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narumi-gens · 4 years ago

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Kintsugi | Chapter 1

Nanami Kento/Reader

summary: No one understood the intricacies of the soul better than you did. That was why you were all too aware of how damaged and brittle your own was. But Nanami would always be there to help you mend the cracks and keep it from shattering completely. warnings: 18+ minors dni, angst, hurt/comfort, PTSD, alcohol as a coping mechanism, mentions of panic attacks, Gojo is his own content warning words: 6.4k chapters: i • ii • iii series masterlist

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“Mama, why don’t people just throw away their stuff when it breaks?” you asked as you watched from your mother’s side as she carefully used a thin paintbrush to apply black lacquer along the crack that ran down the side of the small bowl in her hand.

You were so engrossed in her elegant movements, following each precise brushstroke with wide eyes, that you missed the amused smile that appeared on her lips at the childish nature of your question.

“Because these are things that have sentimental value,” she explained, her voice calm and your features scrunched up in confusion.

“What’s that?”

“It means that people feel attached to their things. It would hurt them if they had to throw them away,” she said, not missing a beat as she dipped her brush into the small dish containing a tiny pool of lacquer before resuming the process of repairing the bowl. Every one of her motions was fluid and well-practiced, perfected over years of repetition.

“But it won’t be the same,” you pointed out, leaning in close to the bowl and she paused to give you a better look.

“It’s still a bowl, isn’t it?” she asked you, carefully setting down the brush and the bowl before turning in her seat to face you.

“But it’s not the same,” you argued with a pout so exaggerated that it made her smile. She reached up a hand and brushed your hair behind your ear in a caring gesture.

“It’s not? It’s still the same bowl that was loved and cherished as it was passed down through this person’s family. That doesn’t go away just because there are a couple of cracks,” she told you patiently as she took your small hands in hers. “All it needs is to be repaired. That’s what we’re here for — to fix the damage.”

She then pulled you into her lap as she turned back to the work table. She picked up the bowl and her brush once more, resuming the process of applying another layer of lacquer to the crack.

“Remember this,” she told you, her voice soft in your ear. “While you come from a long line of shamans, this is the real family business — repairing and restoring.”

Your head was pounding. It felt like someone had taken a hammer straight to your skull. It was only made worse when you let out a small groan and the sound sent shooting pains through your temples. Your closed eyelids weren’t enough to block out the brightness of the room, even when you tried to squeeze them shut even tighter.

As you were slowly dragged kicking and screaming to consciousness, the worse your headache became. With another pathetic moan, you pulled your blanket over your head and buried your face in your pillow. Hopefully, your blanket cocoon was all you needed in order to go back to sleeping off your raging hangover.

But of course, it was never that easy.

The longer you tried to fall back asleep, the more aware you became of a buzzing in the periphery of your senses, almost like a fly that wouldn’t go away. This must have been what had woken you up in the first place.

The more attention you paid to it, the more obvious it became — as if a big, flashing, neon sign was directing your attention to the disturbance. And when you recognized the cursed energy at the center of it all, you realized that it wasn’t someone who would let you easily ignore them.

Gathering all of your strength, you reached a hand out from the safety of your futon and blindly searched for your phone. As you dragged it back into the darkness of your cocoon, you cracked open an eye to look at the screen, wincing harshly at its brightness.

As you eventually adjusted to the sudden source of light, you saw that it was almost three in the afternoon. But what really caught your attention were the notifications waiting for you.

Gojo Satoru 21 Missed Calls

Gojo Satoru 63 Messages

“What the fuck?” you grumbled. You unlocked your phone and opened his barrage of messages. Instead of scrolling all the way to the top to see where the thread began, you simply looked at the most recent ones.

[2:27] Gojo Satoru: R u awake yet????? [2:42] Gojo Satoru: I’ve been waiting for over an hour!!!!! [2:43] Gojo Satoru: Ur hungover aren’t you? [2:43] Gojo Satoru: Nanami wouldn’t approve 😏

It took monumental self-control to keep you from throwing your phone at the wall. You also doubted that you had the energy to actually throw it that far even if you had tried to.

