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sabraeal · 1 year ago

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at home with the glass half empty, Part 1

[Read on AO3]

It’s not that Nanami expected fanfare when he returned to the realm of curses and sorcerers; they hardly have time to mourn their dead, let alone celebrate the living. It’s only…

There should be more to it than this. More than Gojo-senpai’s crooned, ‘Nanami-kun’ crackling over the speaker of his phone, rousing him before even the sun's bothered to heave itself over the horizon. More than the mission brief being a location and time couched in a stream of that idiot's nonsense, more than showing up at to the rendezvous as the sole adult not wearing his high school uniform--

More than the situation going pear-shaped at the moment of contact. At least, that's what he'd thought there'd be when he still trained under these people. Last minute texts seemed normal when he was just some shitty teenager; when he was just some student called in as an afterthought once instructors had deemed the situation safe enough to stand in for a lesson. He'd assumed that when he was an adult, when he finally became a peer rather than a pupil, he'd finally be privy to all the secret strategies the other sorcerers seemed to know down to their bones

Now he'd just settle for a plan before they turned a children’s park into a battleground.

Cursed energy drips off his knuckles, liquid in a way real fire never could be. It flickers with the same frantic rhythm as his breath, a flare of flame before it extinguishes itself on the concrete. That had been the reason he’d left, wasn’t it? That there never had been a plan. That their only way of fighting the creeping tide of humanity’s apathy was to throw more bodies at the problem until it was solved.

Even if those bodies were children.

“Threat neutralized,” he pants, quenching the cursed energy licking over his shoulders. They tense in its wake, braced for a fight long over. “…Gojo-san.”

“As expected from my reliable kouhai!” A lanky arms slings itself over his shoulders, drawing him far too close to that smug smile. “Tell me, was it fun? Is it just like old times?”

“I’ve been doing this for a year.” And Gojo-senpai— intolerable, as always— never changes his script. Unbelievable that they gave this man dominion over children. “It’s shit.”

He nods, sagely. “Just like old times.”

Isn’t that the truth. Nanami plucks his blazer off the carousel's rail, slinging it over his shoulders. “If there’s nothing else…?”

“What? You’re not going to stick around? Reminisce about old times?” Gojo’s lip juts out, wounded. “Come on, Nanami-kun—”

“I told you not to call me that.” They’re work colleagues, not classmates.

“You were a salaryman, weren’t you? You know about post-work drinks. Happy Hour?”

He hadn’t gone to those either, not once it was clear he would make more money on overtime than schmoozing for a promotion. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Lunch, then,” Gojo-senpai decides far too quickly. As if he’d already planned— “I made bento!”

Ah, there it is. The metal teeth snapping shut on this trap. “All right,” he sighs, slumping under his senpai’s weight. “Show me this…bento.”

The paper bag should have been his warning. It’s rumpled, like it’d been pulled out of the bin, the top not even neatly rolled down but merely clenched shut in Gojo-senpai’s fist, like a cartoon bank robber making his getaway.

“I made your favorite,” he says, so saccharine Nanami’s teeth ache. “What is it you always get now? The casse-croute.”

The casse-croûte is a light meal— a snack, really, though a substantial one— an idea that includes but is not exclusive to sandwiches. What he prefers is the jambon-buerre, the parisien, a baguette slathered in butter and layered with Paris ham— or more often, prosciutto— lettuce and brie. But the konbini around here don’t make a distinction between the two, and by the terrible mockery Gojo-senpai’s mouth makes of a French accent, neither will he.

He takes the bag anyway, top pinched between two of his fingers. Between the grit of his teeth, Nanami manages, “Thank you for the meal.”

What he finds inside is…unspeakable.

“Is this…?” His mouth works, at a loss. “Mozzarella?”

“Nice, isn’t it?” Gojo-senpai’s nose wrinkles above his own egg salad, pressed sloppily between two slices of white bread. “Better than that stinky stuff they usually put on. You know it has a rind?”

