Chapter Text
Kugisaki Nobara knew she was ugly.
She was an average girl from an average family living in an average town with an average life.
Which, by default, meant that she had an average face. Except it was worse than average.
She had known for a long while that she wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the world, no matter how much she hyped herself up in the mirror and tried to convince herself that it was true. Her eyes weren’t as pretty as Fushiguro’s blue and green ones, and her hair wasn’t as unique as Itadori’s pink.
That didn’t matter so much to her, of course. No one needed one of a kind hair and eyes to be gorgeous, even if her ‘boring’ appearance had taken a strike to the head when she caught sight of the two of them during their first meeting. Very suddenly, her brown hair and eyes weren’t a simple but striking look, and instead dusty and old.
She doesn’t let this show, of course, because she would probably rather die than admit that she was feeling anything close to the notion of unattractive, so she kept it to herself and pretended that it was just a passing feeling.
It worked, somehow, until she would look at herself in the mirror and catch sight of a forming pimple somewhere at her hairline and all those bad feelings would work their ways up again. How was she supposed to be a model with all those flaws so evident on her face?
She couldn’t.
And those things would only get worse with each passing day that she would wash her face in front of the mirror. Eyebags. Scratches littering her face.. Chapped lips. Crooked teeth that would definitely need braces again, but she couldn’t dare to think about it, so she thinks about using aligners instead. The feeling is uncomfortable, and she opts to keep her mouth shut a lot.
It’s what starts to catch the eyes of her classmates, but no one makes a comment when Itadori purposefully takes a jab at her and she only frowns angrily his way.
Nobara is completely sure that the reason that all this is coming to light is because of her job as a sorcerer. All those missions were making her sweaty and covered in grime that would cause her face to break out, followed by sleepless nights and unattended skin on days that she was barely strong enough to walk.
Communicating these struggles would be fruitless. It’s not like the boys would understand the pain of having to spend hours alone in the bathroom crying their eyes out over the fact that there are so many beautiful girls in the world and they just weren’t one of them.
Tangled and dead hair, Obvious dark roots. Short lashes. Broken nails. She could try all she wanted to straighten her hair and brush and cut away at the frayed edges, but the imperfections were so glaringly obvious that it was a wonder that no one had begun to point and laugh yet.
Stupid Nobara, an average girl who believes that she is pretty enough to be a model. If anything, she was sinking below average.
It scared her. Because she knows very well the cruelty of conventionally attractive girls against the less fortunate ones.
She couldn’t say that she was ever in the former group. She had always been average, and the girls at school were very quick to pick up on that. That was, of course, except for Fumi.
“You’re really pretty, Kugisaki-san. I wish I looked like you.” She had once said offhandedly. And Nobara had, embarrassingly, very quickly burst out crying, because not ever before had someone her age called her pretty before, and she had no clue what to respond with other than tears.
Other than Fumi and perhaps Granny, no one else had complimented her after that. And she was just fine with it, because she had enough spirit fo complement and uplift herself without anyone else’s reassurance or input.
Slowly, that confidence began to crumble, piece by piece until very little of her certainty remained.
There were times where she wanted to run to another girl. To Ieiri-san, Nitta-san, Maki especially. She stops herself each time. Because she would do nothing but offend Ieiri-san by telling her that she hated her brown hair and eyes that were always accompanied by eye bags. Telling Nitta-san that she despised her dark roots and acne scars wouldn’t result in anything good. And Maki…well Maki was just perfect. Nobara doubts that she would understand where she was coming from, and she feared a response that would unintentionally worsen her views.
There was absolutely no way that she was going to the boys over any of this either, because what did they know about being ugly anyway? Admittedly, it wasn’t just Fushiguro’s eyes or Itadori’s hair, because combined with every one of their features it made something that she would see in a museum of distinct figures.
Don’t even get her started on Gojo-sensei. The only thing negative about him was his super freaky eyes.
She had a ton of makeup, which she used to cover up her eyebags and cuts and acne scars and she hoped for the best when putting on mascara or styling her brows.
She gets a bottle of chemical peel as well, and pretends that her lips don’t throb and sting and make her want to cry with the pain of it. It was for a better cause. So she doesn’t let the tears spill from her eyes and just fans her mouth furiously over the sink, waiting that agonizing minute before splashing water all her red liquid on her lips.
