Word Count: 11,603
Nobara can see what's happening. And her friends— she swears, it's like they haven't got a clue! They're halfway off the edge of falling in love; yet, as far as she can tell, they've done absolutely nothing about it.
Take Megumi for example. How can someone so subtle be so oblivious? How can such an obsessive overthinker not have come to the obvious conclusion about Yuuji's feelings for him?
Because it's not like Yuuji is hiding anything, not by any stretch of the imagination. From the look in his eyes as he watches Megumi spar, to the increasingly nonexistent personal boundaries he leaves between the two of them: if hints were falling feathers, then Yuuji is dropping anvils.
Nobara sighs to herself in the privacy of her own room. It's getting more than a little exhausting, having to deal with all this stupid teenage boy nonsense. She needs them to just kiss-kiss fall in love already so that the three of them can work out a schedule or something like that. Yeah, something like—
Trio Time: Adventures in terrorizing Gojou-sensei
Nobara & Yuuji Time: Manicures and spa nights
Nobara & Megumi Time: Debating trashy harem manga and light novels
Megumi & Yuuji Time: That's just a date
Otherwise, Yuuji, poor …"innocent"(?) Yuuji, would never understand why she, Kugisaki Nobara the Queen, did not want to hang out with him and Megumi all the time.
Of course, she could just tell them and get it over with, but she shoots that idea down almost immediately. She is a lady first and foremost, and the bounds of a lady's domain as drawn out by the Girl Code (if it looks like a secret, and it sounds like a secret, then you must keep it like a secret) are not to be crossed.
She's not really much of an elaborate schemer, though. Her best advice has always been direct and honest, Point A to Point B sort of thing. She has her poetic moments, sure, but this is not shaping up to be one of them.
She needs help.
But from whom?
"Maki-senpai, you're a lady. I need some help, lady to lady."
Maki turns around to face Nobara, a dubious (though still willing) look on her face. "That's not the first word I'd use on myself, but sure," she says. She rests her palms on her weapon as she carefully presses its point to the floor. "What's up?"
Nobara crosses her arms and tilts her head up to look Maki square in the eye. She has to test the waters first, just to confirm she's not about to throw the boys off the deep end, after all.
"What are your thoughts on Megumi and Yuuji?" she asks, accompanying her words with a sharp gleam in her eye.
Maki's eyebrows make a subtle jerk down as she returns the look. (Perfect.) "Megumi and Yuuji, you say?"
"Yes." Nobara curtly nods. "Megumi and Yuuji."
Maki leans back, taps her fingers against the butt end of her sword. "I think," she begins, so carefully and so deliberately that Nobara finds herself waiting with bated breath, "that they would make good shounen rivals."
A tiny smirk graces Nobara's lips. She gets it. Maki gets it.
"You read my mind," she says aloud. "Just as I would expect of my beloved Maki-senpai~" She raises herself to her tiptoes and leans into Maki to better show off her smile.
Maki bares her teeth in a rough, proud sort of smile. "Of course," she says, and she gives Nobara's head a single, solid pat.
"Now, what I'm thinking," Nobara continues, "is that they need to acknowledge that part of themselves. I'm tired of being their training wheels."
"I see, I see."
"However." Nobara holds up a finger and closes her eyes to give off the illusion of knowing what she's talking about. "I have no idea how to get off this ride." She cracks open an eye.
Maki briefly looks like a 90's anime character on the verge of collapse by exasperation, but she quickly recovers. "Force them at knife point?" she suggests.
Nobara pulls her hammer out of her belt loops, pounds it against her palm once or twice in thought. "Those don't typically make good confessions, though," she says. "Aren't confessions made under threat of torture or violence legally invalid anyway? They're not gonna last like that, and the only thing worse than what I'm having to deal with now would be if they br— disavowed their rivalry." (Good catch, girl, she thinks to herself.)
Maki hums. "Walk with me to return my sword?" she offers. "Panda and Toge are waiting for me in one of the common rooms."
"Sure!" Nobara trots to catch up, falling in step with Maki. "Do you think they'll have any ideas?" She'll have to vet them first, of course, but if Maki-senpai trusts them…
"They work with Satoru." Maki snorts. "Of course they will."
"Just shove them in a closet together and don't let them leave until they've talked it all out," Panda says with a yawn. He stretches his stubby limbs and flops down onto the floor. "That ought to do the trick, right?"
"Salmon, salmon," Inumaki agrees, nodding his head and pointing a finger gun at Panda.
Nobara twiddles a nail between her fingers, then presses the flat of its head against her lower lip. "How would that work, though?"
"Well, we could ambush both of them separately and just chuck 'em in a closet," Maki suggests.
"We'd have to call up the Kyoto kids to have a shot at Yuuji alone," Panda points out.
"Salted rice."
"I am not asking Mai for help," Maki huffs crossly, folding her arms over her chest.
"Salted rice."
"I don't want to see any of their pathetic little faces either," Nobara adds. She holds the nail between her teeth so that both her hands are free for a hammer toss. "Not that I trust any of them with a mission of this caliber and secrecy anyway." (She shoots Panda a dirty look.)
"Salted. Rice!"
"All right, all right." Panda rolls over and waves a paw at Nobara. "I get it; don't mind me…"
Something quietly unzips. "Oi."
Nobara and the other second years flinch at the ripple of force that blows through the air. The three of them turn apologetically to Inumaki, who zips up his collar with a huff.
"Salted rice," he says, pointing at his own head. Let me ask them.
"Nooooo," Nobara says, waving her hammer around. (She takes a second to catch the nail after it falls from her mouth.) "Coercive and suspicious."
Inumaki snaps in a drat! sort of way.
"Wow, Nobara, you really care a lot about your boys, don't you?" Panda says; Maki nods in agreement.
Nobara stiffens at the suggestion, and words start popping out of her mouth. "No, I don't! I'm just tired of suffering through front row seats to their stupid 'will they, won't they'! Just because we're in high school doesn't mean we have to add every single soap opera trope into the stories of our lives!"
The second years laugh. Nobara feels her cheeks flare.
She stamps her foot and tries to double down. "It's cringey!" she insists, but she falters. Her arm goes slack, and she nearly drops her hammer. "And I miss when there was nothing left unspoken between the three of us."
(Ah, she's crying now.)
The second years exchange what Nobara can only place as "knowing looks."
"Has Satoru given you guys The Talk yet?" Panda asks, apparently cutting right to the chase.
Nobara's jaw drops in disgust. "I know where babies come from!" she snaps, snatching up a tissue and roughly scrubbing her tearstained makeup off her face. (She starts shuffling towards the door just in case.) "And if there's more, then I'd rather get trapped in a special grade box vacuum thing for all eternity than learn about it from Gojou."
"No Talk yet," Maki says, which really only puts Nobara off more. Like, she's nodding and muttering to herself and everything; this can't be good at all.
"Bonito flakes," Inumaki warns, fiddling with his zipper.
