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Nanami pushes his way into the gates just before the railings snap close.
He lets out a huge sigh of relief, entire body sagging into one of the stone columns by the entrance. He peers down at his tattered khakis, one of the threads having snagged on the metal links on the bars and letting it loose. Goddamn Ijichi and his neurotic, unforgiving automatic timers. He made it just in time before curfew, before the matron of the city chastised him for staying too long in the woods, before he himself stayed up too late shrewd in the shadows past their little village.
Nanami lays there for a while, trying to labour his breathing as he peered out into the village. It was completely dark out now, but the kerosene lamps dangling from the pillars in the entrance were enough to let him see beyond the awning of trees. He could hear the chirps of crickets echoing against the branches, the wailing of howls foreboding in the distance.
Goddamn Gojo, Nanami thought as he squared up and steeled himself for a long trek home, And his penchant for dramatics.
On the banks of the Naga river, a little past the shrine, there is an old hickory tree. It had strong, long roots that branched out into the soil, forever spinning and growing and stitching itself together until the years had bred it into a village. In that village, there is a tale as old as time: how the oni lurked beneath the trenches of their barren soil, how the borough lived and thrived off the satisfaction of the faes, and it would do well for the younglings to tread lightly on the ground and not walk alone at night and not stay up too late. Because sometimes, sometimes: the fine lines of the roots didn’t look so much like threads, but claws; and sometimes, too: teeth.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Gojo’s head snaps up, trying not to jostle the delicate set-up of ceramic bowls and jade crystals laid on the table. He frowns a little. “What?”
“What do you mean what?” Nanami walks up to him, gesturing at the poor set-up and all but throwing the satchel he had onto Gojo’s face. “I didn’t just bravely scour the forest for nearly two hours just for you to improvise. I was nearly skewered in half by the gates, mind you.”
The frown on Gojo’s face eases into amusement. “Relax,” he turns back to the table, moving set pieces around. “You got here in one piece, didn’t you?”
“Barely,” Nanami seethes, trying not to claw at his hair. This really was too foolish and risky. “And I’m pretty sure Yaga knows what we’re doing, by the way.”
“I’m pretty sure the old man’s one of them, too,” Gojo scoffs easily, and it’s the candid tone that made Nanami pause. “What? Don’t tell me you didn’t know?”
The blank look of horror on his face was enough of an answer.
“Nanami, seriously,” Gojo glances over at him, growing more amused by the second. Nanami wanted to wipe the grin off his voice. “Even the kids have caught on by now. Why do you think Megumi insists on hanging up cloves of garlic? Why Panda has no friends?”
Nanami blanched. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit, ” Gojo nodded vehemently, glancing at the clock every so often. The time on the wall makes half an hour before midnight. He scurried over to one of the wooden cabinets. “So the sooner we get this over with the sooner we can un-shit this town and finally see the sun.”
They were going to do, of all things, a hex.
They weren’t witches or warlocks—though Gojo has mused to him in passing, how he thinks surely Shoko or Utahime carried over some of that ancestral spite from their predecessors—but they were, above all, worried villagers. More and more babes were being plucked from the womb; it basically induced a town-wide hysteria. People stocking up on rations and barricading doors and hanging ofuda on maple trees. The talismans could basically have been red herrings for all the good it did them, because still: the vanishings had endured and the soil kept growing thicker and more lush.
The village was quickly growing into an embarrassment of riches. The price they paid for it, however, was done in poor taste.
Which is why Nanami snaps out of it and rummages through his satchel, snagging on the bejewelled crystal jar with its warm liquid threatening to spill over. “Alright,” he turns around carefully. “I have the— ”
What the hell.
Instead of expecting to see Gojo set up the kokkuri and lay out the incense sticks and joss paper and other divination essentials, he finds him holding out his own ember flask. Also filled.
“Whose blood is that?” Nanami asks.
Gojo peers over at him from the rim of the glass, the murky red mixing with the azure of his eyes. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Quit it,” Nanami hisses, carefully placing down his procured potion. That poor, unfortunate rabbit who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. “This isn’t a joke, Gojo, what we’re doing. Who is that?” He asks again. “Who do we have to pay hush money for this time?”
Gojo rolled his eyes. “Ever the drama queen,” he sighs, albeit, himself dramatically. He caps off his flask and positions it at the centre of the plateau. “Stop fussing. It's no one you know.”
Nanami narrows his eyes. “I know everyone in the village.”
Gojo pauses, blinking. “Right. Forgot you were Mr. Popular.”
“You know everyone! You!” Nanami groans, running a hand down his exhausted face. He gestures at Gojo pointedly. “You’re literally cousins with Toji – the mayor! And—” He pauses, suddenly feeling very cold and very unsure. He glances at him warily. “That’s not— Is that— Don’t tell me—”
“Oh don’t get so twisted about it,” Gojo waves him off dismissively. “If I wanted Megumi Zenin’s father dead, I’d enlist his kid as my hitman. Have you seen the way he looks at him? If looks could kill.”
“Gojo,” Nanami warned lowly. “Who is it.”
They could hear the tolls of the grandfather clock grate against each other in the distance, echoing its woes all throughout the isolated barracks. The wind was lashing at the windows, the long branches of the sycamore tree in the backyard brushing through its glass panels.
Gojo took a moment to regard him, and then very slowly a corner of his lips tugged up, baring pearly white teeth that nipped a little at the molar.
Nanami felt all the color drain his face.
It was sharp; sharper than Nanami had seen on him his entire childhood, sharper than when he last first saw him before they parted ways at the village entrance with clear instructions on how to proceed. With Nanami needing to secure sacrificial blood, and Gojo, Gojo: a single leaf from the hickory tree.
“Let’s just say they made an offer I couldn’t refuse.”