I Like To Mess Around And Find Out And That’s My Exact Problem

Rilakkuma store in Tokyo, Japan 【2007年5月】 ･ﾟﾟ･｡ᡣ𐭩

one thing about me is that I'll never move on, if I said goodbye to you 10 years ago I still miss you today

“ keep up, okkotsu-senpai! ”

with a pep in her step, nobara moves with purpose as she flits from store to store, the four smaller bags on her arms filling with more and more things. festivals in the city were much more so than back home. they were much more lively, much more people-filled, much more ambient in atmosphere, much more her speed, and nobara was capitalizing on the benefits of discounts and sales off.

5月7日: it's ōgon shūkan in japan, a temporarily extended time of festive celebration and mirth, and the staffs and student bodies of both jujutsu tech schools are in attendance: in accordance with keeping up their disguises as well-meaning institutions geared towards the religious and academic futures of a select, few kids.

in a highly good mood, nobara doesn't mean to sound bossy if she does? but it's also like, the more load of heavier bags he's carrying aside, okkotsu-senpai is taller than her, so he has no excuse for the slow pace he's moving at. she's shorter than him, she would know.

her patience exists on a spectrum, it begins and ends at slow walking, and her momentum is one that can hardly be interrupted once it begins ... but she pauses in her stride if only to turn around slightly, a hand placed on her hip, demanding that okkotsu pick up his pace with a gesture of her other and a look that says slow walking at her expense isn't his place.

usually itadori and fushiguro would be the ones accompanying her, holding any bags she'd shove off on them, but they're busied doing whatever else right now — itadori had made prior plans to hit up a festival and dragged fushiguro along for the ride, with them all promising to meet up later. either way: those two left her all alone, not that she'd have particularly cared if she didn't require company that entailed heavier lifting than she didn't care to do, leaving her to seek alternate means.

okkotsu was her bag boy for the day, less robust than itadori and less broody than fushiguro, she made her pick work all things considered. they were making good timing, too, hitting a few more stores, before okkotsu tired out. “ kugisaki-san, do you think we could take a break? ” he asks and she relents, just a smidge, leading them to the food court.

in his defense? he was new to this, experiencing her in all of her exuberance, her in her element. kugisaki nobara is the same girl outside of school, free-spirited and lively, and she revels in her youth. unbothered by the toils of classwork and sorcerery, she pours equally into her passions.

a sip of her matcha milk tea with boba, nobara is in a good mood, she's bright-eyed and all smiles, and the fruitful shopping day's haul will stave her off from borrowing gojō-sensei's black card for two to three weeks, at the most.

“ thanks for coming with me, senpai. i know that you might probably have wanted to be more so in the company of maki-san and inumaki senpai — — or even panda, but still: this meant a lot. i couldn't have possibly carried all these bags myself. ”

a starter for @waraningyo!

❥:::  yuta  didn’t  think  he’d  get  dragged  along  for  a  shopping  trip  with  his  kohai.  literally  dragged.  she  didn’t  take  no  for  an  answer.  yuta  doesn’t  mind  too  much  since  he  sees  it  as  a  bonding  experience.  but  for  the  most  part,  he  carries  her  bags  as  they  went  from  store  to  store.  kugisaki  was  really  energetic  and  lively.  just  as  maki  described  her.

 yuta  gave  her  weakened  smile.  ❝  Um…  Kugisaki-san…  do  you  think  we  can  take  a  break?  ❞  yuta  asked. 

the  weight  of  the  bags  makes  it  hard  for  him  to  keep  up  with  her.  the  circle  under  his  eyes  seems  darker  than  usual.  he  almost  look  on  the  verge  of  passing  out.   

a curse stake-out with gojo-sensei!⠀웃⠀semi-plotted starter.

ginza, ginza, she was in ginza!  nobara had heard great things about ginza, mainly from magazines acquired from her local konbini back home, and what's more is that now? now she's experiencing first-hand what people find so great about ginza since her move to the city from the boonies of tōhoku.

that doe-eyed, amazed child-to-tween reading through said magazines was now reflected in her eyes as she took in the sights,  reflected in her nose as she took in the smells,  reflected in her ears as she took in the hustle and bustle of the famed shopping district with a penchant for attracting tourists and those native alike, joined only together in the allure that has enchanted them to come in the first place. 