Nobara gingerly places her hammer head into her opposite palm and tugs on it nervously, running her thumb over the engraved heart as she does so. "What's The Talk?" she reluctantly asks, ready to bean any and all of her senpai at the drop of a dime if she hears a single word she doesn't like.
"It's when Gojou-sensei tells you guys not to get too attached to one another," Panda explains. He sits up and flicks his ear. "'You always die alone in this profession' and stuff. Though, maybe he thought you guys didn't need it because of what happened with Yuuji earlier this year." He waggles his panda brow at Maki.
"Shut up," says Maki, kicking his fuzzy butt.
Nobara stares, speechless.
Maki sighs. "Look. It's fun to be normal high schoolers sometimes, obsessing over relationships and other such mundanities. But we're sorcerers-in-training. We can't always have those things."
"Salmon."
"At the end of the day, if you humans don't play carefully, you might end up regretting something that would have, in any other circumstance, made you the happiest you've ever been," Panda continues. "That's why the Three Clans are so thin these days. Too much generational regret."
Everyone falls silent.
"That's so stupid," Nobara declares at last. "Why let others' past mistakes prevent you from taking your own risks? Why let yourself die in empty misery when it could have been fulfillingly bittersweet?" She tightens her grip on her hammer. "Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, right? I would rather go out knowing I said everything that needed to come out of me than die with them never knowing."
"That's what you want," Maki points out, gesturing towards Nobara. "But what about Yuuji and Megumi?"
"Megumi is the quiet, regretful type," says Panda. "He'll take a thought and just pick at it, pick at it, pick at it until its only purpose is to hurt himself."
"Yuuji can draw it out of him," Nobara confidently says. "He's annoying like that."
"But if we lock them in a room together, would he bring it up?" Maki asks. "From what I can tell, his thought process is virtually identical to the Windows screensaver where the logo bounces around."
"He would if it seems like it's on Megumi's mind," Nobara says. Because again, he's annoying like that. And he knows Megumi better than anyone.
"So we've just got to put it on his mind before we trap them," Panda says.
Nobara sweeps her eyes over each of her three senpai, then nods. She tucks her hammer safely into her belt loops and pounds her fist into her palm. "You can leave it to me," she declares, and they all exchange excited grins.
They set the lock-in date to a week from Saturday. Nobara needs time to work her magic, after all.
"Oi, Megumi," Nobara says one evening.
"What?" Megumi replies, on the edge of irritation as he flips around in his copy of Rent-a-Girlfriend. "For the last time, Kazuya should just give up on his pursuit of Chizuru already. It's disrespectful to Ruka, who has shown time and time again that she'd choose him over—"
"You like Yuuji." She says it outright, resting her cheek on her fingers like some sort of bored god judging mankind from above. (And yes, it is hard not to insert her arguments in defense of Chizuru immediately after, but the mood of the scene matters more right now.)
Immediately, Megumi freezes, the tips of his ears now tinged pink. (Nobara smirks. Got him.) He recovers in an instant, however, clearing his throat and aimlessly flipping pages once more. He says nothing.
Nobara scowls. Pretending he can't hear me, huh? she thinks, shutting her book and pressing it into the table as she leans in. Well, ignore this, then.
She kicks his chair hard enough to send him skidding several centimeters backwards.
"Me-gu-miiii," she says, volume rising with every syllable. "You. Like. Yuu-ji. Right?" The last word is quiet, almost whispered.
He still says nothing, but she can see his grip on the book grow tighter to hide the way his hands shake; the way his eyes have stopped pretending to scan the page; the way his Adam's apple bobs slowly up and down.
(She lets herself laugh a little.)
"You're too loud," he says, evenly, primly, like she's the TV or something.
"I'm right," she taunts.
"About what?" he asks. His eyes have returned to reading, and his skin has returned to its usual shade of maggoty pallor.
"You like Yuuji."
"And what of it?"
"Don't you wanna do something about it?" Nobara doesn't think she's blinked this entire time. (She thinks she might be about to lose it.)
"Not really," Megumi replies, placid as ever. "Now, as I was saying, Ruka—"
"Why not?"
Megumi grabs his bookmark off the table and carefully slides it between the pages as he closes his volume. "Are we going to talk about Rent-a-Girlfriend or not?" he snaps. "Because I swear—"
Bingo. Megumi's eyes go stupid wide, and his mouth falls open, all while his entire face and neck burns bright and scarlet like the setting sun.
The smirk returns to Nobara's face. "Ohhh, you doooo~" she sings, waggling a finger at him. "You wanna~"
Megumi stands up so fast, his chair falls over, and he smacks Nobara upside the head.
"Ow!" she snaps, hand flying up to where he hit her. "What was that for?" she demands, knowing full well what it's for.
"Shut up," he hisses, tugging at his uniform collar to hide his face. "You're being annoying."
"Like Yuuji~?" Another smack. "Ow!"
"No, because Yuuji—"
"—is too pretty?" Nobara slaps his hand away, sliding out of her seat to face him head-on. "You wound me, Megumi; I thought we all agreed that I was the pre—"
Megumi snatches up her copy of Rent-a-Girlfriend and halfheartedly beans her with it. "—doesn't make me think about it," he finishes, almost shouting.
The sun dwindles, darkening the space between them.
Nobara makes the first move, gathering her manga up off the floor. "Don't you want to think about it?"
"No," Megumi's response is instantaneous, almost as if he's chiding himself with it, too.
"Why not?"
"No point." Silence. "He's going to die by the end of high school anyway."
Nobara can't refute that. She shuts her jaw, the teasing atmosphere she'd worked so hard to create now ruined.
"Everyone keeps telling me I think too much," Megumi continues. "Gojou-sensei. Maki-senpai. Everyone. But it's different with Yuuji. I don't have to think about all my feelings. I just feel them."
And they hurt to think about. Nobara gathers the unspoken words.
"'Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,'" she quotes. "You lost him once already—"
Megumi shakes his head. "I don't think I loved him then," he says.
Nobara falls back. This conversation is getting to be much more than she had imagined. "Then… when?"
Megumi sighs, runs a hand through his hair. "I don't know," he admits, staring out the window. "Somewhere along the line, it just happened."
She wants to pull her hair out by its perfectly maintained roots. There's not a single thing that comes to mind, now that all her carefully laid out plans for this conversation have been thrown to the wind.
"Well, you do now," she slowly says. Megumi does not deny it. "Do you really want to regret not telling him?"
Megumi mechanically turns to face Nobara; his hollow expression scares her. "Can you truly regret something you can't control?" he asks.
Nobara swallows. "If I say no," she begins, "then does that mean you won't regret Yuuji's inevitable death?"
"Well, I didn't choose to fall in love with him," he crossly says, the childish non-answer killing all the tension in the room.
She throws her hands into the air. "You can't just choose your feelings like that!"
"That's my point!" Megumi throws his hands into the air right back at her. "According to you, that means I can't regret never telling him!"
