Archive of Our Own

Shoko knew the first time Nanami invited her out for drinks that he wasn’t sure she’d show. When he saw her step through the narrow entrance of the little hole-in-the-wall izakaya in Shinjuku that he’d texted her the address to a couple of days ago, she wouldn’t exactly describe his expression as elation, but it was something akin to it.

Even from afar, Shoko could see that the table was already set. It was just missing her. Nanami offered her a demure smile as she eased into the booth across from him, the final piece of the puzzle falling neatly into place.

“Thank you for coming, Shoko-san,” Nanami said by way of greeting, nodding curtly. Shoko furrowed her brows and gave him a quick onceover. He appeared stiff and nervous, hair still perfectly coiffed and suit pristine. Even his glasses were still on.

“Ahh, Nanami-kun. You’ve been away for waaaaayyy too long. Just relax, will ya? No need to be so uptight and formal. Or is this technically overtime for you?”

The smile he flashed her then was genuine, reaching his rich brown eyes as he finally removed his glasses and placed them on the table. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket, too, and the atmosphere immediately settled.

“No overtime today, but you are right about something,” Nanami replied as he grabbed the condensating beer pitcher and poured a serving into the chilled mug in front of Shoko. “It’s been far too long.”

Shoko couldn’t help but to smile then, too, raising her glass once Nanami had filled his own. “Welcome back, Nanami.”

“Thank you. It’s good to be back. Kanpai.”

“Kanpai,” Shoko echoed, their mugs clinking as they toasted to their reunion.

Months later, it was a Thursday again when Nanami invited Shoko out for another round of drinks — just the two of them again, too.

From her seat across the table, Shoko studied him over the lip of the cup of sake he’d just poured for her. So little time had passed since Nanami had left the life of a salaryman behind to rejoin jujutsu society, and it was plain to see that it was taking a toll on him. For a man in his late twenties, his worn expression and tired eyes looked more like he was approaching forty. Not that Shoko could pass any judgment on his appearance. The perpetually darkening circles under her eyes were pretty telling of how the jujutsu world had been treating her.

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” Shoko piped up, offering a reprieve.

Nanami glanced up at her from his own cup of sake, and Shoko realized for the first time just how long his lashes were. It reminded her of Gojo and Geto and how good they looked wearing her mascara back when they were teengers. “Not particularly. I always enjoy your company, Shoko-san, but I’m also quite fond of peace and quiet.”

Shoko nodded sagely. “I believe ‘companionable silence’ is the term you’re looking for.”

He smiled meekly. “Yes, it’s… quite refreshing.”

“Mmm. It’s the best medicine after a rough week. I would know. I’m a doctor.”

“I agree,” Nanami politely assented.

“And when you still have a pounding headache from the last night out.”

Nanami snorted a laugh, and in utter shock, Shoko neary sprayed him with warm sake. She’d never heard Nanami Kento so much as chuckle before. “It’s not that, I assure you. It’s just… Gojo and Utahime-san —”

“Oh, those two? Ha! You’d think at least one of them would’ve matured beyond all that bickering nonsense, but alas, Gojo is a menace and Utahime, well… she is very susceptible to menaces.” Shoko shrugged as if to say nothing could be done about it. “It is what it is, but if you ask me, I think they both get a kick out of it.”

Nanami sipped his sake and shook his head. “What it is is unnecessarily loud and obnoxious buffoonery. Not that I think any of those things of Utahime-san ordinarily. It’s just that Gojo often brings the worst out in people.”

Around a mouthful of sake, Shoko hummed in agreement. “And that, my friend, is why we recharge in silence.”

Nanami generously refilled both of their sake cups then raised his for a toast. “And to that, I say: kanpai,” he added as their ceramic cups clattered against one another.

“Kanpai,” Shoko offered in kind.

Thursday evenings had become their designated day for weekly companionable silence. On that particular night, Shoko was complicit in it, but Nanami couldn’t seem to hold his tongue for once.

“Is there anything you would like to talk about?” he asked, and the echo of Shoko’s own question from weeks prior reverberated in the space between them.