You closed your eyes again and debated whether you should just pretend that you hadn’t seen the notifications, only for your phone to start buzzing as it rang in your hand, the annoying man’s face popping up on the screen. With a tired sigh, you answered the call.

“What?” you immediately asked in lieu of a greeting, your voice rough with sleep.

“Oh! Twenty-second time’s the charm!” Gojo replied cheerfully and his voice was so loud that you had to pull the phone away from your ear and turn down the volume before you could return it.

“What do you want?” you grumbled in a fruitless attempt to get straight to the point.

“What? I can’t just stop by for a visit?” he asked, wounded by the insinuation that he would only come by if he needed something from you.

“No, you can’t.”

You were met with silence, but you knew for a fact that it wasn’t because you had shut him up. You didn’t need to see him to know that he was wearing a cheeky grin on the other end of the phone, already knowing that he had won. You let out a loud exhale and you were positive that his grin grew wider in response.

“The gate’s unlocked,” you told him before abruptly hanging up, not giving him the opportunity to reply with some smartass comment about how he knew you wouldn't be able to resist him.

You took a deep breath, praying to the gods for strength before slowly sitting up, your blanket falling down to your waist. Another pained groan left you as the sunlight streaming in through the shoji assaulted your eyes and you buried your face in your hands in a poor attempt to block it out.

For a brief moment, you debated whether or not you should just collapse back into the futon. But you quickly pushed away the idea, knowing that if you left Gojo to wait for too much longer, he would come and find you and there would be no mercy when he did.

So, as much as it physically pained you, you dropped your hands, slowly opened your eyes, and began the arduous process of stumbling to your feet and out of the futon. With another groan, and feeling like you had somehow aged fifty years overnight, you reached down and picked up the discarded pair of sweatpants that you had drunkenly removed before passing out that morning.

It took every ounce of training that had been ingrained in you since you were young to keep from falling over as you struggled to pull them on. You wondered if your ancestors were looking on in disapproval from the afterlife as you put your skills to use to simply survive your hangover.

As you began to head to the bathroom, you tripped on the way out of your room and your shoulder hit the doorframe, giving you yet another reason to curse Gojo. You shuffled your way down the hall, hoping that brushing your teeth and washing your face would help wake you up.

But as you turned on the light and stared at your reflection in the bathroom mirror through bleary eyes, you knew that it would take more than simply washing up to make you look like you were back in the land of the living. Your hair was a mess, your eyes were bloodshot, the bags underneath them were massive, and the oversized shirt that you had slept in was full of wrinkles.

It looked like you had been on a week-long bender.

You brought up your hands and squished your cheeks together, frowning at how puffy they looked. Maybe you should give the drinking a rest, at least for today.

But then you remembered who was waiting for you and quickly tossed that idea aside.

You made quick work of cleaning up, deciding to forgo doing anything else about your appearance. It wasn’t like you needed to impress Gojo.

As you turned off the bathroom light, you realized that the aforementioned man’s signature cursed energy wasn’t patiently waiting for you to greet him outside as you had expected. No, instead you could feel it inside the house — like you were in your very own horror movie.

“Does that man have no sense of boundaries?” you asked yourself bitterly, already knowing the answer to your question.

You followed his energy as you made your way through the sprawling house, the soles of your bare feet padding against the wooden floors until you reached the large room at the center of it. The shoji had been pushed aside, opening the entire room to the view of the gardens as well as the man standing on the wooden engawa, his hands casually in his pockets and his back turned to you.

“There you are!” Gojo greeted you enthusiastically with a wide smile, spinning around to face not even a moment after your entrance. “Took you long enough.”

The dull pounding in your head worsened, but you would place the blame for it on Gojo rather than your hangover.

“When I told you the gate was open, it wasn’t an invitation to make yourself at home,” you grumbled as you walked towards him, squinting the entire way as you moved further and further into the sunlight.

“I figured this was easier. Considering how hungover you are, it would have taken you ages just to make it to the door,” he grinned and you let out an annoyed huff as you eventually came to a stop at his side on the engawa. He took advantage of your close proximity to lean in and look at you closely through his sunglasses. “Woah, you look awful.”

If your hangover wasn’t currently making you its bitch then you would have at least made an effort to punch him in retaliation.

