👹🔨、 Verse.⠀웃⠀tba. - Blog Posts

before she could even put a name to a face, nobara had already decided that she had a bone to pick with special-grade tōkyō jujutsu tech 2nd year okkotsu yūta. in retrospect, this wasn't at all hard to do. before he had gotten back from wherever he'd been overseas early, his name had lingered in the mouths of the other 2nd years: the residuals of his cursed energy may as well have had lingered in the hallways, too.

his accomplishments during last year's goodwill event with their sister school were spoken of with an undercurrent of pride, and even fushiguro held a deep respect for him: but nobara wasn't impressed.

if anything? she was mildly annoyed. call it a petty annoyance at his thrashing those kyōto hasbeens so good that the succeeding year's goodwill event had to be held on tōkyō's turf instead of where she wanted to sightsee and try new foods, and she'd be lying to herself if she said she hadn't felt a flare of pride, but still ...

it's annoying: the way he walks past her in between classroom transitionings without so much as an inkling of the setback he's put her through ( she was on a slightly fixed schedule and he ruined it! ), the way she catches him during co-training smiling sheepishly and rubbing his head while talking to maki-san, panda, and inumaki-senpai from across the training grounds, the way he's so nice ( he reminds her of itadori in that regard ) that it makes feeling even an inkling of annoyance at him? feel like a slight against him despite what he's unintionally ruined for her, the way he can't tell when a girl's got a bone to pick with him even if he doesn't necessarily know her.

what's even more annoying is that she doesn't necessarily know him, so it's a petty annoyance nobara is feeling and that annoys her more, but even still? she's decided he's earned her ire for making it so that she wouldn't be able to explore all kyōto had to offer a countryside girl, an outsider, like her. she's decided that, for his transgression of annoying her, that he must make it up to her.

so, it's in between classroom transitionings where she catches him at the water fountain that she decides on confronting him, a hand on her hip and stamped down annoyance hidden behind tight, pursed lips as she approaches him. she introduces herself as casually as she can muster as a friend and kouhai of maki-san's, to which he replies in kind, he inquires: you're kugisaki-san, right? and it annoys her that he's being formal with her where he doesn't have to be. kugisaki is just fine, no honorifics are needed. he doesn't hear itadori nor fushiguro using them, does he? okkotsu is his own person, though, he'll do what he will.

pride blooms in her chest, though, at her sensei singing praises to his current class. she has been doing somewhat well in her studies, a little better than itadori, even with the cirruculum something she's getting used to. pride blooms in her chest, and — — — no, no, no! she couldn't forget why she had cornered him at the school's water fountain, couldn't forget the annoyance that had festered before pride had even deigned to take root with his honeyed words.

“ hold that thought, okkotsu. i've got a question: did you ever stop to think about the types of students that'd be filtering into gojō-sensei's class this coming year? what different kinds of walks we've taken just to end up in the same place anyway, where we're from? do you even care? ”

❝ oh , that's a hell of a coincidence ! but anyone who's friends with maki - san is a friend of mine . ❞ the special grade quickly forms his lips into a much warmer , welcoming smile as opposed to the serious expression he'd been wearing before when he comes to the understanding that this is a kouhai of his fellow classmate , not to mention probably one of the students gojo - sensei specifically requested he look out for . good luck or coincidence , he's content with the matter , blade settled over his shoulder in a thick black sheath . ❝ okkotsu yuta , maki - san's classmate . and you're kugisaki - san , right ? ❞ as soon as he suspects her offense , he's quick to explain himself ; ❝ gojo - sensei had nothing but good things to say about his new students this year . ❞

@waraningyo

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? ”

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. ”

being a sorcerer meant risking life and limb,⠀⠀it meant putting yourself second and dedicating all that you could — all that you were able in jujutsu society, your aptitude for exorcising curses — in service of keeping innocents safe from what went bump in the night ( usually, the dreadful manifestations of their own makings, their fears: what haunts them ) and that's who she was. a student / a sorcerer. existent duality of a girl.⠀⠀more recently,⠀⠀she'd found herself walking to the med wing of  tōkyō jujutsu tech, gojō-sensei making it somwhat clear in the eccentric way that he spoke: that her individualized training in regards of effectively targeting the souls of slightly grade-high curses wouldn't be able to be pulled off without an effigy that wasn't made of straw. it made sense to her.⠀⠀even making her 人形 took crucial amounts of time and there was no obāsan to trail after as if she was a little kid⠀⠀( to watch with a keen eye ),⠀⠀to show her the proper way physically,⠀⠀to fix her screw ups.⠀⠀nobara was on her own.

so in this, she understood why gojō-sensei just didn't have her construct a large enough doll. making them took time, something she didn't have, wasn't necessarily afforded to her as their enemies grew stronger. there was a restlessness to gojō-sensei, a carefully crafted methodology to his actions that nobara found somewhat puzzling to decipher. still, this is what she signed up for. this is what she wants to see through. still, though, she makes her way until she crosses the door's threshold of ieiri-san's office and is greeted by a completely different voice, hall pass and request jotted down on a note held in ever-delicate hands.

