From the window by his desk, he could see the how streets glittered. Trees went from brown and orange, to white. He opened the window, catching a snowflake with his nose. He was having a good day. No, a great day. Yuji looked around the classroom to find his sentiments shared. Not a single person in the room was without a smile on their face. Not even algebra could change the fact that the winter vacation was just another week away.
There was a ritual that Yuji kept whenever the bell rang for lunch. Today was no exception. He stood. He looked out the window again but lower this time. He saw the tracksuits. Just like clockwork. Wow, they don't quit. Yuji sighed.
"Guess I'm staying inside, today."
Yuji sprung off his seat and took to the halls. As soon as he crossed the class door, he was sprinting. It was cheesecake Friday, after all, and there were only a limited number of them every week. Technically, you weren't allowed to run in the corridors. Technically, nothing happened if no one ever caught you. And no one ever had. Yuji bounced off the walls on the stairway down. Upon reaching the last flight of stairs, he landed into a somersault, rolling past a group of upperclassmen who would be having their cake, after he had his.
"—And all the radios were..." he caught one of them saying.
"Everything...misplaced...clothes everywhere."
"Hey! Itadori!" said the one boy who noticed him in time. And if he had a widow's peak, he'd be Vegeta for all the frustration in his voice.
Yuji chuckled as he vaulted off his hands. "Who's competing for second place?"
His feet hit the ground. He had to act fast. Now that he'd been seen, he needed to finish his lunch and take his hard-earned dessert somewhere he could savour it in peace. He really couldn't trust the track students, or any student in any of the sports clubs not to sell him out to their coaches.
One of the canteen staff shot him a knowing smile. With a dap surely loud enough to break the collective spirits of the student body, the man handed him the largest cheesecake on display. Yuji was well acquainted with the first cake. They were old pals. Nay, the only thing that separated them was the way they each presented in the world. Different in form, but not in essence. He used to feel guilt that he always had first dibs, but a conversation with Gramps had helped. Before his health declined, not very long before he needed the constant touch of a hospital bed at his back; he had offered advice.
"You're a strong kid, Yuji. So help—"
"Myself to a treat?" Yuji tears up. "Gramps, I'll always remember you—"
"I ain't dead, you brat!"
His recollection ends when the fist lands.
Yuji ate irreverently. He was uncouth, even— devouring rice, and katsu curry like they were the newest, shittiest, isekai that season. Not a moment too soon, he swallowed the last of it. By the time he was done, he heard them. Clamouring. Doing everything short of throwing punches at one another on their way to the canteen. The mob of students.
Yuji fled the scene of the crime with his bounty. He prized possession. His x marks the spot, with the accompanying shovel—a spoon—to unearth its gooey goodness. The cheesecake he left untouched still resting on his plate like an invitation.
Once again, he hit the stairway, going up instead of down this time. The roof would be quiet around this time. Even the kids who brought their lunch to school competed in the Friday rush. Even the lactose intolerants would simply tolerate the lactose or sell. Yuji was told the cakes were worth a lot on the black market. For effectively fifteen minutes, the rest of the school would be a ghost town. Sasaki had run the calculations, and she knew all about ghost towns.
He reached the roof access which was supposed to be locked but—for whatever reason—never was. Yuji smiled triumphantly as his freehand pushed the door. That was when—
THUD!
He felt the vibration through his soles. Like a bomb (or your mother) had been dropped. It was the kind of sound a person experienced more than they heard. He opened the door and saw:
The snow, now scattered like a blood splatter.
The hairline crack along the roof's plaster.
He opened the door and saw the girl. He saw her prone against the floor. He saw her, knees tucked into her chest, shivering. He saw her heaving like she had never known air a day in her life. And he dropped the cheesecake. Itadori Yuji's vision blurred, as he almost shot past her through the snow.
"You good!?" A dumbass question.
She didn't respond.
"Hey! Can you hear me?!" He tried again.
No response. Her eyes, like pools growing under a stab victim, glazed over. Yuji waved his hand in front of them. No response.
"Hey!"
This was bad. This was bad, bad. He wasn't first aid trained. He didn't have the slightest idea what he was supposed to do. But he was going to try. Yuji slowly stretched a hand toward her—if she was injured, any sudden movement could be bad. He moved closer, but when his fingers were about an inch away from her shoulder, it happened. His hand was seized by an invisible force and jerked back towards him. It was like touching a low current livewire without any gloves on. Her body jerked.
He was seeing her now. Taking in her white hair, her eyes. He remembered her; knew her name. Suzushina Yuriko was the subject of a lot of gossip he never had time to engage in. But that didn't matter right now. What mattered now was that she was small. She was so small. So small and unresponsive. He could see her chest rise and fall. He had to do something; he had to—Yuji stood. He saw her fingers twitching. Help, he had to get help, had to—
"No." The voice came out the same way chalk scraped against a blackboard.
Yuji found a vice-like grip around his ankle. Suddenly, he couldn't move. He looked down to see a pair of red... A set of eyes that had been glazed over a moment ago but were now fixated on his own. Sharp and alert. She was watching him, watching her. The whisper of a glare sat in her features.
"Get me—no," she amended. "Please get me out of here."
Yuji nodded numbly, his ability to move seemed to find him again. He bent back down and scooped her in his arms with all the care he could muster. Yuji walked back to the roof access door. Walked past his plate, which had somehow landed dessert faced up. He was heading to the nurse's office. And he, in his haste, never stopped to wonder. That thud. It had been the unmistakable sound of an object striking the ground with force.
