Chapter Text
Tokyo had always been the dream, of course. Glamourous fashion mags like Popeye and Men’s Non-No, boutiques in Harajuku and Asakusa, up-and-coming designers and exotic models. It’s the it destination as far as Japanese fashion is concerned, beating out Osaka and Fukuoka hands-down.
Yuuji never really expected to make it there. Not with his homely Sendai education and lack of personal connections and Gramps, getting sicker and sicker with each passing year and eating up more of his attention. But without a serious club (Occult Research was fun, but it was a joke and everyone knew it) he has time on his hands. Time to sit in his small tatami-floored room at his Grandma’s old Bernina
and churn out the designs that come to him in the early hours of the morning. Strange asymmetrical pieces that pull the eye in odd ways, funky finery puffed up by thick tulle trim, sophisticated suiting that includes just a hint of whimsey. He never met Grandma, but he’s thankful to her for the gift of her sewing machine; just as he is to Youtube for teaching him how to work it. It earns him a place in the Designer program at Sendai U, just as Gramps kicks the bucket and Yuuji suddenly finds himself with more free time than he’d ever dreamed of. Time he fills with making clothes and scrolling through fashion blogs and following models on Instagram.
It’s Prof Ieiri who gets him the interview with the small, fashion-forward designer house in Tokyo, who helps him lay out his portfolio.
“Your designs have a quality approaching brilliance,” she tells him. “But they’re not always accessible. If you can get a spot in Tokyo, success will require finding a model who can pull off your looks. That will be a challenge for you – the best models only work with the best designers; they throw only scraps to the greenhorns. You’ll have to find a way to earn recognition, Yuuji.”
“Yes, sensei.”
“Think about what it is you want. And don’t let go until you get it.”
He nods. “Got it, sensei.”
***
Jujutsu is a small fashion house; just the owner, two senior designers, and two other junior designers besides himself. It’s avant-garde but not overly so, imagination but not without limits. They’re based in the twisting back-streets of Harajuku, a store-front on the ground floor and the design space upstairs. Only the two senior designers take commissions; the junior staff design for sale and show, but primarily for sale.
Yuuji learns all these things as he’s escorted through the house by Zen’in Maki, one of the two senior designers. She’s straight-backed and no-nonsense, her dark green hair twisted in a strict up-do and secured with a pencil. She has a fabulous figure, long and lithe, that would be excellent for showing off streamlined designs. But there’s something stiff about her face that Yuuji suspects would tank a modelling career.
Maki (“We’re all on a first-name basis here”) shows him through the downstairs shop first, an open, airy space with rustic streaky white paint and naked steel clothes racks holding a riot of dresses and suits, skirts and jeans and blouses. There are modernist white cubes to act as seats and tall grey-framed mirrors spaced strategically around the room to allow customers to consider the designs against themselves.
The rickety staircase at the back behind the register leads to the second-storey work-space, and where the first floor was spacious and bright it’s cramped and almost Victorian in style. The walls are a dark grey with white accents which might have been considered modern at one time but now which simply makes the space dark. There are wide heavy wood tables with shelves below holding rolls and bolts of fabric, as well as scissors and measuring sticks and cutting boards. There are sewing machines, and sergers, and thick fashion books and sleek magazines.
And there are the other designers. Zen’in Mai, Maki’s twin, is the other senior designer. She has an angled bob and a sharp, critical look to her and while her figure is as good as her twin’s something in the way she carries herself is predatory rather than supple. Yuuji makes a note not to get on either of their bad sides. Kugisaki Nobara is more homely in comparison, sitting cursing at a Singer machine as she tries to sew sequins onto oyster-coloured satin; she gives him a curt “Yeah – hi,” that Yuuji easily interprets as go die in a small hole. And finally there’s Fushiguro Megumi, who despite his name is a guy, sprawled long and leggy in the window with a cup of coffee and a sketch pad on his knee. He merely nods at Yuuji, then goes back to his sketch. It’s done in charcoal and is old-fashioned, with a hint of 1950s Vogue to it.
“Nobara and Megumi both do primarily women’s designs. That’s part of the reason we brought you on board; we needed someone to round out the male side of things. Although not exclusively – it’s still expected that you can help out with whatever, as needed,” Maki says pointedly. He nods.
“Sure; no problem.”
