The very last time Nobara had some fun after the goodwill event was that little competition she had with Mai. Right after that, she got thrown to this mission which she successfully finished with Yuuji. Then days after that, Gojo, being the late bastard he is, had announced the news of his students being recommended to their grades. Of course, the close knitted young Jujutsu sorcerceres decided to do a light celebration, and they started by...raiding Gojo's cupboard of sweets.

Without any hesitation, all of them agreed to it, but not without having to tie Itadori to a chair to shut him up in trying to guilt trip(which will never work anyway) the others. Meanwhile, Fushiguro had only stood in the background shaking his head as this whole situation went on.

"Alright, only found some brownies in there? You guys down with that?" said Maki as she placed the brownie tray on the kitchen Island. It looked quite delish, moist and fresh with melted chocolate

"There's noooo way that's only it!" groaned Nobara.

The main conspirators, Nobara, Inumaki, and Panda, lock picked the cupboard and were quite disappointed to find only one thing. They expected some well shelved mochi or highly expensive sweets from Europe.

"I guess It's better than nothing," said Panda, shrugging. Inumaki nodded next to him.

All of them know their sensei had an inquisitive taste for sweet, and they dug in to finish the brownie, not slightly questioning why GOJO would even lock up an innocent brownie on a cupboard. They eventually shoved a mouthful to Yuuji.

Hours upon consumption, they were all on their backs, lying on the floor, in their pajamas, and forced their way into Megumi's impenetrable dorm room which only happened because of that damn brownie.

"I'm seeing things," started Maki, slowly spreading her fingers in front of her face, "and feeling…things. I hate that."

"Damn, it does," agreed Nobara, "Like, Itadori and Fushiguro are totally making out right next to me right now."

Then there's the case of Panda and Inumaki who were slapping each other with a bottle and laughing for no reason and just being the definition of Idiocracy. That's with a capital 'I.'

"Oh God, I'm crying, what the hell. No! I can't be like Mai right now. Ah, Mai..she was crying when we had our fight."

Nobara stared at her, laying on her side, as she watched Maki take off her glasses and place her arm on her eyes. "Ah, shit, I'm not sure."

"Fuck, honestly," Nobara's emotional support skills decided to fuck itself at this moment, "I'm not good with this either but yeah, Mai IS trash." Welp, it has always been like that anyway.

Maki started crying harder. "I really fucked it up, huh?" Tears were staining her sleeves. She tried to contain her gasps and sniffs, pursing her lips together.

"Maki-san…" Nobara had no idea what to respond and only went to caress her shoulder, maybe a hug but Nobara was blinking away to sleep. Whatever the fucking thing in that brownie is, its kicking into her. Even though she was almost into it, that moment stayed in her mind. She didn't exactly go to sleep yet as she felt a weight pressed on her face like an elephant plopped themselves on her..

"What the fuck?!" She yelped, pushing away Yuuji, along with Megumi, who stumbled and fell on his ass. The same ass that sat on her face when he and Megumi were indeed trying to make out. That fully woke her up for sure.

She got even more aggressive and started headbutting Yuuji out of nowhere. They eventually knock themselves out, but Maki cries herself to sleep.

The little stunt they pulled didn't leave them unscratched though. The next morning, Yaga himself had found the students sprawled on the dormitory's floor.

"Satoru!" His voice echoed through the whole school, shaking the birds on the trees and finally jolting up the students drooling their faces off the floor. They earned an earful of lecture from Yaga, and Gojo joined in late as always.

Principal Yaga, attempting his hardest to apply discipline to Tokyo Tech, wanted to put punishment upon the students which is as simple as community service.

"You heard him, brats," said Gojo, looking over his shoulder at his students. They were looking like a mess. Bed Hair. Dried drool. Vomit breath. Still trying to make sense of what's going around.

Yaga widened his eyes. Gojo had no complaints or whatsoever. Even the Tokyo students raised their eyebrows.

"We can start today," Their sensei said, a playful grin on his lips.

Mai wasn't that flower type of person. They were selective ones that she liked, specifically those cacti flowers. Roses could be maybe "too" delicate for her and required too much maintenance. She very much preferred the cacti family, armed with needles, than soft petals lovely to the touch. And yet, Kasumi still attempted to get her inside a flower shop.

She had to drag across the road and get to the shop, but still Mai remained hesitant. Kasumi continued to further convince Mai, easing her up, as Kasumi occupied her with stories of her younger brothers' weird shenanigans that Mai easily fell for, who was now shaking in laughter when they entered the store. It was small, placed right in the busy intersection.

"I should totally meet your brothers," Mai said between deep breaths, recovering from her laughter, that the bubble gum she was chewing shot out of her mouth, thankfully not shot into her esophagus but landed somewhere between the displayed pots inside the store.

