
“What are you… suggesting? It wasn’t a confirmed special-grade.”
“They sent Itadori on purpose. If any of the other two students died, it would’ve been more trouble for me.”
She hadn’t been realized that her nails had been digging into her skin. Only when Nobara looked down, flinched at the sight of blood on her hands, did she see the halfmoon prints left by her blood-caked nails.
They killed him. On purpose.
She wanted to kill them.
She still wants to, Nobara reflects as she uses two shaky hands to pour the hot water into the ramen cup, not trusting herself to use one.
But in the end, it wasn’t their fault. They may have sent Itadori in hopes of getting him killed but it wasn’t guaranteed. They could’ve beaten that thing without needing Itadori to switch into Sukuna if all three of them were there.
If Nobara hadn’t gotten herself twisted up with those damn cursed mushrooms and needed Fushiguro to come save her. She’d practically forced Itadori to be left alone in that situation. What else could he have done but release Sukuna?
“Shit,” Nobara hisses under her breath as some of the boiling water touches her skin.
She drops the kettle to the ground with a loud clatter, hot water pooling through the floorboards. Nobara winces, biting her tongue as she shakes her hand to get rid of the horrible burning sensation on her hand.
Is this a fraction of what Itadori felt when he died?
Would it be this but a thousand times worse when Sukuna tore out his heart?
Would he still be alive if Nobara could’ve defeated those damn spirits and been able to regroup with Fushiguro to help him?
Nobara doesn’t realize she’s crying until the sensation of wetness on her cheeks reaches her. She sniffles, wiping angrily at her cheeks only to stain blood across them. This is so fucking stupid.
Why is she on the floor?
Tears cascade down her cheeks uncontrollably, leaking from her eyes as she tries to get it to stop.
She doesn’t get the right to grieve when it’s her fault that Itadori died.
If only she were stronger, if only she were tougher–
Thud.
She shoots up from the floor immediately as if struck by lightning. Her feet are unsteady and she can barely see, blinking through the tears rapidly. Nobara’s hands clench into fists on instinct, already imbuing them with cursed energy.
A figure stands in the doorway, half-hunched over with a hand pressed to the door. Golden pupils glow in the darkness.
Blood stains the door as the hand slowly drags down, unsteady.
The moonlight shifts.
“Who the fuck are you?”
The emerald-haired girl’s words slur – she can’t really be called a girl anymore if she towers almost close to the doorway and she looks closer to being a woman than girl – as she roves her gaze around the room almost in confusion.
“Who the hell are you?” Nobara’s voice is scratchy and hoarse and she winces just from hearing it.
She sounds so pathetic.
“Who am I? I live – wait, this isn’t the second years’ floor…” Her eyes widen before shutting briefly, as if she’s catching her breath.
It’s a second year. She thought all of them had been assigned individual missions at the beginning of this week, which was why none of them had been seen in Jujutsu High. But it seems this one had finished her mission.
Nobara rakes her gaze over her figure.
The unsteady hand that holds her weight up by the door has its fingers twisted in all the wrong directions, as if broken. There’s a huge stain of dark blood by her other shoulder, seeping through the torn fabric of her uniform.
She looks pretty wrecked, her high-ponytail all undone and messy while cuts and blood litter across her face.
Yet, when she runs her tongue over her lips with an exhausted sigh, looking on the verge of fainting –
Nobara’s heart beats louder.
“I’m Zen’in Maki, I’m – agh…” Maki suddenly presses all her weight against the door with a thud, breathing loudly.
Nobara immediately comes over. Why hadn’t she gone to Ieiri?
“I’m fine, I’m fucking fine!” Maki snaps when Nobara tries to help, golden eyes sparking with hostility.
Nobara’s jaw tightens. She may be a second year but that doesn’t give her an excuse to bleed all over the floor of their kitchen. She grabs one of Maki’s tense arms – noting the corded muscles underneath the fabric – and pulls her into the kitchen sharply.
Maki stumbles and Nobara has to stop moving entirely unless she wants the both of them to topple right over. Maki’s weight is entirely on Nobara then, her slender body pressed tightly against Nobara’s with her head beside Nobara’s.
The door slams behind her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Maki’s words are detached and full of aggression but none of it deters Nobara when she feels her clearly struggling to support her own weight to lift herself off of Nobara.
“Why didn’t you go to Ieiri, idiot?” You can’t even stand.”
