Chapter Text
Under the blanket of darkness and the cold, judgmental witness of roadkill angels, Yuuji Itadori vows that he will shovel more out of this life than the scrap of dilapidated concrete that’s been handed to him.
Perhaps that’s an unreasonable ask, standing outside of the convenience store and muttering about stubbing his toe on the same uneven crack in the pavement that’s been there for years, smoothie spilled over the front of his shirt, at roughly two in the morning, but the curse and the vow ring true against the chilled air.
Yuuji sighs, pulling the smoothie away from his ruined white t-shirt, hand sticky where it rests against the plastic of the smoothie’s container. The streetlight is unsympathetic to his plight, only flickering lowly as Yuuji sets the smoothie on the trash can next to him, shaking berry-flavored-goop off his hand. Not like it’ll help.
Serves him right for getting a smoothie late, apparently.
After shaking his hand to rid it of a majority of the former-smoothie-substance, Yuuji quickly wipes it on the back of his jeans, just enough to allow him not to feel disgusting as he grabs some change from his pocket to deposit into the pay-phone next to him.
Yuuji dials a familiar number, his back to the dark main road behind him, the lights of the 7/11 casting an ominous glow across old dirt and new construction.
As the telephone rings, there is a distinct feeling of eyes on him.
When Yuuji turns, there is nothing there than the same streetlight that had pitied him earlier. How… odd.
Before he has the chance to think about it — “What do you want, Itadori? Do you know what time it is?”
“My smoothie,” Yuuji sighs dramatically, laughing wickedly at the disgustingly-tired voice of Nobara Kugisaki, his best — and meanest — friend. “It’s all down my shirt, man. I can’t hide this evidence in the wash. Choso’s gonna kill me if he knows I went out for smoothies at this time of night without him.”
“What time is it? Isn't he at work?” Nobara asks again, and Yuuji really should wonder why she’s always the one answering the telephone at two in the morning, but Yuuji’s also almost-certain that Nobara’s grandmother has terrible hearing and that Nobara is a light sleeper. It’s a perfect arrangement for them, and has been for years now.
“Two in the morning,” Yuuji says sheepishly, shifting both his weight and the pay-phone from hand-to-hand in an effort to keep the cold of the ground from seeping into his already-sore feet.
“Oh, you son of a bitch,” Nobara says, drawling out the last syllable — he can already imagine her rubbing the exhaustion out of her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come over. You’re doing your own laundry.”
“Yes!” Yuuji cheers, mostly to himself. The sound is loud considering Yuuji has no one around him, save for the tired cashier who had spared him barely a glance and is safely sound-protected within the building, but it’s not strange that Nobara grunts her displeasure at the notion. Volume and all. “I’ll be there soon, promise!”
And that’s the end of that, Yuuji hanging up the phone and breathing out heavily when the temperature catches up with him again. He stares woefully at his smoothie, half-smeared across his shirt and cooling rapidly, and half-sat atop the trash can like a crown. With the purple-berry-mash smeared down the side of the cup, it really isn’t worth it to carry the drink halfway across town.
He paid for that smoothie. It was a good smoothie. It did everything it was supposed to, but with a heavy heart and the grief of a widow, Yuuji tosses the tattered cup into the trash can.
As Yuuji walks through the parking lot, hopping over the parking barrier, headlights flash brightly across the landscape — illuminating the desolate, abandoned field across from the 7/11 better than the themed lights ever could.
Yuuji squints, stumbling over the curb, wondering who the hell is driving with their brights on this late at night, rolling through a town, and hey —
“Oi!” Yuuji shouts, stumbling to the side, because the headlights are not stopping, slowing down, or swerving over on account of Yuuji being in the road. “What the hell is wrong with you!”
The headlights drive by.
Yuuji sees only in the absence of the lights that they are attached to a larger truck, maybe a moving-type rental of some sort. Yuuji flashes an unsavory gesture at the truck, scoffing as he dusts the hypothetical-dirt off his smoothie-stained, non-roadkilled shirt. What a fucking idiot.
It’s only as Yuuji starts in the opposite direction that he realizes — I have never seen that truck before in my life, and there is no reason to be going that way on this road.
Maybe it’s a strange thought, but this is a small down by every definition of the word; Yuuji thinks he’s got every person’s name memorized by going through the phone book some years ago, and there are three whole people in his grade at the local high school. It’s stranger for Yuuji not to know the person driving by than it is for Yuuji to recognize he doesn’t know them.
The only house out there — Oh, Yuuji realizes, snickering to himself as he walks.
The only house out there is barely within this little town, destitute and abandoned; a large manor that may have been something treasured, once, a home to be proud of, but now stands rotting with an impressive height, some architect’s wet dream. Maybe there’s a family name tied to the family that used to live there, but if there is, it’s been lost to local legend.
Everyone in Yuuji’s high school has taken to calling it the manor, and the manor alone, never named and never owned. It’s the local haunted house, and look, he isn’t scared of ghosts, really! But there are some interesting stories, and Yuuji can’t think of anyone that hasn’t agreed there was something off about that house after staying in it for a night after some dare.
Whoever tried to run him over is checking out the manor, and Yuuji hopes the ghosts make them eat that fucking steering wheel.
“Oh, yeah, there’s someone moving into the old manor,” Yuuji says, in a new t-shirt — that is actually one of his t-shirts with the hems cut-off and bleach-stains dotting the collar that Nobara had stolen some years back — and lazing about Nobara’s basement.
With her interesting family dynamic and living situation, Nobara’s got the entire basement of her house to herself; bathroom, bedroom, glorified rec-room and all. Many nights have been spent this exact same way, lamenting about happenings while Nobara blearily puts on re-runs of the fashion-disaster show she likes, pretending to listen to him.
Nobara stops what she’s doing, slowly turning the remote over in her hands. There’s still mascara under her eyes from when she didn’t wash it off before bed, and if she was any less fond of him, he would be fed to her demonic little cat. It’s the look in her eyes, Yuuji knows. “Really? Why would someone move there?”
“Fuck if I know,” Yuuji shrugs, leaning against the backrest of the couch. “But they can’t drive worth a damn, I can tell you that much.”
It takes roughly two days for everyone within town to know that there is someone moving into the old manor, and the older folks within their weird crafting circles are much more adept at finding information than Yuuji is. Between the public-record deed of the house, the enrollment records in the school, and whatever jobs have hired on new people, Yuuji receives a neat bundle of information on all the new happenings within the same town he took his first steps in, drank his first beer in, got his heart broken for the first time, and sprained his ankle more times than he can count.
Satoru Gojo seems to be the head of the household, but he isn’t signed to any particular job within town. He’s the adult, according to the gossip Yuuji overhears in the grocery store when he’s picking up more lo mein noodles for his makeshift dinner later that night.
Tsumiki Fushiguro is the one with the car — a car that Yuuji has not seen and did not try to run him over — parked in the driveway. Yuuji doesn’t know anything else about her.