“No,” is all Shoko managed to say before she kicked back her fourth mug of beer, emptying it.

She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, to see the stoicism on his face in stark contrast to the deep concern in his eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else, either, because idle chatter only threatened to summon a gut-wrenching sob that she had been keeping at bay for days.

Christmas decorations still hung in the streets and alleyways of Shinjuku when Geto Suguru unleashed The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. They had known about the attack in advance and were able to evacuate most civilians, but still, Shoko had spent Christmas Day and the day after wrist-deep in bodies — living, dead, and somewhere in between.

But it wasn’t the torn flesh or mangled limbs that had left Shoko so on edge. No, it was knowing that someone she cared for so deeply and so profoundly was at the heart of the massacre.

Before Geto defected, it all seemed like a major depressive episode — something he could climb his way out of and come back from. But then he slaughtered an entire village and his own family, and it wasn’t until The Night Parade that Shoko realized just how deeply she was in denial about it all. Geto was a murderer hellbent on destroying everything they had only ever been taught to protect, and there was nothing she could do now aside from aid in the effort to rid the world of him.

“It’s little consolation, I’m sure,” Nanami chimed into Shoko’s whirling thoughts, “but I do know what it’s like to lose someone, Shoko-san. You can talk to me if you need to.”

Haibara Yu’s big, bright smile briefly flashed through Shoko’s mind before she finally braved glancing Nanami’s way, his face a blur through the sea of tears brimming her eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to lose someone when they’re still alive, Nanami?”

Nanami nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must be like for you.”

All Shoko could do was nod back at him and mutter under her breath about having to go. She practically stumbled out of the booth, a cigarette half lit before she even made it out the door.

Once she was gone, Nanami toasted her empty mug with his own and said, “Otsukaresana deshita.”

It was Thursday again. Time had passed, wounds had scabbed over, and things had changed. Their beloved little izakaya was the same as ever, though, peaceful and secluded — a true respite for the weary. There were a few other regulars tucked into booths and warming bar stools, going about their regular lives, but life for both Shoko and Nanami had been anything but regular lately.

Two days ago, Shoko had a child on her autopsy table. A fifteen-year-old boy — Gojo’s newest first-year. He wasn’t just any ol’ student, though. He was a vessel, carting around the King of Curses inside him, and that king had reached right into that boy’s chest with his own bare hand and ripped his heart right out.

Kid or not, Shoko was a doctor first, and she wouldn’t deny that she was morbidly curious about the boy’s inner workings. She’d autopsied plenty of bodies that had cohabitated with curses, even if only briefly, and she wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to dissect a body that had served as host to the curse of all curses.

She’d barely pulled on her second glove when the kid sprung back to life. The curse inside him had regenerated his heart, and since then, Gojo had been putting the boy through his paces. Most recently, he’d been placed under Nanami’s tutelage, and Shoko was rather intrigued by that.

“That boy you’ve been training — Itadori, was it? How is it going? What do you think of him?” Shoko asked as she reached for a gyoza with her chopsticks.

Nanami carefully discarded an edamame hull and washed down the steamed beans with his beer. “It’s going well, all things considered. I wouldn’t say that he’s particularly bright, but he is eager and capable. He has great potential as a professional sorcerer, but…”

“But he’s still just a child, right?” Shoko finished for him.

“Right, so it’s my responsibility to protect him from whatever hell is brewing. I couldn’t shield him from another catastrophic loss when Yoshino died, but I vow to do so going forward. He deserves as much of a normal life as he can manage with the time he has left — Fushiguro and Kugisaki, too. They all deserve it.”

Shoko wanted to remind him that being so kind and caring is anything but rewarding in jujutsu society. Did he not learn that firsthand from Haibara’s death, from Geto’s? Ultimately, she decided better of spreading her callous agenda, because Nanami could never be like her.

“To protecting the next generation,” Shoko said in spite of her better judgment, raising her sake cup in a toast.

“To protecting the next generation,” Nanami repeated, lifting his own cup. “Kanpai.”

“Kanpai.”