The bread squishes beneath his fingers— not a baguette at all, not even a French loaf, but some sort of mass-produced bread-like product. A...sandwich roll, shoved into a plastic bag with a half dozen other of its ilk, sold for cheap and then bought by this absolute fool to be split in twain and abet this blasphemy trying to pass as a sandwich. The lettuce is soggy and— he’s pretty sure— shredded. Maybe even iceburg.

Even still, his mouth salivates. Not for this abomination, but the superior sandwich it apes; the same way cursed spirits shuffle, mere shadows of the human fears that birth them. One sitting behind a glass case, wrapped in crinkling film, crusty bread glimmering enticingly beneath the bakery’s lights. He can taste it, the funk of the cheese and the crispness of the lettuce, the baguette shedding sesame as it yielded to his teeth. And the girl behind the counter—

It’s much better than the konbini’s, isn’t it? The curse coiled on her shoulder cocked its fly-head to match hers, as if it had a share in her pride. As if it were anything more than a leech, sucking the life out of her sip by sip, until only a hollowed-out shell remained. He’d gotten rid of it; his last gift to the world he’d left behind. To the girl who made the perfect jambon-buerre.

A year ago now. His mouth twists. A lot can happen in a year. Do her shoulders still sit so proud? So easy? If he went back, would he find her still smiling, or would there be another one of those worms wrapped around her neck, squeezing tighter every night. Killing her day by day, unchecked, no sorcerer to—

Nanami balls up the bag, sandwich and all, and throws it into the nearest bin. That has nothing to do with him now.

“What’s the matter, Nanami-kun?” Gojo sing-songs, impossibly long limbs sprawled over the bench, taking up as much space as his smile. “Don’t like the sandwich? What’s wrong, too much mayo?”

Mayo. He pinches his nose, adjusting the way his glasses straddle it. “I don’t like anything about this.”

The sandwich, the job. The growing amount of cursed spirits spawning around the city. The strange way Gojo-senpai smiles when he asks about it. Gojo-senpai in general.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Gojo's must as well; he slips his out from his trousers, brows knitted as his eyes scan over the message.

“Lucky us,” he drawls, smirk stiff as a carcass across the spread of his lips. “Another cursed spirit, and only a few streets over.”

Nanami frowns as the man unfurls from the bench, casual as a cat on its way to batter yet another mouse. “There’s more now, aren’t there? That’s why you were all so happy to have me back.”

“Whatever do you mean, my dear kouhai?” Gojo swings close— too close, his mouth all teeth. “Clearly we missed your scintillating personality.”

“It’s gotten worse.” He doesn’t need to see the man’s eyes to know how tightly he’s holding them, not when the rest of him is strung as taut as piano wire. “You think they’re going to overrun us, the way they did when Geto-san—”

“See? There he is.” One of those long hands reach out, patting him on the cheek. Slapping, really. “That’s the kouhai I missed so much. Nanami-kun, always so positive.”

“Don’t call me that,” he grunts, shrugging him off. A tug fixes the sit of his blazer of his shoulders. “Come on, let’s get going. I’m not about to put in overtime for you.”

Gojo rocks back on his heels as he walks away, taking in a deep breath. Despite the clear skies, a thunder rumbles through the city.

“It’s a lovely day for walk, isn’t it?” he hums, the words dogging Nanami’s heels. “How lucky for us.”

The cursed spirit might only have been lingering only a few streets away, but it’s a slippery one, leading them on what Gojo calls a ‘merry chase’ to the other side of town. By the time they corner it, writhing and helpless now that senpai's patience has run out, his stomach is empty enough that even that war crime of a sandwich seems appetizing.

A good thing that he’d put it in the garbage, then. Nanami would never be able to live with himself if he ate mayonnaise with brie. He had never been to France, but he would one day— if only for the food— and they certainly wouldn’t let him in after that.

Gojo-senpai doesn’t stick around to offer another; he’s got to go back to his class, to the children he’s teaching to sacrifice themselves before they even know who they might be. That’s what they’d wanted him to do when he’d first come back. Even had a promising crop of scouted talent, still wide-eyed from having the veil thrown back, the way he had been when he’d first enrolled, but—

But he’d just laughed. Told them to leave all that to Gojo, a man who tasted death and liked the flavor. They had his number; he’d come when they called.