“Thanks for that,” you instead chose to reply sarcastically.

“I mean it!” he continued, never knowing when to shut up. “You look like you just went three rounds with a special grade curse and lost each one — badly.”

You felt your eyebrow twitch.

“This is why you’re single,” you snapped back at him. The amusement was rolling off of him in waves as he made no attempt to hide how much he was enjoying this. “What woman could stand to put up with you for more than five minutes?”

“I’ll have you know that I’m never short on offers.” His grin turned smug and your eyes rolled so hard that you were surprised they didn’t fall out of your head.

“That’s because they haven’t had to deal with your personality,” you mumbled, a wave of exhaustion crashing over you. Dealing with Gojo was exhausting. It was always exhausting.

No longer possessing the strength or the will to keep standing, you dropped down to sit on the veranda before quickly making the decision to sprawl out on the wooden walkway instead. You tossed your arm over your eyes to block out the sun, but for as much as its brightness exacerbated your hangover, you couldn’t deny how good its warmth felt against your skin.

“You doing okay?”

The characteristic playfulness had ebbed slightly, sincere concern peeking through. You appreciated the question. It reminded you that for as much as he annoyed you to no end, when all was said and done, Gojo was a man who could be counted on when you needed it.

You nodded from underneath your arm and you heard the wood creaking as he plopped down to sit next to you. You lifted your arm just enough to see that he was sitting with his legs hanging off the engawa, his back to you as he looked out into the garden.

“Yeah, just been busy. There have been a lot of repair requests lately,” you explained with a yawn. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of having the great Gojo Satoru coming all the way out here just to see me?”

“Why does there have to be a reason? Why can’t I just want a break from city life and want to see an old friend?” he asked, seemingly offended that you would question his intentions.

“There’s rarely anything you do that doesn’t have an ulterior motive.” The lack of bite in your voice undercut the harshness of your words.

There was a long silence. As Gojo let it stretch on, it was filled with the sounds of the cicadas in the garden and the tinkling of the wind chimes, the paper charms hanging from them flapping in the light breeze. If it weren’t for being so aware of his cursed energy at your side, you may even have been able to fall back asleep.

“Have you talked to Nanami lately?”

The question took you by surprise. Gojo was always sticking his nose into other people’s business, but he wasn’t one to travel across the country to do it in person when a simple phone call or text would do.

“Yeah, just the other day. Why?”

“What’d you talk about?” he prodded, ignoring your question and you could feel a small sense of dread beginning to build deep in your gut.

“That seems kinda personal, doesn’t it?”

You expected some sort of teasing remark. When you didn’t get one, you knew that whatever he was here to discuss was something serious.

“I was hoping I could convince you to come back to Tokyo with me,” he finally said and you let out a humorless laugh.

“Good luck with that,” you huffed.

“There’s something I could use your help with,” he continued, ignoring your rapidly souring mood.

“Get someone else.”

Hoping to put an end to the conversation, you turned onto your side to face the house’s interior, your back pointedly to Gojo.

“When you talked to Nanami, did he tell you anything about his latest assignment?” he asked and there was something gentle in his tone, like he wanted to be careful with you.

Suddenly, it felt like the sun’s warmth could no longer reach you, leaving only the coldness that had made its home deep inside of you to unfurl. You traced a finger along the wooden floor you were laying on, following the grain as you debated whether or not to say the words.

“I called him because I felt someone trying to interfere with his soul,” you finally murmured, closing your eyes as you curled in on yourself. “He said it was nothing. He promised me it was nothing.”

You hesitated, afraid to ask your next question because you were unsure of what the answer would be.

“Is he alright?” There was a sudden raspiness to your voice.

“Oh, he’s fine. You know Nanami. Nothing fazes him,” he assured you, the superficiality in his tone putting you at ease. It felt like a small weight had been lifted from your chest. But then Gojo’s demeanor turned serious once more. “There was a cursed spirit causing a mess in Kawasaki. He uses his technique to change the shape of the soul.”

Your eyes shot open. You lifted your head and looked over your shoulder at him with shock. He had turned away from the garden to face you, one leg folded in front of him while the other hung off the side of the engawa. You let his words sink in, trying to comprehend them and their implications.