It hurts terribly after, and she sniffles simply as she screws the dropper back onto the bottle and stores it in her cabinet. Her lips are a bright red, and she sincerely hopes that the label wasn’t lying and the longest that her new skin would take to grow back was two weeks.
Nothing in this tiny school could stay a secret forever, she guessed, because two days after her attempt at the peel, Itadori’s jaw drops when she enters the classroom.
“Kugisaki…what happened to your face?!” He cried as she walked in. Admittedly, she had woken up late and hadn’t checked her appearance thoroughly. She snatches a mirror from her skirt pocket, looks at herself and promptly screams.
Maybe she should have done a little more research on chemical peel. Her lips did end up looking really good though.
No one mentions the event.
—
Shibuya was a nightmare.
A vague, twisted, painful nightmare and she thinks that Itadori’s yells will forever haunt her ever passing moment. That, and the feeling of that awful curse’s hand on her face. She had felt the actual explosion in which her eye flew out, and she shudders every time she thinks of the squelch and result. Of course, Nitta-san (the other Nitta-san, which was really confusing) had helped Ieiri-san clean her up so that she was bandaged up when she awoke, but she could still feel the phantom weight of that blood coating her face.
Being clean wasn’t the important part. What was important was that she went from average to ugly to ruined.
She looks like a broken doll that a child had abused and beaten to their own liking and then tossed away in the trash. Passing by the mirror wasn’t just an inconvenience anymore. It was a reminder. An aching reminder that she could never be a normal girl, much less a model that she had once dreamed of. She couldn’t bear it.
Every mirror that she knew was turned away, taken down, or just simply covered.
The eyepatch just barely helped. Ieiri-san was nice enough to give her a glass eye so that it wasn’t just an empty gaping hole in her face. The first time she had lifted up the eyepatch (which he hadn’t done when she woke up because there were…other things that needed to be done) she barely had enough time to turn to the toilet and puke up her guts.
Ruined.
Needless to say, she was a little happier about having an implant. It still didn’t help, and she found herself very reluctant to take off her eyepatch, even when she was alone in the dark of her room on select nights.
Of course, she says select nights because Itadori refused to let the two of them out of his sights, and they had all agreed that Fushiguro’s room was somehow the best furnished for the three of them, and each night they ended up tangled in each other's limbs.
Itadori had started furnishing his room after the…incident. It wasn’t like anyone was going to go kill him or anything, and with a push in the right direction he had started to buy little things for himself.
Maybe that’s how they ended up finding out. And it wasn’t just a chemical peel situation either.
“Hey, Kugisaki, you know you can take off the eyepatch when you go to sleep.” Itadori had reluctantly started when she had flopped down beside Fushiguro, resting her head on his chest for their ‘assignment’ of the night. Which really just meant that the person in the middle always switched in a rotation. Itadori, Fushiguro, and then Nobara and around and around they went.
“Hey, Itadori, you know you can take off the scar when you go to bed.” She quips back, adjusting her head so that the inner part of the eyepatch wouldn’t move if Fushiguro did, which was not very often.
“Uncalled for!” Itadori yells back, poking his head out from the bathroom door he had retreated to. “The eyepatch can go off anytime.”
“It’s actually surgically attached to my face.”
“Huh? Wait, seriously?” He asks, drying his face on a towel before shutting off the light and making his way over to the bed.
“Yeah. I just felt like going through the whole process of taking the thing on and off and on and off—” She interrupts herself with a sigh.
“So you got it stitched to your face?” Itadori asks again, and she groans, throwing a hand over her forehead.
“Just turn the lights off and go to bed, dude. Before Fushiguro explodes on us or something.”
“I’m not going to explode on you guys.”
“Yeah, that’s what someone who was planning to explode on us would say.”
Fushiguro sighs, and the feeling of it resonates through Nobara’s head in a strange way as the lights flick off, and she can finally rest. Itadori shuffles around until he’s on the other side of Fushiguro. She isn’t sure if he thought he was being sneaky when he did this, but he began to tiptoe his fingers across Fushiguro’s chest, up until they reached her faulty eye. He poked at the black cloth on her face.
“Ku-gi-sa-ki.” He whispers, pausing between letters. “You can take the eyepatch off.”