"Mai!" gasped Kasumi, subsiding her giggling, worried over where the gum had landed. Her eyes darted all over the store. She yelped when her worry was suddenly thrown at her face as an orange haired girl stood up from between those pots of growing plants next to them.

Horrifically, Mai's pink bubble gum got stuck on a short low ponytail, but to make it more worse, when the girl turned around to reveal herself, it was none other than Nobara Kugisaki.

"What the hell," greeted Nobara as she knotted her forehead upon seeing the mischievous face of Mai. "You're in Tokyo?"

Seeing the apron on Nobara and the flower pot she was holding, Mai admitted she looked cute. "You work here?" She said, chuckling from knowing how Nobara was entirely clueless on the gum on her hair that swayed as she turned to Kasumi's direction.

"And you too?" said Nobara to Kasumi while Mai tilted her chin up, growing her laughter.

Kasumi fidgeted the ends of her shirt, trying to avert her gaze away from that pink gum. "Uh, she came with me to visit my brothers," she said.

"Quit laughing!" barked Nobara at Mai.

"It looks like you kinda grew your hair out." A shade of red dusted her cheeks as Mai closed her mouth. Grinning so hard, her mouth entirely shut with the whole gum incident while Kasumi kept on nudging at her friend.

She did somehow grow her hair out, pulling it to a ponytail with some strands hanging on her side, but that wasn't the central concern of her. Nobara sensed a troubling demeanor coming out from Mai. Something was definitely wrong here.

"Kugisaki-san!" a voice yelped from behind Nobara's back. "Didn't I tell you to go minimal in greeting customers with that face?"

Nobara heard the impromptu footsteps of her manager, coming from her left, towards her that suddenly halted to a stop. She was about to turn around, but her manager said in a terrified tone:

"Ah, is that…gum on your hair?!"

One thing that Nobra learned from all this community service thing was patience and some self control. She got to interact with different people which means different levels of getting into her nerves.

She took a deep breath.

"Was it yours?"

"What do you think?" teased Mai.

She tightened her fist, spinning around to her manager. "Can you excuse me for just a moment? A pest in here is trying to ruin my job." Nobara pushed Mai out of the store

The manager slowly nodded his head, the tension was really extreme right now, he couldn't dare to say no since it could put more flames into the situation.

Nobara pushed onto the door as it rang the tiny bells and made sure she was completely out of the store

"You bitch!" She barked, grabbing the collar of Mai. "Who would have never thought it was you!"

Kasumi stared at the hell fire igniting before her. She wasn't sure if she should just butt herself in between when she was sure as hell she would end up being churned alive by these two aggressive chainsaws.

"Uh.." started Miwa, the two still not shutting up, "How about this!" The nervousness building up in her throat came out as a yelp instead, and it thankfully caught Nobara and Mai's attention.

After much convincing them with her idea and finally getting that yes from the hard headed girls, Kasumi escaped from them, excusing herself that she had to leave because she needed to get some stuff for her siblings and meet them soon.

"I'm not saying it's a bad idea but, holy shit, I really can't stand you at all, and I'm ditching my job for this."

"That's quite the stake, yet you still do it anyway. That just says you actually like it."

The two ladies stood in front of the entrance of the salon. The blinking lights of the open sign illuminated on their eyes.

Kasumi's idea was simple. It was to go to the nearest salon to get Nobara's hair fixed, but it was too vague that way, so Nobara had forced Mai to at least pay for the salon fee.

"Orrrr we could easily cut that gum out of your hair," Mai suggested.

"And risk having a choppy haircut. No thanks, I'm better than that. The salon's better," argued Nobara. "Also, mind you, that this implies that I still hate your guts."

"Hate you too, sweetie. By definition, this still counts as a date."

"Don't even get close to that, I'll cut your tongue out."

"Still have such a way of words, Kugisaki."

"Still the same pounding headache, I see."

At the moment, they were sitting at chairs and getting their hair washed. The employees look at each other, nervous with this one of a kind interaction they have.

"Haven't felt that headache for months, you must have really missed me." Mai continued to push it.

"Well, I was busy actually working my ass off to the top, you know being a semi-grader, unlike you."

"Funny, I never thought you'd still end up at a flower shop after all that."

Of-fucking-course, Mai had heard about the incident from Tokyo tech, especially when they have a teacher such as Gojo.

The flat screen TV was perched at the corner and it featured a familiar face, doing an interview. Mai knew that Todo would be shitting his pants (out of happiness obviously) right now everytime her face showed up anywhere.

"Takada-chan.." The words spilled out from Mai's lips. She clearly remembered how her first meeting went with that idol.

"So, here's a question from daisuketakadachan69 twitter," said the talk show host from the TV, "what is your type?"

Mai widened her eyes.