“ oh, hi. yeah, that's me. ”⠀⠀she confirms her identity,⠀⠀interest slightly piqued at the sight of the other girl.⠀⠀somewhere she's heard that they'd be getting a slight, more influx of students⠀⠀—⠀⠀this had to be one of them,⠀⠀and she vaguely remembers ieiri-san mentioning that there was an incoming first-year who was to be studying under her in learning reverse technique.⠀⠀this had to have been her. “ it's nice to meet you too, did you dye your hair? it's a nice shade of auburn. ”

            ❛     oh!   hello.   it’s …   Kugisaki - san,   right?     ❜          𝘯𝘰𝘵  𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨  𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯  𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺  𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦𝘥  𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦  until now,   the girl nearly trips on her feet from the sudden entrance in the doctor’s office,  a space she’s been organizing for the past couple minutes for said doctor who,  coincidentally,  is not there at the moment.   not recognizing who  ʚ @waraningyo ɞ  is right away,  Orihime quickly pieces bits of information together and greets her fellow classmate with a smile.   with a trained eye,  she quickly scans for any visible injuries and relaxes when she finds none.   from what she’s heard between auntie and Gojō,  the incoming students are an interesting bunch   ━━━   she supposes that includes herself as well,  but she hasn’t exactly been able to show that to the others yet…   auntie promised it’d be soon,  though.          ❛     if  you’re  looking  for  Miss  Shōko,   i  sent  her  away  for  a  nap  after  lunch.    so  i’m  sort  of  in  charge  here,   for  the  moment.   um,   i’m  Inoue  Orihime,   the  other  first  year.   it’s  nice  to  meet  you!     ❜          there’s a short but polite bow from her,  long hair flowing down her shoulder in a cascade of orange.   the white lab coat is fitted to her size,  shorter than the one auntie wears,  and a pair of blue hair clips are attached to the left collar,  glinting in the fluorescent lights.          ❛     please  feel  free  to  ask  for  anything,   i’ll  do  my  best!     ❜

a doctor's visit to ieiri shōko. 웃 starter.

here she was:⠀⠀laying down in a medical bed assigned to her by ieri-san and slightly battered. no one could ever say that she didn't put up a good fight, no one could ever say that she never puts up a good fight. being sidelined sometimes wasn't necessarily a defeat or a loss, it was simply part of the job. as long as one still had their life to live and give insofar as long as they had the strength to get up to fight another day, who's to say they suffered defeat if their foe was felled anyways? she'd long stopped feeling a bit irritated at the fact that she only slightly still felt like a liability to itadori and fushiguro, the reminder of how she got her current injury a nasty gash in her side caught from a curse that swiped her with extremely sharp claws still fresh in her mind.

luckily, that curse had been not so tough as to fatally wound her. it had been weak. luckily, it's only a gash wound. nobara can't ever forget that she's considered one of the 'lucky ones' given her current state of still having her life, that the existence of a jujutsu sorcerer is a ruinous one and that physical wounds are the bare minimum of what you could walk away with. bandaged hand fiddles with her blanket, cautiously, as her mind wanders to just how long she'd be in here, when she'd get out ... because the truth was that she couldn't stay long. her portion of the amount of yen pooled into her, itadori's, and fushiguro's stipend was begging to be spent. they were practically a team. less of a student body accounted for meant less money and less money meant she'd have to shop frugally this coming weekend. nobara didn't want to shop frugally.

an impatient huff can't help but escape her as eyes find themselves idly looking around the room before they land on a photograph of a young ieiri-san, gojō-sensei, and geto suguru ( ' the worst curse user in existence, ' gojō-sensei had proclaimed one day! ). she can't help but study all of their faces, their demeanors, their youth. especially ieiri-san's. she was so very reminiscent, bore an uncanny resemblance.