“Th-that’s impossible,” you finally managed to stutter out, shaking your head in disbelief before dropping your head back onto the wood.

In the back of your mind, you knew that wasn’t necessarily true. You supposed it was possible. After all, the soul was complex — it was both fragile and resilient, it was easy to read some times and difficult to understand at others. And, depending on the circumstances, it could be as malleable as it was flexible. So, it was entirely possible that there was a cursed technique out there that could alter the soul’s shape. But to actually use it? That was unimaginable.

“He changes the shape of the soul to distort the shape of the body,” he explained further and your horror continued to grow. “That’s why you felt a disturbance in Nanami’s soul. ”

Almost instinctively, you closed your eyes and you began to focus. Your cursed energy spiked as you turned your attention inward and reached deep into the depths of your own soul. With practiced ease, you reached past all of the cracks and damaged areas to follow the thread that led hundreds of miles away and which took your cursed energy only a fraction of a second to travel and reach the other side.

You let out the breath that you didn’t know that you had been holding, relief flooding your veins when you found nothing worrying about the state of Nanami’s soul. You allowed yourself a brief moment to savor its familiar warmth before releasing the cursed technique.

“See? I told you he was fine,” Gojo said, his words breaking through your reverie and you could hear the knowing smile in his voice.

“Then what do you need me for?” you asked, suddenly feeling tired all over again. There was a lingering sense of melancholy that was beginning to resurface — one that always seemed to make itself known whenever you were reminded of the physical distance separating you and Nanami. It was only underscored when you opened your eyes and were met with the interior of the large house in which you lived alone.

“Two things. We have some of the bodies of the victims in the morgue. They’ve been dead for a couple of days now, so I don’t think you’ll be able to get much out of them,” he told you and he sounded almost dismissive about the entire matter. “But maybe you can give us a better idea of what we’re up against.”

It sounded like a fruitless endeavor. Only trace amounts of the soul remained in the body after death and even then it was never for long. If it had been days then there was surely nothing left. But Gojo was aware of that, which meant that he was using it as a pretense. You knew better than to be surprised.

Gojo Satoru was a man whose pretenses had pretenses.

“And now for the real reason?” you prompted him dryly.

He was silent and you curiously glanced over your shoulder to see that he had turned back to the garden. He was resting his weight back on his hands and in the stillness of the moment, he almost seemed comfortable — truly comfortable, not like it was part of some superficial facade.

“I have a new batch of students this year, three of them,” he finally said. You wanted to scoff out a remark that as a teacher, having new students was part of the job. But the uncharacteristic note of wistfulness in his tone held you back. “I would really appreciate it if you would come and take a look at one of them.”

“What’s so special that you need me to take a look?” Although there was no trace of bitterness in your question, your reluctance was evident. The last thing that you wanted was to be dragged back into the world of jujutsu, even if it was only for a favor.

“Itadori Yuuji. He’s Sukuna’s vessel,” he answered, taking you by surprise. You sluggishly pushed yourself up into a seated position and looked at Gojo’s back with interest.

“I heard he was dead,” you remarked, the words slow to leave you, as if you were thinking each one over carefully.

Despite having cut as many ties as you could with the jujutsu world, there were still pieces of information that would inevitably make their way to you. The appearance — and untimely death — of Sukuna’s vessel was one of them.

A visible tension suddenly appeared in Gojo’s shoulders and you tilted your head curiously.

“Dead? More like executed,” he scoffed, his words dripping with disdain. You raised an eyebrow in return. There was a beat of silence before the shadow hanging over him seemed to lift. “But no, for the King of Curses, death is only as permanent as he wants it to be.”

“And what? You want me to take a look at Sukuna’s soul? Make sure that it’s not gonna be a problem?” you guessed off-handedly.

“I couldn’t care less about Sukuna,” he was quick to correct and you found your interest growing. “This is about Yuuji.”

“And what’s so special about Itadori Yuuji that I need to go all the way to Tokyo just to look at his soul?”

He lifted his gaze to look up at the clear blue sky through his sunglasses.

“Y’know, I think you’d like him if you met him,” he mused, his words as light as the breeze. “He’s a real earnest kid who really just wants to help others. He thinks it’s only acceptable for people to die natural deaths.”