put simply: nobara has found herself in shopping paradise. 

quite frankly, though?  she should be enjoying herself, enjoying the chillness that's seeping into the day as it gradually turns to night, since she's off-duty, after all. she should be decked out for the weather, dressed to the nines, and enjoying herself as teenage girls do! 

she's off-duty, technically, but technically? she's never off-duty.  

so sure, it was an off-day technically, but what's that to a student-sorcerer whose enemies are spawned around the clock: birthed by the negativity found in humanity? where her hands would be holding any number of shopping bags on a night like tonight, they're empty on a saturday night. she can't be too put off, though, it comes with the job. she isn't alone, anyway: her sensei, as eccentric and jovial as he is, is accompanying her on what is a stake-out in the deeper part of the district.

her targets for tonight? a gaggle of upper grade 2s in a residential area: they boast the kind of intellect that makes it easy for them to pick off unsuspecting targets, and what's more is that they'd been in the area for quite some time, coming out of dormancy every now and again to terrorize. it was no wonder why they weren't exorcised sooner, but nobara supposes they'd had been kept alive just for this.

part of her should be annoyed that she isn't shopping, but there's a flounce in her step that's a touch too giddy. she's been practicing on optimizing the maximum damage of hairpin once triggered, the usage of the one binding vow she can't be bothered to properly place the name of right now: she just knows that she's elated to try it out, showcase her ever-budding strength to her sensei —-

because she had been practicing: because that's the point of attending tōkyō jujutsu tech in the first place, you hone your cursed technique against curses, you fight curses with curses. it's a battle of cursing, but it isn't something trivial, in hindsight it isn't something inherently moralistic. it just is, and that's how it's been for a long while: probably how it'll always be.

a job's a job, a cycle's a cycle, a machine's a machine until it's not. until it inevitably breaks down due to rusted old parts that interfere with its functioning, until it has no choice but to replace those old parts with new parts or until it's replaced with something new entirely.

“ since this is cutting into my me time, sensei, you wouldn't mind making sure a couple extra yen gets deposited into my student bank account, right? ”

wara ningyō are a popular kind of katashiro made of straw [ ... ] wara ningyō are used extensively as wards against evil. they are combined with something from the recipient of the curse, such as a piece of hair. this transforms the doll into a substitute for the intended target. long nails are pushed through the wara ningyō, harming the subject as well as the doll.

#waraningyo is an independent, privately selective, mutuals only, headcanon and lore-heavy rendition of kugisaki nobara from akutami gege's 呪術廻戦. delicately crafted by nine and re-est. dec 2023.

憶ー　memory

Shoe department in a Tokyo department store, 1999.

cont'd. 웃 @cherrygardn.

maybe she shouldn't have tailed him, she'd thought this over and over before impulse had her mind made up for her, had her rushing inside the veil to face low-level curses provoked out into the open under the guised cover of night. nanami-san was a capable sorcerer, this she knew, and good rationale told kugisaki that he had the higher graded ones covered, but duty still spurred her forward into the fray regardless.

what sort of sorcerer would she be if she just sat on her hands when she was able to do something? wasn't she capable, wasn't she made for this? she wasn't the type to sit back on her hands for a victory she could hardly call her own if it'd been handed to her. she was here to do her part, pull her own weight, even if that weight in the form of rambunctious curses threatened to crush her sometimes. in any case: she was capable, she was made for this.

once she'd made her way to where the older grade 1 stood in the middle of the street by his lonely, solitaire with his back turned to her and weapon in hand, she notes that there is no tension to be seen in his shoulders, no fatigue in his posture.

she hopes in her silence that she doesn't appear to be awestruck, too bright-eyed, because showmanship of jujutsu is nothing new to her. curses being exorcised aren't something she hasn't seen before, much less done. she's sure the curses he exorcised were no match for his technique, but still she hopes she doesn't appear to be too awestruck. besides: she's no itadori, no newbie to this, so she's quick to recover once she reaches his side, hammer clutched and eyes peeled for any more outliers he'd have missed —-

not that he'd have, because nanami-san was made for this, but she was too!

