time out
A/N: I've got a craving for tofu lately, and so does this OC.
I just binged the manga in three days and I am (oops, sorry) shocked, appalled, and mildly underwhelmed. It's a fun enough read, and I'm really looking forward to this new arc, but Ao no Exorcist (Blue Exorcist) has it better for me. I recommend reading it if you haven't already.
Kento doesn't pine. He struggles, trudges, flounders, and eventually falls.
AKA: Kento Nanami doesn't want a lot of things in life, but he wants her (in it).
"The soy bean is the foundation of society."
He received that text from her one time, late at night, and he thought it was his senior playing the both of them. He received a set of coordinates and a map pin a few minutes later, and the message:
"How does dinner tomorrow sound?"
He didn't believe it was her either. She wouldn't be so forward with things like this, not at this hour, and she isn't a big drinker either. If anything, this was just an elaborate prank set up by their senior with her as an unwilling participant. So he ignored the text until the next day, when he received another one from her late in the morning:
"Sorry. Senpai had my phone for a few minutes."
He sighs. So that explains it.
And he doesn't ask anything else. He knows how her Cursed Technique works, how she still reports to Satoru after every mission, and how she works the graveyard shift if there was such a thing in the jujutsu world. She starts working after midnight and finishes each job by dawn. It's six hours of her day, and everything in her life is set to follow that. She's like him, in that way, how she compartmentalizes her life into a schedule, a routine.
"Everything had its proper place and time, or so my grandmother said."
Had?
"Now, everything's a mess and everything's broken."
She once told him it makes grieving easier too, in the drunken haze during the aftermath of one of Utahime's house parties.
She was sitting outside and drinking the last of her drink, wedged between the wall and the railing of the small balcony. The space was probably meant to hang laundry in and place a few plants on, not sit two people. But he needs the air and whatever silence he can get before he leaves. It's already past eleven, and he isn't really one to stay up late.
But she's already there when he slides the glass door open, can in hand and head leaned against the wall. She looked dazed, and she might have dozed off if left alone. Should he leave her alone?
"There's space for two if you stand up, Nanami-san."
She's only started calling him by his last name when she realized that was what everyone else called him.
"Sorry, Ken– Nanami-san, I didn't realize... That was presumptuous of me."
But it wasn't like he minded that she called him by his given name. If anything, it was almost welcome. It makes him feel... a little less alone, maybe. A little more... normal and less like a sorcerer. Like he was just Kento Nanami, and not Kento Nanami the 7:3 Sorcerer.
So he sits down, copies her position on the other end of the balcony, and stays. It's cramped and it's a tight fit, but he stays. She looks at him and chuckles like she didn't expect him to, and, well, neither did he. It's quiet, just as he wants it to be. She finishes her drink and he watches the insects under the flickering streetlight.
"I'm getting another drink. Is there anything I can get you?"
"No, thanks."
When she stands up, he doesn't look at the tattoos on her legs, not the ferocious dragon nor the koi fish jumping from the waves. A month ago she had tattoos of flowers and flames, but he doesn't ask why the sudden thematic change. He knows it's for a mission. He knows she's one of the few sorcerers who prefers to plan things out rather than adjust to the situation, one of the few who prefer stake-outs rather than ambushes.
"I don't really like... fighting. You can say my family's technique is more suited to defend rather than attack."
And it was, from what he's heard of it, similar to summoning shikigami. But instead of contracted demons, it manipulates the form itself.
"It all depends on the will, as the elders say, on the combined imagination and determination of the user."
So if it was water, she had to imagine how much there was, how it felt, how it flowed. And if it was a deity, well...
"We're like avatars for the deity... They manifest a part of themselves through us, if we've managed to appease them. It's impossible to completely tame a deity, anyway."
She told him she spends her weekends traveling to different temples and sacred places, following her family's tradition.
"Different deities like different things, different people, different places..."
She goes in and out of Tokyo, and it only makes sense that she's an independent sorcerer. She doesn't belong here in Tokyo, not really. So when she comes back with three cans of highball, and squeezes back into the space she's claimed for herself, he asks her the question:
"Why stay in Tokyo?"
It's not too big of a question, really. If anything, it was simple and straightforward, and anyone who's lived at least a year in the city would be able to answer it.
"I have nowhere else to be."
She opens a can and drinks like she wants to extend the silence. She breathes in through her nose, but keeps the edge pressed to her lips. He can ask her something else, but she isn't going to answer, not until she finishes it.
She looks at the flickering streetlight and he does the same. There are more insects now, flittering about the warm glow. If he thinks about it, he'd think cursed spirits are like insects fluttering about the streetlight of human society. They're a pest, they're annoying, but for some reason this is just natural. Cursed spirits being attracted to human beings is just... natural? Or maybe they're the insects and whatever the streetlight is... No, he's just overcomplicating things. He shouldn't. It's not like him.
