Chapter Text
When Yuta finally tugged his cellphone from his pants pocket after it had gone off three times in ten minutes during morning drills, he wasn’t expecting to see Hana’s name decorating his notification ribbon.
Oh no.
Six missed text messages, one voice note, and three missed calls.
He could barely get that girl to respond to one legitimate question over text – woes of having an eighteen year old sister – and yet, here she was, blowing him up since eight in the morning.
Hana was never up at eight. Too early, she’d bitch and moan when their mother would try to wake her for school. This was especially true now that it was holidays and her school had let out for summer break.
Shit. Was she okay?
“H-hey guys, give me a second. Gotta make a quick call. Inumaki, count them out until Sensei Gojo returns.” Yuta threw over his shoulder as he jogged off the field towards the bleachers.
“Salmon.” Was the last thing he heard before pulling his sword off his back and tossing it off into the field.
The phone was already ringing from his end before he collapsed with a light huff on the bleachers. He leaned forward, back tight with anxiety as the phone rang four, five times, before he heard her voice on the other end.
“Yuta? What the fuck! Did you not see my texts and calls? I’ve been calling for hours!”
Yuta cringed, pulling the phone just slightly away from his ear when Hana’s tone projected too loudly through the speaker.
His sister had a sailor’s mouth.
It’d been something that’d started up around her twelfth birthday and had increased in increments every year. She never did it in front of their parents, fuck no, but Yuta was always fair game.
And being the good big brother he was, he took it. Never snitched. Most days.
He’d just laugh when she’d call him a jackass over a rare phone call or smile at a text that had ‘cunt’ spelt every which way but properly.
He didn’t mind. He missed her. He was just happy to hear from her whenever she found a moment between shopping, boys, and whatever extracurricular had her attention that week.
He’d been seventeen when Satoru Gojo recruited him to Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School – a boarding school, a world unto itself, the kind of place that swallowed your adolescence whole and handed you back unrecognizable in return.
He’d graduated at the top of his class, been categorized as special grade, and transitioned seamlessly into the adjacent wing of the same campus – the Jujutsu Advanced Institute, or Kōtō-ka as the upper classmen called it.
The Institute was less a new chapter than a continuation of the same one, just with harder coursework, a different dormitory block, and the slowly solidifying understanding that this was not just a phase of his life anymore.
This was what it was now. At least he’d come out with a healthy group of friends along the way.
“I’m sorry Hana, I’ve been running examination drills all morning with first and second years,”
He ran a hand through his dark hair that was still semi-damp from the first set of instructions that sensei Gojo had outlined.
Felt a bit cruel having to do it under an unforgiving July sun, but Yuta wouldn’t complain. He never did.
He would be a fourth year come September, so mentoring would be a part of his course load. Expected. So, he might as well get used to it, now.
“Yeah, yeah, if it’s not the never ending drills, you’re away for weeks, sometimes months on assignment. I still don’t one hundred percent get what you guys do at that school…”
There was a faint sound of a zipper opening from Hana’s end and the clattering of what he could only assume was makeup or skincare product. Her recent fixation, according to their mother.
“Better that way, Hana. Trust me.”
Yuta's eyes drifted back to the second years who were getting into exam formation. He heard his sister scoff under her breath and the faint pop of a cap being freed on her end.
“Always a martyr. Anyways, I didn’t call to complain that you don’t write home or whatever. I was calling because…”
Hana paused and Yuta noticed the hesitation behind it. He pressed the phone closer to his ear. She was whispering now, “…I’m worried about y/n.”
Yuta straightened. He knew that name.
He’d grown up with y/n, being that she was Hana’s childhood best friend and in her grade. She used to live next door before moving in middle school. Yuta had enrolled at Jujutsu Tech the following year.
He knew y/n and Hana had always kept contact.
Distance made the heart grow fonder as his sister would say.
When the two girls got older, they began taking transit to see each other on weekends, school study days, holidays, and still regularly had sleepovers at one another’s house. They were inseparable.
It was pretty cute to Yuta. He liked knowing Hana wasn’t lonely or missing him, or worse, stuck with their melancholic parents or getting in trouble out of straight boredom.
