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"Soooo stupid," Mai's whispering to herself as she skims Takada's website. Todo told her about it in one of his many Takada-chan rants, and Mai doesn't like it but she took note.
She hovers over the ticket price to the next meeting. It's in Kyoto, only a twenty minute ride from the Jujutsu High. She could make it after class next week, if she wanted to.
"Stupid," she mutters to herself again, clicking through photos of Takada smiling brilliantly at various men, all of them losers. Mai rolls her eyes. This is so fucking dumb. Mai is not a loser. She is not going to go to this stupid meet-and-greet.
Then again. It would really piss Todo off.
She buys a ticket. 5000 yen, but whatever, the Zen'in family has plenty of money to waste.
The line at the event is way too long. Mai clicks her heels, pretending to be waiting for someone. Todo couldn't make it today — he says he's got extra training, although Mai sort of suspects he's stalking Itadori Yuuji again. So she's here on here own, trying to look like she knows what she's doing. Which would be fine if she knew why, exactly, she was here.
The line shuffles and moves until Mai is at the front. When she reaches the booth, Takada sees her and her eyes light up.
"Mai-chan! You came back!" She says. Mai weakly fumbles the notion of telling her not to call her chan, she's san to everyone and that's a fact. But Takada looks so bright and smiley that Mai can't bring herself to say it.
She feels suddenly lost for words. "I did, yeah. Seemed like…" she looks up.
"You wanted to see me again, right?" Takada is nearly bouncing right now, leaning across the table so she can look right into Mai's eyes. She's taller than Mai. Duh, that's why she's famous, but still. Mai usually finds guys being taller than her fundamentally obnoxious, but this isn't so bad.
Takada almost immediately starts chatting about her day, unprompted by Mai. By the time she's gotten to the part where she nearly forgot to do her makeup before coming her because she was so busy trying to learn how to make onigiri, a man who must be Takada's manager comes up and tells her that there are people waiting to see her, cough. Takada nods, then scrambles for a piece of paper and pen.
"Here's my number!" She exclaims as Mai's led away, still smiling.
Mai looks down. Not even and insta handle or a website. That's Takada Nobuku's real number.
Her heart beats loudly in her chest as she leaves the mall, walking calmly down a white staircase, past the shops and restaurants. She steps out into the streets and presses the number to her chest before slipping it into her purse.
Todo's gonna be so jealous.
Mai doesn't tell Todo about Takada's number, obviously, because she's not an idiot and she actually likes Takada-san and wants her to enjoy however much peace of mind an idol can manage to wrangle. Probably not much more than a jujutsu sorcerer.
Also because Todo sucks and Mai likes to see him miserable. If she has to hear him talk about liking tall women with big asses one more fucking time she might just go ahead and manifest a bullet in his head.
Anyways. She keeps the number for a few weeks before seriously trying to do anything with it. Not because she's worried about a response — if Takada gave Mai her number, then she wants Mai to text her.
It's more like, Mai doesn't have a lot of room for new people in her life. She's got jujutsu and the other people in her school and she's got Maki and the rest of her family to deal with, and that's kind of where it ends. Her mom keeps getting on her case about getting a boyfriend, but Mai is busy. She not Maki, gunning to take over the whole clan, but still. Busy.
So she takes her time. Her fingers hover over her keyboard. How are you? Is plain and stupid. Did you day go well? Also uninspired. How many stupid men annoyed you today? True but probably not the best foot to get off on.
In the end, she settles for, Did you make anything new today?
Three minutes later she receives a picture of a matcha cake with chocolate glazing. Mai's eyes go wide, but she keeps her reaction muted: just a little heart. She could never manage to cook anything. Neither could Maki. Another one of their many tandem failures.
Mai texts her asking for the recipe, and receives a string of instructions with way too many exclamation marks. She has to put her phone down out of embarrassment, her heart beating too fast in her test when she checks it. She makes herself focus by repeating jujutsu techniques, one after another, everything she's learned and everything she knows and especially the things she doesn't.
After digging through a bowl of soba for dinner, she finally checks her texts ago. She lays down in her bed, kicking off her slipping and settling into the sheets. She turned on her lights and told herself to go to sleep.
She checks her phone again, lets it fall against her chest. She smiles.
Mai's in class when she gets a text. Stupid to leave her notifications on: as soon as her phone rings, Todo turns around to raise an eyebrow. Even Miwa looks a bit confused, and Miwa's as nonjudgemental as they come.
Mai flips Todo off, ignores Miwa and her phone. She doesn't check it until she's home again, a cup of tea in hand as she overlooks Kyoto's sunny skyline.