"Even if we can't control our feelings, we can control what we choose to do with them!" She stretches her arms and rolls up her sleeves like she's getting ready to knock some sense into him. Which, if she's being honest, she's about half a millimeter away from doing anyway. "After all, I heard you chose to save him from immediate execution on the basis of— get this— your own personal feelings."
"Because he chose to save me first!" Megumi is visibly shaking now, with both his hands balled tightly into fists. "He's the naturally good person here."
"And you're not?" Nobara wishes she hadn't left her toolbelt in her room; a whack of her hammer would have been perfect for emphasizing her wild disbelief. "Megumi, do you feel like you're not allowed to love Yuuji?"
Now it's Megumi's turn to be dumbfounded.
"I shouldn't," he says, oddly hesitant. "Right? Love him, I mean."
Something within Nobara's chest cracks open. "Why not?"
"His days are numbered," he replies. "He can never be fully mine."
"So?"
"So it would hurt too much if I were to wholeheartedly play pretend at a happy relationship when it does eventually get ripped away." Despite his passive tone, Megumi's cheeks turn rosy again, though it's hard to pick out in the dark. "That's lying to myself at that point. I'd rather live out a hard and painful truth than play with a pretty lie like that."
"But which is the lie and which is the truth?" Nobara walks over to the table and sits atop it. "You don't have to pretend it will all last forever. Isn't going for it despite knowing the tragic ending a harsh and painful truth itself? Walk in with your eyes wide open, never looking away, and it could be."
Silence.
Nobara slides off the table, walks across the room, and flips on the light at last.
"You keep talking as if Yuuji returns my feelings," Megumi snaps after a spell. "Well, you know what they say about assumptions—"
"'They make an ass out of u and me', yeah, yeah," Nobara finishes for him, waving her hand around dismissively. "But you're assuming things, too, Megumi. You're always such a pessimist, man; why automatically assume he could never reciprocate?"
"I'd rather think realistically and not get my hopes up," he replies. "Then I can shrug it off when I'm right and have a pleasant surprise when I'm wrong."
Nobara sweeps an arm in front of her, incredulous. "That's such a boring way to live!"
"Well, aren't you the one who likes to call me a boring person?" Megumi dryly snips.
"Megumi, you know Yuuji better than I do. Don't tell me that in all your quiet little observations, you've never noticed the way he hangs off of you." She marches right up to him, arms crossed, and raises herself to her tiptoes to make herself look bigger.
Megumi does not flinch. "He hangs off the both of us."
"He pulls me in if he can, but I'm not the first person he turns to whenever something happens." Her calves grow tired, and she falls to her heels for a moment's rest. "He gets all up in your face about it, too. It's basically impossible not to notice."
"I'm sure he'd do that to you, too, if you let him."
"Key word here 'let'." She jabs a finger into his chest. "Maybe you like the smell of his breath fresh out of his mouth, but personally, I have standards."
It's actually very satisfying, watching Megumi's cheeks glow red in response to her words, but she's only allowed a second to see it before he turns around to hide his face.
Nobara leans her weight against the table. "What I'm saying here is this: You say you don't want to lie to yourself. Well, the fact of the matter is, you know Yuuji much better than I do. I'm just pulling up things I've noticed myself. There's gotta be a hundred thousand more things you've picked up on and suppressed over the months." Megumi turns around, and she makes direct eye contact with him as hard as she can. "Besides, isn't it lying to Yuuji by keeping quiet?"
"That's different," he insists. (The gall.)
Nobara narrows her eyes. "How so?"
Megumi looks pointedly away.
So Nobara goes out on a limb.
"Because it hurts you, too?" she continues. "You're so used to the pain of yearning that it's like you've stopped feeling it at all. And so the idea of that pain going away, even if it's just for a short amount of time, feels so wrong that you can't even imagine deserving it. It just doesn't fit in with the miserable life of a jujutsu sorcerer! Which isn't to say that you're not afraid of pain, because what really keeps you from making a move here is knowing that when the pain comes back, knowing a life without it will make it hurt differently and so much more."
Silence again. Megumi stares at her, mouth agape for all of ten seconds before he shuts it and swallows.
Nobara sighs, finally allowing her expression to soften. "You're so stupid, Megumi," she says, fondly, achingly. "Stop thinking so hard about everything! You're gonna end up hurting yourself. You are hurting yourself. If jujutsu sorcerers die alone and full of regret, then fine. So be it. Tell me, then, when considering the question of whether or not to confess to Yuuji, which you'd rather regret: the outcome? Or the inaction?"
The next day, Nobara shoves open the door to the second years' hangout and stretches her arms as she walks inside.
"All right, I got Megumi spiralling down the question of regret," she says as soon as the door clicks shut behind her. "He should be ready for Saturday now. Now how are we getting them into the closet?" She plops to the ground next to Maki.
"Toge is drawing up the plans as we speak," Maki replies. She gestures to Inumaki, who gives Nobara a thumbs up.
"I've been wondering something, though," Panda says. "How do we know they actually really like each other like that?"
Nobara steals the soda can sitting in front of Maki and takes a good, long drink. "Well, Megumi admitted to me last night that he's in love with Yuuji," she says. "Plus, I got him to start looking more deeply at the way Yuuji behaves around him, and I think he's starting to realize the potential romance there. He knows Yuuji better than I do, so I'd trust his judgement."
"But we can't actually trust Megumi is the thing," Panda replies, putting his front paws together and pointing them at Nobara.
Nobara slams the empty soda can down on the table with a tinny tok! and tries sliding it back to Maki, who pushes it right back in disgust. "Hah? Why not?"
"Rose-tinted glasses," Maki answers, pushing her own lenses higher up her nose. "He might be misreading things because he wants them to be true."
"Okay but me," Nobara says, jabbing at her chest. She turns to face Maki, and she gestures even harder. "I'm seeing a difference in how they act."
"Is Yuuji really the one changing things, or is Megumi simply letting him take his otherwise normal, unspecial affections further and further, though?" Panda asks. "From our perspective, Yuuji is just kind of like that with everyone who will allow it, even Satoru."
(Nobara makes a face.)
"Plus, he's a self-proclaimed dumbass," Maki adds. "I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know what he was doing, or didn't really understand his own feelings."
On one hand, Nobara is pretty sure Yuuji deserves more credit than that. He is very much a people person, after all. On the other hand, Maki-senpai makes a good point and a compelling argument about him being stupid. One time, he asked her what color the Pink Panther was, and now, she knows they're both country bumpkins, but does he hear the words that come out of his own mouth? Evidently not!
Nobara heaves an exaggerated sigh. "All right," she says. "I'll pick on him when we hang out tomorrow night."
And the senpai rejoice.
"Yuuji, who do you like more? Me, or Megumi?"
It's a cruel question to pose him, Nobara knows, especially thanks to her stunning reputation, but since she used up most of her weekly allotment of poetic questioning on Megumi, she simply makes the executive decision that "it had to happen."
Yuuji seizes up, freezing far more obviously than Megumi during her talk with him. "Um," he says in that awkward, babyish voice of his. Sweat starts beading on his forehead. "I like. You both. The same amount."
