Chapter Text
The sun had been absent all day, but an hour before classes ended the downpour started. It was that persistent kind of rain that drove up indoor club attendance and left clusters of students scattered throughout the building. Marin skirted her way around a rowdy group of girls that blocked most of the hallway to find Wakana Gojo standing between the nearest of the locker banks.
Marin leaned against the corner to watch him, the girls that she had passed by were behind her talking about a tree that looked like a guy they knew. None of it made sense to Marin, but it was hard to keep it from bleeding over into her thoughts. Her alternative was to focus on Gojo frozen next to his locker with his arms down at his sides.
For the last two and a half weeks Gojo had been wearing casts, one for his wrist and the other for his hand, both of which had been broken in the same incident. Marin’s heart sank as she thought of his last two classes of the day; it was easy for her to photocopy notes for him the classes that they shared. A few days ago she had forgotten that a game she pre-ordered had dropped. That had never happened before.
It just slipped her mind.
After everything he had done to level-up her cosplay she didn’t think twice about dedicating any time she could to him. She spent her lunches with Gojo and, on days when she could catch him, she walked home with him. Today seemed to be one of those days since the rain had hindered him.
Even if he had an umbrella there was no way he could hold it.
She approached him with caution, trying to survey exactly what he was doing. Maybe she would catch a hint at how he really felt about his broken hands. Or about her. There was no way that she could see his face from this angle. Gojo didn’t hear her from what she could tell and if he had, he made no effort to let her know. He just stared through the plate-glass doors. The thick condensation on the glass had turned the outside into a muted watercolor painting.
As the full scope of it came into view it certainly caused Marin to stop. It was the same view as always, but the dream-like appearance of the courtyard and front street with Gojo’s sharp silhouette in the foreground reminded her of the cover of some emotion driven theatrical anime. The kind that got heaps of praise in the West only to lose the Best Animation Oscar to a Disney movie about singing pets.
From where she had stopped Marin could read the bubbly marui-ji hiragana of her that made up her name on the longer of his two casts. Of course, she had signed them both. Sajuna and Shinju‘s signatures were close together and there were a smattering of some people from their class that had signed in clumps here and there.
Marin took a few more steps toward him and the white noise of the conversations taking place around them melted away. Her fingers pressed into her palm, her nails biting at her skin. The vein running through her wrist and over the threshold into her hand thudded in syn with the pounding of her heart. She swallowed once, took a deep breath and then continued forward.
She wished that she could blame altruism or even thinking that his injury was her fault for her eagerness to help Gojo. The truth was that she would take any excuse to be around him. All of this time that they had been working on cosplays and photography together had been great, but in those situations, she worried that it might cause him to feel like a simple tool that she could use when she needed. Marin wanted to help Gojo and if she got to spend time with him and let him know what he meant to her maybe something would come of it.
Still, she didn’t want to assume that was what Gojo wanted. He had been slightly more standoffish lately, which isn’t to even say that he was rude, but it made Marin wonder if he blamed her too.
“Hey-a, Gojo,” she raised a hand to wave, her hips rocking side-to-side so that her legs collided with the inside of her skirt like the clapper of a bell. “Do you want me to walk with you today?”
“Hm, oh. Kitagawa. You snuck up on me there.” The time spent in the casts had already changed his mannerisms to some degree. She imagined him running a hand back through his hair nervously, but the weight of both his arms must have been a constant reminder of how that would look.
“I think I might wait out this rain,” he said turning to look out the window once more. Marin could see the redness in his cheeks. “You know, you’ve probably got stuff to do and I wouldn’t want to be a burden.”
“You’re not a burden at all,” Marin said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.
Gojo shrugged, his backpack straps slipped and threatened to slide off of his body. “I can manage—” Marin took a long-legged step toward him and caught the bag. She straightened it out on his body and moved around in front of him to adjust the straps. Her reaction was enough to cut him off mid-sentence.
“I don’t have anything going on,” she said.