If they had been on the roof, where had she fallen from?
***
"Oi, Itadori. Wanna go find it?"
"Hm?" He pulled back from his thoughts.
"The One Piece," Sasaki said, her expression set hard as a fact.
"What?" She did that sometimes. Sasaki had a habit of making everything just a little bit harder to understand. But that worked just fine for him, because they had—
"The vengeful spirit!" Iguchi Takeshi, who would spawn from the woodwork to clarify.
They just seemed to work well as a trio. It hadn't been ling since he'd met either of them, but they were fast friends, and he hoped that would last. Yuji thought of middle school, of the last time he spent any time with any of his friends from there—he couldn't remember. And he imagined the next stage of his life would take him away from his friends of today. But while he had today, he felt content with spending it with the people he knew now.
"In Class 3-2 they found signs of paranormal activity!" Sasaki elaborated.
"Like on Thursday, their class came in and found a bunch of numbers on the board—" said Iguchi.
"—Oh, and all the desks were all flipped upside down!"
"—But get this, there wasn't any footage of what happened!"
"Hey," Yuji cut in, being the voice of reason for once. "Doesn't that just sound like a crime. A prank, even?"
"Silly Yuji. We all know that spirits emit electromagnetic waves that screw up CCTV. Why do you think we've never caught one on camera?"
Yuji tilted his head to the left and thought for a moment. Nope. It didn't make sense from that angle, either. But Sasaki was the expert, so maybe he was missing something.
"Also, also what would be the motive behind the equations? That's going a bit far for a prank, even Yomikawa-sensei was impressed. Maybe it's the spirit of good Will Hunting?" Iguchi proposed.
"That was just a movie." Sasaki chuckled.
"Then explain the math. I know it's Will. I just can't prove it."
"Perhaps I could provide some enlightenment?" A nasally voice whispered from the seat behind them.
The trio turned to face a boy with rat-like features—Timmy Turner ahh buckteeth— who inserted himself into the conversation. Apparently, their history class wasn't interesting enough for him either.
The occult club's influence ran surprisingly deep. Even though they only had three members, a lot of external parties like to fill them in on anything that resembled the preternatural. Iguchi had told Yuji it was because of him. Something about sports teams wanting to poach him using favours; he'd just joined, but he didn't really feel any desire to leave, but Sasaki was not the girl to squander opportunities. Nezu was just one of many that she had roped into being an informant.
"What?" said Yuji, who was once again, out of the loop.
"It was in Class 3-1 on Monday." said Rat boy.
"What?" Oh, hey, Iguchi didn't know either!
"Teach grabbed an eraser, and did his patented Erasure Pitch with its 99.9% success rate—the 0.1% was what happened on Monday. I put good money on that girl being the thousandth victim too. Don't think I can collect it in good faith, you know."
"Actually, you haven't explained anything."
"Right, so the 99.9% success rate pitch never hit her." Rat boy winked. "It was like something, or someone threw it back at Stupid-sensei!"
"Awesome! Wait, who's Her?" asked Iguchi.
"Suzushina Yuriko."
There was a lull in the conversation. Sasaki's expression soured a little, and Iguchi's excitement tapered off. Yuji could feel the shift—the oncoming judgement. His face became neutral as he watched them.
"Ugh," Sasaki shuddered. "She gives me the creeps, and not in the fun way."
"Tell me about it, those eyes..."
"She's always so—"
"Hey," said Yuji.
She lies on a bed in the school infirmary. She doesn't speak, but her eyes convey her intentions. Go away, they whisper. Leave me alone, they say, and the imagined tone lilts with desperation. With distrust. Please.
The nurse walks into the room and he looks over his patient. He flashes a light in her eyes, and the reflection reminds Yuji of a rumour. Demon eyes, they called her. They wonder if she's even Japanese.
Ah, says the nurse. I'll call your parents; you can go home for the day. Itadori, you can leave now. Good job.
As Yuji leaves the room, he sees her face as she watches the nurse. Her expression reminds him of a photo he had seen. The shock. The betrayal.
Some boys had gotten a hold of a portrait shot of her and plastered it on every classroom door. A mugshot she likely hadn't even had the time to consent to. See the cryptid, read the text they'd attached. See the thing that walks among us.
Yuji returns to the rooftop to find his cake unblemished, and intact. He lifts the plate and sighs, as he makes his choice. There's always next time.
"Not cool," he said.
Sasaki rubbed her neck. Iguchi looked bashful. Neither of them were bad people; he hadn't known them long, but he was sure of that. After having his very own Suzushina experience, he kind of got it. From their short interaction, he noticed she could be a little short with people. Whatever reputation she had wasn't entirely unearned but let them complain about her the things she did, and not the way she looked. But he wondered. Did she get her reputation because she was guarded, or was she guarded because an unfair reputation already preceded her? Yuji's friends were already muttered their apologises. Rat boy though? Nah, he rattled on.
"Anyway, I think it's a location bound spirit trapped in that corridor. Classes 3-1 and 3-2 run in series. Maybe it's a math prodigy who ate the mystery meat and keeled over in the classroom—side note, they haven't changed the menu in years."
"I still think it's Will Hunting," Iguchi tried.
But Sasaki had had enough of that theory. She stared listlessly at bro. "My boy is NOT wicked smart."
"It seems to be more active at night?" said Iguchi, not one to be defeated by the allegations.
Sasaki froze. Then her lips stretched into a smug smile.
"Know what I'm thinking guys?" She asked.
Itadori Yuji, nodded with a smile of his own. "I have no idea."
"Stake out."