“ say, ieiri-san, ” she starts when peripheral catches the older woman's coming into her room, clipboard out, tongue clicking. nobara promised that this year would be different, that she wouldn't be as much of a frequent visitor to the infirmary wing of tōkyō jujutsu tech. idle conversation can't help but be made, if not only to distract herself from the annoying sting of her wound. “ being responsible for the medical infrastructure of our school has got to be definitely unrewarding, right? what teacher taught you, anyway, how to hone your technique? i mean, reverse cursed technique is so complex — you've had to have a sensei of your own at some point, right? ”

their first year as tōkyō jujutsu tech students had come and gone.

her first year as a tōkyō jujutsu tech student had come and gone, just like that, leaving her second year open with possibilities and even more room to grow. days, weeks, months: a whole year's gone by since her move to tōkyō and nobara's decided that a passed year of self-indulgence, of living on her own terms, and the survival that comes with clashes against the cursed spirits of the city kind of makes her a bit of a professional in deciding if she's made the right move in the end, right?

she's coming into her own, blossoming at a self-set pace, and this eases her. definitely beats the what if scenario of if she'd stayed back home. she's done so much in one year, she's seen so much in one year, and it's thanks to gojō-sensei's initial teachings: he's wacky, sure, but efficient where it matters as a teacher and she dutifully carries his teachings into this current year.

with each passing day, week, month: nobara has found herself settling more and more into everyday life in tōkyō. she's sat at the communal space's kitchen table, face's cheek cradled in a dainty hand, idly scrolling social media. eyes lift to meet fushiguro's for a brief moment with barely contained excitement before she stands to tilt her chair back on its legs.

it was hard to rope fushiguro into much of anything, sometimes, and it was so nice out. it'd be a waste if the day was spent inside cooped up with some book or whatever he usually does, but she observes that it's easier to coax him, he isn't as non-compliant to her whims. really, he should thank her though. he needed a bit of vitamin d!

it's once they're shuttled outside to harajuku's shopping district, nobara fitted in a flattering sun dress with a paired straw hat to block out the harsh summer sun, and it's when they've fallen in step with one another that she speaks. “ i think encouraging him to reach out was the most amazing thing we've did recently, wouldn't you agree? i need to be frank, though, fushiguro ... i'm helping out itadori, he's a boy — he has no idea what to get her. me and him? we've talked a bit about this. sorry you weren't in on the loop, ”

their first year as tōkyō jujutsu tech students had come and gone.

@kusattainu⠀웃⠀plotted starter!

when she was sent over the school uniform she'd be wearing as a student at tokyo prefectural,⠀cementing that she'd be leaving the lush green for miles that'd a younger her had grown so sick of seeing⠀(⠀she deserved to see more than the same village faces,⠀their condescending ways a thorn in her side⠀),⠀her grandmother allowed her to go shopping in shinjuku as a dual treat and apology.⠀wary of the upper echelons,⠀the big dogs in jujutsu society,⠀she'd initially hidden the letter of recommendation from nobara:⠀under the impression that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her⠀(⠀hoping that one day she would come to understand why the village functioned the way it did,⠀why the villagers were the way they were,⠀how tradition kept them on the fringes,⠀yes,⠀but ultimately safe⠀)⠀and she hoped and prayed to any ancestor that'd hear her out that this was the best course of action to take to protect her granddaughter.

[⠀...⠀]

but nobara was too much like her obasan, ⠀too headstrong and not easily swayed by the opinions of others,⠀nor petty tricks, ⠀a near perfect reflection.⠀a reminder of how her elder acted in her bygone youth.⠀in brash teenaged excitement does she done one of many carbon copies of her official school uniform,⠀double-checking herself and how she looks in the mirror,⠀a hand's nimble fingers carding through recently dyed tresses.⠀gloss-slicked lips upturn into a triumphant smile as once brown eyes⠀(⠀man,⠀these contacts sure stung while being put in!⠀)⠀twinkle with the promise of keeping their shine:⠀no matter the glitz and glamour of the city proper.⠀ nobara wouldn't be so easily sucked into assimilation,⠀not like how so many who moved away did⠀—⠀her sights were set more internally,⠀her mind's eye always more so focused on the appearance and being of self,⠀overall.