And Megumi Fushiguro is the last of the three, apparently; a year or two younger than Tsumiki herself, and he’s enrolled at Yuuji’s high school in his same grade, so Yuuji assumes they’re around the same age.
“He sounds like a loser,” Nobara huffs, swinging her baseball bat aimlessly as her and Yuuji walk to the local baseball field with lack of anything else to do. There’s no homework to be done, because Choso makes him finish his homework before he goes anywhere (when he's awake to do so), and Nobara’s just better about getting hers done on her own.
It’s six in the evening, the sun is beginning to set early in preparation for the drag of winter, and Nobara’s got an old baseball bat slung across her hips like some action hero. Yuuji’s got a five-gallon bucket of screwed-up, dirty baseballs in his hand, two mitts stacked on top of each other topping the bucket, and Nobara’s jacket over his shoulder.
“Really?” Yuuji says, snorting, bumping shoulders with her, despite her sound of protest. “How can you already decide he’s a loser? You don’t know anything about him.”
“I just know,” Nobara shrugs. “Like, you have to be kind of weird to live in a place like this, right? And everyone knows that manor is haunted, and there isn’t a single real estate agent in this city —“
“Town,” Yuuji corrects.
“— Whatever. Anyway, there isn’t a single real estate agent that would touch it. Which means someone decided to buy this house without ever touring it, in the middle of nowhere, for no particular reason, and you gotta admit — it’s a shithole of a house.”
Yuuji’s got to give her that, and so he does, tilting his head in agreement at her words. Nobara swings that bat around too much when she talks. If Yuuji were anyone else, it would upset him more, but he’s only seen her vandalize something once, so it’s not a big deal. “I mean, yeah, but I guess if they were offering to pay for it without touring, the housing place probably would have closed that deal so fast it isn’t even funny.”
“Would you buy a house impulsively?”
Yuuji snorts. “Do I look like I can buy a house impulsively?”
Nobara looks him up and down judgmentally, as she is prone to do, and as she is also known to do, she shakes her head rapidly. Auburn bangs get into her eyes at the motion, which Nobara is quick to push away; her roots are showing. Yuuji’s going to have to re-dye them soon, which means he should probably apologize to the second-year who works at the hair salon place so that Nobara can buy said hair dye.
(Look, it’s not his fault, okay? The person was nice and all, but they were doing their job wrong, so Yuuji just corrected it! He didn’t mean to make them cry!)
“No, no you do not,” Nobara says decisively.
And they walk.
The baseball field is nothing impressive, ill-maintained, and the less-aesthetic part of the town park. The grass is coming in dead, more so now with the frost that coats the ground in the mornings, and the bases have all but been swallowed by the encroaching foliage. The pitcher’s mound is less of a mound and more of a slight hill at this point, and the battered backstop has seen better days; the chain-link is all but destroyed, bent-out-of-shape or broken behind the strike zone.
It feels like home, most days. Yuuji often wonders why the baseball field feels more like home than his own, but that’s a thought for another time as he defaults to the pitcher’s mound; Nobara likes batting far more than she does pitching, and they’re here to blow off steam for her, not him.
(That’s the thing; they don’t talk about it. Nobara is angry and sad and exhausted, and Yuuji doesn’t bring it up, because Nobara doesn’t want to. Nobara is stuck here, in this town she’s hated her entire life, and Maki Zen’in has moved across the country to stick it to a family that never wanted her, leaving Nobara and Okkotsu and Mai and everyone else she’s ever cared about behind. At least, Yuuji thinks Maki cared about Nobara. It’s complicated. Everything tends to get complicated around here.)
Yuuji puts on his mitt methodically, wonders how many times he’s done this before and why the melancholy is only sticking to his skin now, and winds his arm up diligently to pitch to her. A five-gallon bucket ought to help her spirits; Yuuji wonders how many of them they have left.
(As in, it’s their senior year, and Nobara will be moving away as soon as she feasibly can; Yuuji doesn’t know what he’s doing, but all he’s ever loved and lost is here. Would it really be so bad to leave it? Does he know how to? Will Yuuji follow Nobara after this, even then? What if? What if?)
It’s only as Yuuji’s on pitching the last of the baseballs that he catches sight of something out of his peripheral, and in doing so —
“Oi!” Nobara shouts, huffing as she bangs the bat against the dirt next to home plate. “What was that for? Do we need to get your readers? You almost hit me!”
Correction: Yuuji would have hit her square in the eye had Nobara not jumped out of the way, and Yuuji’s attention is instantly pulled off whatever had distracted him, wincing. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to, sorry. You good?”
“Clearly,” Nobara says, her words speaking to agitation but there isn’t any heat behind it. There hasn’t been any heat behind it since they were in middle school and finally decided there was no good reason to hate each other; it was a mutual effort. Look where they are now — with Yuuji mourning this lost time for a melancholy that hasn’t quite settled yet, and Nobara trying to fight off a heartbreak that Yuuji’s never seen her conceptualize before.
And something out of his peripheral vision.
Nobara must notice it, too, because in one instant she’s searching around for the thrown baseball and the next, she’s setting her bat down on the dirt and gesturing Yuuji over.
Nobara walks with the stride of a model, gesturing like a line cook. “Hey, you! Who are you? And stop staring, it’s creepy!”
As Yuuji jogs to catch up with her, Nobara diligently walking around the rest of the chain-link toward the benches, Yuuji decides that it’s too much of a walk. As he has a hundred times, Yuuji speeds up just enough to get a good headstart and jumps, catching his hand on the steady bar supporting the backstop and his boots finding footing in some of the tattered holes.
Scaling the backstop is relatively easy, the whole structure smaller than most; Yuuji hops onto the ground, kicking up dirt, with little more than a slightly elevated heart rate right as Nobara steps next to him.
That’s what caught his attention.
Sitting on the picnic bench, behind the dug-out and its seats, is what looks from a distance to be a shadow monster. As shadow monsters do not exist, that is not it; it’s a… boy.
A boy with spiky black hair, a black hoodie, and stained jeans that have seen better days, sitting on the table, staring with slightly-squinted eyes at Yuuji, of all people.
“Who are you, anyway?” Nobara asks, stepping in front of Yuuji with her arms crossed. With the bat still in the diamond, Nobara is a sweaty force to be reckoned with; don’t let her skater skirt fool you, Yuuji is well-aware that she benches more than him.
Still, Yuuji knows who this boy is before he answers the question.
Dark hair, strange aura, unrecognizable off the top of Yuuji’s head, looks to be around their age; this is Megumi Fushiguro.
Nobara must notice that, too, rolling her eyes dramatically as Fushiguro passively watches Nobara talk without bothering to respond to her. “It’s rude to not talk when someone’s talking to you.”
“I’ve always been told,” Fushiguro says, with a raspier voice than Yuuji was expecting; the syllables roll off his tongue in the same way that a bag of sour gummy worms feels near the end of the bag. It’s an absurd comparison. It’s the first and only thing he can think of. “That it’s polite to wait until someone is finished speaking to respond.”