“ do you think it's baiting us? well, consider me baited then! i can handle it, nanami-san! ” girl's temper and her pride in age-old abilities can't help but flare, she'd be sure to show that curse who's boss if only he'd give her the go ahead. “ it's really stupid when you think about it: because for 1) it can't hope to evade us for that long and for 2) not only is it totally outnumbered but it's also probably weak, right? since it isn't attacking us directly, i mean. ”

The bitter taste of defeat, Megumi remembered that. A belly full of blood and guilt. A heart which wanted to tear itself apart upon seeing Yuuji die with a hollow chest cavity, Megumi remembered every detail. What he could not recall however, was carrying the limp and macabre body of their fallen friend to their driver nor the gruesome drive back to Tokyo's Jujutsu Technical campus . . nor the couple of days proceeding the death — a mess of regrets and mourning which could not take full shape. Was Nobara as broken up about it as he? Megumi suffered on three levels having lost Orochi, Shiro, and, most grievous, failing to protect Yuuji.

With gloom clinging into every pore of his body, the onyx haired teenager emerged from the hermit-like dormancy of his room and attempted to move through the shared living area as stealthily as a shadow. Reclusive plans were shattered the instant eye contact was accidentally initiated from across the room. He didn't know how to feel, he didn't know how to react; he always guarded his feelings from the outside world and even from his own self. Gaze dropped to the wooden floor, and the teenager shuffled his feet with uncomfortable energy. ❛ How are . . you . . Kugisaki? ❜

just how long had it been since she allowed herself to feel so utterly saddened by something well out of her control? only twice: this was one time, a bygone happening in her past ... when saori's parents saw it fit to move her out of the village and away from nobara because of all the harrassment received due to them not being from there, them being gossipped about, them sticking out as much as she in their little non-jujutsushi way. them being outsiders.

she had been age seven then and at age seven, saori and her family were gone.

at an age that young, being the jujutsushi child that she was, emotional regulation was something that she was taught with a more refined finesse. it'd had spell disastrous if she ended up cursing the villagers for their act of transgession against her childhood friend, so she did what all children did when their hearts were broken and she cried in front of saori's abandoned home instead, hand holding fumi's.

the seat she reserved for saori became empty, vacant, and the pain twisting her heart like a knife stab turned into resolve over the years. sure, fumi was still seated at her table but it wasn't the same. it wasn't like saori died or anything, and she promised to meet up with both her and fumi when she got to tōkyō, but still — —

it's been near a week or so following itadori's demise and sleep doesn't find nobara any easier than it did a few days ago. put out early in their mission, she had to learn of its aftermath through a visit from fushiguro while recovering in the hospital from injuries sustained on their mission in eishu.

just how long had it been since she allowed herself to feel so utterly saddened by something well out of her control? only twice: this was the one other time. only more recent and the stakes raised were higher, the probability of meeting again lesser because death was always hot on your heels.

itadori had died and left their group down to just them two, only her and fushiguro. but the seat itadori dragged to her table of his own volition was one decidedly bolted to the floor by none other than nobara herself. she puts up a good front, attends classes with as straight a face she could manage, but at night instead of scrolling social media she'd sometimes find herself poring over the text thread in the groupchat she shared with fushiguro and itadori.

instead of reading messages over and over that equally made you cry or laugh, any sane person would have just left, however nobara is crazy and honestly? it'd feel a little wrong leaving. kinda like an unspoken betrayal, so no: she wouldn't. still groggy with sleep and emerged from her room, palms knead her eyes in an attempt to further wake herself up. a pick-me-up was so needed and she moves, a young woman with purpose, only to pause when:

she sees that familiar dark haired mop of spikes. fushiguro, he'd been there when itadori had ... they both felt his loss, were kindred in that. isn't it tragicomic how history repeats itself? fushiguro's more visibly shaken up about it than she is and she doesn't blame him. after all, he witnessed the ordeal and it'd been the first time he'd lost a classmate in the way he did. the way they both did.

“ i'm ... okay, but jeez, you look like you haven't slept a wink. wanna go get coffee with me? it'll be my treat just this one time. ”