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The decision to go back to her rural hometown came to Kugisaki Nobara after a phone call.
The caller was her grandmother. The old woman's voice came through the receiver, robust and full of vigor, delivering news that the granddaughter of the Sato family next door had just had her second child last month, the son of the Tanaka family at the village entrance had gotten married last year and already had twins this year, and she'd run into Nobara's old homeroom teacher outside the post office who'd asked whether Nobara was seeing anyone. Nobara had the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, listening while messaging Itadori: "My grandmother. Pressuring me to get married. No pauses. She's been going for fifteen minutes."
Itadori instantly replied with a string of "hahahaha," then added, "Want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?"
Nobara replied with a single word: "Get lost."
After he was done laughing, Itadori sent another message: "Aren't you going back to visit? You haven't been home once since summer break started."
Nobara stared at the message and thought for a moment. Jujutsu High's summer break was technically a month long, but Gojo Satoru's "voluntary" extra training had taken up the first two weeks. The third week, the three of them had gone to the beach. And now the fourth week was upon them, with school about to start. She lifted the phone back up and said into her grandmother's still-rambling monologue, "I'll come back this weekend," and hung up.
It was only after hanging up that she realized her grandmother had just been saying, "The young Mr. Kobayashi at the village office is a nice man, would you like to meet him?" and her "I'll come back this weekend" had landed precisely as a response to that. Nobara stared at her phone screen for three seconds, then messaged Itadori: "I think I just agreed to something I shouldn't have."
Itadori asked: "What is it?"
She said: "Don't know. My gut feeling isn't good."
Her gut did not betray her this time.
The day she returned to the village was a Saturday. Nobara rode three hours on the shinkansen and transferred to a local train. The final leg was only two cars long, trundling slowly along the base of the mountain. Outside the window, the city gave way to farmland, then forests. She wore a dark blue dress, its hemline above the knee, the waistline fitting just right, a cropped beige knit cardigan over it. On her feet were a pair of low-heeled sandals. Her hair was down, draped over her shoulders, the ends slightly curled — she'd put in the effort before leaving, not for anyone else to see, but so her grandmother would think she was doing well out there.
When she walked through the village entrance, a bag of sweets from Tokyo in hand, evening cooking smoke was rising from the rooftops. The village wasn't large — a dozen or so households scattered along a single paved road, the mountain at its back, a harvested rice paddy stretching out before it. The air smelled of rice stalks, earth, and burning leaves from somewhere distant. That smell unsettled her for a moment. When she was a child walking home from school, this smell had been everywhere. Back then, carrying her schoolbag along this same paved road, adults from every household would lean out to call, "Little Nobara's back!" Now she was grown, and the people leaning out were still there, but the words they called had changed.
"Oh my, if it isn't Nobara! You've gotten so big! What kind of work are you doing in Tokyo?" The first voice came from Matsumoto-san, who ran the general store at the village entrance. She was sitting outside shelling soybeans and set the pods aside to stand when she saw Nobara.
"I'm in school," Nobara said.
"School? Haven't you already started working? Young people these days, staying in school forever. When does it end?"
Nobara smiled but didn't respond. She quickened her pace. Behind her, Matsumoto-san was still talking: "You absolutely have to go to the alumni gathering tomorrow. All your old classmates are back." The alumni gathering. Her steps faltered. Her grandmother hadn't mentioned any alumni gathering over the phone — or maybe she had, and Nobara had just spaced out at the exact wrong moment.
Her grandmother's house was at the very end of the village: a two-story wooden house, old-fashioned, with a persimmon tree growing in the front yard, its canopy shading over half the garden. When Nobara pushed open the gate, her grandmother was sitting under the eaves, drinking tea. The old woman was seventy-six this year, her back still straight, her hair completely white. But her eyes were as bright as her granddaughter's.
"You're back," her grandmother said, tone perfectly flat, as if Nobara had only visited yesterday.
"Mm." Nobara set the sweets down on the veranda, slipped off her shoes, and stepped up, sitting down beside her grandmother. Her feet, freed from the sandals, rested on the cool wooden boards of the veranda. The remnants of the nail polish she'd put on before the beach trip still lingered on her toes — pale pink, already chipped in places.