"But do you like us in the same way." She waves her nail polish brush in circles.
Yuuji's eyes glaze over. Nobara gets the impression his brain served him up a blue screen of death.
"Uhhhh…" he says, then does a speedrun of the dial-up internet noise. "…Huh. No offense, Nobara, but I don't think I do."
"None taken, as long as the amount—"
Yuuji gasps. It's so loud that it could almost count as a scream. "I THINK I LIKE HIM!" he shouts, his cheeks turning a violent shade of red.
Nobara caps her nail polish; the meat of their hangout tonight is about to begin, it seems. "Like THAT?" she asks, matching his volume for the hell of it. (Luckily, there's no one around, not that it particularly matters. The only person who'd be both interested in and out of the loop on their gossip would be Gojou-sensei.)
"Yes, yes, like THAT," Yuuji confirms, nodding his head so hard, Nobara thinks he might launch it right off his shoulders.
Nobara's disbelief kicks in. "Did you JUST realize that now?" she shouts, jumping to her feet.
It's like a bubble pops: in the blink of an eye, Yuuji shifts from overexaggerated, hyperactive excitement to just… regular teenage boy. Maybe a slightly forlorn teenage boy, but normal teenage boy all the same.
"Ah," he says, in that rare subtle, neutral voice of his. "I was just playing with you."
Nobara's hands change from their semi-strangulating position in the air to one propping up the other elbow as she presses a half-fist into her cheek. Furrowing her brow, she asks, "About the realization? Or liking Megumi like that?"
"About the realization," Yuuji replies. He runs a hand through his undercut, stopping right below the crown of his head, and briefly looks up to flash her an awkward, clearly forced smile. "Sorry. You're not mad that I kept it from you, right?"
She is mad, very much so. However, the mood isn't right for her to express it, so she sighs it away best she can and says, "Give me your hand." She holds out her own expectantly.
"Huh?" Yuuji's hands retreat towards his chest, where he wrings them nervously. "Why?"
"I'm going to paint your nails."
"But we just did that."
"The color is bad."
"But you picked it!"
Nobara balls her hands into fists and starts marching across the room. Yuuji lets out a playful shriek.
"No! Nooo! Mercy, mercy~!"
Nobara rolls her eyes and jumps up to snatch his flailing wrist, play-dragging him back to the table, where he seats himself across from her.
She cracks open the acetone. "When?" she asks, grabbing a tissue with a flourish.
Yuuji cocks his head. "You mean Megumi?" he asks. She nods, and he hums as he holds out a hand for her. "I guess if I had to say… when I taught him to make meatballs."
"That early!?" She starts rubbing the acetone-soaked tissue in little circles on his nail. "You guys have been third wheeling me for that long?!"
Yuuji laughs. "Well, I guess," he replies. "I don't think I knew it at the time, so it definitely wasn't on purpose."
Nobara wrinkles her nose at all the fumes building up in the room, so she puts the tissue aside and gets up to open the window. "At what point was it on purpose, then? At what point did you realize something changed?"
"Okay, first of all, we never excluded you from anything on purpose." Yuuji jabs a finger at her as she returns to her seat. "And secondly…" He pauses to think for so long, Nobara finishes cleaning off all the nails on his left hand. "I guess when I was watching Princess Mononoke down in the basement, back when I was watching movies all day."
(You mean when we all thought you were dead, she thinks, eyebrow twitching.)
"Like, the wolf princess just reminded me so much of Megumi that after a while, I just started imagining Megumi in her place, and then I started replacing all the other characters with people I know in my head…"
"Which one was I?" Nobara demands.
Yuuji blinks. His daydreamy expression shifts to surprise. "Huh?" he asks, then starts clicking his tongue. "Ah, I think you were one of the sharpshooter girls in the Iron Fortress."
"Nice."
"Yeah, I just couldn't see you picking up a bunch of lepers out of the goodness of your heart, even if you'd put them to work making your weapons."
Nobara bonks him on the head with the tissue box for that. "You can't say that for certain," she chides (even though she knows he's probably right).
Yuuji laughs again, and Nobara huffs as she tosses the box aside.
"Anyway," he continues, his eyes darting away to stare at the wall. "Then at some point, I realized, 'Oh! I'm pretending to be the main character. And I am in love with Megumi.'"
Nobara looks up from his second-to-last nail and notes the rosy blush in full bloom on his face. "Wow," she says, sounding way more sarcastic than she intends.
"Hey!" Yuuji flaps indignantly, trying to tug his hand out of Nobara's iron grip. "You can't just 'wooooow' me like that! This is a super embarrassing moment for me, you hear? Suuuuuper embarrassing!"
"I know that!" Nobara snaps. She lets go of his hand, and Yuuji quacks as he smacks himself in the face by mistake. "So why haven't you done anything about it? You're such a go-getter type; why haven't you gone out to get your man?"
Yuuji loses his balance and falls out of his seat.
"Ah," he says from the ground, making no effort to pick himself up. "I don't want to burden him with all my feelings."
Nobara blinks. Burden him? she thinks. That's unexpected. Guess there's more to him than I thought. "Not rejection?"
"Well, here's the thing," Yuuji says, now pulling himself up. "Let's say I confess, and he accepts me. Now he has to worry about my feelings all the time. Megumi isn't the type of person who half-asses his worries. If anything, he has like, two or three asses' worth of worrying. I don't want him constantly wondering whether or not his own feelings are enough to match how big mine are.
"I think if it were anyone else asking him, he could reject them and not care or think about it, but I don't think he could do that for me. He saved my life because of his personal feelings, so I know he, like, cares about me that much at least. Enough to keep me from dying. I don't want him beating himself up over my feelings. I think he'd try to regret the fact that he couldn't return them, even though he can't control someone else's feelings. If I were to lay out all my feelings, then… he'd probably take it upon himself to carry them around until the day he dies."
Nobara stares at him, speechless. Meanwhile, Yuuji plucks himself a clean tissue and starts nibbling on it. Which, ugh, weird (they should probably buy him a chew toy or a teething ring one of these days), but at least eating tissues doesn't reawaken the King of Curses and set the entire world down the track of certain doom.
"So," she says, racking her brain for literally anything to say to all that, "you're afraid you love him too much?"
Yuuji swallows a corner of his tissue (gross) and resumes his nibbling (why is she watching this?). "If you put it that way, then… I guess. Other—"
"Does that taste good?" Nobara interjects, unable and frankly unwilling to hide her disgust.
"Oh, the tissue?" Yuuji holds up the remaining scrap, which is composed entirely of barely connected dry corners and shrugs, popping the rest of it into his mouth. "It has a better texture than printer paper, but this one's one of those types with the lotion in it, so it's got like this soft flavor to it. Not as bad as shopping receipts or even glossed textbook paper, but I gotta say, returned math worksheets are probably the best because the dirt gives it such a particular flavor."
Now, Nobara doesn't have time to unpack all that, so she just smiles and nods. (I can't believe Megumi wants this one, she thinks.)