Mai-chan! Do you want to meet up for conveyor-belt sushi this week? I have time Thursday afternoon.
Mai's hands felt unnaturally shaky. She wondered if the jujutsu technique she's learned in class today had somehow affected her more than she thought.
yes that works, Mei sent back. Within a few seconds she had the exact date, time, and reservation. She blinked at her screen. The restaurant wasn't even that far away. Did Takada know where she lived? Was this some kind of scam? No way and idol wanted to have sushi with her. Mai was great, but she wasn't, well – special.
Still, it'll be nice. Maybe it would do her good to talk to someone who wasn't a jujutsu sorcerer.
On Thursday evening Mai stands in front of her closet, hands on her hips. She only brought a few outfits when she left home, outside her school uniform. A sparkling red skirt and a black velvet halter top. A shimmery white dress that just touched her knees. A dark blue blazer with a white undershirt and black dress pants.
She picks the blazer, and it's only when she's standing outside the door of the sushi restaurant that she remembers this is probably supposed to be a casual meeting.
But she stills stands there for a bit, deliberating. Until she turns, and there's the clack of heels behind her. Takada, dressed in a knee length blue-velvet dress with a slit up the thigh, one that sparkles like the night sky when she moves.
"You look–" Mai swallows. "Nice."
"Mai-chan!" Takada exclaims, wrapping her in a hug. "Thank you for coming. I know you must be busy with school," she says, which is a crazy thing for an idol of all people to say. From the amount of events that Todo yammers about, Mai's pretty sure Takada has a chock-full schedule. "Oh, I forgot to ask what you study? What extra-curriculars do you do?"
"Uh," Mai stumbles. "Martial arts." Jujutsu kind of is.
"Woah," Takada says. "You know, I took karate when I was young. I was good at it, but I had to stop for my," she sighs, "Physique." She looks down at her body. Mai doesn't know what to say. She looks gorgeous – if that's your thing, that is. Tall, busty, beautiful eyes, full lips. But the way she looks at her body is one Mai recognises. She's seen it in the mirror enough times. It's the look you give your body when you aren't quite sure if it's yours anymore, if it's been used so much to serve some kind of purpose you aren't even sure you care for that it ceases to be for you in the first place.
"That sucks," Mai says before she can think to stop herself. "Besides, girls look good with muscles," She looks down at her own arms. She's had a number of family members tell her she needs to focus on slimming down, looking less bulky. But if she did that she wouldn't be as strong, and she'd like to not die from a curse at age sixteen.
"They really do," Takada says, and Mai nearly falls over in shock as Takada takes her hand and runs a finger up her arm. "Especially you," she says, voice low, and Mai–
Mai's never been stupid. She knows– she knows who she is. How she feels about women. How she doesn't feel about men. But she's never– she's a Zen'in. She's not allowed to be – she's not allowed to look at the dip of Takada's dress and let her gaze linger. Or think about taking it off. Of waking up next to her and kissing her neck until she wakes up. That sort of thing is allowed for other people, but not Mai.
"I–" Mai can feel herself go red. A squeaky, "Thanks," is all she manages. "Do you– do you want to get sushi?" She says, and Takada looks at her a bit longer before nodding.
They sit down in a booth in a corner, the conveyor belt rolling next to Mai. It's not really romantic, or special, but the lighting's low and the place is quieter than conveyor belt sushi usually is. Mai feels her stomach swoop, then rolls her eyes at herself. She's such an idiot.
Takada is too busy ordering possibly every type of sushi to ever exist on the screen. She's already poured herself and Mai a cup of matcha tea. Every few seconds she'll ask Mai if she likes a type of sushi, and if Mai nods she adds two extra of the order.
"You know," she says, frowning, "My favourite sushi isn't actually goatfish." Mai isn't sure how this is relevant, but she's pretty sure Todo's mentioned it before. "I'm not even sure why I said it was." She pauses, frowning, puts her chin in her hand. "It's actually tempura yam." Then she shrugs, and fires off the order. She must take in Mai's confused look, because she pauses before continuing. Sighs, and pushes a hand up into her hair, undoing the hair clip that's been keeping it up. It falls down long and luscious over her bare shoulders, and Mai– okay, Mai can admit she's staring.
She's still staring when Takada looks up at her with big gleaming eyes and says, "I guess what I'm trying to say is like, a lot of the things about me are made up. Like, my job can be fun, but– the person everyone loves isn't me. I don't pick my favourite food, I don't pick my dresses, I don't pick who I get to date– it's just." She sighs. "Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you all this. But you're the first person I've met through my job that I actually want to keep seeing, so I thought you should know."
