"he did what?!"
shoko lets out a puff of air she didn't know she was holding from her spot in their classroom, tempted to reach for her cigarette pack safely tucked into the under pocket of her uniform but stopped herself. it was only nine in the morning.
god, men could be so dramatic sometimes.
7:48am / tokyo prefectural jujutsu high school
what started out as an innocent, curse-free day – probably their first one of the month – quickly turned a different direction when the only rose among the thorns of the second year class bumped into her brick of a wall classmates in the hallway of their homeroom.
they were hunched over something by the door, the taller of the two holding something up for inspection while the other one had his eyebrows hunched in contemplation. really, it could have been one of getou's dysmorphic curses or gojo's abnormally sweet sugar fix of the week, who knows with those two?
but as shoko took measured steps towards the pair, an eyebrow raised in question and mouth open ready to ask what the hell are you idiots doing, she could feel something was terribly off.
in hindsight, maybe she should have known.
there were only a handful of students in the entire tokyo compound, six in total counting her. but all of them knew this going in, they knew the repercussions of having a fairly low share of prospect crop when you subject yourself to four years of high-intense sorcery lessons. that arrangement was a given, a trade-off they were willing to deal their hand in if it meant a successful future as a renowned jujutsu sorcerer was in their midst.
only while they were technically witches and warlocks in training, they were still teenagers. and with the exception of her, they were all in the cusp of becoming men.
so when her two clueless teammates turned around ever so slowly, looks of despair and grief etched into their faces while gojo held something distinctively red and pretty and heart-y with her name on it before meeting her curious eyes, she just knew.
it was valentines day.
the morning was curse-free because they didn't have curses to exorcise because it was a day of love and positivity and all that gooey bullshit. no one was feeling like making a deal with the devil today, that's for sure.
shoko casted one look at their weary faces and rolled her eyes in response, coming up to snatch the piece of parchment gojo had in a cuckold by his fingers then made her way past the two idiots still in a deer in the headlights moment.
walking to her designated seat towards the window (getou arrived first on the first day and claimed ownership, but one feigned look of hurt was all it took for him to pack his bags and move to the chair to her right), she didn't even have a chance to put her bag down when the seemingly innocent piece of paper was snatched from her fingers once more into the death grip of one gojo satoru.
she heaved a sigh, settling into her seat as she looked across the two of them hovering by the desk. "as long as it's not a random perverted higher-up, i'm good."
but they weren't even listening.
slouched over the front of the desk, gojo lay the card flat down and scrutinized its appearance as one would a ticking time bomb, glasses off and six eyes in full view. she could see getou mentally taking inventory of his curses, no doubt finding one who could see past concrete matter to aid their investigation.
"haibara?" getou treads lightly, "he seems like a sweet kid. always smiles and bows and offers to do our missions for us when we see him."
gojo only scoffs. "nice guys like him send this kind of shit up-front, not leave it by the door like some fucking stalker."
before getou can even start reprimanding him of his continuous use of vulgar language, shoko beats him to it, "it's a damn letter. not a death threat. now give it here before i tell yaga sensei you misspoke about his favourite student."
narrowed eyes charged with mistrust glanced back at her, but she held her ground. god knows she had to when forced to live with these two. finally, getou hesitantly relents, sliding the paper from the desk and making his way to her waiting fingers.
fucking finally.
the outside was pretty standard, much to her disappointment. she wasn't expecting much but damn, would it kill men to put some effort sometime? all in all, it was decent enough. whoever sent it probably didn't know the first thing about love letters and quickly googled for a template, hence all the hearts and red and glitters and oh?
at the very bottom of the card cover was a little scribble of something circular with curvy lines all over. when she bent her neck to see better, she made out a small drawing of a very tiny earth in black ink.
then everything clicked.
"it's ijichi, you dumb fools."
she flicked her eyes back up at them with a knowing smirk, finding their faces torn from either disbelief or arrogance or confusion or everything altogether. gojo made a move to open his mouth, then closed it, repeating this process at least five times. getou was in heavy deliberation mode, leaning his entire weight into the table as he looked between her and the letter with a frown etched in his face.
"you see this?" she continued while turning the bottom part over so they could have a better view of the doodle, "one of the characters in ijichi's name means earth. you guys would have connected the dots sooner if you actually bothered talking to the kid."
she could feel the information sinking in as they processed her words.
yes there were only a few of them in the entire tokyo prefecture, but gojo and getou were always lost in their own world. their school system was built for three person cells to optimise the power balance with their different skillsets, only their stupid principal didn't count on gojo growing stronger by the day and getou eating up more curses and shoko breezing past all their textbooks.
yaga stopped assigning team building activities with the lower years altogether when shoko outsmarted nanami in a math test, while gojo and getou nearly put haibara and ijichi in death's door through a sparring match.
still the first years were nice enough.
but really, she should have fucking known it was ijichi.