Her grandmother glanced at her feet. "You've learned to dress up, in Tokyo."
"I always knew how," Nobara said.
"You never wore dresses when you lived here before."
"No one was pressuring me to get married when I lived here before, either."
Her grandmother laughed, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes folding together, though her voice remained clear. "Who's pressuring you? I'm just making conversation. Speaking of which — are you going to the alumni gathering tomorrow? Your old elementary school homeroom teacher came by yesterday, specifically. Said since you're finally back, you have to go."
Nobara tilted her head back and looked at the leaves of the persimmon tree. The setting sun fell across her face through the gaps in the leaves, light and shadow shifting. She thought for a moment, then said, "I'll go." If she didn't, people in the village would gossip about her grandmother: "Your Nobara didn't even come to the alumni gathering. Maybe she's not doing so well out there." She knew the logic of this kind of gossip too well. She'd grown up inside it.
The village office's assembly room had been temporarily converted into the venue for the alumni gathering. Long tables were arranged in three rows, covered with white disposable tablecloths, laid out with sushi platters ordered from the town restaurant, fried chicken, and a case of canned beer. On the wall hung a banner made of colored printer paper, cut into the words: "Classmates Reunited." Hand-drawn flowers decorated the space beneath the four characters. Whoever had set it up had clearly put in a great deal of effort, though their aesthetic sensibilities remained frozen two decades in the past.
When Nobara stepped into the assembly room, the first thing she saw was that banner. The second thing she saw was the room full of people — around twenty of them, all about her age. Most she could still match names to. A handful required piecing together facial features and guessing through memory.
"Nobara!" The first to call out was a round-faced girl in a floral dress. She ran over from the crowd, nearly knocking over an unopened can of beer on the table beside her, and grabbed Nobara's arm. "You finally came! I was just asking Sato if you'd show — wow, you've changed so much! You've gotten thinner! No, not thinner, it's your whole... just different somehow!"
Nobara recognized her. Suzuki Yumi, who'd sat one row ahead of her in elementary school, always turning around after class to copy Nobara's homework. Yumi hadn't changed much — still that round face, just with a trace of makeup now. The way she laughed was exactly the same as back when she got caught copying homework by the teacher.
"You haven't changed much," Nobara said.
"That is absolutely a charitable lie." Yumi scratched her head, then leaned in close and lowered her voice. "Be careful. Some of the people here came with assignments from their parents."
Nobara didn't grasp what that meant until Yumi had pulled her to sit down at the middle row of tables.
The first half hour of the alumni gathering was relatively normal. Everyone exchanged pleasantries, reminisced about childhood embarrassments — who'd peed their pants on the sports field, who'd pulled off the principal's toupee, whose lunch box always got half-eaten before second period. Nobara sat by the window. The summer cicadas outside were deafening. She held a can of mediocre beer in her hand and laughed along with everyone else.
But she could feel, imperceptibly, the seating arrangement undergoing certain subtle shifts. The few people originally sitting near the door began to move. The sound of chair legs scraping the floor came and went in fits and starts, like some kind of slow tactical encirclement. By the time she'd finished half her beer, she found herself surrounded, somehow, by a loose perimeter.
The person now sitting to her left was Sato Kenta, the elementary school sports committee member, now working at the town agricultural cooperative. He had a third less hair than when he was a child. He wore a pale blue shirt, pressed too crisply, the sleeves folded three times to reveal thick forearms. The top button was undone, and the tan line above his collarbone was faintly visible. One hand braced on the corner of the table, he tilted his body slightly in Nobara's direction and delivered what he thought was a very natural opening line: "Nobara. Long time no see."
Nobara nodded. Her gaze drifted past Sato's shoulder. Across the table, Suzuki Yumi was mouthing "Careful" at her. She didn't understand what there was to be careful about.
"How's Tokyo?" Sato took a sip of beer, his Adam's apple rolling above his collar. "Job market treating you okay? Income stable? Rent can't be cheap in Tokyo, right?" He paused, his tone taking on that particular concern of someone who's been through it all. "Actually, there are some decent positions here at the village office. Have you considered coming back to develop your career? Your grandmother's all alone at home. Aren't you worried?"
