Chapter Text
Monday, December 17th — 09:15
“That’s actually disgusting,” Maki says.
“Someone get me a bucket, I’m gonna throw up," Kugisaki says, one of her hands flying to cover her mouth while the other makes a fist in Yuji’s hoodie sleeve.
“It’s not that bad,” Yuji tries, but even he doesn’t believe it.
The already pretty ugly, totally stereotypical bowling alley carpet is even worse where it’d been covered by the photo booth. Bright, eye-bleeding neon carpet under a layer of slightly soggy discarded photo reels under a layer of decade-old dust. Does it smell, or is that just Panda? Yuji wrinkles his nose anyway.
“Why is it wet?” Maki asks, and Kugisaki gags.
“If one of you would help me,” Nanami says, strained, leaning against the photo booth,“then you wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.”
Panda and Inumaki jump into action, doing their best to shuffle the thing onto something with wheels. Yuji pokes at the square of uncovered carpet with his foot. It feels… unpleasant. He really hopes he doesn’t get stuck cleaning that up.
“You can actually fix that thing?” Yuji asks. As far as he knows, Nanami doesn’t actually work for Star Plasma Lanes in any capacity, but he’s good friends with Ms. Ieiri and is (apparently) willing to try his hand at fixing up the arcade machines for cheap.
Nanami sighs. “I can try. It might be worth getting an old game out of storage, just in case.”
Yuji really hopes he doesn’t get stuck doing that, either.
The front door bangs open—the little bell above the door ringing like it’s fighting for its life in an alley and losing—and Gojo Satoru barrels in.
“Hello, hello!” he singsongs, brandishing a coffee cup in each hand. Fushiguro trails in behind him, a full drink tray on each arm, looking every inch the landslide winner of ‘Japan’s Most Miserable Teenager.’ “Nanami! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Nanami doesn’t blink.
“Kidding!” Gojo laughs and then turns to glance at Yuji. “What’s with this guy, huh? No fun at all! I didn’t forget about you,” he says, pointing back at Fushiguro, who is currently busy fighting off Kugisaki’s violent attempts to get her drink. “There’s a tea in there for you… somewhere!”
“Who the hell drinks black coffee?” Kugisaki demands, finally managing to wrestle a sickly-sweet looking whipped cream monstrosity from out of the tray.
“I do! Now back off,” Fushiguro says, trying with middling success to elbow her away, “you’re going to drown when this all spills.”
Maki, Panda, and Inumaki all follow him like a pack of prowling tigers until he finds somewhere to set the drinks down. Yuji figures he’ll go grab his later.
“Oh!” Gojo says, spotting the carpet, utterly delighted. “That’s disgusting!”
“It looks like they haven’t moved it in a thousand years,” Kugisaki says.
“They put it there my second year of high school.” Gojo takes a sip of his own whipped cream monstrosity, brows scrunching up behind his sunglasses.
“That’s what I said. It’s ancient.”
While the two of them bicker, Fushiguro appears at Yuji’s side. In one hand he wields the offending black coffee, and holds out a second cup with the other.
“Oh, thanks, Fushiguro!” Yuji says, smiling. Fushiguro’s the only one that had gone home for the school break rather than stay in the dorms, and Yuji’s missed walking to work together. “It’s good you ran into Gojo-sensei, there’s no way he would’ve been able to carry all of this on his own.”
“Uh,” Fushiguro says. “Yeah.”
“I dunno why he’s always here, but I’m not gonna complain if he’s bringing us coffee.”
“You don’t even like coffee,” Fushiguro points out, staring resolutely at his own cup. “Your latte is ninety-percent milk. That doesn’t count.”
Which is fair enough, Yuji decides, but before he can say so the tell-tale horrible creaking of the break room door sounds and Gojo spins on his heel.
“Shoko!” He waves the extra drink in his hand. “I got you something!”
“Stop harassing Nanami,” Ieiri says, taking the coffee anyway.
“He’d never,” Nanami says flatly.
“I’d never,” Gojo grins. “You should tell Kugisaki that ten years isn’t the same as a hundred.”
“It is!” Kugisaki yells from where she’s retreated with Maki. “You’re old!”
“Is that why his hair is white?” Yuji whispers, wondering if it’ll get Fushiguro to laugh.
“Must be,” Fushiguro whispers back, with something on his face that isn’t quite a smile but Yuji thinks counts anyway.
Ieiri ignores all of them. She takes a sip of her drink, and she must decide it’s good enough because she doesn’t hand it back to Gojo immediately. “Aren’t all of you supposed to be working?”
Everyone freezes.
“That’s what I thought,” she says. “There’s a list in the back, Maki and Kugisaki are on shoes.”
Yuji resigns himself to a long morning scraping gum from under tables.
“Also,” Ieiri adds, “we’re having a party.”
“We can do that?” Panda says.
Kugisaki’s head tilts. “Ehh?”
“Do we have to?” Fushiguro asks, and even Inumaki looks confused.
Yuji stands up a little straighter. “That sounds fun!”
“That’s the spirit, Itadori!” Gojo crows, shooting him a thumbs up. Kugisaki sticks her tongue out while his head is turned.
“There’s an email on the break room computer,” Ieiri starts, and before she can even finish her sentence, Kugisaki breaks out into a run, hand tight around Maki’s wrist. Yuji doesn’t really have a choice but to follow them.
