UzuRunner: Thank you so much for your review! You seriously made my night. Gojo definitely makes an appearance. I was going back and forth between him and Itadori but he's just such an easy pick for someone to interrupt a conversation.

Chapter 10:

Aroma Cafe was everything that I had thought Nanami Kento would want in a restaurant. The ceiling was high, the front lined with clean, sparkly windows. Inside chandeliers hung above monochromatic lounge areas. The smell of baked goods mixed oddly with the fresh scent of something roasting in the back. It was elegant in a way that spoke quietly of wealth. On a normal day, I would have slid past it like a convict that had just escaped prison.

"You came." His eyes ticked up from the newspaper splayed across his lap, a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. There was a danger in seeing him like this - in a setting that matched him so perfectly, his tie slightly loose, his suit jacket slung across the back of his chair so that his blue button-up was revealed.

I tried not to show how much he flustered me, how his very presence crawled around inside me. "You keep acting like I have a choice."

That stern expression of his slides into place, the newspaper closing as he turns his full attention to me. "You have one. I gave you more than a choice."

A wave of irritation shifted through me, heating my cheeks as I stood awkwardly by the chair across from him. "You gave me a dead end and a highway," I hissed, trying to avoid his eyes. He was unnerving. He unnerved me. He made it hard to think. I stared adamantly at the bridge of his nose. "Learning nothing will get me killed - I don't know how many times I have to tell you that."

"Sit." I still, something deep inside of me quivering at the sudden shift in his voice. The word travels through me, sinking its fingers into my hair and dragging me into the seat before I can even think. I blink, trying to shake the odd reaction.

His eyes are on me, so deep and dark that I think I can fall into them if I slip closer. It's a good thing there's a table in between us to stop me. There's an odd calculation to his gaze, a brightening that seems to say he just found out something that I might not like.

Why's it so hot in here?

"Would you like anything?" I snap around to the waitress, desperate for anything to distract myself for the odd shift that just happened between us. What was that? What was that reaction?

I gulp, grasping desperately at the menu that's visible just over his shoulder. "An americano please - iced."

"Sugar?"

"Yes please."

I don't like coffee. I have no clue why I just ordered that.

As she hurries away, I watch her forlornly. I should have gotten tea. I actually enjoy tea.

"You say please a lot." Nanami. I had almost forgotten that he was here… That's a lie. His presence is too much like a barely contained leopard to erase from my mind. I shift back to frown across the way at him.

"I like to be polite," I snipped.

God, he was so infuriating. No one had ever gotten me this frustrated this quickly. I wasn't dumb. I knew who I was and who I was was someone who usually got pushed around. I folded easily, forgave too quickly. When asked to keep the shop open, I did. If there were customers waiting outside before my shop opened, I let them in. On dates, I was too timid and in life, I was too quiet. I stood my ground just enough to not go bankrupt in my own business but in every other aspect of my life, I submitted. So why?

"You like to please people," he corrected, his voice slow and rough. His eyes had their own gravitational pull, yanking me down and keeping me where he wanted me. "You say please and thank you and smile too much because you know that that's what people like."

Heat seared me to my hairline. He was right, damn him. That didn't mean he needed to say it though. I forced out my own analysis in a tight hushed tone. "And you like to grouch and grimace and give everyone nothing so that they stumble over themselves in your presence." His brows rose, that telling twitch of a smile flitting across his lips. "You don't particularly like the company of others even though you like the luxuries of convenience that they offer you. You're bossy. And ill-tempered."

His eyes darkened, his thumb rubbing along his bottom lip in a slow, concentrated way. I felt a zing of electricity course up my spine. Was that attractive? Why was that attractive? The way he was looking at me… I gulped, suddenly unsure what had possessed me to say all those things. They all felt like the truth… but only half of it, as if I had opened a book to a random page and decided to judge a character off of a chapter. Those things weren't the sum of Nanami Kento. And - a shiver skated up my spine as that heavy gaze slid lower to my lips - there was a lot that I hadn't said. Guesses may be about who he was but guesses that I was willing to bet on.

"Your americano." I snapped around, gasping as the waitress set down my chilled drink, her smile bright. My cheeks burned, an odd feeling of being caught in the middle of something I wasn't supposed to be doing tightening my chest. "If you need anything, just call me over or come to the front."

When I finally mustered up the courage to look back at Nanami, he had sat back, the newspaper folded neatly on the table between us. His gave had cooled, whatever odd reaction that we had shared passing.

I cleared my throat. "You said you would tell me what…" I didn't know how to explain it - didn't know how to put into words all the ways that my life had twisted in on itself. Instead, I just stared at him, struggling until he finally took mercy on me.