Nobara listened. The fingers around her beer can tightened for a moment, then loosened. She'd heard these words too many times since the year she turned sixteen and decided to go to a jujutsu technical school: a girl going off to some special skills school, studying so much, how will she ever get married, how will she take care of a family. Back then, her answer had been to put a crack in a classroom desk. But today she couldn't crack any desks. Her grandmother's reputation had to be considered.
"My job is pretty stable," she said, tone neither warm nor cold.
Seeing she wasn't taking the bait, Sato was about to open his mouth again when Yamada Kaori smoothly leaned in from across the table.
Yamada Kaori was the very traditional type. She worked in the family registry section of the town office, her husband a fellow clerk in the same department. Married three years, just had her first child last year. She wore beige wide-leg trousers and a short-sleeve knit top, her hair cut to shoulder length, her bangs pinned back with a hair clip. She had the kind of aura of someone who keeps themselves in meticulous order. She took Nobara's hand and looked her up and down. "Nobara, you've gotten so pretty. Do you have a boyfriend? Let me introduce you to someone. My husband has a colleague at work, twenty-nine this year, works in the finance bureau, has a house and a car. Will you meet him? We all think he's a great match for you."
The words she used were "We all think he's a great match for you." The subject wasn't "I." It was "we." Who that "we" included went without saying. Everyone at this table — perhaps everyone in the entire village — believed that Kugisaki Nobara ought to find a man with a stable local job, property to his name, someone who could make a respectable appearance at a New Year's family gathering. And all the things she'd been doing in Tokyo — those nights fighting cursed spirits, all that life and death invisible to ordinary eyes — held no meaning here. Not denied. Simply nonexistent within their framework of understanding.
Nobara looked at Yamada Kaori's sincere face. She knew it was well-intentioned. But good intentions and a sense of pressure were not mutually exclusive.
"No need," she said. "I have a job."
Her finger traced the rim of her beer can. There was a smile on her face, but no smile in her eyes. Yumi had clearly noticed, too. She quickly stood up and grabbed a plate of edamame from the next table, setting it in the middle. "Hey, hey, eat up, eat up!" Her movements were too hasty. The edamame plate knocked against the table edge, and several pods rolled onto Yamada Kaori's wide-leg trousers. Kaori laughed as she brushed off her pant leg, saying, "Yumi, you're still so clumsy." The atmosphere barely smoothed over for a few seconds.
But Yamada Kaori did not give up. She picked the edamame off her lap and set them at the corner of the table, then said: "Saturday afternoon, outside the village office. My husband's colleague will come. You come too. Just meet him. If it's not a match, no loss." After saying this, she lowered her voice, her tone carrying a faint note of superiority. "He's three years older than you. Career's stable. Never been married before."
Nobara knew this rhetorical playbook all too well: a coercive arrangement packaged as "good intentions," using "for your own good" as a shield, making any refusal seem unreasonable.
"Saturday?" Nobara said, her voice very quiet.
"Two in the afternoon. Won't interfere with your sleeping in. Won't take too much of your time."
Nobara didn't answer. She set the beer can on the table and lifted her head to look out the window. The canopy of the old camphor tree swayed in the wind. She remembered the message Itadori had sent — "Want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?" — and the follow-up message he'd added after she'd told him to get lost, the one she hadn't read carefully at the time. She remembered it now. That message had said: "Fushiguro agreed too."
Those two idiots, Nobara thought. And then she found the corner of her mouth tugging upward.
Saturday afternoon. Two o'clock. The heat was unbearable. Heat waves shimmered above the asphalt. The drone of cicadas blanketed everything. The shadow of the camphor tree outside the village office had shrunk to the base of the trunk. The stone steps were bleached white-hot by the sun. Nobara stood there in a white short-sleeve T-shirt and denim shorts, canvas sneakers on her feet, hair pulled casually into a ponytail. She hadn't even put on lipstick — not out of forgetfulness. She simply had no interest in dressing up for this. The occasion didn't warrant the effort.