Gojo was clearly fond of his new student, something about the boy seeming to strike some sort of chord in the world’s strongest sorcerer. But you wanted nothing to do with him.

“He sounds like a fool,” you muttered. However, your tone lacked any bite, a strange haunted quality to it instead.

“He was on this mission with Nanami. I know it was hard on him,” he explained, ignoring your comment. “This was his first real glimpse into how cruel this world can be. I just want you to take a look at his soul and make sure he’s really okay.”

There was a familiar dull ache blooming in your chest. You tried to suppress it but found yourself unable to. You heard a faint voice ringing in your ears, a memory from long ago that you had spent years trying to forget.

“Nee-chan, we’re kind of lucky, aren’t we?”

“Why?”

“Just about any cursed technique can be used to exorcise curses. But you and me, we can also use ours to help people. How many sorcerers get to say that?”

“Hmm. I guess I never thought of it like that.”

“I’m gonna save as many people as I can. Just you watch!”

Disgust reared its ugly head inside of you. You had poured a lot of time, energy, and alcohol into repressing your memories and the pain that they were associated with. But all it took was one visit from Gojo Satoru and a few words about some teenager to have you on the verge of spiraling.

“No,” you suddenly spat out. “I won’t do it.”

You then stood up and made to walk away, a pointed end to the conversation. You had barely taken a few steps, your feet only just crossing over the shoji track to enter the living room when Gojo began to speak.

“Do you know who Yuuji reminds me of? Tadashi.”

You froze. Hearing the name spoken aloud for the first time in what may have been years felt like an arrow through the heart. You forced yourself to take a deep breath and your voice was shaking with your next words.

“I don’t think you’re trying to be outright manipulative,” you replied, choosing to be generous towards Gojo. “But even still, you’re being cruel.”

The admonishment hung in the air between you. But it wasn’t enough to deter him from continuing.

“Yuuji has a big heart,” he said softly. “You know better than any of us what that does to people in this line of work.”

It felt like there was a lump in your throat that was difficult for you to swallow down.

“I’ll do everything in my power to protect his heart, and the hearts of my other students, for as long as I can,” he explained, a bittersweet note shining through as he spoke. “They’re only kids.”

“So were we,” you breathed, but there was no maliciousness left in you. All that remained was a tiredness that you felt deep in your bones.

You closed your eyes and let your head fall back as you took a deep breath. When you opened them again and looked ahead, what you saw had you gasping loudly in horror.

Your younger brother stood before you, his face one that you only ever saw in pictures and nightmares these days. But instead of the image of your brother that you had grown up with — the one that always wore a wide smile and whose eyes were always shining with hope — it was the image of your brother as you had last seen him.

A wide gash stretched across the entirety of his neck, all the way from one ear to the other. The jagged edges of skin where a blade had sliced into him were coated in the blood that was drenched down the front of his white, short-sleeved button-up. His eyes, once so full of life, were now completely vacant.

Unable to help yourself, your gaze followed the trail of red all the way to where it was dripping onto the tatami mats, staining them permanently. You saw that all that remained of his toes were bloody stumps as he stood barefoot in the pool of his own blood. You didn’t need to see his hands to know that his fingers had received the same violent treatment.

Fearfully, you shut your eyes and let your cursed energy flare out wildly as you reached for his soul. When the only other soul you found was Gojo’s behind you, you opened your eyes and your brother was gone.

“Hey, you okay?”

You whirled around to face Gojo who was now standing only a few feet from you. His sunglasses were in his hand as he watched you warily, his startling blue eyes roving over you before darting past your shoulder and then returning back to you.

You could only give him a shaky nod as your heart pounded in your chest. But then you heard a warbling gurgle echoing in your ears.

“N-n-nee-chan…he-help-p…m-m-m-me…”

A wave of nausea hit you and you shoved past Gojo as you raced to the engawa, clumsily jumping from it before collapsing to your knees in the grass. Your fingers were gripping onto the blades of grass so tightly that you were pulling them from the ground as you began to retch. The sounds of your dry heaving filled the garden, nothing in your stomach for you to throw up.