By the time he’s properly shoved himself into place, shoulder to shoulder with Kugisaki three inches from the computer screen, she’s already managed to log in. Her fingers fly across the keyboard so fast they turn into a blur, and Yuji idly wonders if she’d be any good at rhythm games.
“I still think this is super weird,” Yuji says. “You know how many managers run their businesses through creepy, mysterious emails? Because I’m pretty sure the answer is none.”
“Well, it has to be at least one,” Maki gestures around them with her drink. She’s sitting on the desk next to the computer. “Otherwise none of us would have jobs.”
“What the fuck is this?!” Kugisaki says, and everyone’s heads whip around.
There’s a cacophony of ‘what’s it say?’ and ‘we could read it if your big head wasn’t in the way’ and ‘don’t talk about my girlfriend like that’ until finally Kugisaki elbows Yuji and Panda at the exact same time in an impressive display of strength. She clears her throat.
“Star Plasma Lanes: annual Christmas Eve party,” she reads, sounding almost as disgusted as she had looking at the spot on the floor.
“That says ‘extravaganza,’” Fushiguro says.
Yuji looks at the screen. Sure enough, in a bright, bubbly font:
STAR PLASMA LANES: ANNUAL CHRISTMAS EVE EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!!!
Whoever designed the advertisement does not have a future in graphic design, Yuji thinks. It’s a terrible combination of oversaturated, practically bloody red and a dull, near-gray puke green. In one corner sits a creepy cartoon Santa with way too many teeth, pointing ominously at the viewer, and in the other is a reindeer that looks positively evil. Both of them are surrounded by heart emojis. There’s a few snowflake-shaped bullet points listing things like romance, athleticism, fifteen-percent off all menu items, and five free arcade tokens . None of those things seem very appealing coming from demon Santa.
“How can it be annual if we’ve never had one before?”
“Good question,” Ieiri says wryly. Yuji’s not sure when she and Gojo followed them in.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Gojo crosses his arms.
“Okay, I mean it this time,” Kugisaki says. “Someone get me a bucket.”
“What kind of boss gives us a week's notice for an event like this?” Maki asks.
“Since when did you all get so negative?” Gojo pushes his glasses up enough that he can pinch the bridge of his nose.
Kugisaki whirls around, hands on her hips. “Why are you still here? It’s not enough that I have to deal with you every day at school, you’re going to loiter around our place of business, too? On winter break?”
“He did bring us coffee,” Yuji says, and immediately ducks to avoid the finger Kugisaki tries to point at his chest.
“It’s okay, Itadori,” Gojo sighs, and throws a hand into the air. It’s very damsel-in-distress, and doesn’t really do much but prove Kugisaki’s point. “I can tell when I’m not wanted!”
“Bye!” Yuji calls. Everyone else waves unenthusiastically, except for Kugisaki, who doesn’t look at him at all.
“Have fun party planning!” Gojo says before Ieiri shuts the door.
“We won’t,” Maki deadpans.
“We won’t have fun or we won’t plan the party?”
Maki shrugs. “Does it make a difference?”
Yuji supposes that’s fair enough.
Monday, December 17th — 09:58
“Thank you again for calling Star Plasma Lanes,” Nobara says into the phone. “Have a dazzling rest of your day.”
“You could sound more convincing,” Maki says.
“I sound plenty convincing!” Nobara snaps, hanging up the phone with an admittedly unnecessary level of violence. She takes an angry sip of her melting frappuccino. “Who makes a reservation to bowl at noon? There’s never anyone here! Just walk in!”
“But then what would we do all day? You definitely don’t want to clean the restrooms.”
Nobara taps her nails on the counter. She painted them last night on the floor of Maki’s dorm, and they shine a nice and plasticky light blue. “I guess that’s true.”
Maki lazily wipes down a pair of bowling shoes from the pile left over from last night. Nobara wonders if she should yell at whoever closed. It was probably Fushiguro.
Nobara’s phone buzzes in her pocket. Speak of the devil.
fuhsiguro 🙄
> I am actually begging you to leave me alone about this
You
im actually refusing to leave you alone about your big stupid crush on itadori <
> It’s not stupid
we’re talking about the same itadori right <
even maki thinks you’re being dumb <
> If I knew that you’d get ten times more annoying afterward I wouldn’t have told you to ask out Maki
too late now 😝 <
i may be annoying but at least i have a girlfriend <
you’re just annoying with no boyfriend to show for it <
“Do you think I could get Fushiguro to ask out Itadori for the Christmas Eve party?” Nobara asks, trying to stir what's left in her coffee cup.
“No,” Maki says bluntly. “Not without threatening his life.”
“Christmas Eve is supposed to be romantic, right? It’s the perfect opportunity!”
“He’s never going to do it.”
“Unless I convince him it’s his own idea!”
Maki scoffs, but she’s smiling. “You can’t hand it to him. Megumi has to do it himself.”
“Well,” Nobara says, hopping up to sit on the counter by the cash register. “I don’t see the problem with giving him a little nudge in the right direction.”
“More like a shove off of a cliff.”
Nobara sighs overdramatically, trying to bite back a smile. It doesn’t really work, so she looks up at the ceiling, instead. “Who’s going to ask me to the party?”