“I asked you a question,” Nobara counters easily, entirely unaware that Yuuji has lost his vocal footing behind her, trying to contend with the new information following through his head.
“It’s that new guy,” Yuuji says, just to break up the tension. Fushiguro is still staring at him. Yuuji does not appreciate it. “Y’know, the ones that moved into the manor.”
“Megumi Fushiguro,” Fushiguro answers eventually, though he barely spares Nobara a glance, and Nobara seems to notice that as well. “Who are you?”
Nobara, an attention whore on the best of days and a supermodel on others, does not take kindly to being overlooked entirely. “Is there a reason you’re sitting in an empty field all by yourself at eleven at night? Shouldn’t you be unpacking or, I don’t know, exorcising the place?”
“Exorcising?” If Yuuji didn’t know better, and he doesn’t, he’d say that Fushiguro perks up like a dog at the mention. Maybe he’s into ghost-hunting, or whatever — hey, maybe he’s got a family of ghost-hunters and that’s why they all moved into the manor; because it’s haunted as hell.
Nobara scoffs, crossing her arms at the simple question. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, haunted house and all that. Why are you sitting in the dark alone?”
“I’m not alone if you two are here.”
“You’ve been here since before we got here,” Yuuji says, matter-of-fact, shying away somewhat at the attention it places upon him; Fushiguro’s gaze is piercing enough as it is, he doesn’t need to add Nobara’s to that. “Y’know,” Yuuji continues, a rush to explain. “As we started pitching. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Fushiguro shrugs.
Yuuji can almost hear Nobara’s blood boiling.
“Do you seriously —“
Before Nobara can start on her endless tirade about precisely what she thinks about this behavior from Fushiguro, Yuuji interrupts, bumping shoulders with her lightly to signify that he’s going to cut her off.
“Well, I mean, you’re not sitting in the dark alone now,” Yuuji says, waving off the entire happenstance as though it wasn’t strange of Fushiguro to be sitting in the dark without announcing his presence. “Nobara and I were almost done anyway. You wanna help clean up and then grab some milkshakes with us?”
“Didn’t the milkshake place close like an hour ago?” Nobara asks, but she’s already turning on her heel, uncaring of if Fushiguro’s decision reflects hers.
“Yeah, but Choso’s shift started a half-hour ago and he’ll make us drinks,” Yuuji laughs, though he’s rooted in place awaiting Fushiguro’s response. At Fushiguro’s raised brow, Yuuji self-corrects. “Choso’s my older brother! He’s a bartender at one of the local bars. So, y’know, no alcohol, obviously, but free milkshakes on account of I’m his favorite brother.”
And only brother, Yuuji does not add, because that feels cruel for reasons that Yuuji certainly cannot articulate to a near-stranger whose moving truck almost ran him over at two in the morning on the sidewalk next to the 7/11.
“I’ll have to decline,” Fushiguro says curtly, but Yuuji swears he sees the hint of a smile quirk at Fushiguro’s lip. “But thank you for the offer, I suppose.”
You talk so formally, is this a job interview? Yuuji also does not ask.
“Yeah! Well, you’re welcome any time. It’s pretty hard to - I mean, you’re enrolled at the high school, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Starting in a few days.”
“Yeah, it’ll be pretty hard not to see us again, so I’m sure there’ll be other times!”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Fushiguro says, decisively not putting up with Yuuji’s rambling any longer, a notion that Yuuji can’t blame him for as the words spill out of his throat in no coherent order.
Yuuji lingers longer than he should.
Fushiguro doesn’t comment on it.
Nobara, however, is already around the backstop, picking up one of the baseballs she hadn’t hit earlier. “Yuuji! C’mon, man. Choso hates it when you’re out super late, he won’t make us milkshakes if we show up past midnight.”
Yuuji’s got to give her that, so he gives his grunt of acknowledgment and waves at Fushiguro, who does not return the gesture, and jogs back into the diamond to start on the meticulous task of collecting stray baseballs.
Nobara’s got a good swing and the grief of an almost-lover in her repertoire, so finding half of the baseballs on the outskirts of the field in the dark proves to be a daunting task, but nothing more than what Yuuji can handle.
When Fushiguro walks away, Yuuji doesn’t know; he’s there one moment, and the next time Yuuji looks up, he isn’t. There is no sound of pattering footsteps to accompany his leave, and Yuuji chalks it up to being distracted by the search.
It’s going to be a long night.
Yuuji tries to put the encounter in the back of his mind.
“Fushiguro’s weird,” Nobara says loudly, bluntly, and decisively as she walks into Yuuji’s bedroom, dumping her school bag on his desk without a care for the furniture manual it crushes; not like Yuuji was going to use it anyway.
Yuuji spins around in his desk chair, aware that Nobara’s declaration means she wants to talk about the day. Which is good, because so does he. He doesn’t understand why they need so much homework.
(Okay, maybe it isn’t all that much homework; Yuuji’s just put it off until now. Shoko Ieiri as a teacher is a lenient one, and she lets him do fuck-all in class, but that has the downside of Yuuji needing to finish all of the assignments later. Like now. Good thing Nobara’s here to distract him.)
Yuuji snorts at the sorry state of Nobara’s hair, all of her careful work to straighten it nullified by the humidity and drizzle coming down outside. While the winter is making its lazy entrance to the atmosphere, the precipitation has decided it is its time; they’ve had two thunderstorms in the last week alone, and Nobara has paid the price.
It’s chilly, it’s rainy, it’s overcast — the perfect weather.
“Yeah? Did he spit on your shoes or something?” Yuuji asks, tapping his foot habitually on the wood floors; the feeling is a comforting vibration through his muscles, tendons, ligaments; a sense of home in the movement. This is the bedroom he’s grown up in, spent and spilled the majority of his emotions within the confines of these walls.
Always adding, never taking. This room is the sum total of Yuuji’s life and he wonders, sometimes, if it will retain all of his memories if he leaves it. He wonders how Nobara can do it so easily, decide to throw away her childhood bedroom and this shitty little town that tethers his soul.
It isn’t that Yuuji doesn’t want to travel, or doesn’t want to leave; it’s not the location he’s particularly tied to, it’s the people. What does staying do, though, if everyone he loves leaves?
What does it mean, then, if Choso stays here, and Nobara moves to the city? Where does that leave Yuuji? Working at the hardware store, or as a bartender, or going off to college to get a degree he can’t name to make him feel better than everyone else?
(The ghost of his life lives in these hallowed, small halls, the sum total of his life put together into cracked drywall and flaking paint. Everything that has ever mattered to him has been in this house at some point. It isn’t the time for melancholy. He’s still got the summer, and he’s got until they graduate, and Yuuji swears to God that he’s going to be okay with that.)
“I’d study him,” Nobara says, rubbing her shoulder from where her backpack strap had been digging into it, before flopping onto Yuuji’s beanbag, that has been bedazzled across the back with Nobara’s name since she’s the one who uses it the most. “If I had a microscope and a shrink machine. Fushiguro’s just odd. Downright strange. He doesn’t talk much at school.”