Even through your turmoil, you maintained enough control over your cursed energy to look at your own soul once again. Your cursed energy instinctively reached out to grasp onto the traces of Nanami’s soul that had made their home inside of yours over the years. You greedily drank in the warmth that washed over you as clung onto the pieces of his soul desperately, allowing the sensation to soothe you until your heaving eventually subsided.

Your eyelids fluttered open as you panted and you stared down at the grass below you. You could feel Gojo at your side and you looked at him from the corner of your eye to see that he was sitting beside you, his arms lazily wrapped around his knees.

Using the back of your wrist, you wiped your mouth as you sat up. You then rubbed your palms together to brush away the blades of grass that you had tugged from the ground before dropping them to your knees.

“This whole jujutsu world is wrong,” Gojo finally said, his voice filled with conviction. “I won’t let it destroy these kids before I can fix it.”

It was only when you softly sniffled that you realized that you were crying. As you quickly wiped away the tears that had rolled down your cheeks, you let his words sink in. Another memory flashed through your mind, this one nowhere near as violent or upsetting as your previous ones, but painful all the same.

“As much as your body hurts when you’re injured, it’s nothing compared to how much the soul can hurt. But there aren’t hospitals for the soul like there are for the body. That’s why we’re here. We can fix what others can’t.”

Your mother’s words were so clear in your ears that it was almost enough for you to feel a ghost of her caring touch along your cheek. You brushed away another tear before you began to stand on shaky legs.

“You can stay the night,” you rasped. You then turned around and headed back to the house. “We can leave in the morning.”

As you stumbled into your studio, you made a beeline for the worktable against the wall — the same worktable that your mother had spent countless hours hunched over — and collapsed into the chair beside it. You folded your arms across the tabletop and then dropped your forehead to rest against them.

You took in a deep breath and held it for five seconds before releasing it and then pausing for another five seconds only to repeat it all over again. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Hold.

And over again.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Hold.

And over and over and over.

Finally, when your heart was beating steadily in your chest and your hands were no longer shaking, you lifted your head and stared tiredly at the table in front of you. Your mind was blessedly blank but you didn’t know how much longer that would last, not with everything that had just happened and with what was in store for you over the next couple of days.

You needed something to do with your hands. You glanced over to the wooden cabinet across the room before dismissing its contents. You had only just set aside the pieces you had been working on repairing last night to dry, staying up into the early hours of the morning to finish them. They wouldn’t be ready for the next step in the repair process for another two weeks.

You debated sneaking back into the house to grab a bottle of sake that you could lose yourself inside of, only to quickly dismiss the idea because you knew that you would never go undetected by Gojo.

Instead, almost unconsciously, your hand reached into the pocket of your sweatpants and pulled out your phone. Before you knew what you were doing, you were holding it to your ear as you waited for your call to be accepted.

“Hello?” Nanami answered and as soon as you heard his voice, it felt like you could breathe again, relief flooding through your veins.

“Hey, it’s me,” you murmured. “Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“Never,” came the easy reply and you smiled to yourself. “Is everything alright?”

The cold sense of dread that had been present in your chest ever since Gojo had arrived disappeared when you heard the warmth in Nanami’s question.

“Just a bit of a bad day,” you sighed.

“Why? What happened?”

You scoffed and your eyes rolled to the ceiling with annoyance.

“Gojo Satoru is what happened,” you told him.

“Ah,” he said knowingly. Nanami’s tolerance for Gojo’s antics was even lower than yours.

You chewed on your bottom lip anxiously as you debated what to say next. He patiently let you take your time, the comfortable silence stretching on.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you finally asked, the question making you feel small.

“About what?” To anyone else, his response might have seemed dismissive. But you knew better — you knew him better.

“That there was a cursed spirit trying to distort your soul,” you said, your tone slightly hurt. “You promised me it was nothing.”

There was a pause as Nanami absorbed your words.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he eventually replied. Rather than sounding patronizing or condescending, his words were spoken kindly. He then let out a quiet sigh of his own. “I thought it would be easier for you if you didn’t know.”

“I always want to know, Kento,” you were quick to assure him. The idea of Nanami being in danger or hurt while you had no knowledge of it was a painful one.