Maki smells like blood, sweat and the gross shit that the cursed spirits’ blood smell like. But her scent also has a hint of saltiness to it, reminding Nobara of the sea. Maki’s broken fingers struggle to press against Nobara to push herself off, leaving her leaning entirely against Nobara.
“She’s not in her office right now and all the assistants are asleep.” Maki rasps, drawing a sharp shiver down Nobara’s spine at the touch of her breath so closely. “What’s it to you, huh?”
“You’re acting real bitchy to someone who’s going to help you.” Nobara huffs as Maki finally manages to regain some of her footing, pulling back slightly.
Maki’s golden eyes glare beneath tense brows, one of them cut jaggedly through with what looks like a sort of claw.
“I already said, I don’t need your fuckin–”
Nobara pulls her slightly, shuffling them at least to get Maki closer to the coffee table so she can sit down. To her surprise, a quiet whimper falls from Maki’s lips and Nobara glances back, finding her eyes screwed tightly in pain.
“Listen, I’m going to put your uninjured arm over my shoulder and you’re going to sit down over that chair over there. I don’t care if you don’t want my help because you clearly need it.” Nobara whispers sharply into Maki’s ear.
“Fine.”
Maki does a surprisingly great job considering how beat-up she looks. By the time they make it to the coffee table, Maki looks like she’s on the verge of going unconscious with how pale her face is.
“Shit…” Maki groans, leaning against the chair when Nobara stands back.
“I’ll be right back, I need to get some supplies.” Nobara says quickly.
She turns then, before passing into the hallway connecting the kitchen to their rooms. Nobara passes her own, then Fushiguro’s before slowing down as she reaches the several rooms at the end of the corridor.
The first-aid kit is at the end.
Itadori’s room is also at the end.
Swallowing heavily, Nobara tries to not to think about it when she dashes across the corridor. Her heart feels like it’s about to fucking rip itself from her chest as she grabs the first-aid kit, facing the closed door before her.
She needs to get back to Maki.
Fucking hell.
When Nobara gets back to the kitchen, Maki’s eyes are closed and her body is completely limp against the chair.
Nobara’s eyes widen. She immediately gets closer to Maki, panic rising in her chest at the even-darker pit of blood by her shoulder. The blood leaves her face when she sees her not moving at all at the sound of Nobara’s footsteps, remaining still.
“Zen’in-senpai?” Nobara doesn’t even care how small her voice sounds now.
Heavy lids open lazily to reveal a pair of golden pupils, watching her. “Don’t call me that.”
Nobara lets out a sigh of relief, squeezing the kit in her hand tightly. Of course, Maki’s alive. She shouldn’t be stupid. Her injury isn’t that bad, is it? Nobara hadn’t even watched for the signs of her chest moving before panicking.
“Sorry.” Nobara comes over to Maki’s side, opening the first-aid kit.
Where does she even start?
“What should I call you, then?” Nobara stares down at the kit, feeling overwhelmed.
Why are there so many things? What does she do first? The only thing Nobara recognizes are the bandages, antiseptic spray and needles. Does Maki need any of these other things?
“Just Maki is fine.”
Something cold touches her skin. Nobara jerks her head up immediately, to find Maki glancing down at her with this sort of look in her eyes. The only unbroken finger of hers is raised, a strand of Nobara’s ginger hair curled around it before Maki brushes it to the side.
Her skin burns.
“Do you even know how to apply first-aid?” Maki says, her voice almost playful.
“Yeah.” Nobara lies. “Of course, I do.”
“You do?” Maki cocks an eyebrow, a grin forming on her face despite all of this.
Nobara’s heart does not flutter.
It doesn’t flutter.
Fuck, it does. It flutters in her chest at Maki’s crooked grin and the slender finger that still lingers by her brow. Nobara reminds herself to breathe before thinking up of something witty to reply back but she can’t think straight right now.
“Why are you being so docile now? You literally wanted to fight me for being in my own floor a few minutes ago.” Nobara says instead.
Maki chuckles.
The moonlight hits her in the right angle then. It accentuates her features despite the blood caked on them, casting a pale glow against her luminous skin. Her golden eyes are ethereal in the moonlight, filled with this sort of snapping light that takes Nobara’s breath away.
“Hmm? Well, I just came back from my mission a few hours later than my friends did – and it’s midnight. You can’t blame me for being a little pissed after being thrown around by that cursed spirit for the past few hours, can you?”
Nobara really can’t blame her. If she could, she would’ve gone back and blown a hole through that special-grade spirit and those damn mushrooms with a bomb. She would’ve killed them over and over, killed Sukuna too, for taking away Itadori’s chance to live.