Yuuji has a nasty habit of skipping clubs at the end of the school day; honestly, he doesn’t know why he’s in one or why they’re required when their high school has a grand total of sixty-two students. It’s up from sixty-one, thanks to Fushiguro. It’s better than the attendance when Yuuji had enrolled, which was a grand total of twenty-four, thanks to the third-years that year getting themselves expelled. He thinks they moved to the city, and that maybe started an illegal gambling ring, but Yuuji tries not to think about the fate of the people that have left his hometown.
“Most people don’t talk as much as us,” Yuuji solemnly informs her. Nobara’s part of the fashion and design club, or something like that; she’s the founder of it, and some other girls that Yuuji went to middle school with, but he’s never understood the point of it.
They don’t even have enough students or participation to form a baseball team, or any feasible sports club. Otherwise, Yuuji would probably be in a sport. As it is, he’s part of the occult club right now; and it’s interesting, sure, and he likes going along when those two do something that could theoretically be dangerous, but it’s halfway an excuse not to join a proper club.)
“But even for, like, Inumaki, Fushiguro is quiet,” Nobara says, blowing her hair out of her face. “And he’s just got this strange aura around him. Like, I don’t want to get close to him.”
“Until he pisses you off?”
“Until he pisses me off,” Nobara nods somberly, as though this is a matter of life-and-death and not Nobara’s short-temper. Not like Yuuji has room to talk — while he doesn’t have a short fuse in the same way she does, and it takes quite a bit to make him genuinely angry, but he is slow to calm after his fuse is lit.
“Maybe it’s the haunted house,” Yuuji snorts. “Rubbing off on him. You think they’re going to actually fix the place up?”
“I’m shocked they haven’t just gotten a motel and called it quits with that place already,” Nobara says. As she talks, she reaches out and barely grasps the strap of her backpack she’d just set down, yanking the backpack down to open up the zipper, pulling out whatever it is she’d like to entertain herself. “I’d call it quits with that place.”
“There is, in fact, a reason staying overnight in that place is a Test of Courage,” Yuuji says, and they leave it at that.
Most people think that Nobara is consistently, constantly loud and overbearing, but Yuuji knows better — comfortable silence with Nobara is one of his favorite places in the world.
(In fact, Yuuji thinks one of his favorite memories is sitting on the kitchen counter, thumbing through some cookbook while Nobara sat at the table, reading through one of the classics she had to read for a class, Choso stirring a pot of soup on the stove with aromatics filling the air, the light low and dim, the wind whispering through the barely-open kitchen window, twilight fading into night. The point and purpose of life was clear to Yuuji in that moment, but the secret has been closed to him once again.)
He wonders how many of these days he has left.
Nobara’s correct, Yuuji discovers.
Megumi Fushiguro is strange, but not in the typical-strange type of way that Yuuji thinks everyone in this town is; but it’s not, necessarily, in a bad way. He doesn’t talk much at school, and his finger tips are stained soot-black. Maybe it’s charcoal? He could be an artist.
Either way, it’s a notable feature about him; raven hair, soot-black stains, piercing green eyes, and this overwhelming, commanding presence around him; like he doesn’t want attention pulled to him, but can’t help it regardless.
The other kids stay away from Fushiguro.
“Hey, Fushiguro!” Yuuji greets at the end of the school day, hopping over the closest desk to the door to shave off the millisecond from his walk.
Fushiguro, already turning away, backpack slung over one shoulder and hair a mess, like he doesn’t brush it often. It’s longer than the dress code allows, Yuuji thinks, but no one has called him on it; it’s rare for the school to enforce it, though.
He looks over, bored and detached from the entire interaction, and —
Nobara’s right, Yuuji realizes, as he catches up with Fushiguro.
About three feet before he bumps into Fushiguro, already making a bee-line for the doorway, Yuuji stops short. Not because there’s anything there, because there isn’t.
Because it just feels wrong, somehow, the idea that he should step closer; like there’s something there that Yuuji can’t see, and he’d bump into it if he took another step.
Fushiguro doesn’t seem rattled by Yuuji’s confused expression, tilting his head back to stare flatly. “Yes?”
“I was, uh,” Yuuji starts, scrambling for words after they’d left due to the odd barrier, frazzling his nerves and his words like crossed wires left alone for fifty years in a lightning storm. “I was wondering if you wanted to join me after school!”
If frustratingly confused could be an expression, it aptly sums up the way Fushiguro tilts his head, mouth twisting open in some form of aggravated confusion, as though an offer to hang out is the strangest thing Fushiguro has heard in his life.
“So?” Yuuji says after a beat of silence; with everyone else having filtered out of the classroom by now, it leaves Yuuji awkwardly shifting from foot-to-foot. “What’d’ya think? Nobara’s got a club thing, so she wouldn’t be join —”
“Why?” Fushiguro blurts out, brows furrowed as Yuuji takes the time to actually analyze his voice.
Fushiguro sounds — shocked. That Yuuji would offer to hang out. Just what kind of loner is he? (It makes Yuuji wonder if he’s real. He sort-of doesn’t seem real. The dark shadows reserved for the corners of shelves and under desks seem to cling to Fushiguro, but that’s an absurd thing to think, and Yuuji’s been reading too many fantasy manga. It’s just absurd. That isn’t something that can happen with actual, real-life people.)
“Well,” Yuuji starts, reaching up to scratch at the nape of his neck sheepishly. Because my best friend said you were a strange weirdo that she never wants to interact with again, and I’d like to know where she’s coming from, and I’d like to know why you were sitting on a bench at night with nothing to do and nothing to see doesn’t sound like a respectable response. Where’s Choso’s bluntness when he needs it? “Because you seem cool.”
It’s kind of the truth, and kind of a lie. Fushiguro is weird and quiet, but the label weird can be ascribed to anything originating outside of this small, isolated town forty-minutes from the nearest big city. It’s far enough in the countryside that going into town is a chore, and it’s close enough that almost none of Yuuji’s neighbors are farmers born-and-raised.
Fushiguro is odd because he’s new, and because there’s something alluring about him, this strange presence around him that demands attention; that’s cool, in the same way that a new manga is cool, or how seeing someone in a themed-jacket automatically makes them cool to Yuuji.
“Why would —” Fushiguro starts, but cuts himself off regardless before starting again. “Join you for what?”
Yuuji shrugs. He didn’t think he’d get this far. Never really does — never really hangs out with anyone other than Nobara, honestly. “Milkshake offer is still open. There’s a train station twenty minutes out that we could take into the city. Baseball field’s always open. My house is free. We could go for a walk!”
“It’s raining out,” Fushiguro points out, gesturing blankly to the window, covered in raindrops with the soft patter of the droplets hitting the old glass; this classroom is old enough that the cold from the rain seeps into the building, creating a draft that has half the students still within their winter coats.
“Perfect weather for a walk,” Yuuji counters easily, plastering a big smile across his face to seem friendlier and more personable. It’s not that Yuuji’s ever struggled to be friendly or out-going, but Fushiguro seems mildly uncomfortable with socializing, and it’d be rude to make this harder on him than it already is.
