Bloody turquoise eyes | JJK x OC

Canto XI - Bittersweet Memory

A sigh came out naturally of his mouth, picking up his phone, he scrolled through useless information and clickbait titles to kill some time until he noticed some movement to his right with the tail of his eye. As he lifted his gaze from the screen, Gabriele was met by a quite tall girl, just a few inches below him, with blonde straight hair reaching her shoulders. She looked fidgety in her grayish long-sleeved shirt now that they underwent an involuntary staring contest, the young man was praying with all his power that the stranger would not just start up a conversation with him. Please, please, please.

"Um, excuse me." Fuck.

"I'm done here, Gabriele. Now we can go..." Nobara walked out of the store with a small plastic bag, initially unaware of the presence of the girl until her brain acknowledged the pair of extra eyes locked on her in pure terror.

"Who is she?" The tall girl screeched, backing a few steps away from Gabriele before bowing repeatedly. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do anything I swear!" she apologized profusely, almost making the two teenagers feel uncomfortable and attracting a lot of onlookers. "My name is Ozawa Yuko, I saw you talking to Itadori earlier while I was walking home but he disappeared into the crowd before I could reach him, so I followed you to ask about him but I also didn't wanna bother you in the middle of your da-"

"Oi please breathe, Ozawa-san." Nobara's face was washed over with concern, trying to calm the hyperventilating girl.

"So she was the one following us." Gabriele told Kugisaki, he'd had this odd feeling of being watched from the moment they stepped inside the mall, he chose to disregard them at first, attributing the cause to a work-related paranoia, though giving a glance from time to time. He should trust his guts more.

"I'm Kugisaki Nobara, and he's Gabriele, ehm..." she paused a second, she couldn't come up with anything even remotely plausible to cover her demon-slaying, curse-lifting exorcist to save her life. Seeing this, the foreigner had to intervene.

"A transfer student from Italy, nice to meet you." He used sign language while he communicated to Nobara with thought manipulation, he turned half-expecting her to get what he was trying to accomplish. Never he thought he would ever see a human experience network connectivity problems as she stared back at him with the blankest of gazes, he could swear he caught a glimpse of tv white noises inside the pupils of her eyes. He excused himself with Yuko, who was incredibly confused by the whole situation, to talk with the sorcerer in private.

"The hell happened?!"

"You never do that ever!" she whispered.

"I can't talk with civilians the same way I do with you! Do you want to freak her out?!" he looked over his shoulder, Ozawa was still there watching her feet in embarrassment. "She said she saw us with Itadori earlier, perhaps an acquaintance?"

"Let's find out." The two gave each other a nod of agreement and went back to Yuko.

"Follow my lead and repeat after me." he spoke in her mind right before he started doing signs again. Once he was done, it was Nobara's turn to "translate" to Ozawa what he was saying: "He said he's sorry for making you wait."

"Oh that's alright." the blonde girl replied. The next few minutes went by following this same pattern: Gabriele signed, Nobara translated and Yuko replied, and so on. At one point Kugisaki asked her about Itadori and how did she know him, the girl averted her gaze from them in response as a pink coloration dusted her cheeks.

"About that, could we get someplace quieter first?"

_____

The three decided to go to an American-like family diner next to the mall, sitting at a booth near the window while little by little they sipped their beverages of choice, two iced tea for the girls, and a macchiato for him. It turned out Yuko was a former classmate of Itadori back in junior high as she passed the phone for them to see a photo of Yuji and her standing side to side on the day of their graduation. "What? For real? Isn't this just half a year ago? What in the world happened?!" Kugisaki exclaimed, the Yuko in the photo was a bit overweight, much shorter than her friend, and with black hair in a bob cut. A completely different person from the one sitting in front of her.