He was too young. Nobara knows, that despite his denseness, he would’ve grown up to do great things. He would’ve saved thousands of people and fufilled his grandfather’s stupid dying wish.
He would’ve died a normal death.
Surrounded by people.
“What’s your name?”
Nobara looks up at her, snapping from her daze. “Kugisaki Nobara.”
“Nobara.” Her name sounds right in Maki’s mouth. “Fits you.”
“Thank… you?”
Nobara gets up, leaving the first-aid kit by her feet. If she wants to tend to Maki, she needs to know what injuries Maki has. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?
“I’m going to take off your jacket, okay? Don’t try to bend your shoulder too much, I’ve got it.” Nobara mostly mutters some nonsense only to try get Itadori off her mind but Maki doesn’t seem to mind, humming in affirmation.
Maki pushes her weight off of the chair with a wince, raising her arms to shrug off the jacket. Nobara peels the torn fabric from her skin, sucking in a sharp breath when the jacket fully falls away to reveal Maki’s injuries.
She only wears a white tank top under it but the left side is stained with deep blood from the bright angry gash that stretches from her shoulderblade down through her tank top to the side of her stomach.
Nobara tries to hold back the sudden nausea that fills her.
Is this what Itadori looked like after getting his heart torn out? A human being shouldn’t have this sort of horrible injury of their body. In fact, a human being shouldn’t have any of these injuries on their bodies.
Maki’s body is littered with these injuries and scars. Countless jagged white scars, some red too, stretch across the expanse of her muscled body. They stretch in intricate patterns; some resembling the hack of a sword, the scrape of a cursed spirits’ claw or the dent of a bullet even..?
While some like Gojo and Fushiguro have skinny and long arms, Maki’s arms are toned and muscular. Her biceps are defined and impressive, despite the huge wound that stretches across them.
Nobara can’t help but stare.
She bites her lip, staring and unsure of what to do. Is she so useless that she can’t even do simple first-aid? She can’t fight right and she can’t even help people right? What was she thinking – coming to Tokyo?
Itadori wanted to help people, goddamn it. He was able to fight and save people. Yet in the end, it was him who died. He, who was the most helpful and big-hearted out of everyone Nobara knows, despite her only having known him for two weeks.
Why wasn’t it her?
Why did she get sucked into the ground and pulled into safety away from the special-grade, while Itadori and Fushiguro fought tooth and nail to survive? Why hadn’t it been Itadori who was saved? Or even Fushiguro?
Fuck.
She feels her eyes stinging again and she shuts them, chest heaving. This can’t be happening right now. Not only is she useless, she’s both mentally and physically weak. Nobara can’t be crying again.
She doesn’t have the right to cry.
“It was a graveyard spirit.”
Nobara opens her wet eyes to find Maki staring up at her, jaw set. There’s this weird look in her golden eyes, Nobara can’t really pinpoint what it is but it’s definitely softer than the way she’d looked at Nobara before.
“H – huh?” Nobara’s voice is watery and she’s one-hundred percent on the verge of breaking down right now.
“It was a cursed spirit made from the regret and grief of the people in the graveyards.” Maki repeats. “The one that I fought.”
Nobara nods weakly, unsure of where this is going. But Maki’s voice was able to pull her from that deep pit and she wants it to keep going. She crouches down to grab the antiseptic spray and paper towels before rising.
“Can… are you comfortable with taking your shirt off?” Nobara mumbles quietly.
To Nobara’s surprise, Maki doesn’t make any snide or joking remark on it, only nodding. Maybe it’s because she’s seeing how pathetic and weak Nobara is right now and is thinking she probably will break down if Maki says anything otherwise.
Maki lifts her arms and Nobara grabs the hem of her tank top. She pulls the tank top over her head, careful to avoid her shoulder as she does so.
Maki’s just left in her sports bra now and Nobara at least has the grace to blush.
Maki’s stomach is flat and toned. Of course it is, she’s a second year sorcerer. She must’ve trained so much. Why is Nobara making it such a big deal?
Itadori… will never reach his second year. He will never have the experience that Maki has, because he never got the chance. He will remain forever a first year while Nobara and Fushiguro move their way up the sorcerer ranks.
“What happened?” Nobara’s voice comes out raspy.
She desperately wants Maki to talk again. She needs something to focus on, something to get her mind off of Itadori.
She focuses on Maki’s voice as she works, depending on it to stop herself from plunging back into the darkness. Nobara cleans the wound slowly, spraying it and wiping all the bits of dirt and debris on it.