Y/n had her own way of kinda keeping Hana in check – and he was grateful for it.
Last Hana had told him at Christmas when he’d made the rare trip home for the holidays, was that y/n and she were going to apply for the same colleges in January, hoping to land in the same program for the fall.
She’d gone on and on about how they were going to be roommates and go out partying, drinking, and sneaking boys into their dorm.
He felt himself go rigid at the last few things mentioned but, he offered his sister a polite smile regardless.
“I’m sure you two will have a lot of fun,” was all he'd been able to manage after her little speech.
No matter what, no one could say that Yuta wasn’t happy for his little sister.
He was extremely fucking happy for her and elated even, that she wasn’t the Okkotsu who had to exchange normalcy for a life of exorcising curses and trying to cheat death.
“What are you worried about Han? Is she okay?”
Yuta signaled five more minutes to Inumaki who had shouted tuna mayo from the other side of the field with both hands in the air.
“Ugh, I dunno Yuu… it’s a long story. Basically, remember that college event that was happening in Tokyo? The one hosted by the school me and y/n got into?”
“Yeah, of course. You were so excited to spend a night in the city with her and attend the event. Did… something go wrong?”
“Wrong is a fucking understatement. We ran into Sota. You remember Sota? Y/n’s boyfriend?” He listened to Hana rummage through a drawer over the speaker.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Okay well, he is not her boyfriend anymore. He was supposed to meet us after the event and he never showed. Then we fucking find out from Hima that he was fucking some slut from the all-girls school in Shiogama.”
He hears Hana drop something on the floor. It clatters away and Yuta imagines it’s probably a nail polish bottle, if he knew his sister.
She mumbles a sharp fuck it’s everywhere which basically confirms his theory.
But man, y/n got cheated on? That really sucked. She’d always been a sweet girl whenever he hung around the pair.
His sister’s shadow, as their mom would put it.
She had been so kind whenever she’d come to their house. Which was often, back then. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, she was a valued regular.
Hell, come to think of it, y/n even had her own plateware at their house.
He liked her, she was super sweet. He hated to think she was going through it right now.
This news didn’t come as a surprise to Yuta. Hana and her friend had been in a boy-crazy phase for about three years now.
He wasn’t particularly fond of this new development with his little sister and her friend.
But, he did take some comfort in knowing y/n had a long term boyfriend all throughout high school.
So, at least Hana wasn’t being influenced to sleep around like most students at her school – according to Hana.
“Oh, no. That’s… that’s terrible. How is y/n holding up?”
“Obviously not fucking good Yuta, God.”
Hana exhaled sharply into the speaker making it crackle on his end. He winced and pulled the phone back slightly. Hana loved her brother dearly but fuck, did she really have to always spell it out for him.
Like, hello?!
“So… what does this have to do with me? Do you need me to like, I don’t know, kick his ass or—
“No, you fucking idiot. I didn’t finish my story. Shut up. So, basically, and don’t be mad… but we went to a frat party on campus… I just thought it’d be a good way for her to like, forget, you know?”
“Hana…tell me you weren’t drinking.”
Yuta slouched into the bench, hand rising to tug at the roots of his hair like he could tear the disappointment he felt from his brain.
Hana was going to be the death of him. Not a special grade curse. Her. His civilian baby sister.
“Of course we were drinking, it’s a college party, Yuta. Anyways…” He closed his eyes slowly and inhaled a quiet but intentional, deep breath.
“She got really, really drunk. This college guy was like all over her, and she was feeling it at first, but then he said something to her and I dunno…”
Hana sighed into the speaker.
“I think it reminded her of Sota and she literally took off. I followed her out of the fraternity house and she was, like, crying, and yelling, super emotional… I tried to comfort her while we cut through an alley. Ugh, I definitely said the wrong thing and then she just…”
“…just?” Yuta dragged out, confused as fuck as to where his sister was going with this.
“I dunno Yuta. She… went to, like, catch her breath and lean on the brick wall in the alley. It was so dark. I honestly thought I fucking imagined it, it happened so fast and I –
“What is it, Hana? I really have to get back to my class.”