Mai pauses, taking that in.
"You know why I first went to your events, right?" Takada shakes her head.
"My friend bought me a ticket." Takada frowns. Mai waves a hand. "He's weird. And kind of not my friend. Anyways, I didn't really know who you were outside of that. You're just– another person to me." Takada smiles brightly at that, and just then their dishes whizz in, little plates of soba and cuttlefish and yam tempura.
Shopping?? Takada sends, followed by three pleading face emojis. Mai has resolve, but three emojis is enough to make her wonder if she should skip hanging out with Todo at whatever dumbass party he's going to, convinced that it'll impress Takada-chan when he finally gets to talk to her for more than five minutes.
On second thought, she's definitely skipping that one. She texts Takada a when & where? in response, and received about sixteen hearts before getting the actual location they're supposed to be meeting at.
Takada's already there when Mai arrives, wrapping her in a hug as soon as they meet. "Don't — ah, okay," Mai says, feeling kind of awkward just standing there, like she doesn't know what to do with her hands. The last person who she hugged was Maki, years ago.
But Takada doesn't seem affected by her lacklustre response, just gives her a smile, grabs her hands and pulls her towards the dresses section.
"This one would look so good on you!" She says, pulling out a glimmering red velvet dress with a plunging neckline. She holds it up against Mai. "It'd look good on you. Really show off your shoulders, they're so nice. And you're-" Her eyes flicker down to Mai's chest for a second, and then back up. It takes Mai a second to realise that Takada's blushing. "Ah, uh, nevermind!" She says.
Mai feels a flutter in the pit of her stomach. On instinct, she steps forwards to grab the dress. She's close now, close enough that the toes of her shoes touch Takada's.
"Do you want to see me in it?" She says, and watches Takada go bright red this time.
Mai doesn't miss the way Takada's eyes linger over her figure when she steps out of the dressing stall. Normally, she's doesn't like when people look at her like that; men in her family assessing her marriage value, her mother fussing with her clothes so she looks 'proper', men leering at her on the subway — but when Takada looks at her, she finds she doesn't mind.
"Should I get it?" She says, turning around to give Takada a view from the back.
"Ah— uh-huh," Takada says, sounding not entirely there with Mai. Mai checks over her shoulder, grinning to herself. Crazy. Takada has a way nicer ass than she does, but still, it's nice to feel appreciated.
"I'll get it for you," Takada says, taking the dress out of her hands once Mai's stepped out of the stall, and Mai's too dumbstruck to protest.
After shopping they go back to Mai's place, for the first time. She unlocks the door and lets Takada in, shoulders curving in. She's suddenly embarrased at the thought of Takada seeing her place. Mai's apartment with white walls and simple appliances, the mark of impermanence, a lack of personality she'd always had in comparaison to Maki. Takada was bright. Mai had seen her place – decked in posters of places she wanted to go, painting she liked, her room full of concert ticket stubs and boarding passes. She had those dumb mugs with slogans in English like World's Best Dad! and pictures of hamburgers on them. There had been a curse in her pantry that was moulding her sushi rice, and Mai spent a full half-hour trying to figure out if there was a way to explain jujutsu without sounding insane. At some point, she gave up, said fuck it, told Takada everything, and demonstrated by exorcising her extremely minor pantry curse.
Takada had stared at her, eyes wide, and said, "You are so cool." Mai still blushes thinking about it.
All that taken into account, see Mai's apartment shouldn't matter that much. But she still feels oddly exposed.
"Uh, well, here's my place, Takada-chan."
"You can call me Nobuku, you know," She says, and Mai smiles. Then she turns to eying Mai's place critically.
"You could use some colour here, I think," she says, wrinkling her nose and setting down the dress gently. Mai mostly misses what she says next about complementary colours and interior design because she's too busy staring at Takada — Nobuku.
"Mai-chan, are you listening?" Nobuku says, and Mai snaps too attention.
"Sorry, you're just— so beautiful," she says, and that's not really the right word. Nobuku is bright, bringing colour into Mai's life.
She blushes as soon as she realises she's said it, but Nobuku's blushing too. After a few seconds she ask, "Can I kiss you?"
Mai stares around at her blank appartment that she's probably going to be painting in the next few weeks. Thinks of sushi and shopping dates, late nights spent watching bad game shows (Nobukus choice) and crime dramas (Mai), the time they'd gotten a bottle of sake and spent all night lying on top of each other, Nobuku's skin hot against hers, whispering secrets in her collarbone.
Mai nods so fast it hurts her head a bit. She looks up at Nobuku's eyes, and she steps in for the kiss.