“If you’d like to wind up sopping wet,” Fushiguro corrects, dryly. As opposed to the literal wetness of his words. Yuuji does not snicker at the thought.
“There’s a sex joke to be made here,” Yuuji says, smiling easily. “So? What do you think? Any desire to figure it out?”
Fushiguro stays quiet for a moment, as though contemplating, leaning against the doorway — likely to take the strain of holding his backpack off his shoulder. His uniform is a size too big, but it’s much higher-quality than the near-rags that Yuuji’s wearing.
He wonders how much money a family has to have to purchase a home on a whim in a town like this, and have the money to fix it up, too. Haunted house, and all. It’ll be strange to see the manor on the hill without its haunted, destitute charm of flaking paint and rotting floorboards and the screams of scared middle schoolers.
Yuuji shuffles, self-consciousness overtaking his stance the longer Fushiguro’s silence stretches on. Is he overstepping? Should he have just left?
Maybe Fushiguro wants to be a loner, and it isn’t just the awkwardness of moving to a town where everyone knows everyone except for you.
Eventually, though, Fushiguro breaks Yuuji’s minor spiral of social faux-pass, clearing his throat and batting at the air next to him, like he’s reaching for something, but there’s nothing in the air. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to kill some time.”
Not the overt enthusiasm Yuuji was looking for, but hey, it isn’t blowing up in his face, so there’s that.
“Yeah!” Yuuji says, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I can get to know what brought you here, eh?”
“Yeah,” Fushiguro repeats, but he seems a lot less happy about that than even the flat tone from before. Maybe Yuuji shouldn’t have said that? Yet the annoyance doesn’t seem to be targeted at Yuuji, so he figures it’s the usual story.
Most teenagers don’t look at their life and decide they want to move to some middle-of-nowhere, out-of-the-way town; away from everything they’ve ever known, to a town with a population so small you better hope you like your neighbors, and the opportunity bucket not dissimilar to a barrel of crabs.
In the end, they go for a walk anyway, despite the drizzle. The rain was coming down heavier earlier in the day, but it’s let-up enough to lazily allow a stroll through the woods. The woods that, by all technically, are on private property; but Yaga could care less about people walking through the place. The amount of desire paths with crushed leaves underfoot are a testament to that.
Fushiguro doesn’t even complain, and Yuuji refrains from commenting on Fushiguro’s expensive, ugly boots actually getting some dirt on them.
“So,” Yuuji starts again, as soon as they’re within the wounds of the little trail that lets out near the stream. His hands are in his pockets, and the smell of petrichor permeating through the leaves alleviates most of the discomfort of the chill. It’s the perfect weather, for secrets, for sin, for forgiveness, for life. That’s more the thoughts of a philosopher than Yuuji Itadori, but he finds himself thinking it nonetheless. “What do you think of this place, anyway?”
It’s the lead-in to the question he’d already said he’d ask — what brought you all the way out here?
Fushiguro takes it in stride nonetheless, his eyes on the trail ahead of him rather than Yuuji. Right — he doesn’t have the trail, its turns and roots and foliage, memorized. He doesn’t have need to. Yuuji cannot remember when he’d memorized it. Such things get lost in the haze of same-same, in a place like this.
He hates it as much as he loves it, and sometimes, in moments like these, he understands why Nobara hates it, why she wants to run away from it — from him. From any reminder of a youth wasted, but Yuuji doesn’t know if it’s been wasted yet.
Fushiguro hums. “It’s got it’s charm.”
That’s a nice way of saying, there’s nothing to do around here, and Yuuji can hear it plainly, but he chooses not to call Fushiguro on it.
Yuuji snorts, reaching up to cover his mouth. “Yeah, I suppose it does. How’s the manor? Any ghost stories yet?”
“Ghost stories?”
Yuuji tilts his head, and then remembers, again — of course you wouldn’t know. It isn’t malicious, the way he thinks it, but how is it not obvious? (He understands why someone would want to leave all of this behind. He still doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t even know what founded this little town — most people get their city histories, but Yuuji never has. It’s like it simply popped up one day, fully-functioning.) “The old manor is, like, the most haunted place in town. I mean, it could definitely also be the draft from bad windows and the creaking from a settling foundation, but hey, I’m sure the stories have some merit.”
Fushiguro frowns, and much like his smile, it’s only a little quirk to his lips. The very movement of it, though, prompts attention. “I don’t think it’s haunted.”
“Really? I’ve never actually seen someone stay the full night — actually, no,” Yuuji corrects himself, and wonders if maybe he’s talking too much given Fushiguro’s general lack of long responses, but — still. “Maki Zen’in did it once, with Okkotsu, but neither of them wouldn’t talk about what happened afterward.”
“Zen’in?”
“Yeah! Maki graduated last year, though, and so did Okkotsu,” Yuuji explains. “They were really cool, though. Maki got on my ass a lot — only person I’ve ever lost an arm-wrestle with, actually.”
“I know a couple of Zen’ins.”
“Really? Do you know Mai? She’s Maki’s twin, but I think she goes to school in the city, or something. Maki’s kind-of the black sheep of her family, so she’s lived here with the Inumakis for most of my life.”
“Hm.” Fushiguro makes a face, but Yuuji has no clue what it’s meant to mean, so he doesn’t bother attempting to interpret it.
Fushiguro doesn’t add more to that, so Yuuji decides to start talking again, just to get the conversation up and running. “Anything close to ghost stories?”
At least Fushiguro looks amused this time. “Something like that, yeah. I keep hearing growling when I go to sleep.”
Yuuji’s eyes widen, a bit. “And you’re not concerned with that?!”
Fushiguro just laughs it off, a slight little thing, and wow, Yuuji thinks, he has a beautiful laugh. It’s small, it’s slight, it feels like Yuuji earned it, and it’s just the perfect pitch to make Yuuji perk up like a smug cat when it gets a beam of sunlight to stretch in. “I’ve got a feeling it’s some feral dogs, not some ghoul.”
“Oh? You’re more inclined to ghouls and ghosts? What about zombies? Hey, how do you feel about horror movies?”
They wind up back at Yuuji’s house, curled up on the couch in the living room watching horror movies that Choso has on VHS, bought for Yuuji for his birthday some years back. The storm has come back in full-force, Choso’s spending the day in the city — he left a note on the counter for Yuuji, and there’s leftover tonkatsu in the fridge for Yuuji later —, and thus, the house is quiet.
The static on the television while Yuuji gets the VHS tape in is, he swears, louder than usual, but Yuuji isn’t quite as awkward about having new company over as some, so he doesn’t stress it.
The shitty slasher films, and zombie films, have been well-loved. Yuuji’s watched them dozens of times, by himself, with Choso, with Nobara, and all of the jumpscares have long-since stopped scaring him. Lately, he puts them on in the background in an effort to focus on his homework, because there’s nothing new for him to process within it.
