ITSY BITSY SPIDER. ― ( Jujutsu Kaisen )

CHAPTER FOUR. all the things we couldn't leave behind

Nanami Kento was used to walking into a room and finding his classmate sleeping soundly, whether it was on her desk in the classroom, curled up on the couch in the dormitory's common area, or on the grass in the middle of morning exercises. It was exhaustion, he had quickly figured it out upon learning the depths of her technique, and quietly putting a jacket over the sleeping girl had turned into a habit between him and Haibara until one day the duty fell on his shoulders alone.

Seven years had passed since Kento had last walked in on Kanzaki dozed off somewhere on the campus. Yet the habit had somehow survived the test of time as he found himself slipping off his jacket.

He paused with the beige jacket in his hands. Even when they weren't on speaking terms for weeks after their friend's death, he had never hesitated to act before; he would cover her with his jacket and find it neatly folded on his desk later in the day, and both would pretend like nothing happened. But they were no longer the people they used to be in high school. Once they were friends, close friends even. A lot had happened since those days. Now they were acquaintances with memories neither wanted to remember.

A little ashamed, Kento soaked in the nostalgic feeling of that one spring morning of the second year: He was lying on his back beside her under the tree, staring at her long lashes for half an hour until the breeze caused a blade of grass to tickle her face and woke her up from her nap. Her lips were curled down in a similar pout as they were now. What a naive young boy he was for thinking they were going to stay under that tree forever, and what a sad adult he was for still grieving a friendship he lost a decade ago.

He placed his jacket over her skirt.

"Hey, Nanami, did you see a wallet around here?"

"I didn't," Kento answered the man that walked into the room with a quiet voice, stepping away from Kanzaki. The woman muttered something incomprehensible in her sleep, almost like a complaint. His head snapped back at her, ready to apologize for disturbing her rest.

"Don't worry about her. She's been sleeping like a log since morning. Nothing can wake her up." Kusakabe's voice was also lower than a moment before as he assured Kento. His gaze went back and forth between him and his jacket laid on her lap. "She often talks in her sleep. I never figured out what she was saying."

He sounded troubled by his inability to decipher what was going on in her subconscious.

Right, Kento remembered. They dated.

On the day he returned, they had a very short and awkward chat (after Ryosuke-san told her to stop hiding behind him). It was the part of going back that had made him nervous the most; facing the girl he had left crying in the classroom after four years. He had a lot he wanted to tell her, a lot he wanted to ask. Four years' worth of questions, maybe even more. And there she was, standing before him with a shy and distanced smile that he had never seen on her lips before.

Then he had walked through the door, and before Kento could tell her the one thing he wanted to say for all those four long years, Kanzaki had excused herself and walked away, leaving him with the realization that he had taken too long, that whatever he had to say, she no longer cared. She had run into the older man's arms, giggled at his words while brushing her thumb over a cut from a shaving incident.

The more he got to know his colleague, the more their relationship confused him. He had no interest in putting himself in danger, and he found the job to be a 'pain in the ass' — it reminded him of himself in his high school days a little. However, she looked very content with his mindset, and that was what confused Kento the most after all the things Kanzaki had accused him of when he had told her that he was quitting.