“Fuck off.”
“Okay.” His fingers pretend to sulk and turn around and walk back, though they stop and his arm encircled around Fushiguro’s waist instead. He doesn’t pressure her with anything else, and Nobara finds herself slowly drifting off. Fushiguro’s breathing levels out, and Itadori only mumbles something ineligible under his breath a few times before falling into a peaceful silence.
—
Nobara finds that usually the person in the middle always wakes up last. Even if it’s Fushiguro who gets up with the rising sun. Even if it's her when her face needs a serious deep cleaning.
So she isn’t too surprised when she wakes up first, and very begrudgingly she pulls herself out of the mess that they had become, with her totally sprawled out over half of Fushiguro’s body and Itadori’s head somehow finding its way onto her torso.
It’s always unnervingly quiet in the halls of Jujutsu Tech, and there is a very obvious reason why. Even with Okkotsu’s addition, they still lost people.
They had still lost Gojo-sensei.
Nobara couldn’t say that she was the closest to the man. If anything, she was the furthest from it, because each student had something different about their relationship with him, something that was so unique and something that mattered—and she didn’t.
Just another reason to add to the list of being the ‘average’ one out.
Her feet hit the cold floor harshly when she walks, and the hallways that used to be so full of laughter and teasing and fun are completely still.
She tries her best to fix herself up without looking into the mirror. It’s a bit difficult, but she had started practicing by using a handheld one, pointing it towards the good side of her face when she did. That got a little too much to bear when she actually started feeling good about herself until the mirror shifted a little too far to the side, and she was left gagging up water.
When she turns around to leave, she lets out a loud gasp before stumbling back, a hand on her chest as she shakes her head.
“Dude. Fushiguro. You can not be doing that.” She warns, pounding her chest as she slowly begins to regain the soul that had jumped out of her body.
It was one thing for Fushiguro to sneak up on her. It was another to be standing in the light that made his hair appear much lighter, almost a ghostly white, and make her think she saw the ghost of her dead sensei.
“I thought you said you grew so much more alert.” He replies dryly as she shuts the door behind her and the two of them walk out.
“Not against freaks like you, shadow master.”
“Shadow master.” He repeats, raising an eyebrow.
“Mhm. What are you doing, spying on me anyway?” She asks suspiciously, eyeing him for a few moments longer than necessary.
“I was checking up on you.”
“Checking up on me…for what?”
“Just because. I don’t think any of us are the same since before Shibuya.”
“Woah, dude, really? I never would have guessed.”
Fushiguro gives her a look, and she reluctantly raises her hands in surrender and sighs. “Alright, alright, sorry. Thanks, but I’m totally fine.”
He watches her for a moment more, and then turns back to the front. “Okay.”
Itadori is still asleep, according to Fushiguro, so it’s just the two of them in the kitchen as Fushiguro makes breakfast. It wasn’t often that the second years joined them, and today was no different in that matter.
It was clear that they had all gotten at least a little bit closer over the months, but that didn’t mean that Fushiguro was any better at talking to people. She knows that he wants to say something, but she isn’t very sure that she’s going to like it, so she doesn’t help him out. Maybe it was a little mean, but in her defense, he probably didn’t want to be asked it either if she was the one with the question.
It’s a few minutes later that Itadori appears, mumbling under his breath about how the two of them left him cold and alone. It almost makes Nobara laugh. But for some reason, since she woke up, something heavy was resting on her, as if something terrible was going to happen. It just made her uneasy.
“Fushiguro~” Itadori calls, practically floating to the kitchen. “You’re cooking? What’re you cooking? Let me see~”
Just like that, she pushes the burden from her mind and pretends that everything is normal again. Fushiguro and Itadori’s banters, that will soon pan over to Nobara and she’ll pick a side depending on what they’re arguing about, and the day starts off. That’s how everyday was.
The only difference was that there would be no Gojo-sensei to join in if the argument continued to the classroom.
Nobara has no clue why her mind keeps drifting back to the man. He was nothing but an annoying teacher that she had no connection with. Other than…well, she didn’t want to mourn, so she keeps any semblance of a bonding moment between them far from her conscious mind.
“Kugisaki, don’t you think that Fushiguro should smile more?”
“We’ve had this conversation multiple times before. The answer has never changed.”