“I’m sure someone will come along eventually,” Maki says. “Panda’s always said he thinks you’re very pretty.”
“Okay, well, you ruined it.”
Maki steps up to Nobara’s knees and very carefully reaches to brush some hair behind her ear. Nobara glances off to the side and does her level best to keep her face from turning red. The look on Maki’s face makes it very clear that she’s failed.
“Why do I have to ask you?” She teases. “Why can’t you ask me?”
“It’s more romantic,” Nobara says. “Plus, I asked you out in the first place. It’s only fair.”
Maki considers this. “Alright. Will you go to the stupid party with me?”
“Only if we can complain in the corner the whole time.”
“Deal.”
Monday, December 17th — 10:05
“How come we always get stuck doing the really gross stuff?”
“I think Ms. Ieiri knows I’ve been eating her food out of the fridge,” Panda admits.
Yuji throws his arms up. “But I didn’t do anything!!”
“Scrape faster,” Panda advises.
Sighing, Yuji slides back under the lane three table. There really is an obscene amount of gum stuck to the bottom of it. All of it is either rock hard or horribly sticky, and Yuji’s plastic knife is not exactly up to the task.
“How much gum do people need to bowl, anyway?”
“Apparently a lot,” Panda says, ducking out of the way as a piece threatens to fall directly onto his nose. “I’m just glad we don’t have to deal with all of the drawings under here.”
That’s a good point. Most of the drawings are, admittedly, very crude. Yuji counts four dicks without even moving. There’s a cat, some names, some kind of weird snake, maybe? A lot of it is faded, some of it is actually carved into the table.
“Man, this stuff’s gotta be years old,” Yuji says. He runs his plastic-glove clad finger over some sloppy english letters. They’re probably initials, right? GS, IS, GS. “Oh, look at this. Didn’t Gojo-sensei and Ms. Ieiri hang out here when they were younger? I bet they wrote this!”
“Why’d they do it in English?”
Yuji shrugs. “Probably thought it looked cooler.”
“Why’d Gojo write his twice?”
“How am I supposed to know?!” Yuji tries to look at Panda incredulously, but lifts his head too far and bangs it on the bottom of the table before dropping it just as hard against the tile floor. “Ow, shit!”
That’s gonna leave a bump. Yuji closes his eyes, just for a second.
Panda sucks in air through his teeth. “You okay?”
“No,” Yuji moans. It feels like his teeth are buzzing. “Fuck, I did this last time, too. Did I get gum in my hair?”
“Uh,” Panda says.
“Oh, come on!”
“Don’t worry,” Panda says. “I think there’s peanut butter in the break room.”
Monday, December 17th — 10:45
Megumi’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it. Inumaki is already annoyed at him, he doesn’t need to test it.
The usually-pretty sticky floor of the karaoke room is stickier than normal. Someone must’ve spilled a slurpee last night or something equally disgusting. They’ve mopped twice and they still have to fight to lift up their feet. Shoko told them to ‘clean it like you mean it ’ this time.
His phone buzzes again. Inumaki is sitting down, they are taking a break.
Kugisaki Nobara
> just think about how lame you’ll be if you go by yourself
You
We’re supposed to be working the party anyway <
You do realize that right <
Not to mention that we’re supposed to be working right now. <
> you depress me
> itadori will say yes if you ask him
> everyone thinks so
> ask inumaki right now
I am not going to ask Inumaki <
> ok i'll do it hang on
Megumi scrubs a hand over his face and pretends not to hear Inumaki’s phone go off. Instead, he suddenly becomes very interested in mopping the floor. Maybe they need more soap. That has to be it.
Before he can get to the door, Inumaki clears his throat.
“I’m going to see if I can find that stuff they use on the grease trap,” Megumi says.
Inumaki raises his eyebrows and shakes his phone back and forth.
“Ignore her.” Megumi does his very best to not beg. He’s not sure he’s successful. “Seriously. Ignore her."
Inumaki looks at the text again, and then back up at Megumi. Then he nods.
Megumi groans. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Have you heard Itadori talk about girls? About Jennifer Lawrence ? There’s no way.”
The look on Inumaki’s face can only mean that he has heard Itadori talk about all of those things.
“See?” Megumi says. “And besides, whoever said I had a crush on Itadori in the first place?”
There’s a long, expectant beat. Inumaki waits patiently.
“Okay,” Megumi sighs. “Yeah. That was a dumb question.”
His phone buzzes.
Kugisaki Nobara
> what did i tell you
You
Shut up <
Monday, December 17th — 13:04
“I’m not going to ask,” Shoko says when the break room door shuts.
“That’s probably for the best,” Itadori agrees, nodding his head enthusiastically. It’s endearing. Megumi wants to throw himself out of a window.
“Don’t nod!” Kugisaki snaps, smacking the top of Itadori’s head with an open, peanut butter coated palm. “Hold still!”
“Watch it!” Itadori whines. “I told you! I hit my head earlier!”
“He did,” Panda says. “I was there.”
Kugisaki digs another scoop of peanut butter out of the jar that she forced Megumi to hold for her and slaps it unceremoniously onto Itadori’s hair. Megumi wrinkles his nose. Everything smells like peanuts. “Are you sure this actually works?”
“Obviously,” Kugisaki says. “Why else would the internet say that it does?”