Despite the twenty centimeters that he had on her, Gojo seemed shorter. It was as if something had shrunken the lovable lankiness out of him. This close to him, even when he felt smaller, there was a kind of danger. The smell of him, this kind of fragrant body wash or spray that she couldn’t place, and the warmth radiating out of his clothes and right into her. Marin felt like she could lose control and say or do the wrong thing.
She patted the spot where his chest and arm met, right over the strap of the backpack. “Besides, I don’t want you to get all wet—you didn’t bring an umbrella, did you?”
Wakana Gojo shifted his weight to one side and turned to look out the doors. His direct line of sight was just out of reach of Marin’s eyes. There was no telling what he was looking at, Gojo had a way of seeing the world; he was a romantic. Not in the way she would have used it, but in the way that historians described old French painters and composers.
The girls that Marin had passed earlier emerged from the corridor, moving in a loose cluster toward the doors. Their noise wafted over the metal locker bank between them, taking on this slight, muffled quality.
Marin waited for them to exit out into the rain. They hugged the wall near the building to avoid getting wet, but as watching them gave her an idea.
“Either you can walk with me or you’re taking the umbrella to keep you dry. Your grandpa asked me to look after you, so if you arrive at home without me or with my umbrella and he sees—”
“Grandpa is away right now he…” Gojo caught himself, his words trailed off into stuttering.
Marin’s eyes went wide and she slapped her hands to her cheeks. “You were going to be home alone? How were you planning to eat?”
“I was just going to order something.”
“No way, I’m coming home with you and I’ll cook—”
Gojo cut her off. “Eh, why don’t I just order out for both of us. It can be a thank you for everything that you’ve done for me.” He had protested a little too much at first, waving his casted hands out in front of him before remembering that he was even injured.
Marin wondered what that was about.
“You can walk home with me,” he said finally.
Marin watched his dark eyes, her hand clutched the shoulder strap of her bag right above her breast. The two of them were still so close together, she could feel his breath brush past her. She tried to focus on a safe spot and just look past him at the doors. He would still know she is paying attention, but it might at least keep her from blushing. Was she blushing right now? She couldn’t tell and not being able to tell definitely made her cheeks redden.
It was some kind of causal loop of blushing.
Shit.
His eyes were too soft and kind. She needed to make sure she didn’t look into them; standing in the hall the way they were was already more than Marin could handle. Why did these feelings wash over her in waves like this?
“Um, Kitagawa,” Gojo said. “The storm’s let up some.” He leaned out and waved the dark blue cast past her vision to get her attention.
“Oh, we could go for it now,” Gojo said.
“Ha, right.” Marin answered.
On instinct they exited through the doors furthest from the rowdy girls and Marin made sure to hold the door for Gojo. She opened her umbrella, it was a lavender color with chibi-style characters from Flower Princess Blaze patterned across it in different poses.
They left the school grounds together, still pressed too close beneath the cover of her umbrella. Outside of the gate and around the corner, as the were headed toward the station, they walked by the cherry blossom tree at the corner of the school’s perimeter.
Many of its petals and leaves had been flattened into the sidewalk by the driving rain earlier, but the combination of the rain with them caused a steamy sweet smell to hover between the ground and the tree.
The walk and the train ride were quiet, but as they were getting off Gojo muttered something as he checked for people waiting to get into the train. “The doctor said my X-Rays came out great. I’m healing up nicely, apparently.”
“That’s awesome. The sooner that you’re better the sooner that I can get back to not spending day and night fretting over whether you’re okay.”
Gojo stopped and stared at her. Marin slapped her hands over her mouth to keep anymore from getting out. The strip of skin running over Gojo’s cheeks and nose darkened in embarrassment.
How could she have said that? Where did it even come from? She wasn’t fretting over him, she was trying to help.
“You really don’t have to worry so much about me.”
Marin lowered her hands. “But I do?”
Dammit, why couldn’t she stop herself?
“I mean, I’m a bit of a caregiver when it comes to certain situations,” her voice became tiny.
“I don’t mind it. I just don’t want you overdoing it,” he said.