“We’re all pretty up in each other’s business around here, so I hope you don’t mind a crowd. Space is at a premium, obviously, so we expect you to be a team player about the equipment. We usually have four sewing machines but one’s busted right now so it’s a bit tight. I’ll let you speak to Yaga-san about your monthly quotas and promotional material, but the volume and the quality of the work is high. If your stuff is good enough, Yaga-san may talk to you about getting it featured in our house magazine, or another publication – but don’t start dreaming of big things yet. It’s hard to break out in this industry.”
He nods, careful to keep his expression open and eager. This is his big chance and they both know it.
“Okay then. You can start with some sketches. When you’ve got a few ready bring them to me or Mai and we’ll decide if they’re ready to move to the next stage. Oh, and make sure you take a few back-issues of our house magazine home with you so you get a vibe for our style – that will help you target your work to our tastes.”
“Right. Thanks, Maki-san.”
“Mmhm.” She leaves him right in the middle of the workspace and strides off, unconcerned, straight as a switch.
Yuuji stands there, surrounded by textiles and bobbins and the groan of Nobara’s struggling sewing machine, and wonders what exactly he’s supposed to do. There are a couple of free chairs scattered around, but no drawing materials. He used a tablet in Design School – but Megumi in the window is sketching on a big artbook. He feels suddenly lost and alone.
Maki has disappeared, and Mai is scowling at something on a laptop screen with the intensity of a hundred suns. Yuuji turns to Nobara and Megumi; Nobara’s pulling at the sequin netting which has gotten caught in the machine’s sewing track and kicking her Mary-Janes at the thick wooden leg of her table like a toddler having a tantrum. Megumi’s staring dreamily out the window, steam from his coffee twining upwards.
“Um,” says Yuuji, choosing the latter as the safer haven. Megumi looks up at him. He has a nice, serious face, the kind of face Yuuji imagines a conscientious doctor would have. The kind of face none of Gramps’ doctors had had. “Maki-san told me to get going on some designs, but I don’t have any equipment or paper or anything. Should I go home and grab my tablet, or…?” It’s an hour commute each way to his apartment, tucked away in a residential part of Edogawa-ku, which seems like a bad use of time. He mentally kicks himself for not bringing the tablet with him.
“Can you do paper and pencil?” asks Megumi.
“Sure, no problem.” He’s a little clumsy with smudges compared to the clean sleekness of a tablet, but he started out with pencil and paper. Had filled book after book with badly-proportioned figures wearing riotous clothes, until he got the hang of anatomy and pattern design.
“C’mon then.” Megumi hauls himself to his feet, tucking his sketch pad against the window, and leads Yuuji through the slightly claustrophobic work space to a back closet. He pulls the door open to reveal stacks of books, most clearly used, with a few new ones still in their cellophane wrapping. There’s also a box with pencils, pens, charcoal and erasers. “This is our stash. Nobara works with a tablet too, but I prefer physical media, and so do Maki-san and Mai-san. If you want to work with a tablet it’s no problem, but you’ll have to bring it in. We’ve got an old workstation you can hook up to but Nobara trawls for hot singles on it in her free time so be prepared for viruses.”
He says it dryly, without a hint of humour in his voice; Yuuji has to glance at him to see that there’s just a tiny glint of amusement in his eyes. “Yeah, those catfish really know how to gut your system,” Yuuji says.
“I can hear you,” shouts Nobara. There’s a crunch from the Singer, and a muffled, “Fuck!” followed by a fluent medley of curses.
“Why don’t I show you the nearest coffee shop?” suggests Megumi, without turning.
“Um, yeah. Good idea.”
***
Megumi’s still got his coffee waiting for him back at Jujutsu, so Yuuji suggests getting his to go. Megumi shakes his head. “No way Nobara’s gonna be over it by then,” he says, and calmly selects a pastry from the shelf.
They end up tucked away in a corner of the coffee shop on cream-coloured faux-leather seats abutted by warm faux-wood tables. A world of pretend, of plastic. But the coffee is good, and the music is quiet enough that he can hear himself think.
“Yaga-san showed us your portfolio,” says Megumi in between bites of his fluffy, brittle pastry. There are already flakes all over his distressed jeans. His clothing style is casual, an over-large faded yellow shirt with holes at the bottom hem; grey jeans scored at the thighs, a heavy chain hanging from his pocket. He has even more product in his hair that Yuuji, his thick black locks spiked upwards like a Morningstar. There’s a matte black fang-shaped earring in his left ear.