“That feels like a lot of peanut butter, Kugisaki…” Itadori squirms in his chair.
It really is a lot of peanut butter, but Megumi isn’t going to be the one to say so.
“You asked for my help!” Kugisaki warns. “Don’t make me regret giving it to you.”
“Only ‘cause I thought girls might know what to do!”
Maki looks up from her phone for the first time in ten minutes. “Girls aren’t stupid enough to get gum in their hair in the first place.”
Itadori considers this, looking not dissimilar to a curious, slightly-stupid puppy. Megumi stares into the peanut butter jar.
From across the break room, Shoko very decisively hits enter on the computer’s keyboard. She spins the office chair around and points at the group. “I forgot to mention something earlier.”
“There’s no way we already have to clean the soda machine again,” Itadori groans.
“It’s not that,” Shoko waves a hand dismissively. “Where’s Inumaki?”
“Front desk,” Maki says. “There’s a reservation.”
Shoko clicks her pen twice. “There’s one more thing about the Christmas Eve party.”
“Extravaganza,” Panda corrects.
Suddenly sounding deeply, deeply exhausted, Shoko ignores him. “The Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event is the week after.”
“Oh no,” Panda groans, and Maki looks up to the ceiling like someone might decide to descend from heaven to help her.
“The students are coming early, and they are invited to the party.”
“I thought you were on our side!”
Shoko doesn’t look fazed. With a tone that Megumi remembers distinctly from nights spent with her as his babysitter, Shoko says, “I’m on the side that makes my boss at the school happy.”
“I guess you know Gojo isn’t going to do it,” Kugisaki says.
“Exactly.”
Maki narrows her eyes. “You guys don’t think that one guy is going to try and fight Okkotsu again, do you?”
“Okkotsu’s coming?” Megumi lifts his head. He’s only met him once or twice, when Gojo brought Megumi to the high school with him rather than let him sit around in the apartment. You’re suspended, Gojo had said, like he thought it was funny. You can’t just stay here and play video games.
“Who’s Okkotsu?” Itadori stage-whispers.
“Another second year,” Megumi whispers back, and then feels ridiculous about it. In a normal voice he adds, “He’s abroad.”
“If he does,” Panda says, shrugging, “Okkotsu will just beat him up again.”
“No one is beating anyone up on school property,” Shoko says, typing something on the computer. “Anywhere else, sure. But not where I have to deal with it, please.”
“He sounds cool.” Itadori bounces his leg, clearly trying very hard to stay still so that Kugisaki doesn’t hit him again.
“He isn’t, really,” Maki says, but it doesn’t sound as mean as it would if she were talking about anyone else. If anything, she’s disappointed. “We’ll get him there.”
“Inumaki thinks he’s cool,” Panda mutters, and Maki cracks up.
Whatever that’s about, Megumi doesn’t really care. He’s wasted most of his lunch break watching Kugisaki smear Itadori’s head with peanut butter and he’s sure Shoko will have some annoying, terrible chore for him any minute now. She thinks she can get away with it just because she let him eat extra snacks when he was eight. She might be right.
“Are you almost done? I don’t think adding anymore peanut butter is going to help,” Megumi says, sparing a second to shoot Itadori a sympathetic look. He’s not a complete asshole.
Kugisaki sighs theatrically. “I guess so. I was just starting to have fun.” She claps her hands together in a mushy, peanut butter-y mess. “Itadori! Rinse!”
Itadori salutes and races over to stick his head under the break room sink’s faucet. Kugisaki flips the water on without a second thought, and the back of Itadori’s hoodie is immediately soaked. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you plan on using soap?” Megumi asks.
“Um,” Kugisaki says. Everyone looks at the more than half empty container of hand soap resting next to the sink. It’s supposed to smell like apple blossoms. “Of course.”
“We really should make a rule about using that sink for playing hair salon,” Shoko comments, but doesn’t actually sound very bothered.
Maki leans over to look at the bottom of it around Itadori’s pink, peanut butter covered skull. “It’s still stained from when you dyed your hair, Nobara.”
“It was worth it though, right?!” Kugisaki yells, pumping hand soap directly onto Itadori’s head. “I make a fantastic ginger! Everyone shut up. Itadori, scrub!”
Shoko turns around again, eyes trained on Maki and Panda. “You two, go back to work.”
“But there’s no one here,” Maki says reasonably.
“And yet you get paid anyway.”
They seem to see the wisdom in this, looking at each other before shrugging. Maki hops off of the counter and waves goodbye to Kugisaki. Megumi sincerely hopes Shoko forgets that he’s there.
“You three,” she says, and Megumi tears his eyes away from the soapy, pink and peanut butter-colored mess that Itadori’s head has become. “You’re going into storage.”
“What?! But I almost died last time!” Itadori tries to lift his head, but bumps it on the faucet, then on Kugisaki’s hands, then on the faucet again. Water sprays in a deadly, beautiful arc, somehow managing to drench the both of them even more. Megumi’s glad he’s sitting farther away.
“Stop moving!” Kugisaki shrieks.
“You didn’t almost die,” Megumi says. “You thought you saw a rat.”
“That’s why I’m sending all three of you,” Shoko says, deadpan. “Safety in numbers. You need to see if there’s any arcade games back there that still work. We need to cover up that spot on the carpet with something.”