Gojo had the nerve to say this to her; he was the one who had run himself ragged in secret without so much as asking her if she needed him to.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” It was the easiest thing to say and, Marin thought, probably the safest way to navigate her way out of this entire line of inquiry.
Come on Marin, you’ve been training for this all your life. Just pretend like you’re playing a high-stakes dating sim, no save scumming, no Life is Strange time rewinds—just say the lines that are least likely to embarrass you or cause you to go rambling off on some emboldened tangent like a lovesick Genki Girl.
They had to jog to his door as the rain intensified, it had even managed to catch the umbrella just right to turn it inside out and get them soaked. Gojo fished the key out of his pocket. Even Marin wasn’t brave enough to help with that. She watched him as he fumbled to unlock the door.
“Let me see,” she said.
He handed the key over and stepped aside to let her open the door. The house was silent, but not the nobody’s home kind. She only understood after they slipped out of their shoes and Gojo tried the light switch.
“Power’s out,” he said.
“I guess either of us cooking was out of the question,” Marin forced a giggle as she twisted the droplets of rain out of her hair.
“There plenty of candles in the kitchen,” Gojo said as he struck off through the house.
“Can I borrow one of your towels?” Marin asked as she followed behind him. He pointed to a sliding closet door in the hallway as he passed and she moved it aside and grabbed a neatly folded towel to finish with her hair.
Just like all the other times before her weird behavior passed. They sat surrounded by candles in the living room eating take out curry and listening to the pitter-patter of rain on the windows and roof. There was an aura of something romantic to it, but the flowers, heart-shaped boxes of candy, bubble baths together kind.
The thought of bathing together made her heart race. Marin really needed to keep doujins and real life separated in her head. She shoveled another ball of curry covered noodles into her mouth as a distraction.
And it worked.
They sat in conversation, a more natural back and forth than she could remember them having. She was explaining a kind of dating sim with tactical battles set in a fantasy world with kings and dragons. She did this a lot. Marin had a habit of over explaining everything she was interested in. No matter how deep her lore-spirals got, Gojo always listened intently.
They had finished their plates and the rain was worse. The sky had darkened to the point that the golden flicker of the candles was the only light. It was well into the night, but she supposed that it didn’t matter what time it was when she got home.
Maybe she should have left before, but then she remembered the weather. She wasn’t sure how she could forget the thing she was hearing. In the middle of describing weapon types to him when she yawned.
Marin hadn’t lied before about thinking about him all of the time. She knew it was dumb, he still had partial use of his hands and he was good with his hands—that even sounded lewd in her head.
Where was she again? Right, weapon types. Axes were shit and everyone knew swords were boring, but they always had the most variety. Two characters using opposing weapon types could protect each other which made them grow closer, but two characters with the same weapon type gained a relationship bonus just by being near each other.
Why wasn’t she hearing her own voice? The darkness that had been kept at bay by the candles was now darkness itself. Marin wrestled with a terrifying thought: when was the last time she said something out loud? She had thought all of that just now.
Wait, did she fall asleep?
It had happened seamlessly, she must have been thinking instead of speaking and passed out. Gojo was proven right, she had made herself so tired by staying up worrying.
Then another terrifying thought: where was she right now?
What if she was laying on Gojo drooling or something and breathing her curry breath in his face? Marin tried pinching herself and even slapping her own face. She tried yelling, but she was yelling inside of a dream in her own head. Maybe Gojo would wake her up and send her home, she thought.
But she knew that was the last thing he would do, even she hadn’t fallen asleep on him, he would probably cover her up with a blanket and then watch over her to make sure she was fine.
Aw, the thought of Gojo watching her sleep was so sweet that she almost forgot the nightmare scenario that she had gotten herself in. Marin needed to wake up. She walked in quick circles around the darkness that she found herself stuck in, slapping her face and praying that it would work.
Then she remembered how much water she had. She hadn’t used the restroom since before last period! What if she peed all over him and his couch like some kind of excited puppy.
No way she would ever recovery from that. It was life ending. World ending, honestly. She needed to be awake and now.