"Anyway, as I was saying," Yuuji continues, his hand idly reaching for another tissue until Nobara slaps it away. "Other people's feelings for you are a huge responsibility, you know? All those hopes and fears and dreams and stuff, resting on your shoulders."
Nobara chews the inside of her lip. "I suppose you could put it that way," she says, picking up Yuuji's still-polished hand and her acetone-soaked tissue. "But I don't think you should worry so much about what other people that you never end up doing what you want. You're just gonna make yourself miserable like that.."
"I don't think Megumi knows anything else, though," Yuuji argues. "If I—"
Nobara sighs with irritation. "You stop that!" she scolds.
Yuuji blinks owlishly at her, then makes a face. "What? What am I doing?"
"Putting other people's feelings above your own!" She gestures at him with sharp, exaggerated motions. "Why does your confession rest on how Megumi deals with feelings? He's as emotionally constipated as they come—"
"That doesn't mean he doesn't have them—"
"—so why do you continue to bury yourself in other people's shit?" Nobara slaps her free hand into the table so hard, her palm stings.
"Because I care about his feelings?" Yuuji glances around the room, as if looking for someone with whom he could share his disbelief. "You know, Kugisaki, you're being really—"
"Well, news flash, dummy! I care about you guys!" Finally finished cleaning Yuuji's nails, she lets go of his hand and slams a fist on the table, filthy tissues clutched inside. "And I want you to be happy."
The bottle of acetone clunks lowly as it falls on the ground, spilling all over the wooden floor.
Nobara swears. "That's going to eat through the varnish and destroy the finish," she says, grabbing up fistfuls of tissue and tossing it into the puddle.
Yuuji ducks under the table and squats beside her. "You care about us~" he cackles, grinning mischievously.
"Shut up or I'll stuff these tissues down your throat."
"Too bad I'm immune to all chemicals and poisons, then~"
"Idiot, I wouldn't do that if I hadn't known," she snaps.
(Her teeth click audibly when she abruptly shuts her jaw.)
For a moment, Yuuji neither moves nor speaks. Nobara pays him no mind, sulking.
"Oh," he says.
Nobara stuffs a soaked tissue into his hands. "Go throw that in the trash for me," she orders, already tossing fresh tissues into the spill. It's halfway gone, but it's probably going to leave a tacky spot for a few days and a lightened patch with tissue dust forever afterwards. Oh well, she thinks. Such is the price of airing out feelings.
Yuuji returns, and they wordlessly exchange tissue balls, her soaked and sopping one for his fresh and fluffy one.
"Hey, Nobara," Yuuji says when she meets him at the trash can. "When did you start feeling left out?"
Nobara tosses her wad of tissues into the garbage and turns around. She starts walking, and Yuuji follows her back to the table.
"Pick a color," she says, sliding her collection of nail polish towards Yuuji.
"But you always say I have bad—"
"Pick a color."
Yuuji inspects the box of colors and hands her a bottle, which (and let this be known on absolutely no uncertain terms) she can already tell will look hideous with his pink hair, but she decides to let him have this.
"Peacock green," she murmurs, reading the label off the bottom.
"Kind of reminds you of Megumi's eyes, huh?"
Nobara stares him straight in the eye as she cracks open the bottle, which isn't easy when he keeps averting his gaze like that. "Oh, so you're gone, gone."
Yuuji laughs. "Yeah, I guess so!"
Nobara takes his hand and begins applying polish.
"I guess it started right before that time you wanted to go to Akihabara," she says, finally answering his question. "Truth be told, I kind of wanted to go, too, since my best friend back home, Fumi, is really into Detective Conan, and I would have liked to find her something among all the shops there. I almost changed my mind and went along anyway after Megumi said he'd go along to keep tabs on you, but at that point, something changed, and I suddenly felt like I would just be intruding." She carefully paints along the edges of his nails such that she won't have to clean up the undersides later, then smiles at him. "Hope you don't feel bad."
"I don't," he lies, lyingly. He's such a bad liar; she just doesn't normally care enough about the things he chooses to lie about to push it.
Normally.
"There you go again, putting other people's feelings above your own," she idly says, annoyed. "If you want to be so considerate of others' feelings, then do me a favor and stop considering mine so much. It'll make me feel a lot better."
Yuuji balks. "But then I might hurt you!"
"I'm prepared for that."
'Maybe you are, but not everyone else will be!"
"So what?" she challenges. "Yuuji, I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but one person can only care about so many others before they end up taking on the weight of the world. No one can carry all that alone without hurting themselves. Aren't you someone, Yuuji? Aren't you a person, too?" She presses his hand into the table to keep him from messing up his wet nails as she tries to cap the nail polish bottle one-handedly.
Yuuji stares at her, dumbstruck.
"Let's go back to considering other people's feelings," she continues, making direct eye contact the entire time. "You told me already Megumi cares a lot about your well-being, enough to save your life without hesitation. I don't think a big ol' softie like him would prefer you crush yourself to death alone when he might be able to help take on some of the burden."
Yuuji continues to stare back, expression growing pained as he opens and closes his mouth over and over again like a fish. "I can handle it myself!" he insists. "I don't want him to—"
"Aren't you human, too?" Nobara snaps. This is getting ridiculous. No human being really thinks this way, right?
"No."
She glares at him.
"Yes, you are," she insists, her tone leaving no room for him to argue. "And honestly, that's so disrespectful to Megumi as well. You think he can't handle you? You think he's so delicate that he can hardly handle his own feelings, let alone yours? Don't give me that crap. You guys may know each other better than I do, but for two months after you died, Megumi and I only had each other. I know him plenty well, and I know he can handle anything you, of all people, might throw him."
She leans into his space and bares her teeth at him. Yuuji's eyes start shining with glossy tears, but he doesn't cry.
"And hey, did you know, that by making all your feelings known, you take on the burden of knowing his, too?" she continues. "A relationship is not a one-way street where one person takes on all of the other person's problems. In fact, if that's how it goes, then it's a shit relationship."
Yuuji pushes her away and stands, towering over her. "But Megumi already has so much to worry about," he argues. "I don't want to add to that!"
"There's no way out of this situation without worrying him somehow. That's just the way he is," Nobara returns, folding her arms"Life's full of choices like that, where no matter what you do, someone will have to face the consequences of your actions. As jujutsu sorcerers, usually 'consequences' mean life or death, so consider yourself lucky that these are only feelings."
A long silence ensues. Nobara struggles to put her final thoughts into words, now that Yuuji has been rendered well and truly speechless.
"So who are you really considering by holding it all in? Megumi, by keeping the burden of your feelings off his back? Or yourself, by using this as a way to tell yourself you're a good person?"
Nobara sticks her hand into her nail pouch, searching for the iron closet key she and the senpai spent all of yesterday afternoon filching from Ichiji the driver. Her finger catches the ring, and she tugs it to the top of her cursed nails for quicker access.