“Oh yeah?” Yuuji keeps his voice casual despite his sudden spike of nervousness. Megumi might only be a junior designer but he’s still Yuuji’s senior, still anchored in this new world of Tokyo fashion in a way Yuuji isn’t.
“You’ve got a strange perspective. Your stuff is really good, but it’s not quite right yet. It’s like you haven’t found your muse.”
“Muse?” says Yuuji, immediately picturing old French artists painting young, naked, voiceless women. Always the subject, never the artist.
“Yeah. The vision that’ll tie it all together. Or the person, maybe.” He stuffs the rest of his pastry in his mouth, munching. Yuuji sips at his coffee, a little unsettled.
“I think the inspiration should come from me. What I think and feel. I don’t want to rely on others.”
Megumi snorts. “That’s crap. Everyone relies on outside influences – other designers, historical trends, natural beauty. Where do your designs come from?”
Yuuji blinks. “Out of my head. At 2am, mostly.”
“Then it’s probably your sleeping brain processing memories and experiences. Explains why your stuff feels a little… otherworldly.”
Yuuji doesn’t know what to say to that; his ideas come to him fluently, fluidly, flowing out of his head and onto his tablet like a river. They’ve always made sense to him. “What’s your inspiration then?” he asks, expecting New Age. Grunge.
“Balmain meets flapper,” summarizes Megumi easily. He grabs the receipt from his snack and produces a pen. Sketches a long figure with a square-necked dress cut high at the hem, playful with just a hint of class. “That’s my next approved design,” he says. “I’m thinking tartan and tulle.”
“It’s nice. Original.”
“Eh, it’ll end up the same as most of our stuff, on some student trying to rack up Instagram likes. It’s not edgy.”
“No one said you have to be. It’s about expressing yourself, right? Not a space race.”
Megumi shrugs. “Here, you are what you make. If you get stale, you’re out. Yaga-san’s decent, but if you don’t produce… no one gets a free ride.”
“Got it. I can earn my keep, you know.”
“Hope so,” says the other designer, but kindly. “C’mon, let’s get back and see what’s left of the Singer.”
***
That night he goes home with his arms full of house mags, their glossy pages printed with pictures of young men and women wearing a variety of styles. The target is young trend-setters, individuals looking for a pop of style without breaking the bank. Like Megumi said, many of them are probably Insta Fashionistas, but more the casual sort than the dedicated Harajuku girls.
He flips through the magazines while he eats dinner – reheated Nikujaga – sitting at his tiny table with his chin resting on his palm. The pictures credit the designer, and he begins to get a feel for Megumi’s style – elegance infused with a little funk – as well as the others’. Nobara is bright colours and unexpected textures, Maki sleek conservatism with accents that hint at hidden depth, and Mai violent patterns cut at harsh angles. None of it is overly expensive – the materials are decent quality but nothing special, and the amount of effort going into each piece is moderate. Nothing extravagant or sumptuous. Young designers don’t have that kind of luxury, don’t have the freedom of spending days on designs and weeks on production. He’s okay with that. Every oak started as an acorn.
He brought his sketches home with him so he could transport them into his tablet and clean them up a bit; he spends some time doing this while an old movie plays on the screen – something black and white, subtitled.
You haven’t found your muse. The words echo in his brain suddenly while he’s in the middle of developing a square-yoked collar. He’s never worked too closely with models – professional models. The ones at Design School were just good-looking students trying to earn a bit of cash. They did their own hair and make-up and focused on looking glamorous themselves, rather than making the clothes look glamorous. Yuuji’s seen plenty of serious catwalks (via Youtube), and he knows the difference. He wonders what it would feel like to have someone wear his clothes who really understands them, who knows how to make them come to life.
He doesn’t think that’s what Megumi meant by muse, but it’s the closest he can come to imagining it. So far the lesson that life’s taught him over and over again is that you’ve got to rely on yourself, because when the chips come down you’re all alone.
Yuuji tucks his tablet up on top of the couch’s back, turns up the volume on the TV, and tries to switch off his brain.
***
The first set of five pieces he designs are airy, insubstantial. He draws pale lines across the screen and fills the resulting forms with the faintest of gradients. He imagines dove greys and pearl whites, the three shirts and two jackets featuring rough feathered hems and asymmetric lines because like cobwebs, like frost crystals, his work isn’t meant to match up.