"Ah," Takada's usual demeanor changed into something else. "I actually don't think about that much since I really don't have the time."

"Well, if you had the time, what would your boyfriend be like?"

Takada raised her brows, a certain smirk carving into her lips. The camera zoomed into her face. And for some reason, Mai found that quite funny. "Let's see, I guess...I'd be someone who understood my business."

"I'm telling you, she's dodging it, probably not into guys," Nobara casually said.

Mai knew exactly why that somehow made it funny. "There's that certain look on her face when they asked her that question like it was…"

"Gay silence."

Both girls said at the same time, and they quickly looked at each other. The usual hostile look on their faces were gone, fading like how the noises around seemed going further away. They stared at each other with the absolute neutral faces they could give away to each other.

"Meet her before." Mai cut the brewing silence. "She totally gives off the vibes."

Nobara looked away. Again, she realized that peace may be an option and both of them don't have to wake up, choosing violence everyday. She blinked at the ceiling, a certain memory came into her mind.

"Anyway, Maki said that you should try.." She turned to look at Mai, flipping a magazine, "visiting some time, you know."

"Hahaha, no kidding," bluntly shot back Mai, her voice and face devoid of expression.

After everything she saw, she wanted to throw a punch at her. "Fine, fine, if you think it that way, then eat shit , Mai."

Only silence dominated between them as if they're making those exchanged words seep in properly..

When their salon session was over, Nobara had her roots dyed orange and toenails painted while Mai had her hair lightly curled.

"Whatever stuff I have going on with Maki," Mai suddenly said, "that's none of your business."

Nobara clutched onto her seat, closing her eyes. "I only said what I have to say for Maki-san."

The salon was inside the mall, and upon getting out, a mass of crowd had gathered in the very corner like there's some sort of human magnet gathering them there. To make it worse, people are screaming really loud.

"Did you see that?" Nobara squinted her eyes and ran up to the crowd. Mai followed.

Despite just having downtime, they sure still are busting their asses off to work as jujutsu sorcerers.

"Shit," cussed Mai as she managed to look past the crowd. "It's her."

"Who?" Nobara leaned into her direction and there was the familiar raven haired idol, being lumped in by her massive fans who were almost trampling on each other. The stress probably created those cursed creatures, slinking within the crowd.

If Takada's here, there was a massive chance that Todo is here. But to Mai, she doesn't see that beefy gorilla around whose height will probably tower the whole crowd.

"That's weird, Todo's not here. He's usually the one who cleans up the cursed spirits for Takada-chan," said Mai.

"Guess we have to deal with his shit." Nobara assessed the situation. Most of the cursed spirits are clinging to people's necks and heads. Quite the challenge to exorcise when people are being sucked onto together. Plus, they can't really start bringing out their weapons, for security will totally kick their butts out of the mall.

Eh, but who cares what they do when the brash and no-fucks-given Nobara is there.

"Don't you even dare to bring your hammer out, you freak," Mai stopped Nobara from doing her usual nail throwing skills.

"What the hell?" Nobara gritted her teeth. Her metal nails were already placed in between her fingers. "Now's not the time to do this, Zenin."

"You really think those nails work long-range?" Mai revealed the hidden Bo shuriken under her sleeves, placed around her wrist. They are sharpened steel iron meant for throwing weapons that she just picked up months ago. She found it in their estate and being bored out of her mind, she started throwing it around out of spite. It never crossed her mind that she would use it for jujutsu.

Nobara clutched onto her nails. Mai was damn well right. Training with Maki-san, Nobara had only good knowledge on doing only short range attacks. Her throwing skills weren't that quite satisfactory to her yet.

"I can't be the useless one here!" exclaimed Nobara. She stared at Mai's Bo shuriken, and immediately, Nobara's fingers wrapped around her wrist. Mai's left speechless, and only watched as Nobara imbued her Great curse energy in Mai's spikes as if a jellyfish capsulated her throwing spikes.

"Gee, thanks." Mai took one of her spikes, now flaming blue, and prepared to throw at those targeted cursed spirits like playing a game of darts.

Thank god, there was nothing too special about the cursed spirits to give them more time to be stuck with each other. And halfway through finishing the task, the gorilla himself has finally showed up.

But unfortunately though, they have to report all this shit back to Tokyo Tech, of fucking course. Todo was too lovestruck about Takada-chan that Nobara and Mai had to do it. They almost got themselves involved with the media since that massive crowd had some people pass out and injured from the blob crowd's shit-hitting-the-fan size.

Into the campus and its wooden hallways, Nobara's phone started ringing wildly.

"What's up?" she answered.

"Kugisaki! You in your post right now?" Yuuji's huffing real fast in the other line. A screeching sound roared like it was from a demon.

"What post?"

"The flower shop, dummy!"