“It is pretty gross,” Itadori says, but it’s muffled under the sound of the faucet. Kugisaki is scrubbing peanut butter out of his hair with an aggression that Megumi imagines she usually reserves for stains on her very expensive dresses. “Ow! That hurts!”
“Quit whining, I’m almost done,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Does the game have to work?”
Shoko squints a bit, thinking. “No, not really. But try to find one that turns on.”
Megumi stands up. “I’ll go dig up the flashlights.”
“Oh!” Itadori says. “Can you get me a towel, too?”
Monday, December 17th — 14:25
“These flashlights are garbage, Fushiguro,” Nobara says, hitting the flashlight in question against her palm. It flickers valiantly, only to go out again the second she points it into the dark depths of the storage room.
“Use your phone,” Fushiguro grumbles, though his flashlight isn’t working very well, either.
Nobara flicks her hair over her shoulder. “It’s charging in the break room, for your information.”
“Don’t worry!” Itadori grins, holding his phone out so that the flashlight shines directly into Fushiguro’s eyes. He sits there and takes it. Nobara’s disappointed in him, the lovesick loser. “I’ll lead the way!”
“What if a rat jumps out to rip your face off?” Nobara asks.
Itadori laughs, but it’s a little too strained to be natural. “Rats don’t do that!”
Nobara raises her eyebrows.
“...Right?” Itadori’s eyes go comically wide. “Rats don’t bite faces off, right?”
“Rats don’t bite faces off,” Fushiguro says, sounding fifty instead of fifteen. “Why would they…? They’re too small. A rat isn’t going to bite your face off.”
“I’ve seen some big rats,” Nobara says.
Fushiguro just looks annoyed. “That’s because you lived in the country. Can we find a game now?”
Nobara grabs Itadori’s phone and swings it around, white light sweeping across decades old arcade games and dusty boxes of bowling shoes. Is the storage closet way bigger than it should be, or is that just Nobara’s mind playing tricks on her? Whether or not any rats exist aside, there’s definitely a high spider population if the cobwebs lining the shelves mean anything.
“Why did they save any of this stuff?” Itadori says, sounding a little awestruck. “Half of these games are older than we are!”
“Well, one of them has to be able to turn on.” Fushiguro brandishes the end of the practically miles long extension cord Ms. Ieiri had plugged in outside. He points to a slightly-less dusty game. “Let’s start there. The stuff closer to the door shouldn’t be as old.”
Itadori bends down to plug the game in, head twisted sideways to read the title off of the side. NIGHT PARADE OF ONE HUNDRED DEMONS, the fiery font screams. “This one looks cool!”
“Looks like a knock off Street Fighter to me,” Fushiguro says.
“Oh,” Itadori sounds disappointed. “You think so?”
Nobara sighs loudly. She rattles a joystick with one hand and lazily presses some buttons with the other. “I know video games are just about the most exciting thing to boys your age after beautiful women, but can you focus? It’s not turning on.”
Fushiguro whips his head around to stare at her with his eyes narrowed. He probably didn’t like the beautiful women comment. Nobara just yawns.
“Okay, what about that one?”
They plug in what feels like a thousand games, even though Nobara knows it hasn’t been more than ten. Titles blur together—buff men yelling about evil robots and Pac-Man. There’s a space themed racing game that Nobara thinks might actually be kind of fun, and even something called Sorcery Fight, which everyone agrees sounds incredibly lame, but none of them stay on for longer than two seconds at a time, if they turn on in the first place.
The farther they go, the more it feels like Ieiri’s bright orange extension cord is the only thing connecting them to the rest of the bowling alley, slowly unraveling from the loop around Itadori’s arm.
“This is getting ridiculous,” Nobara says, after the twelfth game shuts off, this time with an impressive spray of sparks from the controls that she has to dance away from.
Fushiguro’s usually very bored expression somehow looks even more bored, like every bit of patience this storage closet manages to suck out of him is something he’s never going to get back. Nobara finds enough kindness in her heart to pity him.
“Try this one,” Itadori calls from a bit farther into the closet.
It doesn’t look any more promising than the last five, but Itadori sounds confident. As confident as a man who’s spent most of his time crawling around on the floor digging for power cords can, anyway.
Fushiguro wipes some of the dust off of the screen in time for it to light up. There’s some big, retro lettering so shiny and metallic that Nobara can hardly even read what it says, but when Fushiguro sticks in one of the spare tokens Ieiri had given them, it lets him play. It’s just the same as half of the games back here—a slightly more sophisticated Space Invaders that requires, as far as Nobara can tell, no skill whatsoever. The tinny little speakers beep when Fushiguro blows up an alien.
“Wait, it works?” Itadori exclaims, standing up so fast he almost bumps his head for what would’ve probably been the ninth time in one day. “Fucking finally, huh?”
“Seems to,” Fushiguro says, glancing away from the game long enough to look, subtly but fondly, at the side of Itadori’s head. Nobara resists the urge to throw up. All this pining is driving her up the wall.
That split second look away costs Fushiguro the game anyway, the big white GAME OVER flashing bright enough to light up his face even this far away from the storage room door.
“Oh, no way! It still has all the high scores saved!”
Nobara looks at the screen. Every entry save for one, all the way from the top down, is assigned to two letters. GS.
“Whoever GS is, they spent way too much time playing this game,” Nobara says, because it’s true. Some of the scores are insanely high, and the difference between the top two is only a handful of points.