the tohoku shinkansen makes quick work of bridging the distance between nobara and her destination:⠀mylord,⠀a shopping mall in shinjuku with a knack for attracting young shoppers much like herself.⠀the ride is relaxing enough to where she's soon lulled to near-sleep by the steady rock of it,⠀exacerbated by the early 2000s' j-pop playing through her headphones.⠀soon enough,⠀this would be her life⠀—⠀living it up,⠀sticking it to city curses⠀(⠀'⠀they can't be so tough,⠀'⠀she surmises⠀),⠀showing the higher-ups not to underestimate the likes of countryside sorcerers⠀—⠀and oh,⠀what a life it'll be!

to say that kugisaki nobara was excited for this new development in her life,⠀wherein independence would be wholly in her grasp after being watered so delicately by her grandmother:⠀her roots⠀(⠀her potential as a jujutsushi carefully cultivated into what it was⠀)⠀finally growing after a period of stagnation,⠀brought forth by the somewhat unfavorable⠀(⠀until she got sick of village life⠀)⠀conditions she found herself in,⠀was an understatement.⠀finally,⠀she was allowed to blossom on her own terms and she wanted to keep it that way.

it happens in a blur:⠀her unboarding,⠀briskly leaving the train station with the trusty help of her dated smartphone's GPS⠀(⠀really,⠀she couldn't wait to invest in a new one, this one's camera quality sucks!⠀), staring a bit doe-eyed and marveling a bit at her sight of the city's ward, people bustling around her, before moving on to the mall:⠀she wasn't in tohoku anymore.⠀soon enough,⠀shopping bags weigh a bit heavily on her arms⠀(⠀where was a boyfriend when you needed one???⠀)⠀and what's in them is any other teenaged girl's correct guess.

she doesn't feel like the odd one out here.

it was deliberate,⠀her choosing to stick out like a sore thumb.⠀when she dyed her hair,⠀the villagers,⠀who long held her grandmother in high regard,⠀stared at nobara like she sort of grew an extra head or two.⠀trading her lush natural brown hue for a seemingly eccentric shade of ginger:⠀the outgoingly spirited young girl,⠀with the ancestrally wise obasan,⠀seemed astute in the choice that conformity in regards to long-held village customs and ways of living was something she'd hold an aversion to.⠀always.

perhaps,⠀this was her rebelling and lashing out against the bulldozing of saori's home years prior after she'd left,⠀having been ostracized and run out by their stupid views on outsiders.⠀nobara had been devastated and enraged by this,⠀but she was a growing and in-training jujutsushi:⠀she'd have to settle for pouting,⠀angrily scribbling in her diary,⠀and keeping her emotions on a regulated leash⠀—⠀lest cursed spirits would fester near.

she was never the odd one out.

just set apart,⠀consecrated by her bloodline's inheritance of their technique,⠀by her status as a jujutsushi.⠀to non-jujutsushi others she was the outlier,⠀but who gave a damn about what they thought?⠀she wears her pride in her heritage,⠀in what's been passed down,⠀overtly.⠀it's an integral part of her:⠀makes up a big chunk of who she is.⠀it helps that her new school uniform grounds her in a way that exacerbates that pride.⠀it's a good fit on her and it isn't gaudy.

any other,⠀regular-degular non-jujutsushi human looking at her would assume she attends a private school⠀(⠀they aren't wrong in a sense⠀).⠀to them,⠀city folk:⠀she'd perhaps just be another country girl who got fed up of seeing rolling plains of green,⠀the lack of opulence to be seen there instead of here,⠀a budding assimilationist who'd readily toss herself to the wind because she'd become enamored with skyscrapers and convenience of walkability.

they had her pegged wrong.⠀

to the trained eye,⠀to another jujutsushi,⠀it'd be wholly evident that she's wearing a personally custom-made uniform because she'd be soon to be set to attend only one-of-two jujutsu educational institutions as a student.⠀she's all smiles as she walks into the nearest konbini,⠀shopping majorly over,⠀it was time to stock up on her personal stash of snacks before sightseeing and eventually heading back home to tohoku.⠀tokyo would see her again,⠀soon enough.⠀it's with a pep in her step that she flounces up to the cash register,⠀yen in hand,⠀dumping her allotted treats and flashing a friendly smile at the person working the register today.⠀

a keen eye catch their name-tag and gaze soon zooms in on their face.⠀she was much like her obasan,⠀too much,⠀one would argue:⠀astute to a trained degree.⠀

jujutsushi knew their own.⠀she looks around,⠀they're the only two in the konbini.⠀good,⠀she feels less scandalized when she takes back her bagged goods from them,⠀leaning in she asks:⠀“⠀ne,⠀suiren!⠀you wouldn't happen to be a fellow jujutsushi,⠀would you?⠀”⠀