Mai swipes through the images on his tablet when he presents them to her, zooming in to critique every inch of his technique, his style. Finally she drops the tablet onto the table, her long legs crossed as she perches on her stool and her back rounded like a cat’s – all she needs is a cigarette holder to play a bored 1960s French model – and stabs her finger at two of the sketches. “This one and this one. The others are too extravagant; they’ll never be cost effective. You can make those two.” She grabs a piece of paper and scrawls some figures on it. “Nothing more expensive than this; you can look at the swatches if you don’t find something in stock. Ask someone else about ordering.”
“Got it!”
“Ugh, go away before you get that enthusiasm on me.” She shoes him dismissively and goes back to her laptop.
He builds the two shirts from scratch, of course, draping fabric on a dress form and cutting out a pattern, then transferring it into a muslin and finally the real fabric he picks out – driftwood-grey crepe with white voile accents at the throat and cuffs. He puts more time into them than he did most of his work at Design School, labouring over the hems and the buttonholes until they’re perfect.
And they’re good. He knows that without having to be told, without seeing Nobara’s nod of acceptance or Maki’s assessing look when he displays them for the other designers. They’re not the kind of thing he would ever wear – he’s much too informal for that, his style print Ts and colourful high tops, but there are men out there who would look like a million dollars in these shirts.
Yaga himself, Jujutsu’s owner, inspects them one late afternoon as they stand in the corner waiting to be priced and taken downstairs. It’s only the second time he’s seen the man; the first was on his third day when he was taken aside into a small back office and grilled on his inspirations and motivations – I want people to feel the best they can, he had said, sweating, while Yaga towered over him like some kind of perfectly tailored gladiator, all beard and muscle. Life’s short; people should have the opportunity to feel that they’re beautiful. I don’t want to make clothes that are fabulous, I want to make clothes that make people fabulous.
Yaga slowly orbits the dress forms, inspecting the shirts from every angle. Finally, he nods. “An acceptable first product,” he says. “Your freshness is apparent, but fresh sells. You have further to go, though, until the look is complete. Don’t get complacent because you landed a job.”
“No sir!”
Yaga turns to leave, then as almost an afterthought, gestures at the better of the two. “This one can go in the house magazine.”
Yuuji feels blood rush to his cheeks, his face splitting in a wide grin. “Wow, thanks!”
***
Yuuji’s invited to the shoot for the house magazine’s monthly issue, but he’s too busy working on his next set of designs to attend. He works at all hours, visiting the textile stores in the morning, cutting out patterns in the afternoon, stitching together seams in the evening. Waking up at 2am to jot down the ideas that come to him on his tablet and wondering if they’re as Megumi says interpretations of his memories and experiences. Certainly there’s nothing really familiar in the strange angles and floating fabrics, but once he’s got them down he knows that they’re right.
Almost right. When he looks at them now, something niggles at him. He’s not sure if it’s the concept or the sketch. Something in the way he captures his idea on the touch screen is slightly off. He tries erasing and re-drawing the lines, but that just worsens the quality of the original sketch.
Megumi, Yaga, they’re both right. Something’s missing.
***
His first month comes and goes, more than a dozen of his designs making it into the shop and two more into the monthly house magazine and – maybe more importantly – onto Jujutsu’s social media pages which it turns out are ruthlessly curated by Nobara. She is aggressive in her friending and liking, playing a long game with bigger designers with the intense concentration of a military strategist. Yuuji friends Jujutsu’s accounts, and is not friended back.
(“C’mon, Nobara, friend me!”
“You friended Himuro Kyosuke. And Gackt! When were you born? 1980? Look forward, not backwards, you cretin.”)
He’s starting to get used to the rhythm of the office, though. Maki’s always the first in, turning on the lights at 6 and making coffee. Megumi is a whiz at hand-stitching, and offers his unneeded time on the sewing machine to Nobara who’s chronically late but also capable of pulling off last-minute miracles. Mai spends most of her time glaring at her laptop but somehow manages to keep up her quote of designs and oversee the juniors. And Yuuji works. And works. And works.
It’s rewarding, though, at the end of the day to check the sale book and see that one of his designs has sold. Rewarding to imagine someone bringing life to the garment he spent hours labouring over. He religiously searches for #jujutsu and the first time he sees one of his designs tagged he almost cries from the unexpected joy of having made it.
He wonders if Gramps would be proud. Knows the old man always envisioned him doing something more traditional to help others, like law enforcement or maybe the JGSDF. Instead he’s designing frilled shirts and androgynous skirts and celebrating Instagram likes. Saving the world with sexy suiting sounds a lot less macho than saving it with a Howa 64.