Itadori is grinning, though. “That’s so cool.”
“Oh,” Fushiguro says, blinking. “It’s Gojo.”
“Huh?”
“Look,” he points at the only entry that’s different, under the initials IS. “That’s Ieiri. This game must’ve been out there back when they were our age.”
“They also carved it into the table at lane three,” Itadori adds. “Panda and I saw it today.”
“And they get on us for vandalism.”
“They have never once done that,” Fushiguro says, but he isn’t paying attention. Itadori is standing too close to him, Nobara can tell—the lights are on but nobody’s home. He’s too busy thinking about holding as still as possible.
Nobara decides not to keep arguing. She has an idea.
Monday, December 17th — 14:50
“Can we go back now?” Kugisaki says impatiently.
Yuji swoops down to unplug the game from the extension cord. “I hope Ieiri gets Nanamin to move it.”
“Aren’t you crazy strong?”
“Well,” Yuji says. “I’m also pretty lazy.”
“Men are so disappointing.”
Kugisaki walks ahead, tossing Fushiguro’s phone over her shoulder. They aren’t out of the dark and creepy closet, so Yuji’s not really sure why she’s decided she’s done with it, but when it lands out of Fushiguro’s reach he bends down to pick it up anyway.
A few feet from the door, where the walkway is the narrowest, games crowding in so close together that they have to walk in a single file line, Kugisaki screams.
“Rat!” She yells, throwing an arm out and stumbling backwards so her elbow lands squarely in the center of Yuji’s chest. “There! It was right there!”
They fall like dominos. Yuji tries to catch Kugisaki, but her writhing sends his arms pinwheeling as he falls back against Fushiguro and onto the floor into what can only be called a teenage sandwich. Everyone coughs, dust flying up in their faces from the floor, and Yuji’s pretty sure the extension cord got wrapped around his foot when he spun.
Kugisaki pulls herself to her feet, glancing around. “Did you guys see? It was huge.”
“Is it gone?” Yuji asks, trying to determine where it came from, where it went, and which of the nearest bowling balls is the heaviest. Just in case it comes to blows.
“Uh,” Fushiguro says, sounding strained.
“Huh,” Kugisaki taps her foot. “Well! Guess it got away.”
“Are you sure?”
Kugisaki turns around to look at both of them on the ground. She shrugs. “Yeah, probably.”
“What do you mean probably?”
“It was fast! And it was a rat, you know, they aren’t very big—”
“You just said it was huge!” Yuji snaps.
“I was terrified!” Kugisaki snaps right back. She brushes her hair behind her ear and points down at him, one hand on her hip. “Questioning me so soon after a traumatic experience? You should be ashamed, Itadori! I’d never do this to you!”
“Can you help him up?” Fushiguro asks, and Yuji can practically feel him grinding his teeth.
“Mm?” Kugisaki picks at her nails, already walking away. “Oh. No. I don’t think I can.”
“Oh!” Yuji says, finally realizing that he is pretty effectively sitting in Fushiguro’s lap right now. Is that what smells nice? “Sorry!”
Yuji scrambles to his feet at the same time that Fushiguro lifts himself up, but it doesn’t really help much. Now they’re just standing very close together. Yuji can feel Fushiguro’s breath. Why does his face feel warm? Why is everything so weird all of a sudden?
“We should go catch up with her,” Fushiguro says, almost quiet enough to count as a whisper, and Yuji startles back to reality. Yuji realizes, maybe not for the first time, that Fushiguro has a nice face. His eyelashes are long.
“Uh,” Yuji says, and when he swallows his throat feels thick. “Yeah.”
Monday, December 17th — 15:13
“Ms. Ieiri!” Itadori yells, shoving past Kugisaki to get into the break room. “There was a rat!”
Shoko turns the swivel chair to look at the three of them. To her credit, she doesn’t laugh. Megumi wouldn’t really blame her. They’re all dusty, rumpled, and a little battered from their trip onto the floor. The extension cord is a fluorescent orange bird’s nest in Itadori’s arms, and Megumi’s pretty sure his face is still red.
“You’re telling me you fought a rat and lost?”
“We didn’t say that!” Kugisaki crosses her arms, indignant.
“I have eyes,” Shoko reminds them. “And I can see with them, too.”
“Okay, whatever,” Kugisaki pouts. “We lost.”
“Did you find a game?”
Itadori launches into a description of what is quite possibly the only working game in the storage closet, and Megumi lets himself zone out. It’s not even very late and he’s exhausted. His phone, which managed to survive Kugisaki’s halfhearted attempt to shatter it on the floor, buzzes in his back pocket.
Gojo Satoru
> hey what do u want for dinner
> tsumiki’s thinking that nice ramen place by that one bookstore
> u remember
You
K <
> just k???
> are u mad at me 🥺
???? <
No? <
>ur so bad at being a teenager
> no wonder kugisaki complains about texting u
> i bet u changed my contact name again
There is no way you thought I would keep it as a bunch of emojis <
Also leave me alone <
“Woah, who are you texting?” Kugisaki asks, appearing, very suddenly, over Megumi’s shoulder. His phone is off and back in his pocket in a second flat.
“No one,” Megumi lies.
