pomegranate ink | y. okkotsu

vii

a/n: making yuta go absolutely batshit is so funny to me. like we have this nice little boy being all "😊 I love my friends" 90% of the time and then all of a sudden he's just like "👿🔪 time to commit crimes" is it ooc?? maybe. but it's so entertaining.

With the air somewhat cleared between you and Yuta, you settled into a tenser version of your earlier avoidance. Studiously averting your gazes when you passed each other, jerking away from the slightest brushes of fingers — it was almost worse than before. It felt so charged, like there was electricity between you, like you might short-circuit at every single small moment. His eyes on you no longer felt like grief; instead, he was stripping your soul bare, seeing straight through to your heart whenever he stared at you. And the worst thing was that you wanted him to keep looking until there was not an inch of you that he did not know as familiarly as his own self.

It made sitting next to Noritoshi for your meals nearly torturous. Yuta stayed with Gojo, and though he pretended to listen to him, his eyes were solely focused on you. You could feel it, feel the way he was burning into you until you were practically on fire with it, fumbling to respond to whatever question Noritoshi or Mai had asked you and attempting to disguise how badly you wanted to glance at the next table over.

The morning of the teamwork challenge, you and Yuta were to dine alone so that you could formulate a strategy for it. You picked at your food, waiting for him to speak first. You weren't meant to do much but slow him down, so your opinion would probably make things worse.

"What do you think we should do?" he said after a minute, taking a bite of his cereal and staring at you with his dark, poison-blue eyes.

"Me?" you said.

"There's no one else here, is there?" he said, not even disdainfully. "Of course I'm asking you. You're way smarter than me, plus you know much more — about jujutsu and about the opposite team in general."

"I guess that's true," you said.

"So, what're your ideas?" he said. "Want some pomegranate seeds?"

"Sure," you said, accepting the handful he handed you and tossing them into your mouth, marvelling at the way both your fingers and his were purple now. "Okay, I think that they're going to focus on trying to get us out before they worry about exorcising the grade 2. Handling the curse itself shouldn't be too difficult, not when they have so many strong sorcerers on their team, but I'm sure they'll be anticipating that same level of ease for us. They're going to bank on overwhelming us so that we're unable to compete in the challenge at all."

"Who do you think will attack us?" he said. "I'm sure a couple of them will go after the curse."

"Right. I don't know much about their techniques, only Noritoshi's, but I'm willing to bet he'll be one of the ones that'll attack us. His technique is blood manipulation, although it only works on his own blood — don't think that holds him back, he usually stocks up on vials beforehand so that he can fight without passing out," you said. Yuta frowned.

"He'll still run out eventually, so that's nothing to worry about. The one I'm scared of is Todo," he said.

"Likewise," you said, "If I had to guess, he'll be attacking us — I mean, he all but gave it away, and anyways, he doesn't seem the type to stay away from a fight. We can count on him to be an opponent; Mechamaru and possibly Miwa as well. Mai and Momo don't seem the type to engage in all out brawling, but at the same time, we could be surprised."

"Right. I'm sure they don't expect you to be doing anything much, but you'll show them all up, so we should operate under the assumption that they have a few tricks up their sleeve, too," he said.