"Oi," calls Megumi as he rounds the corner, a box of old curse sealing tape in his arms. (Right on time, she thinks.) "This is where these are supposed to be kept, right? Maki-senpai said you'd be waiting outside."
"Yup!" Nobara chirps, pulling the key out and twirling it about on her finger for a moment, just to show off. (Megumi is as indifferent as ever, killjoy.) She catches it, unlocks the closet, and immediately starts babbling. "Thank you sooo much for helping us hide everything from admin. Like, Gojou wouldn't flip out or anything, since he doesn't care about anything, but that just means we'd get into soooo much more trouble with the higher-ups if they caught wind of our adventures."
Megumi's eyes glaze over less than two seconds into her rambling. "Uh-huh," he says, clearly hanging onto this conversation by the barest of threads. He adjusts his grip on the boxes and walks inside. "Now, where does it go? I wasn't here for your original heist, so—"
"Oh, noooo~~~" Nobara kicks the door closed, trapping him inside. "Someone's coming! Hiii, Nitta-san, how are you~? Don't mind me, just locking up. You know Gojou-sensei, always pushing his work onto us first years like the trashy adult he is!"
Of course, no one is actually approaching, but Megumi freezes anyway, thus allowing Nobara to lock him inside as though there were.
(Ahh, so smart of Maki to weaponize Megumi's ride-or-die, all-or-nothing sacrificial nature against him.)
Nobara proudly twirls the key around her finger as she leans her back against the door. Now that's a job well done, if I may say so myself.
"Nobara?" Megumi calls from outside, and Nobara catches a soft, airy thump as he sets down the box. He shuffles over to the door. "What are you doing?"
"Don't worry about it just yet!" she calls, digging her heels into the ground and pressing her weight into the door just in case.
"Just yet?" Megumi sounds like he's on the verge of summoning Mahoraga just to bust himself out of there.
Luckily for Nobara, the wall rattles as if on cue, and something heavy falls through a window and into the closet.
"Hah! I told them I could parkour two stories up the sheer wall! Now— oh, Megumi! What are you doing in here?"
Yuuji has arrived.
Nobara clutches the closet key tightly in her fist, unable to grin any wider than she's already grinning.
"Kugisaki," Megumi warns, coincidentally managing to hit the exact spot on the door behind from her head.
"Ohhh, so you were helping out in here," Yuuji says, and Nobara can't tell if he's purposefully playing the fool, or if he genuinely could not read Megumi's tone just now. "The senpai dared me to climb in through the window. Inumaki-senpai even bet me three weeks' worth of desserts that I couldn't jump up the walls like Spider-Man!"
"Don't you need to go back down to claim your reward?" Megumi asks, voice straining.
Yuuji smacks a fist into his palm. "Oh, you're right! I should go do that."
The door handle jiggles, and Nobara holds her breath.
"Eh?"
"Kugisaki locked me in."
"Dude, just call her Nobara— wait, what?"
Nobara takes this moment to clear her throat and turn her head so that her ear is flat against the door. "I'm not letting you two out until you finish talking," she announces.
"About what?" Megumi asks, his constant practice in denial and avoidance serving him well, she sees.
"You know what about," she says, tossing the key back in with all the nails in exchange for her hammer. Not that she's going to actually use it for anything at the moment, but it's nice to hold.
"No, we don't," Megumi insists. "None of our cursed techniques involve mind reading."
"Well, there's a—" she begins.
Yuuji makes a monkeyish shriek. "OHHH, WHAT'S THIS?"
"—prompt sheet on the floor otherwise." She rests her hammer head on her palm. Sounds like Yuuji's got it.
"What are you plotting?" Megumi asks, his hissing barely audible through the door.
"I just told you. I'm getting you two to talk. Can't discuss everything in theory and never put it to practice. It's time to see how you boys fare in the real world."
"You—"
"'Outcome or inaction'?" Yuuji reads. (Nobara senses Megumi tense up.) "Huh. Is there another—" The paper flaps loudly as he turns it over and says nothing else.
Nobara feels the pressure of Megumi leaning against the door ease as he moves, presumably, over to Yuuji's side.
"'Yourself or others'," she hears him read aloud.
Yuuji awkwardly laughs. "Oh, that's just something Nobara and I were talking about the other night," he says. There's a pause. "Wait, so on—"
"What were you guys talking about?" Megumi interrupts.
At this point, Nobara faces forward and sinks down to sit on the floor, her back still pressed to the door. She tilts her head back to stare at the pretty rafters, the ancient woodwork impressively well-done.
"Ah, well," Yuuji begins, "we were having our usual spa night in her room, right? And somehow, the conversation got to the question of whether I'd rather take on everyone else's burdens, or let them share in mine."
"And you chose to take on everyone else's, huh?" Megumi is absolutely deadpan.
Yuuji laughs, a bit more naturally this time, but not yet all the way there. "Yeah, but then Nobara pointed out that sometimes, by never letting anyone worry about you, you're gonna end up making some people worry about you. So now you're created this burden you literally cannot take, and now I'm not so sure."
Megumi hums. Nobara hears the boys' shoes scrape against the floor as they sit down.
"I don't know," Yuuji continues. "My grandpa told me to help people, make myself useful to others, with his dying words. That's why I keep things to myself a lot of the time, but the idea that I'll just end up hurting someone I care about in trying to protect them like that… I dunno. I guess it's kind of selfish of me, but I don't want to feel like I've failed Gramps by leaving some people burdened on purpose. Then it becomes a game of pick and choose who gets to be saved. I don't feel like I have the authority to decide, 'cause I don't know anything about their situation, and even then, I'm imposing my own weights on their issues."
"I don't think letting other people know what's bothering you is choosing to burden them," Megumi replies. "Some of the burden leaves just by talking about it and making it known. Besides, aren't you unloading on me now?"
"Oh, is that how you see it? Sorry, you don't need to worry about any of that. It's not really an emotional burden to me, so I didn't really think of it that way."
"Whether it's mostly emotional or not, what's the difference? A burden is a burden is a burden."
"Ah, well, I guess this one's more of a moral dilemma." Yuuji answers. "You don't have to get your heart as involved."
Megumi grunts. "So over the summer, when you were training while we thought you were dead, whatever it was that happened, you felt that in your heart."
"Yeah."
"What was it?"
Another forced laugh from Yuuji. "You don't have to worry about it— oi, oi, stop looking at me like that!"
A long pause, then a sigh. Nobara hears the loud thunk! of something getting knocked around inside the closet.
"All right," Yuuji says with another sigh. "A recent friend of mine died in my arms. I thought maybe I could use Sukuna to save them, but he said no. I didn't even get the guy who killed them, so now it feels like my fault that they died sometimes."
("What the hell," Nobara mutters to herself. "All right, I guess; really airing out all the skeletons today.")
"It's not your fault," Megumi says. "Sukuna is your responsibility in that your job is to keep him at bay, but he's still separate from you, and his refusal to act is in no part related to your actions."
"But I'm supposed to learn to control him, aren't I? And isn't the refusal to act an action itself?" Yuuji argues.