His phone buzzes four more times in rapid succession. Kugisaki stares at him like he’s stupid. She’s probably right.
“Uh-huh,” she says.
From over Itadori’s bouncing shoulder, Shoko raises one, judgmental eyebrow.
He’s never really outright said that he hasn’t told Kugisaki and Itadori who he lives with, but it's been pretty clearly implied since day one. Megumi doesn’t know why Shoko insists on holding it against him—Gojo’s said from the start that it doesn’t bother him, he doesn’t mind, he totally gets it—it’s fine.
It’s not that he’s embarrassed, it’s just that it’s objectively pretty lame to live with one of your teachers, especially when the teacher is widely regarded as an annoying asshole who gives too much homework and harrasses students outside of school.
“I’ll get Panda and Inumaki to look for the rat later,” Shoko says, in a tone of voice that means she definitely will not be doing that anytime soon. “Kugisaki, you can go home. You’re off for today.”
Kugisaki claps her hands. She grabs her bag off of the rack by the door and snatches her phone up from where it was charging. With a lazy, mocking salute, she glides out of the break room.
“We’re stuck closing?” Itadori asks.
“Do you ever look at the schedule?” Megumi crosses his arms.
Itadori tilts his head. “You always check it.”
“Yes,” Shoko says. “You’re stuck closing. It’ll be easy. There’s no reservations.”
She disappears after that, taking her coat from the back of her aging office chair and leaving them to it.
Suddenly, Megumi feels more awkward than he’s ever felt in his entire life. Itadori, to his credit, doesn’t really seem to notice.
Monday, December 17th — 16:03
Nobara knocks on Maki’s dorm room door, and then opens it before anyone has a chance to tell her not to.
“I’m going to kill Gojo,” Maki says to Inumaki on the floor, looking up in time to smile at Nobara. “Who does he think he is giving us homework over winter break?”
“You don’t need physics anyway,” Nobara assures her, dropping her bag on Maki’s desk chair. She waves to Inumaki, even though he hasn’t looked up from his phone.
“He spends the entire class period ranting about things that he admits are too complicated! ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t on the test!’ Then why is he even talking about it?”
“I think he’s got Principle Yaga in his pocket.” Nobara flops across the end of Maki’s bed and then rolls over to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars she had stuck to the ceiling a few weeks ago. “Are you doing physics too, Inumaki?”
Inumaki groans and shakes his head. Guess not.
“He’s complaining about other things,” Maki says, even though Nobara’s very sure that Inumaki hasn’t said a word at all, let alone complained. “How are the boys?”
Nobara holds one of Maki’s worksheets above her head, squinting at the admittedly nonsensical math problems. “Fine. I think I gave them the shove they needed.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing,” Nobara says. “I actually shoved them.”
“I guess that’s one way of doing things.”
“As long as there aren’t any cute girls from the Kyoto school coming, then they should be able to figure it out in time for the party.”
Maki starts laughing. Hysterically. Even Inumaki joins in from where he’s laying on the floor. Nobara looks between them desperately.
“Wait, what did I say?” She asks, trying and failing to sound casual. It doesn’t help. They manage to keep going for another minute, at least, and when Maki slows down to catch her breath, Nobara tries again. “No. Seriously. What’s so funny?”
Maki takes a deep, deep breath. She closes her eyes. Then, with a completely straight face, she says, “Trust me. There are no nice girls at the Kyoto school.”
“None?” Nobara scoffs. “That makes sense, I guess.”
“Definitely none coming here,” Maki says. Inumaki nods knowingly. “Miwa’s not so bad, actually, but she’s too awkward. Nishimiya’s a stuck up princess, and Zenin is just a bitch.”
Zenin. That’s familiar.
“Wait,” Nobara props herself up on her elbows and tilts her head to the side. “Isn’t Zenin your name?”
The first thing Nobara had ever learned about Maki was that no one, under any circumstances, was allowed to call her by anything but her given name. The second thing, of course, was that she was the coolest person alive. Forgive Nobara for remembering one thing more than the other.
“Is she your cousin or something?” Nobara asks when Maki just stares blankly.
Quietly, Inumaki scoops up his untouched homework and abandoned hoodie and makes his escape. Nobara waves him goodbye, confused, but he doesn’t turn around once.
“You alright?” Nobara tries.
“I was hoping you forgot about that,” Maki says, a lot softer than Nobara was expecting. She feels bad for asking.
“I’d be a really shitty girlfriend if I forgot your name.”
“She’s my sister,” Maki says. “And she sucks.”
Nobara blinks. “Okay.”
It’s not a secret that Maki doesn’t get along with her family. Everyone knows, and even though Nobara’s never really asked any follow up questions, she’s sure, even with the limited information she has, that Maki’s hatred is entirely justified.
“Twin.”
“What?”
“She’s my twin.”
“You’re a twin?!”
Maki hides her face in her hands, pushing her glasses up to make a mess of her bangs. “I was going to tell you before they got here—”
“Oh, woah, hey,” Nobara sits all the way up, then. She carefully untangles Maki’s glasses from her hair, making sure the nose pads aren’t caught, and sets them down on the bed. “I don’t—it’s fine, okay? Don’t worry so much.”
Maki shifts so that her chin is propped up in one hand. She’s looking off to the side, a little sheepish. “I should’ve said something.”
