Chapter Text
Yuuji thought it was ghosts at first.
The creaking of the floorboards. The distant footsteps. The rustle of fabric.
Yuuji didn’t believe in ghosts because being a jujutsu sorcerer meant that you blamed every anomaly on curses. But curses shouldn’t exist here inside the barrier of Tokyo Jujutsu High. That was the one thing they prided themselves on.
Midnight made your brain go wild, and Yuuji blamed it on the three energy drinks he had earlier. His thoughts were like the roots of an old tree, twisting and tunneling into every possible explanation for the noise outside. He had thought of urban legends. A vengeful spirit came back to life to haunt school bathrooms. A human-faced dog creature rummaged through their kitchen trash can and ate the remnants of their dinner, which were just cups of instant noodles. Not the fanciest feast, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Another theory—he was going crazy. That was what having an insane amount of caffeine and a demon in your head did to you. Maybe all he heard was a very convincing hallucination his brain made up. Yuuji had seen movies where people got high on some powerful substances and ended up on a dance floor with a talking horse-headed girl. So, as far as his circumstances went, a little bit of strange noises was not too bad yet. And maybe he should have taken that as a sign and gone to sleep before it got any worse.
Yuuji did eventually drift off as the sun started to rise on the horizon. He woke up feeling like a zombie. After that, Yuuji had decided that the second theory was the most plausible and that he should never drink that many energy drinks again, at least before bed.
The next day, Yuuji did everything he could to make sure he would be able to sleep tonight. He had made a point to move all of his energy drinks into Fushiguro’s mini fridge so he wouldn’t be tempted to drink them before bed. Preemptively, he also emptied the trash can in the kitchen, hauling it out to the dumpster amid a snowstorm and negative degree temperatures. Panda gave him a big thumbs-up for the effort, since it was usually his chore (he had the most fur out of everyone here).
No human-faced dog was going through the trash tonight under his watch. Not that Yuuji believed the dog existed in the first place.
Once back inside, he took a hot bath, as suggested by Maki, so that he would “pass out as soon as he hit the bed”—her words. Yuuji closed the bathroom door carefully behind him, making sure the bolt clicked firmly in place. No vengeful spirit wandering this hall either.
At first, sleep came easy. Maki’s method did work because his eyelids were glued together as soon as his head hit the pillow. He’d have to thank Maki tomorrow, Yuuji decided as he sank into the mattress.
Creak…
Yuuji’s eyes jerked wide open, his pulse thundering in his ears. That noise again.
Creak… creak…
The floorboards groaned as something seemed to move outside. A shadow loomed over his door before quickly disappearing. Yuuji stared into the empty darkness, his brain struggling to catch up with his hammering pulse.
He got up and threw the door open, fists clenched with cursed energy already gathering around his fingers. He had expected a monster, or at least an indication of one. Instead, he found a dark hallway.
The silence was absolute.
Yuuji lowered his hands, wondering if he had actually gone crazy.
—
“I’m telling you, I heard things!”
“I think you’re just being paranoid. Stop drinking so many energy drinks!”
No one believed him. Yuuji had been trying to tell everyone about the noise ever since this morning. Maki had brushed him off every time.
“Maybe it’s just old wood,” Panda offered as his final attempt to settle the dispute. “It’s freezing out, so the wood expands and contracts—happens all the time.”
Yuuji frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. “I get the wood thing, Panda, really. But ‘expanding wood’ doesn’t usually cast a six-foot shadow across my rug.”
“Then you’re probably crazy. Go get your head checked out.” Nobara snarled from across the table, clearly annoyed at his insistence.
Yuuji dropped his forehead onto the table in defeat. Two nights without sleep, and his head was killing him. His brain was running out of fuel to figure out what this mysterious noise could have been. Normally, energy drinks were the answer, but now, that would earn him another night of staring at the ceiling. A vicious cycle, indeed.
Yuuji: 0. Mysterious ghost/monster/something: 1.
A carton of milk slid into Yuuji’s view. He looked up to purple eyes watching him. Inumaki gave a small smile behind the collar, nudging the carton closer.
“Tuna mayo.”