Beside her stood Yamada Kaori, looking down at her phone: "Almost here, almost here, he says he's arrived." A few steps away, Sato Kenta and two other elementary school classmates just happened to be nearby, leaning against the camphor tree and making idle conversation. Nobara knew they weren't here by coincidence. Their positioning was too neat — three men perfectly surrounding the most convenient angle for spectating — and their laughter was about thirty percent louder than normal. Villagers passing by the office entrance occasionally stopped. Some greeted Yamada Kaori, asking if she was matchmaking for someone again, then glanced at Nobara and offered a meaningful smile. In a small village, an arranged marriage meeting was never a matter between two people. It was a performance in which the entire public space participated.
A silver-gray sedan pulled up at the roadside. The car was new, recently washed by the look of it, its body reflecting the harsh sunlight. The door opened. A man stepped out. Twenty-nine years old. Height estimated at a little over 170 centimeters. On the slender side. He wore a light gray polo shirt, black trousers, freshly polished leather shoes. His hair had been styled with gel, swept back from his forehead to reveal a full hairline. His features weren't unattractive, but combined they carried that particular brand of respectability and stiffness unique to public servants — a face Nobara had seen countless times in Tokyo, on station attendants at ticket gates, on clerks behind ward office counters, on bank tellers behind windows. They all had similar faces.
"Hello. I'm Kobayashi," he introduced himself, his voice carrying the practiced politeness drilled into him by his profession.
Nobara gave her name. She remembered her grandmother mentioning "the young Mr. Kobayashi at the village office" during that phone call. So the foreshadowing had been planted that early.
"Yamada-san has told me a great deal about you," Kobayashi said.
"Has she," Nobara said, glancing at Kaori. Kaori stood to the side, smiling as she said, "All compliments. Works in Tokyo, beautiful, good personality too." Nobara looked at Kaori and thought that if what she was holding right now were a nail, the phone in Kaori's hand would probably already be pinned to the camphor tree.
Kobayashi suggested driving into town for a cup of coffee. "I'll drive. Not far. Just a dozen minutes or so."
Kaori immediately chimed in: "Yes, yes, you two go. I've got something to take care of, so I won't join. You two have a nice talk." She was already stepping backward as she spoke, the lightness in her retreating steps reminiscent of a sales agent who'd just met their monthly quota.
Nobara stayed right where she was. "No need. We can talk here."
Her tone was perfectly flat, but her body was already retreating. One foot had stepped back onto the gravel beside the camphor tree's roots, the rubber sole of her canvas shoe grinding over the stones with a soft, gritty sound. Kobayashi paused, clearly not having anticipated that the entire sequence would stall at the very first step. The crowd of onlookers around them was growing larger. A village woman on an electric scooter had stopped, pretending to check her phone — though the screen was angled, its lens pointed precisely toward the camphor tree. Matsumoto-san from the general store had emerged from her shop, teacup still in hand. Sato Kenta and the two other men had stopped their chatter, standing in silence now, their gazes stuck to Nobara's back.
Kobayashi stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He had crossed the line of social safety, but he himself didn't seem aware of it. "Is there something about me you're not happy with?" He reached out, intending to take her arm.
Nobara's eyes changed in that instant. The look in them went cold. Her center of gravity shifted silently to her left foot. Her right hand hung naturally at her side, already poised to counter the moment he made contact — in that final centimeter before being touched. The instincts trained into her at Jujutsu High were telling her: this distance, this gesture — threat. She wasn't deliberating. She had already reacted. It didn't sound like the volume of a single car. The engine noise wasn't the deep, throaty roar of a luxury sedan but something lighter, sharper, a mechanical growl revving higher — two motorcycles taking a curve at the same time. In this quiet little mountain village, it sounded like an airplane flying low.
Every head turned.
When the first vehicle entered view, the can in Sato Kenta's hand nearly dropped to the ground. It was an all-black heavy motorcycle, its body lines like some kind of diving raptor. The rider wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt and dark blue jeans, body pressed low over the fuel tank. The helmet was full-faced with a dark visor. Only a clean, sharp jawline was visible. The passenger seat was empty — he was alone on this bike, having ridden all the way from Tokyo, dozens of kilometers away, the seat behind him empty, as if deliberately left for someone.
The second bike roared into the clearing in front of the village office. A sharp brake, the rear tire carving a curved skid mark into the gravel. Fine stones and dust sprayed outward. The engine cut. The kickstand hit the ground, the metallic clatter crisp and satisfying. The rider pulled off his helmet, shook the sweat from his pink hair, and aimed a textbook six-toothed grin toward the camphor tree.