12:20pm / shibuya, tokyo
"where do you guys wanna eat?"
the second years were in gojo's chartered car being driven by his driver, provided by the head family for ease of transportation if their son needed to leave for somewhere. lest the only sole heir to the gojo dynasty be seen loitering around public transit, imagine all the commotion it would cause. how scandalous.
getou was situated to her right, still in a sour mood from the morning events as he mindlessly scrolled through his phone with more force than usual.
they ate outside on the rare days they had time to, not that anyone from admin kept hours in the school. but it was part of the self-discipline being drilled into the students that they come back to the compound of their own will once their break was over. shibuya was just one of the many places the trio frequented often.
"i'm okay with anything," she distractedly says, busy scanning her bag for a lighter and taking care not to ruin ijichi's letter. "just not that sushi place that gave you food poisoning for a week. getou and i can only take on so many curses at once."
gojo lets out an amused laugh from his seat at the front, giving directions for a yakisoba place just around the corner.
shoko is maybe two minutes away from throwing her bag outside the moving car out of frustration before a black, metal thing gently lands on her lap. a lighter with SG engraved. she sneaks a glance at getou before muttering her thanks.
even without checking the contents of his bag, he carried extra matchsticks and candy bars for gojo too, she knew. they really will fall apart without him.
"so," gojo said as the car descended a narrow street and met her eyes in the rearview mirror. "what's the deal with you and ijichi?"
getou stiffened.
this was going to be a long ride.
2:04am / tokyo prefectural jujutsu high school dormitory
someone was outside her room.
slowly rising from her bed, shoko stayed still and listened for the sound of the uninvited intruder. she heard some shuffling and moving around, accompanied by several heavy footsteps pounding on the tatami as someone paced back and forth. the stomps were unconsciously loud, no doubt due to the large statures of whoever was making so much damn noise this night. whoever it was also failed to account not everyone was over six feet tall and weren't used to large volumes of their large bodies making blaring noises.
closing her eyes and exhaling slowly through her mouth, shoko thinks maybe she can get away with murder if she played her cards right tonight.
yaga wouldn't mind. in fact she thinks with their constant special grade missions lately, it was actually the opposite. he was on her side on the court. so to speak.
the footsteps suddenly stopped.
wrapping her cardigan around herself, she moved over to the door and strained her ears as she made out sounds of some kind of struggle, followed by rough grunts and what she's pretty sure was a barely repressed squeal, then some more scuffling, until finally nothing.
enough is enough.
yacking open the door to her room, she was met by a horrific sight she wouldn't wish on anyone at past midnight. there was a tangle of bodies and limbs on the floor directly outside her door, both planted face in as if they tripped. or were tripped. she recognised those hairs.
"nanami-san?" she squinted her eyes to confirm, then spotted the other lump of black hair by his side in an equally compromising position. "and haibara-kun? what are you guys doing out here?"
there was a movement somewhere to her left and she snapped her neck towards the wall by her door, spotting gojo and getou sitting with their long legs out struggling to fit across the narrow hallway and backs propped against the wall, looking as dumbfounded as she was. she doesn't know how yet, but she's sure whatever happened could only be the work of her idiotic classmates.
"what the hell did you do?"
"us?!" gojo had the audacity to look almost insulted, jumping from his place by the foot of her door and rising to his full height, staring her down. "we're trying to protect you!"
the fuck?
"excuse me?"
getou coughed, suddenly appearing by his side and looking at least half-apologetic and sheepish as he gestured towards gojo. "what he means is, we were worried someone else might drop things on you unexpected, so, naturally, we came to make sure nothing would happen."
unexpected? what the hell could something unexpected happen in a goddamn curse school, more than usual? the only unexpected things to happen around here were the totally expected, normal things that do happen.
"if you're talking about the card ijichi sent, i swear to god—"
now it was the first years' turn to scramble to their feets. predictably, nanami was first to collect himself, already turning his brows down and opening his mouth, no doubt ready to go on a full repentance barrage. in his rushed movements, something shiny flashed in his hands.
then gojo and getou promptly lost it again.
"you have got to be fucking kidding me."
"you too, nanami?!"
there was about a three second delay as nanami processed why his seniors were yelling at him, looked at the box of dark chocolates in a ruby red metal container in his hands, and then to shoko. until it clicked.
exasperated, he tried again, "i was only trying to—"
but he wasn't allowed to finish.
in an instant gojo and getou barged towards him, leveraging their much more filled out builds and towering physique over the already impressive proportions nanami held, holding him up by the collar and dragging him outside through the hallway, all the while yelling profanities of all degrees and suggesting various methods of torture. gojo wanted to lock him in his domain expansion for maybe a month, getou suggested a year.
in the squabble, nanami dropped the box of chocolates on the floor, showing a scrawny note that read,
"i hope you like sweets, ieiri-san. – ijichi"