Oh, right. Nobara's intakes a sharp breath. "What's the situation?"

"It's a mission in disguise from Gojo-sensei! Me and Fushiguro have to deal with some cursed spirits in the orphanage right now." Then there was more screaming. Their Tokyo Tech group chat had talked about this suspicious behavior of Gojo, all of them assuming maybe it's a hidden mission.

Oh, crap, oh, crap. Then that could only mean that her bald-headed manager is probably pisssing his pants right now. She abruptly turned around sprinting out of the campus away from the office.

"Hey, hey! Where the hell do you think you're going?" Mai followed behind.

"I'm going back to the shop."

"Huh, no way you're leaving me alone to deal with our mess."

"Jesus, fuck, piss off, Mai! This is more important than you think."

"You should have thought that before deciding to ditch the shop." It pained her how she was right.

Nobara jumped into the car of an auxiliary manager, and Mai squeezed herself in the backseat with her. Yelling, Nobara urged the driver to drive them fast. If she had the time, she would probably have opened the back door and pushed Mai out of the speeding car. Minutes later, she contemplated that maybe she should have done it.

"Wooo! You're doing a shit job, Kugisaki!" Mai picked up her paid can of coffee from the vending machine. She opened it and raised it to the air as she watched the scene before her. "Give us nothing!"

Nobara couldn't be bothered to give her a side eye. She battled the cursed spirit from the shop. It turned out that her bald-headed-wrinkly manager had some massive demons hiding in his closet underneath those sweat demeanor like his flowers. Honestly, she felt bad for him, and she was right, he really did pissed his pants.

An exercise. That's what Gojo said. With all that fucking work, it was a goddamn exercise and not a mission.

"Just think about it as an initiation for being recommended, y'know!" reasoned Gojo. "You bet your ass you learned something from it."

"What a lame excuse, Satoru." bit back Maki. "Just admit it that you were too butthurt when we stole your stash of brownies."

Nobara and Inumaki heartily agreed. Panda as well.

"Then you sure are condoning hazing," commented Megumi.

Their 'exercise' had ended just hours ago, and they gathered themselves at Gojo's office, all sweaty and smelly, with Mai standing in her own corner.

With most of the Tokyo students kicking their sensei's butt, Yuuji stood, darting his eyes at everyone. He usually defended his Gojo-sensei, but he just fidgeted. At some point, he opened his mouth but no words came out.

"The most interesting thing about this is," Gojo interrupted the stones of insults being thrown at him by his students, "you two." He eyed Nobara and Mai who shivered a bit. "Never officially got partnered up with any missions. But you still worked together twice today."

"FYI, it was only ONCE," said Nobara, putting her hands on her hips. She recalled how Mai was snickering in the sidelines while Nobara was throwing punches at the shop's cursed spirit.

It was a fun time for Mai, having Nobara extra annoyed while she really was so gung-ho about taking ALL the credit for the 'mission.'

"Who knows? Maybe partnering you two up is actually a good idea," playfully added Gojo.

"Will NEVER dream of it," sassed Nobara. Yet deep in her, she wanted to shake the thought that she kinda was surprised with Mai's handling of Takada-chan's situation. Not too bad for someone who doesn't wanna be a sorcerer.

"Can I leave now?" Mai crossed her arms, tapping her foot. She badly wanted to get out here and check how Kasumi was doing.

Gojo dismissed them, and as they exited the halls, Nobara overheard a conversation between the sisters, their first interaction ever since Mai had landed in Tokyo.

"I heard what happened at the mall," said Maki. "You're getting into action."

"I fucking hate it but that's what we're supposed to do," replied Mai.

"Well, if you really hate it, then why'd you still do it?"

Nobara froze in her steps.

"C'mon, Kugisaki," said Yuuji. The sisters were left behind down the hall.

She felt how he tugged her arm. She knew he felt it as well, the accumulating tension behind them, between Mai and Maki. Out of respect for Maki, she let him pull her along, and the conversation was out of her ears, but she was rooting for them, not just Maki, as sisters. Nobara saw it, how the two could possibly be. So peaceful. Maki had that untroubled glint in her eyes when it was usually bordered with rigid walls. Mai was missing the scowl on her face, loosening to let her cracks be exposed, but she still looked relieved.

"Did you hear what I said?" Mai bit her lips, turning around to face her sister.

"The truth, Mai." Maki squinted her eyes.

"Sure, sure, Takada-chan….I met her before, she's not that bad."

"You wanted to protect her?"

"Would you do the same for me?"

The question hung in the air, and Maki quickly yanked it without any hesitation.

"Yes," said Maki, "you ARE my sister. Why'd you think I'm all here getting strong?"

"But sometimes," slowly sighed Mai, "it doesn't hurt to visit Kyoto, you know."

(A/N) crossposted on ao3