"Can you truly regret something you can't control?" The way Megumi says it this time is much loftier, much gentler than when he'd posed it to her earlier in the week.
Nobara hears Yuuji loudly sigh (for the third time!), and admittedly, she's not sure what to think either. Leave it to Megumi to come up with stupid philosophical questions that have no real answers and then spend the next three epochs trying to solve them.
"I guess that would depend on what you want to count as a regret," Yuuji answers. "Like, is it a feeling? You can't really control those, either, not all the way, so I guess if that were the case with regret, then yeah, you can regret something outside your control."
Megumi grunts. "I think a regret is like a wish you always carry inside you, that you'd done something different in the moment," he says. "And it comes out sometimes, makes you think about what could have been, and you regret your decisions."
"Oh, so in that case, isn't it impossible to regret something outside your control?" Yuuji asks. "By your definition, you had to have had the power to change the outcome yourself."
"Correct. The negative feelings associated with regret are a function of wishing for the past and for things to be different, like evil nostalgia."
Yuuji snorts. "Evil nostalgia," he says, amused. "So then on the back of the paper— is that for you?"
Megumi stiffens, Nobara can almost see it now.
He acknowledges Yuuji in what Nobara at this point can only assume is his first language: grunting. "She asked me if I'd rather regret the outcome or the inaction when making an important, irreversible decision."
"Really now? That's easy," Yuuji says, the light, sing-song lilt returning to his voice at last. "Outcome, all the way. I wouldn't be able to stand myself if I could have made even a little bit of a difference to someone but made the conscious decision not to."
"You're so impulsive," Megumi sighs (his turn this time, heh).
("Ow!" Yuuji yelps.)
"What if you end up hurting yourself in the process?" Megumi asks, sounding almost chiding.
"Well, I think that's worth the risk."
"What if it hurts someone else when you do that? What if the decision requires you to be selfish? What would you regret more: an outcome you brought into being due to your own selfishness, or refusing to act at all because it was for the sake of someone else?"
"Hah? That's so convoluted! Wouldn't the second situation be selfish in the long run, too? Nevermind that, what would a situation like that even look like?" Yuuji demands.
Megumi doesn't answer right away.
"Let's say you're on a mission with either me or Nobara, and we get captured by the enemy," he says at last. "We gave you explicit instructions to save yourself no matter what, because if you come in to save us, even if we all survive, the curse has made us forget everything, or hate you, or turns us into hollow shells of who we once were. Point is, you have us, but not our friendship, and you can't get it back. Do you save us, because you selfishly want to keep us in your life regardless of our role, or do you run and leave us for dead because that's what we wanted?"
Outside, Nobara shifts around uncomfortably. Her ass is going numb, for one thing, and she finds it a bit rude of Megumi to just damsel the both of them like that in this hypothetical situation, for another.
"So, you're asking if I value your lives or our relationships more," Yuuji slowly asks.
"You lose us either way," Megumi replies. "Would you rather regret losing us because you were selfish, or selfless?" There's a long silence. "I'd rather you not try to save me," he softly adds.
Not if it means losing our relationship. Again, Nobara carefully picks the unspoken words out of the air— did Yuuji catch them, too? That's pretty damn close to a confession, at least coming from Megumi. Herself? She'd rather stay alive, even if it meant losing her best friends. They're still young; there will be other best friends, she uneasily hopes.
"I'd rather regret being selfish, then," Yuuji says, words coming out like a carefully unravelling thread. "There's no guarantee I'll regret keeping you guys alive, even if it means losing what we have right now. The future holds so much we don't know yet, and even if I do end up regretting my decision that day, I never want to regret being selfless."
Nobara pulls out her phone to check the time. 15:02, the phone tells her, and right below that, a text notification from Maki.
He took the bait, it says, almost half an hour ago now. Nobara lets her phone sleep again, replacing it into her tool belt.
"Hey, Megumi, you never answered the original question," Yuuji says, and Nobara imagines him leaning way, way into Megumi's space and calling it a mere nudge. "Which would you rather regret? The outcome, or the inaction?"
"I don't know," Megumi answers.
"Whaaat?" Yuuji squawks. "You haven't thought about it at all since Nobara asked? That's so unlike you!"
"I've thought about it so much, I think I'll go insane if I think about it any longer," Megumi explains. "At first, I thought inaction, because then it becomes, 'I thought about it so much I ran out of time', and that's not really making a choice anymore, so technically, I can't regret that. But, then I started arguing with myself about that all the time, over whether or not not making a decision is a decision itself, and so that made me think that maybe that counts as a regret. So maybe I'd rather regret the outcome, because at least then there are a million smaller things I could have done differently when acting that might have changed the outcome. But now that's so many more regrets, and while I'm resigned to dying with some regrets, it's not like I'm trying to break the world record crushing myself to death with the sheer number of them."
Nobara rests her cheek against the smooth wood of the door and closes her eyes. Megumi, you really do think much too much.
Yuuji hums. "I guess for you, it would depend on the situation, huh? You always like to do things on a case-by-case basis."
"Yeah."
The silence that follows lasts much longer than Nobara thinks she can bear. Am I going to have to intervene again? she wonders.
Luckily, Yuuji changes the silence into mere quiet, speaking up in a voice just above a whisper. It's hardly enough for Nobara to catch, but she manages to make out his words.
"Have you ever regretted saving me?" he softly asks, then adds, "Megumi?"
"No, never." For what Nobara suspects is the first time in his life, Megumi doesn't hesitate.
"What if I end up losing control?" Yuuji presses on, voice gaining strength along the way. "What if I end up killing a bunch of people?"
"Then it will be our mistake," Megumi fiercely insists. "Our blame to carry, our burden to bear. You've asked me this question before. The responsibility of a life belongs to the one who saves it. I will carry my past and my mistakes upon my back for all the world to see, but I refuse to ever regret saving you."
Another long pause. Nobara holds her breath, brings her knees up to her chest, and presses as much of herself against the door as she possibly can. She fingers the closet key, wondering if it's almost over.
"Is that a selfish thing to do, or a selfless one?" Yuuji asks. "I wonder."
"Well, regrets come from a pretty selfish part of a person," Megumi answers. "By refusing it, I suppose that makes it selfless."
"You know, Megumi, I think it's okay for you to be selfish sometimes," Yuuji says, and Nobara hears the scuffling of his shoes upon the floor. He's probably pushing himself into Megumi again..
Megumi snorts. "Look who's talking."
Yuuji laughs in return. "I guess I don't show it much, but I'm a pretty selfish person inside."
"Oh?"
"Yup. Like, for example, there's this one person I like a lot, but they're kind of shy sometimes. I think they might like me, too, but they don't like bringing up their own desires, so they end up sacrificing them so that the people around them can keep moving forward."
Nobara has to clamp a hand over her mouth and nose to keep herself from laughing. Yuuji is a great many things, but subtle is not one of them.