“Well…yeah, but he claims that he has smiled more. I think that he should smile even more.”
“Oh, yeah. Fushiguro, you gotta smile until you get smile lines and wrinkles and everything.”
“I smile enough.” Fushiguro responds, shutting off the stove and serving them breakfast, easily causing the debate to die down quickly. Well, she supposed that if he was smiling a little more than normal, then that would be fine.
“It’s mostly because of me, y’know. That he’s smiling.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Hah? What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that Fushiguro’s smiling is all because of me. You just make him frown more.”
“No I don’t! If anyone makes him more upset, it’s you.”
“You wish!”
“Will both of you...stop talking!” Fushiguro urges loudly, and the two of them fall quiet and look at each other, quickly shoveling food into their mouths.
“See…you made him frown more. Good job, Itadori.” Nobara mumbles, shooting him a glare. Itadori gawks at her, furrowing her eyebrows.
“It’s your fault—”
“Just stop.” Fushiguro interrupts. “I smile on my own accord. Happy?”
Itadori sighs at the same time as Nobara crosses her arms.
—
Nobara sits on her bed, holding a little mirror in her hand. She forgot that she had owned the pink thing, a little large and intricately designed along the borders. She doesn’t remember when she got it, but it must have been a really long time ago. Dust covered the reflecting parts of gems on the sides, and it had been found buried deep in her storage of things that she didn’t use much anymore.
Ieiri-san had suggested cleaning up, saying that it sometimes worked therapeutically to rearrange and actually know where everything is. Not that Nobara cared all that much, but it was Ieiri-san telling her that it might help, so they all went back to their rooms to figure everything out.
She blows on the surface, dust flying into the air. She stands up, and shifts the mirror around. It was a pretty thing, so lovingly designed. She catches sight of the eyepatch in the corner, and very slowly she turns it away. She looked so…so close to pretty in that mirror, as if it had magically made her appealing.
Maybe…just maybe if she looked into it and took the eyepatch off, it would make that pretty as well.
It takes a lot of hesitation and reluctance, but she raises her hand up slowly and pinches the end of the fabric between her fingers before closing her eyes and slowly lifting it up above her head. When she feels it drop from her head, she opens her eyes and looks into the mirror, seeing at first only the good side of her face. She tilts it over just a bit, and freezes.
It’s grotesque and hideous and so horribly disgusting that she drops the mirror (throws it?) and barely hears the smashing of glass against the floor, bits and pieces of shards of glass and ceramic spraying over the hardwood floor. And from her lips escape a wailing scream because it all strikes her at once.
No matter what anyone does, no mirror or makeup or eyepatch will ever hide the deformity of her face. No person could make her feel beautiful, and there was certainly no way that she could ever be anything close to pretty.
Footsteps thunder down the hall, and her door slams open, revealing Itadori with his hand stretched out against the wood, breathing heavily. Behind him is Fushiguro, looking around the room for the threat. But he doesn’t know that it’s her.
“Kugisaki!” Itadori breathes out, flicking over her face and the glass on the floor. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
She wants to speak. She wants to tell them to get lost so that she could mourn the last remnants of her average face and average life alone and sob to herself. But the words can’t form, and all she can do is hold herself tight as she raises a hand to cover her eye much like she did right before it was taken from her. And the only thing she can do is begin to cry.
In any other situation, it would be hilarious to see the pure look of terror on Itadori’s face, and the extreme dread coating Fushiguro's, but she was too distraught to even notice anything that was happening around her. Because everyone else was just so perfect, and she was always the odd one out.
Slowly, Fushiguro pushes past Itadori and extends his hand out towards her. She shakes her head despite barely even registering the outside world other than the hatred that was swirling around inside her heart, directed toward that stupid curse and her stupid appearance.
“Kugisaki.” Fushiguro says quietly. “Just—just step away from the glass, okay? Don’t cut yourself.”
There was no use. Who cared if she got any more damaged than she already was?
“I do. We do. We’ll get this cleaned up, okay?”
Vision blurry with tears and her face feeling so uncomfortably sticky, as well as her fake eye that had suddenly began to ache horribly, she reached out blindly towards where she could see the shaky blob. A hand wraps around her own, and she’s gently pulled to the side and then around boxes that she had been sorting through.