“Then you’ll always know,” he agreed and you quietly let out a relieved exhale. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” you whispered and you could imagine the soft smile that was surely playing on his lips. It probably matched the one on yours.

“I should be the one thanking you. It was the protection that your soul gave mine that saved me,” he told you and your eyebrows raised slightly with interest for a brief moment. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“Always,” you breathed, the promise quiet but no less heartfelt as it left you. “I’ll be coming back to Tokyo with Satoru tomorrow. Something about one of his students.”

Nanami hummed thoughtfully on the other end.

“Itadori Yuuji,” he offered.

“Satoru said he was with you for this whole cursed spirit mess,” you explained. “He asked me to check his soul, make sure it's alright.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Itadori-kun has a strong will, but this was a tough mission for anyone. Especially for a child.”

You could hear everything Nanami wasn’t saying — his clearly growing fondness for the teen, his concern over his spiritual well-being, and his own frustration with a system that demanded so much of children.

“I’ll make sure he’s alright,” you told him, hoping to put his mind at ease.

There was a moment of silence and you could practically hear him thinking.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said. There was a sternness in his voice that usually melted away whenever he was with you. It was a signal that what he was saying was meant to be taken seriously. “You walked away from it all. I don’t want you being dragged back into it out of some unwarranted sense of duty. Gojo-san doesn’t get the final say in this.”

You appreciated his reassurance more than you could put into words.

There were times, late at night when the alcohol didn’t seem to be doing the trick, that you questioned whether or not you had made the right decision. Maybe the benefit of helping people was worth the high cost to your soul. But then you would remember how willing those at the top of the jujutsu world had been to treat your family like sacrificial lambs and it was enough to convince you that you had made the right decision.

It was comforting to know that Nanami was on your side, no matter where you landed.

Turning your attention back to the present, you sighed tiredly. You looked out the window of your studio at the trees just outside. A strange feeling of peace crept up on you, one that you hadn’t felt in so long that it felt foreign.

“Itadori Yuuji sounds like a genuine kid,” you thought aloud, your tone unusually wistful. “It seems kind of wrong to let this world ruin that.”

Another memory flashed in your mind for the briefest second. Tadashi’s familiar, joyous laughter faintly resounded in your ears.

“Nee-chan, I’m gonna be a hero that people can count on when they need help!”

The pain that would normally have accompanied the memory was nowhere to be found. Instead, to your complete and utter surprise, you found a bittersweet smile playing at your lips. Your eyes were prickling with tears that began to form but you didn’t have the heart to wipe them away.

“Especially if it’s in my ability to help,” you continued, the words sounding like something from a lifetime ago as they left your lips. You mulled over the way they tasted and you felt something buried deep inside of you stirring.

“You’ll be here tomorrow afternoon?” Nanami asked, gently putting an end to your introspection.

“Yeah, I’ll text you the details,” you answered, grateful for the opportunity to push away all of the complicated emotions that had been raging inside of you. “I’m trusting you to find somewhere good for dinner, alright? I’m sick of eating at the same restaurant over and over again just because it’s the only one within a thirty-minute drive.”

Nanami’s quiet chuckle on the other end of the call felt like a soothing balm for your soul.

“Alright. Have a safe trip,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks. See you tomorrow,” you repeated and your next words left you so easily that saying them was almost as instinctive as breathing. “Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Bye.”

You ended the call and slid your phone back in your pocket, the corners of your lips slightly turned upwards and your heart thrumming with something it felt like you never got to experience — excitement.

But whatever lightheartedness you were feeling came crashing down when there was a knock on the door before it opened a second later so that Gojo could pop his head in.

“You left me all alone,” he pouted and you began to rub your temples in hopes of staving off the inevitable headache. “What’s there to do around here anyway?”

You sighed loudly and pushed your chair away from the table to stand up.

“There’s nothing to do. Why do you think I drink so much?” you grumbled as you made your way towards him, shoving him out of the way so that you could leave the studio. As you breathed in the fresh air, you found an unexpected calmness settling over you.

“Because you’re an alcoholic,” came the sing-songy reply.

You felt your eye twitch as that sense of calm came shattering down around you.

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