Thursday, October 25, 2018. Five days until what would later become known as the Shibuya Incident. Five days until the course of jujutsu society — and society at large — would change forever.

The atmosphere was stale, Shoko and Nanami’s shared mood sour. The silence could hardly even be described as companionable now. In fact, it was quite heavy, smothering, but neither of them had the energy to fill it.

There was little to be said then anyway. They had planned and prepared until there was nothing left to plan or prepare, idle hands trembling in anticipation. They’d barely touched the beers on their table. It had been so long they had become tepid, so Shoko waved a server over.

Nanami watched quietly as the server returned with Shoko’s order: two shots of their hardest liquor. He graciously accepted the shot, twirling it around on the tabletop a time or two before sliding it to the center. It clinked against Shoko’s glass, sloshing a bit of clear liquor onto the varnished wood.

“To making it to the other side,” he said.

“To making it,” Shoko offered in response. “Kanpai.”

“Kanpai.”

Shinjuku wasn’t even reachable until sometime in February 2019, and by then, Shoko wasn’t even sure she wanted to go. But that little izakaya tucked away in a nondescript alleyway had been calling to her, and to say the least, she was shocked to still find it standing.

It was a Thursday, of course, and as she stepped through the tiny entrance, Shoko half expected to see him sitting there in their usual spot. For some reason, the emptiness of it stunned her, rooting her to the spot. She hadn’t expected to become so overwhelmed by emotion, but before she could burst into tears or flee or both, the server from their last visit walked into her blurry line of sight.

“Good evening, Ieiri-san. Right this way, please.” Shoko didn’t move at first, still processing it all. The grief she was wracked with felt like lead in the pit of her stomach, but there was lightness, too, a sense of relief at seeing this stranger whose name she didn’t even know having survived.

The server seemed to glean that a member of Shoko’s party was missing — and would always be so. She didn’t attempt to rush Shoko or even try to shoo her out of the doorway, and for that, Shoko was grateful.

When Shoko did finally take a step forward, her gait was wobbly like a newborn fawn, but her feet didn’t fail her completely. She made it to their booth without incident before all but falling onto her seat. She stared blankly at the space where he should be. She stared so long that she hadn’t realized the server had left and was now returning with a tray brimming with their usuals: beer, sake, and tapas — all for two.

“No need to concern yourself with the tab, Ieiri-san. Nanami-san settled that quite some time ago.”

All Shoko managed was a weak nod, and the server seemed to take that as her cue to leave her be.

For the first time since the Shibuya Incident, since the Culling Game and the final showdown with Sukuna, Shoko sat alone in that dusty, old booth and processed it all. She grieved for all of them — Nanami and Gojo and Yaga. She grieved for everyone, even the people she had never even knew existed.

“Shoko-san, are you alright?”

The voice was familiar, and it drew her heavy gaze away from the vacant seat across from her. Standing awkwardly at her tableside, Shoko found Ijichi looking more anxious and concerned than she thought could be compatible with life. If she didn’t answer him soon, he may very well die of a heart attack — and after everything he’d been through…

“I’m fine, Ijichi. I’m just… having a moment is all,” Shoko answered as she furiously wiped her tears on the sleeve of her lab coat.

“Good, good. I-I mean, no! Not good, good. It’s just good that you’re okay. We all have our moments these days anyhow, don’t we?”

Shoko simply nodded as Ijichi continued worrying himself into a frenzy, practically wringing his hands now. “So, what brings you here, Ijichi?”

“Um, well, this actually. It’s, uh, it’s a note. From Nanami-san.” Shoko stared at the neatly folded paper that Ijichi offered to her, but she couldn’t bear to take it for fear of melting down again. When Ijichi finally realized that he would be keeping it, he hurriedly stuffed it back into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Oh, um. It says that I’m… I’m supposed to join you here for, uh —”

Shoko couldn’t help but to laugh then. “For companionable silence.”

“Y-Yes, that’s it!”

Gesturing to the barren booth across from her, Shoko smiled as she said, “Take a load off, Ijichi. Let me show you our ways.”