“That’s right. Itadori will take you to get water, okay?”
“I am? Oh, right. Absolutely, yeah.” Itadori says, and the hand lets go of hers, and a tentative arm rests on her shoulders as she’s led out of her dorm room.
“You like cold water, right? Lots of ice?” He asks, before humming. “Wait, don’t answer that. Of course you do.”
Nobara hiccups, her chest heaving as with every new batch of tears comes ten times the amount. She stumbles over herself, and Itadori stabilizes her each time, murmuring mixed nonsense about how it was going to be okay.
They must reach the kitchen, because Itadori sits her down at a chair as she scrubs furiously at her uninjured eye because of the still conscious fear that if she even touched the other one, it would become an even worse gory mess.
She hears the sound of ice clinking in a glass, and then the running of water before it's placed in front of her. She wants to drink it, with her throat feeling bitter and salty, but her hands shake when she tries to move them, and the tears just won’t stop. She doesn’t think that she had cried over her injury this much before. Damn her, keeping it all in and then having to break down in front of her classmates.
“It’s…it’s okay. Shh?” Itadori tries, rubbing her back, and she almost laughs, but it sounds more like a choked sob.
“I’m—I’m not an animal.” She stutters, but a part of her denies that. Even an animal was not as horrible as her. It made her feel even worse, which meant that her cries got worse which also meant that Itadori panicking got worse.
His hand doesn’t falter though, and instead comes up to wipe at her face, his palms gliding across her cheeks despite the consistent flowing of tears erasing his progress. He eases her up, and quickly is sitting in a different place, one that she can feel is a couch. Itadori sits beside her, and for a moment he leans away. There are muffled voices, and she realizes vaguely that Fushiguro must have been talking to him. She can barely make out the words.
“...mirror…eye…panic…”
“...deeper…more serious…”
Itadori’s calloused palms meet her face again, and he talks to her.
“Oh…Kugisaki…” He says sorrily, and the tone of his voice makes it seem like she was some poor pity party. But she already knew that.
She blinks harshly and a large mess of hot and sticky and bitter tears fall from her eyes to reveal a blurry image of Fushiguro crouching in front of her, a hand on her knee.
Neither of them say much except for reassurances. Itadori puts a firm arm around her shoulders and continues to clean her tears, and she leans her head against his shoulder until after what seems like eternity, the tears begin to slow. As if she was beginning to run out of them or Itadori’s system was working, it all soon came to a stop, leaving Nobara just hiccuping and sniffling as she tried to regain her composure. Fushiguro stands up and walks to the kitchen, returning with the glass of water that Itadori had filled earlier.
The glass is damp with condensation, some of the ice still present as she shakily lifts it up to herself and gulps down a generous amount, all the while trying not to burst into tears again. But she thinks that maybe she cried all she could.
“Do you wanna…y’know. Talk?” Itadori asks softly as he takes the glass from her when she’s finished, handing it to Fushiguro who turns to place it on the coffee table.
And for some strange reason, she does.
“If you don’t want to, that’s totally fine—” Itadori begins, loosening his grip on her.
“It’s disgusting.” She says, and mentally winces at the state of her voice. Itadori falls silent, and Fushgiuro goes still.
“What…what’s disgusting?” Itadori asks, nudging her slightly.
She shakes her head. She wants to talk, and if anyone interrupts she might just run off and cry again. Nobara thinks that Fushiguro must understand, because he looks at Itadori and purses his lips, and the other boy seems to just get it.
“This stupid eye. It’s not fair. Everyone else was morphed into some stupid ugly monster and he did the same to me but I ended up—with just my face—it’s not fair. I wasn’t even someone unique or pretty and he still went for my face.”
She pauses, and Itadori speaks up. “I think you were plenty pretty.”
Nobara laughs hollowly. “Were. Even then, I wasn’t anything special. I don’t have Fushiguro’s eyes or your hair and I’m just some average girl that’s the textbook definition of basic.”
Itadori opens his mouth to interrupt, but closes it when she continues.
“And no matter how hard I try, I just can’t fix it. It’s so difficult and it still doesn’t work out. And now I’m ruined. I’m ruined.”
There’s so much that she wants to say, that she wants to just let out, but her voice falters. Maybe there were things left unsaid, but that was enough to give them an idea, and that was enough to sum up all of her feelings.