Yuuji blinked at the carton, then back up at the older boy, pointing a finger at himself. “… Is this for me?”
Inumaki nodded once before casually going back to his food, as if he didn’t just offer Yuuji the sweetest thing he had received all day. Yuuji stared at the small carton, eyes filled with bewilderment.
“You’re the best, senpai!!!” Yuuji crowled, reaching across the table and nearly tipping it over as he tried to wrap the other boy in a hug.
The table wobbled violently. Inumaki’s orange juice came close to spilling before a hand reached out from next to him and stabilized it. Yuuji stopped in his tracks, eyes following the arm up to find Okkotsu staring at him.
Okkotsu gave him his usual polite smile. But for a split second, there was something else in those dark blue eyes that gave Yuuji a shiver. Before he recognized what it was, Okkotsu had already looked away.
“Itadori!” Nobara howled from the other side.
Yuuji’s body instinctively sank back into the seat as his flight-or-flight response began to ease. He couldn’t help but watch Okkotsu now as the older boy whispered something into Inumaki’s ear. Inumaki nodded in return, pushing his plate closer to Okkotsu with practiced grace. Okkotsu’s face lit up immediately.
Yuuji’s eyes followed the slice of strawberry cake as it made its journey from Okkotsu’s plate to Inumaki’s. The cursed-speech sorcerer didn’t hesitate for a second. He shoved a massive forkful into his mouth, cheeks puffing out like a squirrel’s as he worked through the strawberry and cream.
Okkotsu had this strange, satisfied expression on his face that Yuuji was sure he had never seen before. He was looking at Inumaki as though the other boy was the only point of light in the room. As if the world somehow had disappeared around them. Yuuji suddenly felt like he was intruding.
When Okkotsu reached out and brushed the cream off Inumaki’s face with his thumb, Yuuji decided that he should look away.
“Oh hey Toge, isn’t your room close to Itadori’s? Have you heard anything?” Maki suddenly asked.
Her question made both Inumaki and Okkotsu look up at once. Something flipped inside Yuuji like a switch—Inumaki lived just one door down. He must have heard something too.
So, Yuuji turned to Inumaki with expectant eyes, only to find him staring at Maki with his mouth agape. For a moment, Yuuji thought he saw a flash of crimson on the tips of his ears. Inumaki ducked his head slightly, his focus returning to the half-eaten strawberry cake with a feigning interest.
“Okaka,” he said, voice a little higher than usual.
Maki hummed before turning to Okkotsu. “What about you, Yuuta? You know anything?” She paused, resting her head in her palm. “You’re a couple of doors away, maybe you heard something then?”
Okkotsu let out a strangled sound as the attention was suddenly on him. His face rapidly caught up to the color of Inumaki’s ears.
“No, I didn’t,” he muttered, averting his eyes.
Maki hummed again, her fingers tapping the table as her gaze drifted between the two of them. Yuuji thought she was going to say something else, but she turned to him instead.
“Itadori, why don’t you stay with Megumi tonight?” she suggested, pointing at the end of the table.
Fushiguro, who had been trying to blend into his breakfast, let out a sudden, strangled yelp. His head snapped up, a sharp cough escaping him as his tea went down the wrong way. He stared at her with the look of someone who had just been betrayed by his own teammate.
“You’re fine with it, right, Megumi?”
That was not really a question. Fushiguro gave a single, stiff nod.
—
Yuuji stood awkwardly as Fushiguro smoothed a spare blanket over the floor.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I’ll try to take up as little floor space as possible. If I start snoring, feel free to just… kick me or something.”
Fushiguro didn’t respond, but he nodded once before getting into his bed. The silence stretched between them, so thick that Yuuji was at a loss for what to say. He stared at the ceiling, the shadows of Fushiguro’s furniture stretching like long, dark fingers across the walls. The mini fridge buzzed quietly with monotonous electric pulses. Yuuji tried to quiet his mind as he reached out for the charger on the side table, only to realize that he’d forgotten it in his room.
“Actually... I forgot something,” Yuuji whispered, words came out louder than he expected. “I’ll be right back.”