He brought a hand up, clenching it into a fist. "What do you see?"

I stared for a moment longer, watching the tendons flex. Veins throbbed invitingly along the back of his hands, twisting down his forearms before they were cut off where he had rolled his sleeves. I gulped, blushing. How long had it been since I had been on a date? Had sex? I tore my gaze away from the appealing sight, staring hard at the condensation slipping down the side of my cup.

"Your hand - just your hand." I rolled my lips together, trying to get myself under control. "You just put your hand in a fist."

A low murmur slipped from him, his hand (thankfully) dropping back to rest along the chair's arms. "So you can't see cursed energy."

I blinked, eyes snapping up to meet his. "Excuse me?"

His eyes ran over me, taking me in. "Have you ever felt so sad or mad that you thought you might burst? So desperate to get away from your own body that you think you might split in half?"

Something ugly and sick tightened in my gut, making me still. As if from a great distance, I heard a telephone ringing. I could smell the sweet scent of fresh dough, the chalky texture of flour coating my fingers, clumping under my nails and making the phone hard to grasp as I answered.

"Dead," I remember saying. Not the words before - I couldn't remember the things that my aunt said all I remembered were the tones - the way her voice quivered and cracked as she tried to keep some semblance of control even as she told me that my father had died. I remembered how harsh the laugh that left me was. Who laughed in that situation? "This isn't funny. This isn't a funny fucking joke. Why - Why are you -?"

"Minato," Yumi had breathed and she didn't need to repeat it again. Didn't need to repeat the fact that my father was dead.

I yelled at her. I screamed into the receiver until I thought my voice would slip away forever. I had always thought when I was little that I would handle death with more dignity. But I screamed at her like a child, not caring that the people in my bakery could hear me, not caring that Riku, the girl who I had just hired, had come rushing over to me like I needed to be committed to a ward. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing existed other than this cruelty

I didn't speak at his funeral.

"You-" I shoved myself back behind the nearest building, gasping for breath, feeling like the air had gone from the sky as my aunts huddled around me. "You - why is he - You didn't tell me that he - that he would just be…"

I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't bring myself to talk about how violated I had felt when I had entered the funeral home and found him lying there, so still, the casket thrown open like a window in a house that needed to be aired out. It was wrong - wrong to see him there when I knew that that wasn't him.

"Minato, you need to grow up now," the aunties had said to me, their voices mingling into one continuous drone of scolding. They had shielded the frail shell of my mother from me like I was the enemy - the catalyst that would cause her to finally break like so many empty shells before her. "You need to be strong for your mother."

So I didn't speak. The flimsy words I had written down crinkled in my hand as I stared, unseeing at the podium I was supposed to get behind. No one needed to hear what I thought about my father. No one deserved those memories. Those were mine. They belonged to me.

I boiled with righteous rage, wanting to lash out but not knowing where to go. So I simply boiled softly from the inside out.

"I thought the daughter was supposed to come and give a word," the funeral director had murmured, a half-smile gracing his lips like he was trying to get a laugh out of us. Wrong timing. Wrong crowd. I felt my aunt's eyes slip to me, simmering with disapproval.

I didn't look at them, focusing instead on the tips of my dad's shoes. He always hated those shoes. Liked the blue wingtips better. No one had thought of that. No one had dressed him in what he would have liked. I knew him. I knew what he wanted.

I had thought, in that moment, that nothing would ever tear out my insides like this moment. Nothing would have scooped out the parts of me like this. Funny, how the world learns to laugh at you.

My mother's death made me feel like I was dying - or, at least like I wanted to. I hadn't learned anything from my father's death. Not how to control myself. Not how to grow up. Who was I being strong for now?

I didn't give them the illusion that I wanted to speak about my mother when the time came. People never tell you about the odd possessiveness that overcomes you when someone you couldn't imagine a day without isn't there anymore. I hoarded those memories - the words my parents had spoken to me like a greedy troll. I didn't talk about how great they were, how many times they had picked me up and brushed me off.

The thing about loving someone so much is that you think that no one else can love them the same. You realize that not a single person in a room filled to the brim with people who missed them could ever know what those moments meant to you - the simple ones where they hugged you, brought you tea, laughed with you. Writing them down didn't give them justice. So no one deserved to hear them. No one deserved to know about all the things that made them so bright to you. Not the people who had lived with them since birth or the people that were there when you weren't.