“Are you sure you don’t watch many horror movies?” Yuuji asks, glancing over at Fushiguro. He’s sitting cross-legged, with a wide bubble around him, the hems of his pants mud-slick and dirty, but Yuuji doesn’t mind it on the couch and never does Fushiguro. Both of their shoes are sitting in a pile in the corner, somewhat near the vent in an effort to get them dry before the evening.
And Yuuji asks, because - the jumpscares he’s used to have taken years to memorize their exact timing to keep from being startled or jumping, but one’s just come up, and Fushiguro didn’t even flinch. He hadn’t flinched at the one before that, either, and Yuuji’s almost certain that this horror movie has scared Fushiguro about as much as a documentary about bunnies.
Fushiguro turns his attention away from the television, and the boredom in his expression never changes. “Not particularly. I think Gojo put one on once, but it was cheesier than this.”
“Gojo?”
Fushiguro almost winces, and there’s likely irony to be found in the fact that Fushiguro is wincing at the concept of bringing up personal details about himself. “My guardian.”
Yuuji nods, processing this information easily enough. Makes sense — it’s not too uncommon to have strange living situations around here. Yuuji is a prime example — he lives with his older half-brother who only came into his life a decade ago, he’s never moved towns, and he can’t remember his mother. Nobara, too — she lives with her grandmother and her aunt (sometimes) and Lord only knows there’s no mother in that situation.
Prime examples of the fuck-ups of mundanity, Yuuji supposes.
“What does he do for a living?” Yuuji asks, trying to continue the conversation without the awkwardness that is clearly painting the picture now that Fushiguro’s been forced to explain things about himself.
Such an odd guy. Nobara would never — Yuuji learned far more about her upon their first meeting than is either acceptable or reasonable, Yuuji thinks.
Fushiguro snorts, as though Yuuji is one hell of a comedian. Even that is a light, little sound, contrasting starkly to the forward nature of the question. “This and that, you could say.”
“Descriptive,” Yuuji says sarcastically.
“More that it just isn’t interesting,” Fushiguro shrugs —
Another jumpscare. Fushiguro, who is still staring at the television, once again does not flinch. It’s got to be a talent, to be as unbothered by this as he is. Yuuji’s impressed, at least.
And Yuuji takes that as the end of the conversation, not willing to push his luck when it’s already temperamental at best that he’s got Fushiguro here at all.
Fushiguro is new, and adjusting to new things is terrible, and Yuuji doesn’t like being alone, and Choso can only re-watch this movie so often, anyway. Fushiguro’s never seen it before, which means that by bringing him over, Yuuji found a new victim.
Yuuji doesn’t find it all that strange that Fushiguro doesn’t talk that much — plenty of people are quiet, keep to themselves, but it doesn’t mean they’re immediately odd and terrible. Nobara is just dramatic, and this is a town full of gossips.
They sit, they don’t chat, and they watch the rest of Yuuji’s terrible slasher movie.
In the cracked glass mirror of the downstairs bathroom, broken by Yuuji actually slamming his head into it a year ago by slipping on the wet tile, Yuuji Itadori stares at a different version of himself.
It isn’t anything pretty.
Yuuji tilts his head to the side, not all too shocked when his reflection follows suit; he’s remarkably calm about this, and he doesn’t know why. In his reflection, there are black marks marring the side of his face and his forehead. Not like a tattoo, but an inky black that make him wonder if there’s even flesh underneath, reaching up and only barely daring to touch one of the marks with his fingers.
He touches flesh. It’s solid.
His reflection has long canines, almost inhumanly so. And that’s just it — it’s his reflection, but it is not him. Yuuji knows this as intimately as he knows his own heartbeat — this is something, but that does not mean it’s him. He does not have marks marring his face.
There is something wrong.
In his reflection, the dull purple of the shower curtain behind him isn’t visible, and Yuuji realizes only then that he has no clue where the light is coming from, because the lights above the mirror aren’t on and the overhead light hasn’t worked since this house was built.
“How old are you?” his reflection asks, and Yuuji can feel his jaw moving, but he isn’t the one saying the words. There’s a dark red stain by his reflection’s ear, and its hair is a far more dingy, dirty pink than Yuuji’s is now. Yuuji can feel himself tilting his head, like his reflection does, but he isn’t consciously doing that.
How odd is it, to be having a conversation with someone that is nearly-him, but Yuuji understands that this is not him. Not him.
Who is it then?
“Eighteen,” Yuuji answers honestly, and he wants to ask — who are you, but the words get caught in his throat before he has a chance. Like something’s blocking them.
It almost feels like that same barrier around Fushiguro, this feeling that something would be disgustingly, maggots-on-skin wrong if he were to ignore the feeling and do it anyway.
His reflection grunts, takes this in stride. Yuuji can feel his own body do the same.
Yuuji stares. So does his reflection.
“So,” his reflection starts, Yuuji’s lips mouthing the words. “What are you the Patron Saint of, anyway?”
Yuuji wakes up with a start, coughing and sputtering as he crashes down onto the cold, unforgiving living room floor.
His forehead bangs against the coffee table on his way down, ankle tangled in a blanket that he doesn’t remember grabbing, landing awkwardly on his wrist and unable to think about anything other than patron saint patron saint patron saint —
Yuuji’s never had nightmares before; maybe some when he was a child, when he was young enough that the memory could not cement, but in his conscious life, he has never had nightmares. A bad dream, maybe, where he dropped ice cream or his favorite action hero died, but never a nightmare.
That was a nightmare.
That is clinging to his skin and Yuuji finds himself balled up on the floor, arms crossed over each other, digging his nails into the bare skin of his arms to ensure that his body does not make any movements he does not approve of; eyes squeezed shut and thankful not to see his reflection staring back at him, and you’re not supposed to remember nightmares in their entirety, but he remembers all of that one.
“Are you—“
There’s someone talking to him. Yuuji knows there’s someone talking to him. He cannot open his eyes and he cannot cover his ears and despite knowing that someone is talking to him, someone with their own voice that does not require his vocal cords, Yuuji cannot respond, jaw clenched together and he thinks there’s wetness stinging his eyes, but he doesn’t know why.
It’s borrowed grief, but he doesn’t know what he’s grieving.
Is he grieving?
“Itadori!”
Maybe it’s his family name — and why is it his family name? — that snaps Yuuji out of it, releasing his death grip on his own arms and —
“Hey, hey, hey,” Yuuji hears, and he doesn’t know who’s talking, because his vision isn’t properly coming into focus, but someone is shaking his shoulder. “Sit up, man. Are you okay?”
Clearly not, Yuuji does not snap, but is that really Yuuji, anyway?
How does he know?
What’s the difference between him and what he saw in his reflection?
“What are you the Patron Saint of?” Yuuji finds himself asking, pushing himself back over onto his side and able to finally — finally — focus his vision enough to realize that it’s Fushiguro standing next to him, talking to him with a concerned voice, and not Choso.
Makes sense. The VHS player informs him that it’s not late enough in the night, or early enough in the morning, for Choso to be back from his shift at the bar, and Yuuji doesn’t remember going to bed or sending Fushiguro off last night after the movie. Begs the question of where the blanket came from, but maybe Yuuji will laugh at Fushiguro for snooping through his house at a later time.