Fushiguro offered a small grunt, which he took as an okay. Yuuji slipped out of the covers, his feet cold against the floorboards as he eased the door open. The hallway was a tunnel of dim, flickering light and deep shadows. He made it only a few paces toward his own door before he stopped.
A few steps ahead of him, Okkotsu pressed himself against the wall, looking like he had been watching his steps to avoid the creakiest floorboards. He was in his plain, oversized pajamas that made him look younger and far less intimidating, though his posture was anything but relaxed. He was hunched slightly, his shoulders drawn up toward his ears as if trying to minimize his silhouette against the wall.
In his arms, he clutched a crinkling plastic bag of snacks to his chest with the kind of white-knuckled grip one might use for a cursed tool. He was balanced unstably on the balls of his feet, his weight shifted forward mid-stride, one heel hovering just an inch above the wood.
“Okkotsu-senpai?” Yuuji asked in a confused voice, his voice echoing in the narrow corridor.
Okkotsu snapped his head around so fast it was a miracle he didn’t break his neck. Dark eyes widened at Yuuji with baffling terror. His expression reminded Yuuji of a deer in the headlights.
He was gripping onto the crinkling plastic bag for dear life, tightening so hard it let out a loud pop. The bag broke open. The noise startled Okkotsu enough that he nearly jumped.
“… Hi,” Okkotsu whispered back, the word came out less of a greeting and more of a plea for mercy. He didn’t move his feet, still angled toward the far end of the hall, but he tried to square his shoulders to look “normal” again.
Yuuji blinked, his gaze dropping to the snack bag and then back up to the other boy’s face. The hallway felt even colder now that he was standing in it. “Um, hi. What are you doing out? Where are you going?”
Okkotsu’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but no words came out. He looked down at the snacks in his hand like some foreign object, his brain short-circuiting as he scrambled for a cover story.
“I... was just...” he started, his voice cracking slightly. The floor beneath him let out a loud creak as he shifted his weight. “Um… going to the kitchen for… um, water?”
Yuuji didn’t understand why that sounded more like a question than an answer, but his feet were going numb against the cold wood, so he nodded reluctantly. As he was about to walk away, something clicked in his head.
“The kitchen?” he asked, tilting his head and pointing a thumb back over his shoulder, toward where he had just come from. “Isn’t the kitchen... that way?”
The silence that followed was deafening. Okkotsu looked in the direction Yuuji was pointing, then back at the end of the hallway, then finally down at his own feet. His head ducked even lower. His chin was practically vanishing into the collar of his pajamas as he stared intently at the floor.
“Right,” Okkotsu whispered, sounding breathless. He shifted again, voice trailing. “I… I must have been sleepwalking. Or I just missed the turn. It’s been a long day.”
Okkotsu didn’t wait for Yuuji to point out that sleepwalkers don’t usually carry snacks with them. He broke into a stride and began walking back the other way, so quickly that it looked like he was fleeing a crime scene.
Yuuji stood there, watching Okkotsu’s back until the older boy disappeared around the corner toward the stairs before continuing back to his room.
Suddenly, he stopped.
He looked down the corridor that Okkotsu was heading towards. The moonlight hit the floorboards in cold, silver slats, illuminating the very end of the hall. There were only two occupied rooms down there.
One was his own. The other, just a few feet away, was Inumaki’s.
Panda couldn’t fully grasp the concept of human affection.
He loved his friends, of course, at least as far as a cursed puppet could. He liked talking to them, training with them, teasing them, and taking care of them. Oh hell, he would even give them his life when the time came.
Panda thought fist-bumping was the farthest you could go when you were really, really excited about your friend’s achievements. A simple “Good job!” and probably a pat on the shoulder were sufficient. That was what Panda would want for himself, too. The thought of hugging his friends, however, had never appeared on his radar.
So, when Yuuta picked Toge up in his arms and spun him around, Panda was flabbergasted.
It wasn’t just the physics of it—though seeing Yuuta, who usually carried himself with the grace of a startled deer, muster the strength to hoist Toge into the air was impressive.
It was the intangible closeness of the act that troubled him.