But then, Yuuji’s never been a fan of macho. He keeps his keys and his wallet in a purse, for fuck’s sake, and dyes his hair sakura-petal pink. And he is deeply, committedly, hopelessly gay.
“Well, aren’t we all?” mutters Nobara, when he happens to mention it after she catches him ogling some new (male) models on their website. And it occurs to him that when Megumi told him she spends her time slumming on the dating websites, he didn’t mention that she was looking for men. “Except Maki-san,” she adds, and sighs forlornly.
Yuuji is just pondering how one consoles a certifiable co-worker who has a crush on a boss who seems like she definitely could be related to Sephiroth (he wouldn’t put it past either of the twins to be the result of some strange genetic experiment) when the store clerk Sasaki runs upstairs. “Yuuji-san! Yuuji-san!” She waves hurriedly at him, eyes wide. He blinks and strolls over. Nobara tags along too. “You’ll never believe this! Guess who’s downstairs?”
He opens his mouth to guess (Justin Timberlake, maybe, or Jennifer Lawrence) but she doesn’t wait. “Gojou Satoru! And he wants to see you!”
The name rings a bell, but it’s a dusty bell in an unused corner of his brain and he fails to bring up any information or a mental picture. But clearly it means something to Nobara, because she chops him in the stomach and hisses, “Jesus fucking Christ,” as she pulls him into a headlock. “You lucky little shit, Yuuji.”
He wheezes and pulls free, his superior strength only barely enough to keep his windpipe from being crushed. “Should I know him?”
“Oh, he’s only a nationally-famous model and one of the most likely to break into the international scene,” drawls Nobara. “If he didn’t have the personality of a dumpster fire, he’d already have done it.”
“Oh. Right.” Her words bring with them the vague memory of gossip columns and blurry paparazzi pictures. Nothing substantial.
“Don’t keep him waiting,” hisses Sasaki, biting the tips of her fingers. Yuuji stares, and Nobara gives him a shove in the small of his back that sends him stumbling towards the stairs. He catches himself at the landing and scrambles down into the store.
There’s only one occupant in the wide whiteness of the shop-front. Yuuji grabs the counter to stop his hasty entrance and stares.
Gojou Satoru is tall and willowy with a perfect model’s frame, wide shoulders and narrow hips. His hand, currently resting atop one of the metal clothes racks, is long and elegant, his nails perfectly manicured. His hair is pure snow white and feathered softly around his pale face; his features are delicate, almost boyish – but his eyes, Yuuji can’t see. They’re obscured by slim sunglasses.
Taken piece by piece, he’s obviously model material. But it’s when he looks up and steps out from behind the clothes rack that Yuuji catches his breath. Because Gojou Satoru is drop-dead gorgeous, not chic or extravagant or elegant, but sexy as hell. His clothes are simple: a slim-cut black blazer with angled black-and-white houndstooth ticket pockets, white v-neck T, and faded black jeans. Simple, moderately priced stuff. But it’s the way he wears them, the way he holds his body, that makes them look like Met Gala material.
He catches sight of Yuuji and pauses. And then he smiles, and Yuuji feels his heart catch.
“Itadori Yuuji?” His voice is a little higher than Yuuji had expected, and has a teasing note to it. But it’s smooth; pleasant.
“Yeah!” he navigates around the counter and strides over as casually as he can manage, only knocking into one dummy on the way.
Gojou tilts his head to the side, the movement simple but eye-catching. He’s not posing, Yuuji doesn’t think. He’s just naturally stunning. “Younger than I imagined,” he muses. “And cuter.”
Yuuji flushes. “Um. Can I help you with something?”
The model produces a smartphone in a slick silver case. Thumbs it to life and brings up an image, then swivels it to show Yuuji. It’s Jujutsu’s Gram, with one of his shirts. Black, constructed of velvet with horizontal strips of sheer chiffon in a panel down the front. “It caught my eye,” he says.
“We still have it in stock. I can show you?”
Gojou leans in close – too close, so close Yuuji thinks he’s coming in for a kiss and that would be weird but maybe also okay – and smiles. Then he reaches up and raises his glasses.
His eyes are a colour Yuuji’s never seen before, like the blue sky shot through with diamonds, like stars in the daytime. “Oh,” says Yuuji, breath catching.
Because he’s just found his muse.
“I’d like that,” purrs Gojou.