Maki’s only signs of pain are the tensing of her shoulder and quiet hisses time to time.
“It controlled the ghosts of all these corpses.” Maki says quietly as Nobara kneels down to grab the needle. “They whispered all the things their visitors said to them to confuse me.”
Nobara’s only stitched wounds once, when her grandmother taught her when she was younger after Fumi cut herself on her father’s ax.
“They kept apologizing to me, saying how these corpses didn’t deserve to die and how they should’ve been the ones to live a long life.”
Nobara shivers at how similar those words sound to the thoughts had been plaguing her mind for the past hours. She tries focussing on the firm line of Maki’s bicep and the cleaned gash that runs along it, pressing her lips together nervously.
She… she can do this.
She tugs out a chair from the coffee table to sit on the side of Maki’s injured arm.
Maki’s gaze bores into the side of her head as she presses the end of the needle into her cool, scarred skin. Other than a sharp intake of breath, Maki shows no sign of discomfort or pain. Nobara threads the needle through, focussing sorely on the work at hand.
Itadori would’ve been good at this, Nobara thinks weakly and her chest collapses in on itself at the thought. He was good at everything I wasn’t; cooking, fighting and probably would’ve been good at painting nails.
“Hey, you okay?” Maki’s voice, again, pulls Nobara from the deep, dark sea.
Nobara blinks away tears, readjusting her grip on the needle to find the sutures crooked. She sucks in a sharp breath, forcing her hands to stop shaking.
“Sorry, they’re sort of crooked.” Nobara curses herself for the waver at the end of her voice.
“It’s fine. It’s better than anything the other second years could’ve done.” Maki’s tone is surprisingly soft for such a serious voice. “Keep going.”
Nobara nods. The more distracted she gets, she’ll fuck up and end up hurting Maki’s wound even more. Instead, she focusses on Maki’s breathing, syncing every intake of breath with the puncture of her needle.
In – inhale, and out – exhale.
Maki’s breathing grows gradually faster for some reason the higher Nobara stitches up her arm. Eventually, Nobara reaches the curve of her shoulder and presses her palm to the shoulderblade to link the skin together while she pulls the last suture through.
She chews her lip self-consciously – the sutures still aren’t straight.
When her gaze falls back to Maki, who she finds has her gaze already set on Nobara. Softness ghosts her golden pupils as she regards Nobara underneath the moonlight, hands clasped by her thighs.
Nobara crouches down to grab the gauze again, seeing droplets of blood on the floor. Her stomach churns again and she closes her eyes, breathing heavily.
Nobara can’t be a jujutsu sorcerer if she gets nauseous at the sight of blood after one death. She’s better than that, she’s stronger than that. Nobara never thought she was afraid of death, but after realizing this, jujutsu might not be for her after all.
She sits back down on the chair and shuffles closer to Maki, whose eyes stay frozen on her.
Nobara touches Maki’s frigid skin with a clammy hand as she begins wrapping up the wound. She feels like she’s on the verge of vomiting, fainting or both. She wants to cry. She wants to scream.
Why did it have to be Itadori?
Why is the world so cruel?
It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all. If any gods were real, why couldn’t they have prevented this? How was this planned? Why did it have to be Itadori, of all people?
Why couldn’t I save him?
When she finishes bandaging Maki’s arm, she can barely breathe. The lump in her throat is overwhelming and she can barely hold back the tears, blinking insistently. She moves onto Maki’s fingers, wrapping it gently as possible with the gauze.
Nobara chokes up when she smears blood across the gauze.
A gentle hand touches her chin and Nobara looks up, her lip wobbling.
Maki’s golden eyes are so soft.
“Is something troubling you, Kugisaki?”
Kugisaki, Demon Dog is so smart – isn’t he?
“You seem… bothered.”
Don’t be so bothersome, rotating sushi is obviously better!
“Do you want to talk about it?”
You talk way much more than me! Right, Fushiguro?
Nobara manages a shake of her head. Tears threaten to spill from her eyes as she sniffles, wiping her eye with one hand.
Her hand comes away tainted with blood.
The words come out clumsy and broken. “Have you ever lost someone, Maki-senpai?”
Maki looks at slowly at her then, as if trying to figure out her expression. Then, she smiles – the curve of her lips bittersweet. There’s a dark shine and momentary film in her eyes, almost as if reminscing before a shadow overtakes the light in her golden eyes.
“Once.” Her voice betrays no grief nor emotion as to however she’s feeling. “The beginning of my first year.”