"But, I get the feeling that they want to become someone who can wholeheartedly do things for themself. So I selfishly keep all my feelings towards them to myself, enjoying the life we can only have right now, because I want to look forward to a day where I can be the one confessed to. Until then, I don't want things to change, because I also want to feel like I'm a good person for putting his character growth above my own."
If Yuuji realizes he slipped on the pronoun usage there, he doesn't say anything about it. Nobara chews her lip, wondering if maybe it was on purpose, if Megumi will call it out. They have to be nearing the end of this conversation by now; they just have to be if Yuuji's going to be talking like this.
Megumi does not respond for several minutes, likely overthinking everything, as always. Nobara hears Yuuji shift around, even getting up to pace restlessly around the tiny closet. He could just jump back out the window again, if he wanted out that badly.
(Nobara knows why he stays.)
"Penny for your thoughts, Megumi?" he asks, once Nobara feels like the conversation is never going to come back.
"Is there really such a thing as a truly selfish or selfless action?" Megumi asks, mumbling like a child in trouble for whatever reason.
"What do you mean?"
"You framed all your feelings as being selfish, but really, you just want to give the other person the opportunity to act based entirely on their own feelings, since that's not something they find easy to do right now. Your feelings might be selfish, but you're also holding back with that other person's best interests in mind. Is that not a selfless thing to do?"
"Uhh, yeah…? If you put it like that."
"And in the earlier scenario about saving us from a curse if it means losing our relationship. If you save yourself, you could call that a selfish action because you're the only person who benefits, but the only reason you'd do that would be to honor our wishes to not be saved," Megumi continues, though Nobara wishes he wouldn't just assume what she'd want in the situation. "You act selfishly but for the selfless reason of honoring our wishes. The opposite is if you chose to save us. You risk your life to save ours, but only because you want that."
"Yo, what the—?" Yuuji stops his pacing and is quiet for a minute. "…Huh."
"So then what does it matter if your internal motives are selfish or selfless? The actions you take are the ones that ultimately make the difference in the end; shouldn't your actions then be the sole factor in determining whether what you've done is a selfish or selfless action? Ultimately, the other person isn't going to care that you held back because you wanted to feel good about yourself; they'll simply feel indebted to your kindness in giving them the opportunity to grow."
Silence, though this time it's Yuuji's fault. Not that Nobara can really blame him for that; she doesn't know what to think, either. How are they going around defining selfishness? Should they really discard the motives entirely?
"Look at what you've done, Megumi," she says under her breath, running her nails along the grooves between the floorboards. "Now you're making me think too much."
"What makes you say that's how they'll feel for sure?" Yuuji asks, a guarded edge to his question.
"Just a hunch," Megumi blandly replies.
There's a tension to the silence that follows that makes Nobara hold her breath again.
"Hey, Yuuji." His voice cracks like he's twelve.
"What is it, Megumi?" Yuuji sounds like he's five with how high-pitched and sing-song he says it.
Nobara finally slides her hammer back into its proper loop in her tool belt and scrambles for the closet key again. It's coming, it's coming, it's coming…
"You're right in that I should allow myself to be more selfish, so thank you for giving me this opportunity to maybe regret an outcome rather than my own inaction." He lets out a trembling breath. "I like you. A lot. Like that. Will you go out with me? As my boyfriend?"
Nobara grabs the key and scoots away from the door, still holding her breath, though at this point it's mostly to keep her from letting out all her internal screaming. Finally, finally, finally, finally, finally…!
"Aww, Megumi," Yuuji teases. "You have a crush on me? That's so embarrassing?"
She hears the scrape of Megumi's shoes against the floor as he gets to his feet and turns around. "Shut up," he says. "You're such an embarrassment."
"Aww, but Megumi~" There's the sound of Yuuji's running footfall, then Megumi's quiet grunt as Yuuji tackles him. "I love you, too~~ I love, love, love—"
Nobara unlocks the door and rips it open as fast as she can.
"FINALLY!" she shouts over the deafening bang of the door hitting the wall. Both boys jump stupidly high into the air, and Megumi pivots around to look at her, red-faced and dragging Yuuji along with him. "I thought you idiots would never get here! It was all this silly philosophizing around and around in circles—"
Yuuji, who had been still hanging off of Megumi's shoulders until that point, springs away. "Oh, the door's open!" he yells, dashing out of the closet so quickly, the breeze ruffles Nobara's hair. "I need to get my desserts from Inumaki-senpai!"
Nobara stares down the hall, speechless. Kudos to him for having his priorities in order, but that was not at all what she expected to happen when she opened the door.
Megumi slinks out much more quietly. "Oi," he says, looming over her with a pissed expression. "What was all that for?"
Nobara puts her hands on her hips and looks him right in the eye. "It had to be done," she says matter-of-factly.
"Is that so?"
"Are you not happy with the results?"
"It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
"Why did you feel like you had to lock us in a closet like that? What would you have done if we had simply refused to talk? And why did you want us to talk about it so badly? Isn't it none of your business?"
Nobara sighs. "Listen, I'm only going to say this once: I care about you guys. You're my boys— my stupid, stupid boys— and I want you two to be happy. Anyway, I figured that even if you guys weren't going to end up talking the way I hoped or predicted you would, it would at least mean there would be nothing left unspoken between the three of us."
Megumi stares at her unblinkingly. "That's very selfish of you," he says.
But she shrugs. "Perhaps, but someone around here had to be the selfish one," she says, then points a finger gun at him with a wink. "Besides, didn't I do it with you guys' happiness in mind? And didn't it end with the two of you getting the largest net gain? So doesn't that make it selfless in the end?"
"Perhaps," Megumi replies. He chews the inside of his cheek, tilting his head side to side as he thinks, then sighs. "I suppose. Thank you."
Nobara grins, clicking her tongue at him. "You're welcome," she says, stepping aside so that he can leave.
She watches him walk down the hall, following Yuuji to wherever the senpai have gathered, then pulls out her phone. She sends one text, to Maki:
Mission accomplished.
author's note: hello naughty children it is time for discussion questions because otherwise this a/n would be the same length as the fic itself if not longer. feel free to hit me up on tumblr (hua-fei-hua) for my answers to these questions. or don't bother. it's whatever at this point.
in megumi's hypothetical scenario, why do you think nobara would rather have yuuji save her life at the expense of their relationship? do you agree with this characterization at all?
in contrast, why do you think megumi would rather lose his life if it meant yuuji saved himself? do you think he might have had multiple reasons? do you think he'd do the same for anyone else?
the characters bring up the question, "Can you truly regret something beyond your control?" and discuss it in terms of the meaning of regret. What IS regret, really? And can you really disallow people from it?
While the question of "outcome or inaction" was ultimately answered in the text by having Megumi confess, this also meant that "yourself or others" was unable to be answered as explicitly, as it would have meant Yuuji would have been the one to confess. Do you think this was the right call? Do you think it was in-character?
haha yeah that's all peace out leave your thoughts in the reviews if that's what you're into or not, thanks for reading, stay safe out there