Fushiguro blinks at him, hand reaching back from Yuuji’s shoulder, and in a desperate bid for something he can’t name, Yuuji pushes forward blindly to shove his shoulder back within Fushiguro’s grasp.
And it’s something that Fushiguro allows, maybe doesn’t have the words to deny Yuuji of the comfort he’s seeking, sputtering awkwardly, trying to find some common ground between them.
“How —“ Fushiguro starts, but Yuuji cuts him off, and he knows it’s rude, but he’s just got his lungs back in working order and re-learned the in-out-in-out of breathing again.
“I’m sorry,” Yuuji says, too quickly, choking out a forced laugh and pulling back into himself, shaking the blanket off his ankles and re-orientating in the room. The fridge is still humming. His back hurts. His head hurts from — did he hit it? Fushiguro’s hair is mused from sleep and he’s got this concerned expression for Yuuji that Yuuji finds he cannot stand. “It was just a nightmare, sorry.”
“A… nightmare?” Fushiguro asks, and the way he twists his words around makes it seem uncertain, like Yuuji may be lying.
There’s nothing to lie about, though, and the phantom presence on his throat, something pushing against his windpipe, cutting off his air, and it’s not actually there, and Yuuji knows he can breath, but there’s something — off.
Like there’s something in the room with him.
It’s a familiar presence. Yuuji knows it is familiar because it has always been with him, and how has he never recognized it before? How do you forget something as familiar, as intimate, to you as breathing?
What does it matter if its familiar if Yuuji cannot put a name to it?
“Yeah,” Yuuji says eventually, breathless, realizing only after he says it that he’d reached up to claw at his throat. Good thing, Yuuji supposes, that he bites his nails; too blunt to cut through the skin even with excessive force. “Nightmare about that. That hasn’t happened before.”
Fushiguro just frowns, and Yuuji takes another breath, and he’s fine now, really, this time. He’s certain he’s fine this time.
“When did I fall asleep?” Yuuji asks when Fushiguro doesn’t say anything, sitting up properly and rubbing at his forehead — and the decent-sized lump that now resides there as well. Serves him right for falling over, Yuuji supposes.
Fushiguro shrugs, some of the concern slipping off his face like it’d never been there in the first place. “Not a clue. I don’t know when I fell asleep, either.”
It’s easy enough conversation, as Yuuji rights himself. His hair is a mess, he doesn’t really believe Fushiguro, and the blossoming bruise on his forehead is going to give Nobara an astounding amount of comedic material tomorrow.
These are normal, tangible things. Yuuji should focus on the normal, tangible things. That are not his reflection and the words of his reflection, and not a familiar presence that he cannot remember whatsoever.
Yuuji doesn’t know what to say now, as he stands up, gets his bearings and pretends he can’t see the shaking to his own hands; the way that they won’t steady even as he wills them to, pulling the blanket back onto the couch and adjusting his eyes properly to the dim light.
Fushiguro doesn’t seem to mind that Yuuji has nothing to say, because Fushiguro doesn’t have anything to say either.
Fushiguro doesn’t leave, Yuuji doesn’t ask him to, and the blanket of the night keeps Yuuji quiet company as he fixes their sleeping arrangements.
In the morning, Fushiguro heads out before Yuuji gets his bearings; I have to get ready for school, Fushiguro had said, but Yuuji was half-asleep for the interaction and isn’t sure that it even happened, really.
Either way, he wakes up just as exhausted as he’d fallen asleep, and if it weren’t for the constant hustle-and-bustle of Choso in the morning, then Yuuji wouldn’t know to get up.
Choso’s a hard-ass about random things, and attending school is one of them. Yuuji’s tried the faking sick thing, and Choso promptly did not fall for it. He’s got a keen eye for exactly the things that Yuuji doesn’t want him to see — it’s the nature of older brothers, and all that.
“You didn’t sleep well,” Choso says immediately, a laundry basket on his hip like one of those stereotypical, American sitcom moms. His hair is still messy and bumpy from his ponytails last night, and the tattoo on his nose looks like it’s gotten dirt smeared across it, or something. He desperately needs a shower, and sleep himself — Yuuji doesn’t think Choso gets more than four hours of sleep on work nights, which happens too be most of the days of the week. It must be an exhausting way to live.
Yuuji shrugs. He does not mention Fushiguro, and he hopes that he had half a mind last night to clean up; another thing Choso is a hard-ass about happens to be having people over, because he’s particular about the people Yuuji lets over. Even Nobara is on thin ice, and Choso’s known her — and her lesbianism — for about a decade. “No, not really. But hey — new day, new dawn huh?”
Choso purses his lips, an action that only emphasizes the mom-look he’s giving off. “I suppose. When did you get to sleep?”
“Same time as every night,” Yuuji lies easily, and really, he feels bad about lying sometimes, but Choso would just get frustrated by it, and Yuuji doesn’t need to add more to his plate. “Just some weird dreams. You going to be home for dinner later?”
And with a sigh, Choso shakes his head; it does nothing to dispel the bumps from his hair. “No, I picked up another shift today, Margie called out.”
“Is she the one with the baby?”
“The one with the man-child of a husband.”
“Same difference.”
And that’s that, and Yuuji’s bounding off downstairs, but he can still feel Choso’s gaze on his back, and something isn’t quite right.
Yuuji catches his reflection in the mirror on the hallway. He sees black marks on his face. He walks past the mirror.
It’s the beginning of the end. Yuuji doesn’t know why, and doesn’t know how, but it’s the beginning of something. There’s this syrupy-slow, lingering cold in his veins, burning somehow, and he can’t walk past the mirror without seeing those strange black marks smeared across his face.
“Maybe it’s the spirits from the manor,” Nobara says, snickering, picking at her bento box. They’re skipping the last two hours of the day; Ieiri won’t tell. And if Ieiri isn’t a snitch, then Yuuji wholly circumvents Choso’s attendance policy. Her smile slips off her face all the same as the noodles slide off her chopsticks. “Seriously though, man. That’s weird. Are you alright?”
Are you alright?
Yuuji considers this.
His entire world is going to come to an end soon — everything in this town will cease to exist in the way that he knows them. He will not be bound here by family and friends; only his own will. Nobara will go off the city to become the hotshot she’s meant to be. He’ll have a high school diploma, and the whole world to explore if he so desires.
No, Yuuji thinks, the phantom of summer heat against his skin, prickling and unwanted with the nostalgia of sweat and cliff-side picnics. Instead of that, he says, “Yeah. And yeah, it’s definitely the ghosts. Maybe they’re unhappy and all about being disturbed again.”
Nobara’s noodles look slimy and cold. No wonder she’s picking at them. She’s never been a fan of leftovers, but usually she doesn’t have them for lunch. Still, that confident air of, the world will have to try harder than that to bring me down, is exuded in her overdramatic sigh, throwing her chopsticks down and her arms up. “They’ve come to take their revenge on the new owners! Hey, what do you think they’ll go for first? Like, making Fushiguro lose his mind, or, like, standard poltergeist stuff?”