He glances in her direction and sees that she's finished the drink, her teeth are pressed onto the edge of the can like she wants to bite into it, like she wants the silence to last longer.
He looks back at the streetlight and sees a bigger insect, he isn't sure what it is, coming close to the light. All the other, smaller insects fly lower, like they're afraid of it. Or is it out of respect? And maybe they, the jujutsu sorcerers, are this big insect. They're at the top of this supernatural food chain, and all the smaller insects are the cursed spirits. But what about that light? What does that represent?
"To make a living as a jujutsu sorcerer, you have to be where the people are."
She sets the can down beside her and moves to drink another one.
"Hokkaido is sacred land, and no ordinary curse would dare enter it."
She sighs, finger ready to open the can, but then decides against it.
"My family makes a living as patrons of the Thirteen Buddhas, among the many other deities in the region, but it's not as humble as many may think, though."
He found out from Satoru that she came from neither the Tokyo nor the Kyoto schools, but was homeschooled in the sacred land of Hokkaido itself, among deities and mantras instead of spirits and curses.
"They're old. Like, old-old. Really old. They're in-charge of taking care of spirits before they turn into curses, at least, for that part of Japan."
He's heard Satoru call their cursed techniques "manifestations" and their home region a "jujutsu sorcerer's prime vacation spot" because of the lack of cursed spirits.
Maybe he'll consider visiting, eventually.
"...actually surprising how many people from the upper class pay to be blessed by the gods, and how much..."
She's still talking, and he thinks she might be rambling now, going on and on about her family and the intricacies of their patrons, but for some reason it isn't as loud as he expected. She's talking in a hushed tone, like it was something precious and dear to her and he's a good friend. Well, he is, isn't he?
"Sometimes I even consider going back home and earn a better living with minimal effort, but–"
That's when she pauses. She looks like she's breaking, stopping all of a sudden like she's said something she wasn't supposed to.
"But there's something I have to do here."
She leans her back against the wall and looks at the sky.
"So I have nowhere else to be..." She trails off.
He thinks, if she wanted to exorcise cursed spirits and help people, she could be anywhere else in Japan. But why Tokyo? Surely it's not just because of Satoru. The man can go and be anywhere at anytime, and he does, so there's no point in... keeping her here and having her work with Jujutsu Tech. If anything, if her family's more traditional–the foundation of tradition, as Satoru once said–wouldn't it make much more sense if she was in Kyoto?
But he's overthinking again. He's almost close to prying too. This isn't like him. Not like him at all. He shouldn't... care this much, should he? She is a... fellow sorcerer, something like a friend, that's all.
Something like a friend?
"...everything had its proper place and time, or so my grandmother said."
He didn't catch whatever she said before that, but she opens the can and drinks a full mouthful before she sighs and closes her eyes.
"Now, everything's a mess and everything's broken."
What was she talking about?
Instead of asking and putting himself in an awkward position, he takes the third can of highball, opens it, and raises it to her. He doesn't know the full context of what she said, but he can't help but agree with the current state of the world.
"Cheers, then?"
She blinks, then hums as she raises her can, "To everything."
He feels the liquid slosh inside his can when he taps it against hers.
"To everything."
She smiles, for what might be the first time he's ever seen it this close, and tries not to feel special. She does this to everybody, she smiles with the same smile, and it's almost effortless in how she does it. Calm and casual, that's how she's always acted towards anyone. Calm and casual and cool, and nothing like anyone would think she'd act given the way she looks. It's far different from his type, he knows, different from the plain and simple and loving.
The insects fly below the streetlight, and he thinks then, what if he was an insect and she was a streetlight?
But today in the present, three days later, he receives her reply.
"Sorry, habit."
Which is... uncharacteristic of her. She usually doesn't flounder around with things like these.
"Ah, and I mistook your order for mine. You prefer agedashi tofu over mapo tofu, right?"
She doesn't normally send messages one after the other either. But she's right in that, he prefers tofu-based dishes with light and simple flavors.
"Should I make it up to you?"
The use of the word "should" is strange here. It sounded like a challenge, like she was goading him. It doesn't sound like her. Maybe Satoru has her phone again. Or maybe Ieiri. She wouldn't really use the word "should" because it sounds too demanding, too unlike her. She'd use the words "can" or "shall."
But when did he know her enough to conclude that?
She then sends a link to a map. It's a small restaurant nearby. Was she outside? Was she there already?
"Lunch on me?"
Right. He doesn't have a day job anymore, and it might be a little early for lunch, but he knows she opens the tattoo parlor at noon. Is she making time for him, or is she just in the area and wanted some company?
But him? Of all the people who'd like a free meal?
Wait.
"Or dinner?"
There's another map link, but he doesn't notice it. Not at first, not when he's thinking (overthinking) about why she'd ask him, out of everyone else.
Was she asking him out?