Nobara hangs onto her every word, staring at her mutely. Maki glances back at her then and Nobara nods subtly to tell her to go on.
It’s all she can do right now without violently breaking into tears.
“I didn’t even know their name yet.” Maki shrugs. “They had yellowish eyes and always kept this religious charm with them.”
“On the day of orientation… a cursed spirit attacked us.” Maki says slowly.
Silence hangs between them for a moment before Maki swallows, licking her lips. “We were ambushed at the entrance outside the barriers. They were standing right next to me on the stairway.”
Nobara’s stomach sinks.
Maki’s broken fingers curl into a fist. “They were beheaded before the cursed spirit was exorcised on the spot by a teacher’s blast of cursed energy.”
“I could’ve done something. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
I could’ve done something.
But I couldn’t.
“I saw it first, hanging from the arch when I looked up. I could’ve warned them. I could’ve told them to run, or pushed them aside.”
“But I didn’t.”
“And they died.”
I could’ve warned them.
I could’ve told them to run.
But I didn’t.
“Do you blame yourself?” Nobara finds herself slowly lifting her head to meet Maki’s curious eyes. “That if you’d done something, they would still be here?”
“I did. Every night last year, I kept seeing their yellowish eyes in my dreams. How wide they’d been when their head lay by my feet, their blood staining my shoes.” Maki says, as if it was a memory long ago and it didn’t bother her now.
“I felt like their blood was on my hands.”
Nobara looks down at her hands. They’re slicked with sticky red blood.
“What about now?” Nobara asks quietly.
Maki looks at her then, slow and calculating. Nobara wonders if she knows that Nobara’s hanging onto every word like it’s her lifeline. She wonders if Maki knows that Nobara’s on the verge of breaking down right now.
“I know it wasn’t my fault, not because I hadn’t done anything but because there was nothing I could’ve done in that moment.” Maki says simply, staring at Nobara.
“I had done the best I could and even if that wasn’t enough, it didn’t mean it was my fault. I was only fifteen and I didn’t know how to fight properly yet. Even if I had done more, it was a Grade One spirit and my actions wouldn’t have changed their death.”
“Maybe I would’ve died trying to save them. Or the other two second years if I had attempted to draw that spirit’s attention to me.”
“In the end, I realized that fate is powerful than I. I couldn’t have changed their fate either way.” Maki says finally. “It was out of my control. If there’s anyone to blame for their death, it’s the damned school for not seeing the spirit earlier.”
Nobara feels wetness leak down her cheeks. She only realizes now that she’s crying, very much like how she’d been before Maki barged in. Except it isn’t like the silent crying, it’s full-on, chest-heaving hyperventilating.
A hand presses on the top of her head. She blinks through her tears to find Maki watching her, her hand gently stroking through Nobara’s hair to disentangle the knots.
The touch on her scalp draws tingles down her spine and calms down the storm raging in her chest as she struggles for air. It’s surprisingly comforting in the midst of all this madness. Nobara leans into her touch, closing her eyes as she tries to stop crying.
If only she was stronger, if only she was smarter, if she only she’d known–
“It’s not your fault.”
It’s not your fault.
Nobara cries harder.
At one point, Nobara hears Maki get up and her arms circling around Nobara awkwardly due to her injury. But it’s the very thought that makes Nobara sob all the harder. It’s such an Itadori-like thing to do – she could imagine him if he saw Nobara now, crying over him for no reason at all.
Eh, you crying, Kugisaki? Don’t cry! You’ve got so much to live for!
Live a long life!
Nobara inhales Maki’s scent, pressing her wet cheek to her neck and desperately tries to stop the tears.
Nobara’s hometown was close to the coast, it always smelled like the sea and salty wind.
Just like Maki.
Maki’s arms are strong and muscular, shielding Nobara from the world as she cries into her neck. She feels Maki’s chin press against the top of her head, leaning against her on the chair. Sleepiness overcomes Nobara eventually – Maki’s warmth too comfortable and the brush of her fingers on her scalp too nice.
They stay like that for a while.
…
When Nobara wakes up at the crack of dawn, she’s tucked in her bed and her blankets wrap around her snugly – even covering her toes.
When she searches the floor, Maki’s gone.
…
She sees Maki a few hours later, all healed-up and looking even more pretty under the sun. When Maki starts arguing with the other second years; Inumaki and Panda, for making her out to be some cold-blooded heartless demon, Nobara smiles for the first time in three days.
It grows wider when Maki smiles that charming grin of hers.