“I mean, maybe,” Nobara says. “But I get it. Your family’s terrible, you don’t like thinking about them, let alone talking about them.”
“You aren’t mad?”
“It’s not like you lied to me,” Nobara shrugs. “I’m just glad I didn’t find out by running into some other girl with your face. Are you identical?”
“Yes,” Maki sighs, sounding like it’s the most upsetting part of it all. “I think she cut her hair, though—I haven’t seen her since the exchange event last year.”
“Well, obviously she sucks.”
Maki smiles, a little bit. “You didn’t know she existed until five minutes ago.”
“You called her a bitch,” Nobara points out. “That’s more than enough for me.”
There’s a second where nobody says anything, Maki just stares at Nobara, grinning across the bed. The longer it goes on, the more Nobara’s smile threatens to drop. Was that the wrong thing to say?
“Too much?”
Maki shakes her head. “No, it’s…you’re just really great, you know?”
Nobara laughs awkwardly, very sure her face is on fire. “Yeah?”
Maki reaches out to kiss her.
Monday, December 17th — 19:20
Ieiri was right, it is a slow night. There’s only two lanes in use right now, some clique of girls split down the middle and giggling to each other, which is a little annoying but is mostly a good way to keep track of them all.
Fushiguro is going through the returned shoes that need to be put away while Yuji diligently plays tic-tac-toe against himself. Nobody had bothered to change the music since Panda and Inumaki were working the front—it’s still playing old Christmas music quietly, and that’s been Panda’s thing lately.
“Are you winning?”
“Against myself?”
Fushiguro shrugs. “Seems like something you’d manage to make harder than it needs to be.”
Yuji frowns and marks another ‘x’ on the board. He hates it when Fushiguro’s right.
“Look through those instead,” Fushiguro suggests, pointing to the plastic tub of photo booth pictures on the counter. Someone must’ve picked them up that morning—the carpet where the photo booth had been is discolored and a little damp but otherwise clean. “See if there’s any really stupid ones.”
That does actually sound more fun.
Most of the older pictures are in black and white, printed out before whoever owned Star Plasma Lanes could be bothered to pay for color ink. Yuji digs through, flipping through pictures of teenagers grinning at the camera or making increasingly stupid faces. There are some inappropriate gestures, some gratefully less inappropriate activities , and a lot of dumb haircuts.
A reel falls out of Yuji’s hand and back into the bucket, and without really realizing why he drops everything to pick it back up. The first thing he sees is the white hair.
“Come look at this!” Yuji reaches a hand out and grabs Fushiguro over by the wrist. “That’s gotta be Gojo, right?”
But there’s no question: it’s Gojo at least ten years younger, down to the snowy hair and stupid circle sunglasses. The girl with Kugisaki’s haircut, mole on her cheek, and lollipop in one hand has to be Ieiri. Yuji doesn’t know who the other boy is—long black hair and narrow eyes. He looks tired.
In the first photo Ieiri sits between them, caught between smiling and rolling her eyes while Gojo and the other boy stick their tongues out. It devolves from there, the second and third photo catching them in the middle of a blurry, smear of a slap fight above Ieiri’s head. By the time the last flash had gone off, she’d managed to get them in line, both leaning down to give her a slightly mean kiss on either cheek.
“Woah,” Fushiguro says, for once actually sounding surprised.
“Who’s the other guy?”
Fushiguro shrugs. “He looks kind of familiar.”
“Gojo-sensei kind of looks insane.”
“And he doesn’t now?”
Okay, yeah.
Yuji realizes, for the second time today, that they’re standing very close together. Their shoulders are overlapping, Yuji can feel Fushiguro breathing—the whole nine yards. Yuji swallows around the lump in his throat that very suddenly appeared.
He doesn’t really know what he’s doing when he does it, but Yuji says, “Hey, uh. I was going to go see a movie tomorrow night, since I get off work earlier.”
“Which one?”
“Human Earthworm 4.”
Fushiguro does a very good job of keeping a straight face, but Yuji doesn’t miss the split-second look of profound confusion. “Okay.”
“You get done early, too.”
“Yeah."
Yuji still isn’t sure what it is he’s trying to do here, but he thinks whatever it is, he’s doing it wrong. “You could come with me, if you want to.”
“Sure,” Fushiguro answers, quicker than Yuji was expecting, and by the look on his face, quicker than Fushiguro was expecting, too.
“Are you sure? I wasn’t really thinking—it’s the fourth one and you haven’t seen the others…” Yuji trails off. Everything about this is weird, in an especially strange, exciting way. The Christmas music fills the silence, and when Yuji glances to the window, he can see that it’s snowing.
“It’s fine,” Fushiguro says.
“Oh,” Yuji says. He smiles, just a little bit. “Okay. Cool.”
Monday, December 17th — 20:15
As soon as Megumi locks the bowling alley’s door behind him, he digs his phone out of his bag.
You
Itadori invited me to see a movie <
If you said a fucking word to him <
Kugisaki Nobara
> I DIDNT
> I SWEAR I DIDNT
> the boy you like finally mans up and asks you on a date and the first thing you do is accuse me of betrayal?
> you should look inward, fushiguro
It’s not a date <
> says you or says him?
It’s not a date. <
It’s weird, but it’s not a date. <
> whatever helps you sleep tonight
> you need your beauty sleep before the big day ♥️