“She fucking fell through the brick wall.”
Silence.
He heard his sister exhale softly, but that was it. She didn’t say another word.
“She… fell… through the brick wall?” Yuta leaned forward slowly, eye brows creased with interest now.
Did he hear that correctly?
“Yeah, she disappeared. Fell into, like, the shadow of the brick wall. And then stumbled back out like nothing. I basically threw up. It scared the fuck outta me, Yuu.” He heard her blow air on the other end of the line.
She was painting her nails.
She was telling her brother that her best friend fell through a fucking brick wall, and she was painting her nails.
“She tried again and low and behold, she could put her whole fucking arm through the brick wall and pull it back out. Anyways, we both spent the rest of the night crying. Fucked up right?”
“Hana, I-I have so many questions, I – where is she, now?”
“She’s here. Downstairs. Eating… listen, I’m only calling you because weird shit happened to you too before you found out you had, like, super powers or something,”
Hana rose from her vanity chair and crept to her bedroom door. She cracked it open and listened, ensuring y/n was still downstairs.
Y/n didn’t know about Yuta or his abilities.
As far as she knew, Yuta switched to an all-boys boarding school after the bullying at his school got so bad. You know, after the whole Orimoto Rika thing...
“I’m not saying the same thing is happening to y/n but you told me before that the stuff you’d been going through was because of an abundance of negativity. I just figured in this particular situation, you might be the best person to… call. Since she’s like, obviously super negative right now.”
Yuta listened earnestly for another ten minutes, even ignoring Inumaki who was pretty much doing a contemporary dance to flag the sorcerer's attention from halfway across the field.
Five more minutes, Yuta had signaled again pressing his hands together in prayer, begging his friend for a morsel more of grace while he dealt with… whatever the fuck was going on with his sister’s best friend.
Yuta got off the phone not much later, promising to call her back later that night when he’d consulted his Sensei, Satoru Gojo.
He would know what to do.
Gojo was the best person to assess the situation and determine whether y/n and his sister Hana had just drank too much and were super wasted, imagining the whole fucking ordeal.
Or, if there was actually something cursed related happening to his sister’s best friend.
So, imagine Yuta’s surprise when Gojo took a trip to Sendai later that week and returned with a wide smile and an overly excited ‘congratulations! She’s cursed’.
Yuta was floored. Who would’ve thought sweet y/n would end up having a fuck-ton (Gojo’s words) of cursed energy and super weird shadow technique?
“She‘ll enroll with us in the fall. Let her enjoy her last summer of normal. Your sister is pissed by the way – she was looking forward to rooming up with her at the University of Tokyo.”
Gojo leaned back on the couch in his private quarters on campus. He took a long, obnoxious gulp of bubble tea.
He grinned right after, ahh, falling from his lips as he glanced back at Yuta, who of course, looked very concerned.
“I-Is she scared?” Yuta slouched against the wall, kicking away nothing at his feet.
He remembered how terrified he’d been when Gojo had come into his life at the beginning.
Although, he was sure being sentenced to an execution made it scarier.
“Hana? No, she’s pissed. Y/n? Also no. She took it rather easy. She had more questions about the types of courses she’d be taking at the Advanced Institute.”
He paused, sucking up another gulp of bubble tea.
“She’ll make friends easily, I’m sure. Might be tough getting her adjusted since she’s coming in raw but we’ll mentor her. Get her as close to par as the other incoming first years who’ve graduated Jujutsu Tech.”
Yuta nodded, pushing off the wall. Gojo was right. It might be hard to get her adjusted.
She didn’t have the formal ‘jujutsu high school’ training to fall back on, but he would help her out. He’d make sure she didn’t fall behind.
Plus, he knew the other graduates who were starting their first year in the advanced institute would help her out, too.
They were all good friends. Super close. Yuji, Megumi, Nobara…
It would be fine. She’d be fine. She wasn’t alone, no matter how fucked up and confusing the situation probably was for her. At least she knew a familiar face.
Him.
He was absolutely certain everything would be fine…