“Thinking of being a model was so stupid. I was never going to make it, was I?” She asks, and she thinks she feels the tears resurfacing but pushes them back and pulls up her knees, hiding her face in them instead.
“Well…well I think you’re beautiful.” Itadori says, and she lifts her head up slightly to look at him. His eyes are as round and owlish as they usually are, but they stare at her with such an indescribable intensity that she finds herself almost believing him.
“I don’t want your pity.” She mumbles, and Itadori’s hand reaches out to stop her from putting her head back down again.
“I mean it. You were pretty when we met and you're still just as beautiful. Even more so.”
“Go get your eyes checked. I’m not so stupid as to believe you. I can see better with my one than you.”
“Is Maki ugly?” Fushiguro asks, and she turns to gawk at him.
“Are you serious? Of course not.”
“Even with her burns?”
“They make her look so much more badass.” It takes her a moment to realize where he’s going with this.
“So why doesn’t your eye make you look any better?”
“That’s a stupid question.” She grumbles, scrubbing at her damp lashes. “Maki’s burns highlight her figure. My eye is just a horror explosion of blood and flesh.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He says, and without explaining he gets up slowly. Itadori looks to him, and then to her before shrugging.
“Okay, but listen for real, Kugisaki. I think you’re super pretty. Ah, shush.” He says, muffling her voice with his hand as she tries to rebuttal it. “Who cares if you have a ‘basic’ hair color? That’s not what really matters. And no, I’m not going to say it’s what matters on the inside, so just listen to me, will you?” He says, exasperated as she tries to talk again.
“It’s about good features and good facial harmony.” He explains. “You've got a straight nose, white teeth, and the most fitting eye shape known to jujutsu society. Acne scars just highlight your features even more, and I’ve never met anyone other than Fushiguro with longer lashes than you. And it all comes together so nicely, and that’s what makes you so pretty.”
Fushiguro returns with a few containers of what looks to be glitter and two brushes. He pulls out his phone and points it towards Itadori who had let go of her to join him. He makes an ‘o’ with his lips and nods.
“Just let us do this, okay?” Fushiguro requests, raising an eyebrow, so she nods and lets them do whatever. “Close your eyes.”
The sensation of wet brushes against her face would have normally felt ticklish, had it not been for the completely numb feeling of the skin around her fake eye. She doesn’t say anything about it, though, and lets them brush away, secretly hoping that it wasn’t going to make her hate it more.
It takes a few minutes, and she stops them when Itadori starts blowing at her face to make it dry.
“I think you’ve done enough.” She grumbles, pushing away his face as she opens her eyes. The boy pauses, staring at her for a few moments longer than necessary.
She looks at them with a frown. “...what did you do?” She asks suspiciously, and Fushiguro blinks.
“Nothing. It looks really good.” He says earnestly, and Itadori stops his gawking to comment on it as well.
“You look really good.” He says in awe, and she can detect nothing secretive about their tones, and she hates how her face flushes and she just accepts it to be true.
“Just let me see it.” She says, turning her face away. Itadori freezes and looks around awkwardly. She figures it out quickly. “I’m not going to freak out and break down when I see myself.”
She gets up and walks to the nearby bathroom. Wordlessly, the boys get up and follow her. There’s something in her gut that makes her feel strange as she pushes open the door and walks in, her gaze lowered. The duo behind her peek through the door.
With a quick inhale and no time to rethink, she looks up, and her breath is immediately stolen away. There was a combination of colors on her face. A light blue, purple with bits of yellow and red dotting her face as well. They lined her face like a decoration, as if it were something to be put on display. She resists the urge to bring a hand up and touch it, afraid of ruining the beauty that it presented.
“Do you like it?” Itadori calls from the door, and she turns around to look at their anxious faces. With a simple movement, she slides across the floor and wraps her arms around Fushiguro, who was the closest to her. She buries her face in his shirt, and she can feel the moment that Itadori’s arms circle around the two of them.
“Thank you,” She whispers, and though it’s barely audible to her, she knows that the words echo through their bodies. There’s a strange feeling of confidence that she hasn’t had in a while, and it brings her to a realization. For the first time in a very long time, she felt good about her appearance.
Kugisaki Nobara feels beautiful.