So there’s no reason for him to be here. No reason for him to be idling next to this awning as rain pours down, pelting umbrella he’d bought from the konbini a street over. His old one; the shortest jaunt from his last apartment, closer still to the building where he used to work. One that still didn’t have casse-croute in the case.

But she would.

It’s busy now— the dinner rush, now that the salarymen have been turned out from their offices, ravenous and eager to avoid their empty apartments. Or worse yet, the filled ones— the kind with the children their parents wanted and the wife that begrudges their existence just as much as they begrudge hers.

A red beret blazes behind the counter, but even through the plate glass, it’s outshone by the smile beneath it. She’s been doing well, it seems— it had only even been her at the till before, but there’s two other employees working behind her now. They’re laughing as she tallies up an order, one of them wiping tears from his eyes.

It’s…nice. Good even. More camaraderie than he’d ever seen on the front lines of the stock market. More than he sees now, despite how close these missions fly to death. And that should be enough for him, to see proof of her success, but—

But that fly-head cocks its head, its unblinking stare settling on him through the glass. A larger one than the last. Makes sense; it’s had a whole year to siphon off its sustenance.

Nanami heaves a sigh, and with a nudge of his shoulders, opens the door.

The bell rings, the same bright chime he remembers, but the shop is so full, so lively, that no one bothers to look at the man stepping off to the side, letting another glut of customers through. He collapses his umbrella, careful to keep the extra water from dripping all over her floor. Even from here, he can hear that damn thing chittering on her shoulder, teeth clicking at every twitch of his fingers.

There’s nothing to be done about the thing from back here— he’s not Gojo-senpai, he can’t simply exorcise a spirit from annoyance alone— but he can’t bring himself to join the crowd. To hop in line and simply be yet another customer, not when she could look up and know—

But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d been a regular for only a few months more than a year ago. There’s no reason for her to remember his face, at least not enough to see past the new set of glasses on his face.

It’s better that way.

One of her employees passes behind her, leaning down to murmur in her ear, and her eyes jerk up, scanning the back of the shop. Not casual, no— that gaze is sharp, focused. Searching. It skims over him— once, twice— then catches, the tense lines collected at the corners of her eyes easing.

Oh.

She does remember him.

Her mouth opens, a hand lifting to a wave— only to flounder in empty air as the next customer shoulders his way to the counter, spitting out his order. She blinks, attention dragged back to the mundane, to the only reality she knows, and—

He should have never come. What difference did it make if he rid her of that curse? Oh, he can pretend it’s altruism, that all he cares about is gaining one small foothold in this war of attrition, but this isn’t about her. No, all this— it’s about him. About his pride. About proving to himself that these small victories meant something-- that even if he fell protecting this world from the horrors they’d never see, he’d leave a mark. That he'd have done something to make is better.

And now Nanami has his answer: he can push these boulders up this hill all he wants, but they’ll always fall back down. It’s only a matter of time.

He should leave.

The rain is still coming down outside, hard enough it bounces off the awning, splattering his already half-soaked blazer. A cluck catches between his teeth, trapped tight as he wrangles his umbrella open. An unremarkable black, one that will disappear into the sea of identical canopies; one more body in the surging tide, and—

And the bell rings. “Wait!”

He’s too close to feign ignorance, to pretend that he can’t hear her as easily as the heart pounding in his chest. That he can’t see her panting where she leans against the glass, rain dripping onto her chef whites. “This is for you!”

It’s the second time today that a paper bag has been foisted on him, but unlike the last, this one is crisp, a clean white with a neat fold at the top. And when he unfurls it, glancing into its pristine depths—

It’s his usual. The jambon-buerre. It’s a miracle his stomach doesn’t growl. “I didn’t…”

Order anything. He shouldn’t even be here.

“I know!” If he’d thought her smile was bright behind the counter, it is blinding this close. He squints into it, half-surprised it hasn’t burned the clouds away. “I keep one in stock, just in case you stop by. As a thank you!”

