When We Were Young || JJK

01.

Hana waited for her classmates on a rock near the entrance of the school, swinging her feet back and forth as she grew impatient. Of course, she had shown up early, but still. She hated waiting. The sound of soft voices came from the nearby walkway, drawing the girl's attention.

"There you two are! Took you long enough." Hana complained, jumping to her feet and wiping off the dirt from the back of her skirt.

"You told us to meet at seven. It's seven." Nanami pointed out, his hands tucked into his pockets.

"Yeah, well, you two should know being on time means being fifteen minutes early." Hana tried to defend herself, throwing out something she used to hear her dad say to her older brother when he started his first job.

"Okay, Hana-chan!" Yu broke the tension, offering a smile to the girl who returned it, turning around quickly when she realized her hard exterior was being broken. The group walked to the station, taking the train to the center of the city where they had been told a handful of curses were lurking in a heavily populated area.

"It should be... Oh, there it is." Hana spotted the bakery, pointing across the street to a storefront with boarded up windows, a sign on the front of the door reading 'closed until further notice'. Whatever the curses had been doing, it was enough to significantly impact the business the people were running.

"What are we waiting for, let's do this!" Yu clapped his hands together, eager to do his job. Nanami and Hana trailed behind the energetic boy, hanging back in the shadows as Yu interviewed the shop owners who had put in a request to be seen.

"It's so cute in here, it's too bad it closed down." Hana remarked, looking around at the adorable interior.

"Mm. They have the best bread around, but I haven't been able to get here for a while. I'll be glad when they open back up." Nanami replied, glancing at the owners and Yu every so often.

"You used to come here? I didn't peg you for a sweets guy, Nanami." Hana teased, nudging the boy next to her.

"Well, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of sweets, per se. I like bread. Gojo is the one with the sweet tooth." Nanami shrugged, brushing off Hana's comments.

"True, true. Once I found him scavenging through my trash like a racoon one night because he heard I threw away a piece of cake I didn't want. It was weird. He's weird." Hana thought back to the gangly upperclassman being caught red handed with half of Hana's trash dumped on the ground, sitting at her desk eating a piece of cake she had gotten rid of earlier.

"Ew." Was all Nanami said. Hana nodded in agreement. The upperclassmen were nice, but they were... Strange to say the least. Geto was probably the most normal of the trio, which was a surprise given his appearance. 

"Okay, so, apparently around back there's this alley where some poor kid got mugged a few years ago and died. Ever since, the couple said they were having trouble with weird things happening to them and their customers, but it's gotten worse in the past few months. They think it's because it's the kids five year anniversary of his death." Yu explained as the group walked outside, following the black-haired boy around back.

"Damn, poor kid. I would be pissed too if someone mugged me and I died. It's a shitty way to go." Hana empathized with the deceased, silently saying a prayer for him so she didn't distract the others. 

"Hm, I don't see anything." Yu said, spinning around in a circle as he looked at the cramped space, the back of six buildings all butting up against each other in the alleyway.

"There." Nanami pointed to a metal garage door next to the bakery, walking over to it and pulling, not getting anywhere.

"Don't worry, I got this." Hana confidently strode over to the door, using her cursed energy to create a crow bar, snapping the lock that was holding the door shut.