Toge didn’t seem to mind. In fact, his legs dangled loosely as Yuuta held him, his usual quietness replaced by a muffled, bubbly laugh against Yuuta’s shoulder. Yuuta was holding onto him with practiced ease, face half-buried in the mess of Toge’s hair as he too laughed.
“You did it!” Yuuta praised, even more excited than the other boy. “You got the technique down!”
There were so many things going on that Panda couldn’t make sense of with his limited human contact experience. For example, the way their eyes sparkled when they met one another. Or the quiet laughter that shared so much intimacy, as if it existed in a space meant only for the two of them. Or the way Yuuta’s face transformed. As if all of his burden was erased. And Toge looked like he had finally found a place where he didn’t have to restrain himself.
Is this why people hug?
If hugging could induce such euphoric reactions, Panda wanted to try hugging for himself.
He looked over at Maki, who was standing a few feet away, arms crossed, leaning on her polearm as she watched the scene with the faintest hint of amusement.
Panda decided that she would be a perfect subject for this. As far as he could tell, Maki checked all the boxes: one, she was his best friend; two, she did an amazing job at training today, as always; and three, he could easily lift her.
So, he waddled over with determination.
“Maki!” he declared, and before Maki could react, Panda wrapped his big arms around her and lifted her clean off the ground.
“…What the hell are you doing?” Maki’s voice was flat. Dead flat.
Panda tried to ignore the intention to kill in her voice. He spun her once, trying to replicate the maneuver he had just witnessed.
It did not go well.
Maki did not dangle happily. She went rigid like a plank. One hand raised, ready to smack the back of Panda’s head. Actually, she did. Panda barely felt the force underneath all of his fur, but it hurt his feelings a little.
“Put. Me. Down.” She threatened, eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared behind her bangs.
Panda blinked. This already felt different.
Still, he tried to analyze the variables. Maybe the key component was emotional dialogue—he needed to compliment her.
“You did great today!” Panda announced enthusiastically.
Another smack.
“That’s not the problem!”
Defeated, Panda slowly set her back on the ground.
Maki adjusted her glasses and took a step back from him like she was distancing herself from a contagious disease.
“… Please don’t ever do that again.”
Panda looked past her shoulder. Yuuta had put Toge back on the ground, but they were still wrapped together, laughing quietly as if nothing else in the world existed.
Then Panda looked back at Maki.
“…Huh.”
It was definitely not the same.
—
Panda did not want to give up on hugging yet.
Maybe Maki was just an outlier. She had been an outlier in many things. In hindsight, she was probably not the best test subject for this.
Panda thought about who would be. Fushiguro, Itadori, Kugisaki, maybe Gojo? Gojo should be the last option, Panda had decided. Still, the rest of the list didn’t prove to be suitable. He suddenly came to a painful realization that everyone he knew at this school was pretty… emotionally unavailable.
Kugisaki would be the best, but Kugisaki would smack him the same way Maki did, if not harder, and Panda was not ready for another emotional devastation. Fushiguro was a no-no, for obvious reasons. So naturally, his next target became Itadori. And conveniently, Itadori was with Fushiguro when Panda found him.
Two birds with one stone. He already felt positive about this.
Panda trotted across the training ground with the newfound confidence of someone who hadn’t been rejected by a teenager in at least ten minutes. He was walking at such a pace that the two boys didn’t have a chance to react to his coming.
Itadori was mid-sentence, gesturing wildly about a movie he’d seen, while Fushiguro stood beside him looking like he was mentally calculating how many minutes of his life he’d never get back.
“Hey, guys!” Panda called out, waving at the pair.
Itadori beamed. “Oh, hey Panda! You’re just in time. We were just—”
He didn’t get to finish. Panda didn’t waste a greeting—he swept Itadori into an immediate hug, lifting the boy’s feet off the ground. Itadori went still from the shock as Panda mentally prepared himself for any negative reaction.
Instead, Itadori let out a delighted “Oof!” and melted into the fur. He wrapped his arms around Panda’s neck, squeezing back with all his strength.
“Whoa, Panda! Is it National Hugging Day? Because I am down.”
Panda felt a surge of triumph. Validation!
Panda squeezed Itadori, and for a moment, the world was exactly as it should be. It didn’t reduce around them. It didn’t get smaller either. Hugging Itadori was nice and warm. Yet, as Panda’s large paws patted Itadori’s back, something felt… off.