Some days I still felt like that - like if I got hit by a car or slipped away silently in my sleep, it wouldn't be so bad. That was the kind of sadness that breaks you - the kind that's all skin tightening against skin, weight pressing down until you can't draw in a solid breath. People always think the things with claws and teeth are the worst but after feeling the gentle suffocation of despair, I could safely disagree.

"Yes." The word caught in my throat, sticking like freshly chewed gum. I coughed, avoiding Nanami's too-sharp gaze. "Yes. I have."

He was silent for a moment, his face tightening as he stared at my frozen form for a moment too long. "Strong negative emotions like that give birth to something we call cursed energy. The thing that you saw the other night is a manifestation of a great deal of cursed energy. Like sediment slowly collecting, one emotion can build until it shapes into something as deadly as the thing that attacked you."

I stared at him, trying to digest his words. "You said we…"

I saw the tensing in his shoulder, the way his eyes sharpened. He didn't want to tell me too much. "Everyone has a certain level of cursed energy. Those with higher levels can not only see it but also fight with it."

That made sense… But I hadn't been able to see anything until just recently. "People are just born that way."

He nodded and I frowned.

"I wasn't born that way."

Nanami's lips tipped down further, his brows dipping. "This makes your… recent development a bit…"

He didn't seem to know the right word to describe it so I took a wild guess. "Annoying?"

His brows rose. "Particularly."

"Any guesses?"

"A few," he admitted, leaning back to run a hand through his hair. It came back a touseled mess, blonde strands sliding forward to tickle his forehead. "I'm still working out the details but I think… Remember when your shoulder was hurting so bad?"

I nodded, eyes narrowing.

He continued. "And then it suddenly stopped?" His lips tipped into a sardonic smile. "You thought it was a miracle."

The pit in my stomach opened up a bit, cold dread creeping forward. "You didn't," I breathed, realization sinking in like the cold wet press of water through a layer of clothing.

"I got rid of the curse causing you pain," he said, his voice snippy with defensiveness. "It was a favor."

"Really?" I snarled, more than annoyed. "It seems like a gateway."

He rolled his eyes, an uncharacteristically boyish move. "You needed help."

"Unwanted help isn't help," I snipped.

He mimicked my tone. "If you don't know how to swim, you shouldn't be in the water."

I gasped, irritation rising. "I didn't ask for that creature to attach to me!"

His eyes darkened with annoyance, his tone sharp. "Fly heads come to people who work too hard. They're created by the loneliness that comes from an unfulfilled life."

My breath stopped, pain so sharp and stabbing that I felt like I had been stabbed coursing from me. I flinched, drawing back at his words. Was that… I guess it had to be true. I flinched again, breaking his eye contact. An unfulfilled life… I bit back a bitter laugh. How pathetic.

Silence, pregnant with my own self-loathing hung between us.

Finally, he spoke, his voice low. "My apologies."

My teeth dug into the soft skin of my cheek and I forced a smile. "You're just telling the truth."

His eyes ran over me, his face unreadable for a moment. "Sometimes the truth is worse than a lie. Sometimes it's unnecessary." He let out a soft breath, dragging a hand over his face. "Please forgive me."

Sweat ran thick lines down my americano, the liquid the cover of tar. "Nothing to forgive," I said distantly. The world seemed so much more… confusing now. So much harsher. So all of my own hatred, all the things I tried to bury down and get rid of - they all spewed out to hurt you in the end. They chased after you like insects swarming at a corpse, feasting on the putrid liquid that spilled from inside. I blinked out of my self-pity. "Can I fight against these things?"

His eyes were dark, unforgiving things, his jaw tightening. A muscle in his throat flexed. "I… can't give you an answer," he finally murmured. "The fact that you can't see my cursed energy might suggest that you can't… But stranger things have happened."

I let out a humorless laugh. "Like a drab, lonely bakery girl suddenly being able to see another world just beneath her own?"

"Don't talk about yourself like that." His words rang sharply in the space between us and I reeled back at the cutting tone.

I didn't know what to say. Didn't know where to go from there. So instead I stared across the space at him dumbly. He looked so enraged in that moment, his face tightening into tense lines as he stared at me. Enraged that I had degraded myself like that. I felt like I should apologize.

"I-"

A low, foul curse halted my next words, my eyes widening as Nanami's eyes flicked over my shoulder, pinning something or someone with one of the nastiest glares I had ever seen. His shoulders rolled, the look in his eyes halfway to murder.

Who-

"Nanami darling, have you been keeping secrets from me?" I blinked, turning at the silky voice. A shock of silver hair pressed up into cresting spikes, the strangest man leaning languidly over my chair. His smile was all teeth and humor. "Well, aren't you cute."

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