Itadori Yuji wore a white sleeveless tank top and camouflage shorts, every muscle in his arms bearing the dust of a ride spanning dozens of kilometers. He swung off the bike and strode toward Nobara, his steps without the slightest hesitation, like an arrow flying toward its target.
"Nobara!" He called her name. "Your village is so hard to find! The GPS took me down three wrong turns before I found this road."
The entire area in front of the village office went silent for about three seconds. Not because this person was speaking too loudly — though his volume was indeed not small — but because the amount of information contained in what he'd said required every brain on the scene to reboot. He called her "Nobara." Direct address. No honorifics. He was from Tokyo. He was here looking for her. He had ridden a motorcycle through dozens of kilometers of mountain roads, for her.
Three seconds later, the silence was prolonged by something else.
The rider of the first motorcycle, the one stopped in the middle of the clearing, removed his helmet. Fushiguro Megumi set the helmet on the fuel tank and ran one hand back through his hair, which had been flattened by the helmet. He wore a black short-sleeved T-shirt today. The hollow of his collarbone, visible above the crew neck, formed a sharp recess in the shadow. He didn't walk toward the crowd. He simply came to a stop about half a step behind Nobara, lifted his head, and looked at the man in the polo shirt — the one still reaching for her arm.
A single look.
Kobayashi's hand withdrew. Because the way Fushiguro Megumi looked at him was, how to put it — not a glare, not menacing in any way. One could even say it was emotionless. A very calm, very flat gaze, so utterly unruffled it was unnatural. He was neither provoking nor greeting. He was just looking at him. But the look itself conveyed one thing: This has nothing to do with you anymore.
The teacup in Matsumoto-san's hand tilted. Tea spilled over the web of her hand. She didn't wipe it off.
Itadori was entirely oblivious to the effect he'd caused. He was currently nodding greetings at everyone around him with that natural, guileless enthusiasm of his: "This camphor tree is so huge! Is this the village office? Looks so clean. Hey, Nobara, you didn't reply to my messages yesterday. I had to ask Fushiguro to find the address."
"How did you even get the address?" Nobara said, caught off guard.
"Fushiguro found it." Itadori pointed at Fushiguro Megumi beside him.
Fushiguro Megumi did not participate in their conversation about the address. He was looking at Yamada Kaori. Kaori took a step backward under his gaze, the phone in her clenched hand nearly falling to the ground.
"We're here to find Kugisaki," Fushiguro Megumi spoke, his voice not loud, the timbre clean. Every word was like a coin laid out before you, one by one, at the checkout counter. "Didn't mean to interrupt the arranged meeting."
He spoke in declarative sentences. His tone held no accusation, no mockery, and yet, when the words "arranged meeting" left his mouth, everyone on the scene suddenly felt as if they'd done something wrong.
Nobara felt the corner of her mouth lift in the silence. She had no intention of looking too pleased in front of the villagers, but she couldn't control the corner of her mouth. She elbowed Itadori in the arm. Itadori didn't dodge. He didn't even register it as a nudge — he thought it was a greeting, and reached out to pat her shoulder in return. His palm was broad and warm. The force with which it landed on her shoulder was exactly enough to steady her entire center of gravity.
The crowd of onlookers in front of the village office began to murmur amongst themselves. The hem of Itadori's tank top had ridden up a little, revealing the grooves of his abdominal muscles above his waistband. He himself was completely unaware, entirely focused on patting Nobara's shoulder. Sato Kenta looked down at the outfit he'd learned to put together from beauty influencers and quietly unrolled his thrice-folded cuffs a little further down.
Fushiguro Megumi did not take off his jacket. He simply stood to Nobara's back right, one hand in his pocket, posture casual, but his eyes had already swept over the positioning and expressions of everyone present. That was instinct forged by long-term conditioning — he was cataloging the exit locations and the gaze of every stranger. His silence, in this chaotic drama unfolding outside the village office, was like a bass line suddenly introduced. It didn't rush the beat, but it made everyone who was off-key stand out all the more glaringly.
Yamada Kaori attempted to pull the situation back under her control. She forced a stiff smile. "These two are... your coworkers? Why didn't you say something beforehand?"