He blinks down at the bag. It’s been a year, he doesn’t say.

“Your neck,” he manages instead. “Does it still bother you?”

“Ah…!” Her eyes pulse wide. “Yes! How did you know?”

The fly-head chitters on her shoulder, and if it were possible for it to know what danger it was in, Nanami might have called that beady gaze a glare.

“Could you step closer?” His request isn’t breathless, but it is soft; softer than he’s ever spoken. She follows before he’s even finished, quick enough to leave his mouth strangely dry.

His movements are not practiced like he’d thought they’d be. Before he’d been relying on memory, on the feel of how cursed energy collected in his palms, but now he’s used to the way it sits there, to the way it tingles against his skin. He brings up his hand too fast, expecting the weight of the cleaver, but it doesn’t matter— the cut is same with an edge or without, his fingers honed just as sharp when it comes to little pissant curses like this one. It explodes over her shoulder, like a fly beneath a swatter.

When she breathes in, it’s with noticeably more ease, the tense line of her shoulders softened to a more natural curve. Funny how such a little thing could carry so much weight.

“Ohhh,” she sighs, eyes fluttering shut. Her hand raises, rubbing at where it sat, and he— he has to look away. “That’s so much better.”

“Thank you.” The words are foreign on his lips. “For the sandwich.”

For remembering. He turns, umbrella resting on his shoulder. It’s time.

“Wait!”

Fingers tangle in the sleeve of his blazer. Small, insignificant things, grip so weak a hard breath might break it. But it’s enough. This time, he turns back.

“How…?” Her face scrunches, head shaking. “No, wait. I asked last time, but I don’t think you heard me.”

She plucks her phone from an apron pocket, waving it with a smile. Not a shy one, but hopeful. “Can we exchange contacts?”

He stares. Not…forbidding. Simply…blindsided.

“No pressure,” she tells him brightly, despite the pink flush across her cheeks. “If you drop me a line the next time you’re around, I’ll make your sandwich fresh. No charge.”

That, if anything, tempts him. But still— he should go. It’s not good to make connections among the mundane. It only hurts them when they get caught up in his world.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He smiles to ease the sting. “Thank you, though.”

This time when he leaves, she doesn’t call after him.

Nanami waits to eat until he’s home, setting the bag on the counter, right beside his keys. There’s a part of him that’s reluctant to eat it, to take advantage of her kindness when the best he can do is walk away. But the famished part wins out, salivating at the very memory of its taste, of how the butter and brie meld into the most decadent expression of flavor, and—

And he might get a plate, at least. A luxury; he’d always eaten it on the run, trying to finish before he went back to the office, putting more hours in on the clock. Watching his life tick away through rows of a spreadsheet.

He sits down too— ah, what a dream this would have been back then, to sit and savor each bite. To not just cram as much into his mouth as he could before the elevator finish twenty-four flight climb, spitting him out into yet another soulless lobby. He unfurls the bag, extracting the sandwich with exquisite care. There’s a napkin wrapped around it; it flutters to the plate first, and he nearly leaves it there, but—

Sayo, it reads, followed by a string of numbers. Ten of them, to be exact, grouped two, four and four.

Ah. Heat flares where his collar rests at his neck. A phone number. That’s…persistent.

He stands up, skin tingling the same way it does in battle, but there's no curse energy to blame. Only the strange beat of his heart, and the even more foreign sensation of heat beneath his collar. He paces the kitchen, once, twice, trying to expend the tremble in his muscles, to still the half-formed thoughts racing in her head, and--

And with a delicate swipe of his hand, he guide the paper into the bin. Sayo, it still reads, and a number after it. Right there, on top of all his rubbish.

Nanami turns away, taking the plate with him. He’ll eat on the couch tonight.

#jujitsu kaisen #jjk #nanami kento #kento nanami #nanami x bakery girl #my fic #at home with the glass half empty #god okay i wrote the draft for all three parts #but unfortunately only had time to write the first one #this is one of those 'rating subject to change' fics #because this is pretty G right now!#but it is not gonna stay that way

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