He tried to analyze the variables again. When he’d watched Yuuta and Toge earlier, the space between them had vanished. They seemed to occupy the same coordinate in the universe, a seamless fusion of two bodies that made the air around them feel heavy and private. Panda, on the other hand, felt like a vast and empty continent.
He was too big—there was too much “Panda” left over. Panda reasoned.
So, he shifted his glance over to Fushiguro, who had taken a big step back, eyes darting around for a way to flee whatever-this-is.
“Fushiguro,” Panda rumbled, his voice dropping into a tone of grave scientific necessity. “I’ve identified the variable. The ratio is off.”
Fushiguro blinked, his brow furrowing. “The ratio of what? My misery?”
“My body,” Panda clarified. He reached out his other arm—the one not currently occupied by a dangling Itadori—and reasoned. “I am a large Panda. You are a small human. Itadori is another small human. So to cover all of me, I require the total mass of both of you.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Fushiguro said wearily, taking another step back.
“That makes a lot of sense, Fushiguro!” Itadori offered, rubbing his hand all over Panda’s fuzzy fur as he tried to sell the appeal. “Come on! Get in here!”
Panda didn’t wait for a formal invitation. He reached out and scooped Fushiguro inward, despite the boy’s opposition. Fushiguro stiffened, his hands coming up in a reflexive ‘stop’ gesture that was immediately swallowed by black-and-white fur.
Panda pulled them both in tight, burying his head between the two. He waited for the “erasure of burdens”. He waited for the “sparkling eyes” and the “shared quiet laughter”.
What he got was Itadori laughing hysterically into his fur and Fushiguro screeching like a boiling kettle.
It was definitely better than with Maki. But something was still missing. Panda couldn’t seem to figure out what.
“Are we done yet?” Fushiguro rumbled, his face slightly flushed. Too much heat.
“Almost,” Panda gave them a final squeeze to see if he could force the intimacy into existence. Nothing. So he let them go.
—
Panda decided he would go straight to the source—he would talk to Yuuta and Toge.
He might have overlooked a crucial detail in his observations this morning, and they would be the only ones who would know what it was.
He found them tucked away in a shadowed corner of campus, sitting so close that their shoulders had basically become one. They didn’t notice him, too absorbed in their own little world. Panda raised his paw to get their attention, but before he could call out, Toge said something, and Yuuta burst into laughter.
It wasn’t just the nervous chuckle that Yuuta usually gave. It was a genuine, chest-deep sound that made his shoulders shake and his eyes crinkle into two crescent moons. Next to him, Toge laughed too. The sound muffled as he pressed his face into Yuuta’s shoulder.
Their faces were so close. And if they noticed it, they didn’t react. If anything, Toge leaned in just a fraction more.
That was when Panda saw the white wire split between them—a pair of earbuds. One in Yuuta’s ear, the other belonged to Toge.
Whatever they were listening to, it was reserved between them.
Panda watched as Yuuta reached up and slipped the earbud from Toge’s ear. He leaned in to whisper something, lingering a second longer than necessary. Toge flustered at the closeness but didn’t pull away. His fingers tightened around Yuuta’s sleeve. He lifted his eyes to meet Yuuta’s before giving him a soft smile.
When Yuuta pulled back, he didn’t go far. The space between them remained small.
Then, Yuuta closed it again, drawing Toge into a gentle hug. Toge stiffened for just a moment before melting into it, his hands curling into the fabric of Yuuta’s uniform as he held on.
It was that feeling again, the one Panda had seen this morning—the same one he had been trying to replicate.
Though the hug was different this time.
There was no sudden lift, no dangling legs, no spinning, no laughter. And yet, their faces stained the same shade of pink. There was the same sense of closeness, the quiet warmth that made the world shrink to just the two of them, even without the excitement of the morning hug.
It was something that had always existed between them—a closeness Panda could see but didn’t have a name for. The invisible pull of their shoulders, the smiles they shared, the glances, the unintentional touches.
As much as he wanted to know what that something was, Panda decided to leave them alone for now.