Nobara lifted her chin and produced an ambiguous syllable, somewhere between a hmph and "didn't need them to," the end of the sound lifting slightly upward.
"We're her classmates!" Itadori immediately supplemented. "Here for the class reunion!" His eyes were bright as he said this, full of sincerity. He probably genuinely believed that an arranged marriage setup could count as part of a class reunion.
Kaori was about to say something more when Mr. Kobayashi, who'd been silent all this while, finally spoke. The collar of his polo shirt was already ringed with a damp circle of sweat. His gaze avoided Fushiguro Megumi's direction, but he couldn't help stealing a glance at Itadori's arms. In the end, he fixed his eyes on Nobara's face. His voice was dry and rasping: "And this is..."
Itadori turned and extended his hand. The gesture was extremely formal, as if he were truly on a business visit. "I'm Itadori Yuji. I'm Kugisaki Nobara's classmate."
Kobayashi looked down at that hand — knuckles slightly reddened, fingertips bearing calluses — and hesitated before reaching out to shake it. Itadori controlled the pressure well. He didn't deliberately squeeze to cause pain, nor did he intentionally ease up. Just a normal handshake. But Kobayashi was clearly still jolted by the strength and thickness of that hand. After pulling his hand back, he unconsciously flexed his knuckles.
Fushiguro Megumi did not extend his hand. He merely gave a brief nod. "Fushiguro Megumi. Classmate."
Two words. Binding Nobara to their side. Shutting Kobayashi out entirely on the other.
Yamada Kaori looked to the left at the black motorcycle with its aggressive lines. She looked to the right at the old camphor tree. And finally, she looked at the black-haired boy who had spoken barely a handful of words since arriving but had somehow made the back of her neck go cold. She began to realize she might have to explain herself. "Nobara, look, this... Mr. Kobayashi came all the way here too... why don't we all just go grab some tea together—"
The second half of the sentence never made it out. It died under Nobara's turned gaze. She wasn't frowning. But the sunlight that fell across her face through the camphor leaves revealed a temperature in her eyes like mountain spring water — perfect for drinking in the summer, but in winter, it would startle a shiver right through you.
"I said five minutes was enough." Nobara's voice was very light. Not a shout, not a curse. Yet it was like a fan slowly closing. "Kaori. Thanks. But next time, no need to arrange anything for me."
After she said this, she did something no one present had anticipated. She lifted her canvas shoe from the gravel and turned toward the black motorcycle gleaming coldly in the sunlight. She looked at Fushiguro Megumi. Raised an eyebrow. "Giving me a ride or not?"
Fushiguro Megumi looked at her. The curve at the corner of his mouth was as small as a sliver of sunlight slipping through a gap in the camphor leaves. Not obvious. But Nobara saw it.
"There's only one helmet," he said.
Nobara stepped past him, picked up his helmet from the fuel tank, and put it on her own head. The chin exposed beneath the helmet's visor lifted at a defiant angle — not directed at Fushiguro Megumi, but at the entire audience gathered in front of the village office.
"Gojo-sensei says sharing equipment is the foundation of teamwork."
Fushiguro Megumi swung onto the motorcycle and started the engine. The low, rumbling exhaust note shook the camphor leaves into a rustle. Nobara sat on the passenger seat, both hands gripping the sides of his waist. She turned her head back and shouted to Itadori: "Keep up!"
Itadori answered by mounting his own bike, firing up the engine, and roaring out after them. He even managed to free one hand and wave it at the crowd outside the village office. The arc of that wave was so expansive it looked like a cheerful farewell — yet it froze the smiles on several faces in the crowd.
Two motorcycles. Three people. Fushiguro Megumi rode ahead with Nobara behind him. Itadori followed alone on his own bike. The sound of their engines faded into the mountain road, growing distant.
Sato Kenta rolled his cuffs back up. The motion carried a petulant force. Yamada Kaori bowed her head and typed on her phone — typed, deleted, typed, deleted. Matsumoto-san righted her teacup, which had been tilted for an eternity. Tea leaves scattered across the ground. And Mr. Kobayashi, who had barely managed to get out a single complete opening line from start to finish, stood alone where he was, briefcase in hand, suddenly remembering he hadn't even had the chance to ask for Nobara's contact information.