Nobara’s seen Yuuji’s collection of horror movies so many times over. It shows, in this moment.
Yuuji rolls his eyes, letting the amusement through his system to drown out the syrup-like molasses stuck in his blood. “Maybe the ghosts encourage cannibalism. Or - or, like, murder-suicide?”
“I thought that was implied with the ‘make Fushiguro lose his mind thing.”
Just as Nobara begins pouting, her hands back down in her crossed legs, someone rounds the corner to their secluded little stairway.
Yuuji’s got his mouth open to respond, but that heavy atmosphere of rot and maggots and fear of the dark — don’t you touch me, get away from me, what are you the Patron Saint of? — stops him mid-syllable; in time for Fushiguro’s silhouette to come into view, baggy uniform and all.
“What about me and murder-suicide?” Fushiguro says, bored and flat.
Yuuji winces, but Nobara only barely bothers to hide her snickers behind her arm. (Hey, at least this has proved suitable for her to discard her sad lunch.) “Uh, we were just —“
“Trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with you and your family,” Nobara says. She’s never been accused of trying to keep the peace.
Then again, while Fushiguro’s movie night with Yuuji was nice — sans nightmare —, he had ignored Nobara the first time they’d met. That’s an unforgivable sin.
The whole world will, at some point or another, look at Nobara Kugisaki. Yuuji’s decided this, and so will everyone else. Fushiguro better get on that.
Fushiguro seems unfazed by the words, only sighing slightly; his uniform barely moves as his chest rises-and-falls, and the light from the too-harsh fluorescent bulb above doesn’t help the shadows clinging to his frame. “Well,” he starts, messenger bag slung awkwardly over his shoulder. “Have you narrowed it down yet?”
Yuuji blinks.
Blinks again. Fushiguro’s still standing there, shifting his weight from foot-to-foot. Like — like he might be nervous.
The thought makes Yuuji want to laugh, but he refrains. “Nah, still trying to figure out if the ghosts are gonna make you go for murder-suicide or cannibalism first.”
“Wouldn’t the cannibalism also be considered murder-suicide?” Fushiguro asks. Despite the topic, he seems remarkably alright with the gory nature of their conversation.
Nobara interjects, gesturing for Fushiguro to come sit with them. “Only if you killed yourself after!”
Fushiguro takes the cue, fumbling somewhat over himself as he does so.
The school building is two stories tall, built for a much busier high school than they have; it isn’t modern, by any stretch of the means, but the desolate, tiled stairway has been where Yuuji and Nobara spend their free time since they found it. On the west wing’s second, less-used hallway, they’ve only ever been caught by Getou, and it’s not like Getou’s a snitch or in town anymore.
With two of them, the landing between the two flights of stairs is a comfortable fit.
With three, it becomes more crowded, but Yuuji throws his bag up a step or two, and Nobara shifts her legs to allow Fushiguro a bit of personal space. Yuuji gets no such grace, and he doesn’t expect to, shoved against Nobara like a can of sardines.
“I guess,” Fushiguro relents, tilting his head to the side. He isn’t unlike a dog in that manner. The atmosphere is no less heavy, just as uninviting as when Yuuji just met him, but he feels like he’s part of it, somehow. “Maybe they’ll try to get me to solve their murder, or something.”
“So you admit there are ghosts?” Yuuji says, maybe too excited.
Fushiguro opens his mouth to respond, but Nobara beats him too it, the humor and glee leaving her face and leaving only her keen eyes against Fushiguro’s own. “So, what are you doing over here anyway? This side of the building isn’t used for classes anymore.”
Fushiguro’s face flushes, only barely. The red of the blood rushing to his face contrasts well with the pale pallor of his skin, and Yuuji thinks that’s the strangest thing he’s ever thought about a person. “Exploring,” Fushiguro says, and it even tastes like a lie.
If Yuuji can hear it, so can Nobara.
“Really?” she says, sharp and to-the-point, but she keeps the mocking polite tone she used for some of their middle school teachers, when Nobara thought they were being incompetent. It was often. “I mean, I don’t typically go exploring during the school day through the building where I’m liable to get caught. And you’re just begging to star in some B-List horror if you turn down strange stairways in a strange new town for fun.”
“Who said your town was strange?” Fushiguro says, taking it all in stride.
It isn’t that he’s prideful, Yuuji realizes. He wasn’t neutral and unfazed by their words earlier because he thought they were boring and beneath him, but that Fushiguro is here for something.
Yuuji doesn’t know what. The feeling and realization comes to him just as strongly as the nightmare: Patron Saints and reflections, a familiar presence so suffocatingly apparent that it’s been with him all his life.
He shoves that to the back of his mind.
Nobara huffs. “How dense would you have to be to think otherwise?”
“Do you have any examples?” Fushiguro asks, switching tones completely, to something more curious but professional. Back to that same formality. Guess their movie night means nothing in the face of Nobara; then again, the sterility in which he delivers the words suggests that maybe it isn’t Nobara’s presence pressuring him at all.
Yuuji really needs to stop wondering. He wonders more than a cynic and less than a philosopher, and that’s where everyone who just up and fucks off one day dwells.
He jumps in before Nobara does, because it’s a topic guaranteed to get her going for at least two hours, and Yuuji’s less inclined to sit here for that. “Oh, y’know, just the usual case. People move out, but no one really moves in, but the population always stays the same. The service out here sucks if you’re trying to make calls anywhere other than here. The drive to the city is forty minutes but I timed it once and it was, like, an hour-and-a-half. Everyone moves away and fucks off, but you’ll see ‘em here again.”
When the words tumble out of his mouth, it doesn’t seem all that strange. There’s some affection in his voice, maybe; something Nobara wouldn’t convey.
Like every small town, there’s this curse around it. You can move, and start a new life; you can abandon everything and everyone you’ve ever loved, but part of your soul will always be tethered to the same place you were born.
“I like the explanation of things that,” Fushiguro starts, dryly, “can easily be explained by people having kids and getting homesick.”
“Not the drive to the city,” Nobara says, she pulls her knees to her chest, clearly discarding her food now. She nudges it with her foot over to Yuuji, who takes it immediately. Cold and slimy as the noodles may be, they’re still better than what Yuuji had for lunch. (Choso is good at a great many things — cooking is not one of them.)
“Or the service,” Yuuji adds.
“Or,” Fushiguro hums, “all those ghost stories have gotten through the sensible matter of your brain.”
Yuuji shrugs, and that’s that.
They sit in silence, with Yuuji nibbling at Nobara’s bento, Fushiguro pulling out a fucking Fukuzawa Yukichi book of all things, and Nobara staring up at the ceiling like there’s something more there. Maybe there is. It’s not like she’ll find it here.
For the next two days, Fushiguro skips the last few hours and eats with them.
For the next three, he doesn’t. Yuuji wakes up sweaty and tear-streaked from nightmares each night.