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If Choso didn’t know better, he would have thought this room was ordinary. He’d never had much reason to be in ordinary rooms before. No matter how it looked, maybe the fact that Choso was here meant it wasn’t ordinary at all.
The paneled walls shone with light that had no clear source. A metal kettle sat unused atop an electric stove. Weathered tatami covered the floor. At the other end of the kotatsu, a woman he barely knew flopped onto her side, her blonde hair spilling across the woven straw. The bowl of fruit he hadn’t tried shook as Yuki groaned.
“Ugh! I’m so bored!”
Choso looked past the oranges, across the low, blanketed table, to meet Yuki’s eyes. She didn’t meet them back.
Choso sat up against the table, and raised his voice just as high as she hadn’t lifted herself. Though she still wasn’t looking at him, he spoke to her clearly. “I don’t see you as one.”
Yuki rolled towards Choso. The straw seemed to pop under her shoulder, her hair tangling under her arm as she blinked back, “One what?”
“A board,” Choso answered. “Boards are flat. You aren’t.”
Her shoulders bounced with a snicker. “Psh. Got that right, bucko.”
Choso wasn’t sure what Yuki meant. He rarely was. All he was sure of now was that he had a duty to help his little brother. For the sake of Yuji’s mission, Choso and Yuki had been tasked to stay behind, in ordinary rooms like these, to protect the guardian entity of the Jujutsu school, and the barrier they created.
For now, Choso and Yuki shared a task. Beyond that, there was no reason for the two of them to speak, or know one another. All they had was a common goal, for uncommon reasons. As long as Choso could do something for his brother, the rest hadn’t mattered.
The rest, in this case, included listening to Yuki answer questions Choso hadn’t asked.
“Not ‘board’. Bored ,” Yuki emphasized the words differently, as if the tone alone changed the meaning. To a human being, maybe it did.
“Is that different?”
Yuki raised her hand to her neck. She stroked through the yellow waves of her hair, adjusting them to her shoulder. Her fingers tangled as she took a breath.
“...Only if you want it to be.”
“What I want doesn't match what you intend,” Choso answered, unsure if that was true.
The words hadn’t even left Choso’s lips when Yuki shifted abruptly. Her head turned, her neck craning until the shade of her eyes changed in the light. From this angle, the deep red of her irises turned bright, like blood hitting the open air.
“How’re you so sure about that?” Yuki asked through a smile. “You got some mind reading mixed in there with that blood-bending of yours?”
Choso didn’t know what that meant, either.
“I know people. I’ve seen enough of them to understand them,” he said. “Everyone wants different things, yet so many of them are different. That conflict leads to pain.”
This time, Choso let himself be the one to look away. He watched the wall, his own eyes sinking at the blank canvas of the panel. It was easier to understand the nothing of the walls boxing them in than the person at his side. Choso knew blank walls. For decades, they were all he could see. Their simplicity left no questions, only a state of being. A human being wasn’t like that. At least, she wasn’t like that.
Yuki propped her hand against her cheek. She stretched beneath the kotatsu, her legs tapping the blanket on the other side.
“Bored, as in boredom. That’s what I meant. Like, my brain’s going numb. It ain’t right, staring at the wall, getting stuck watching things that aren’t changing. Hell, we’re not even watching paint dry! It’s already painted.”
“Most of my brothers and I spent more than a century in vials,” Choso told her, truthfully. “This is normal to me.”
It was.
Again, Yuki turned towards him. Her voice raised. “A century? What, like you’re an old geezer?”
Choso didn’t move. What he meant to say didn’t form before Yuki spoke up again.
“You look pretty good for a geezer,” she poked at his cheek. “No ear hair.”
Choso closed his eyes.
“I believe my hair is in human places, yes.”
“Ah.” Yuki snickered. “Good to know!”
There was a way that human beings laughed when they meant to mock you. It was a sound Choso was sure he would hear, if he ever dared to let his little brothers get too close to humans. Her laughter didn't have that sound. What it did have, Choso wasn’t sure.
He didn’t mind it.
“I’m accustomed to this,” Choso added. “Flat walls. The numbness.”
“Well, that’s depressing.”
“I’m normally pressed.”
Yuki raised an eyebrow. “The Death Painting Wombs were in storage, right? I never saw ‘em, but I heard they were in the warehouses around here.”
“We were.”
“And you had consciousness, like that? Like, you could see what’s around you?” Yuki asked, as if the concept was unusual. Choso nodded along.
“Huh. Wild,” Yuki added, leaning closer. “You’ve gotta be, like, a master of meditation or something after that. None of the research thought you’d be conscious through that.”
There were plenty of things humans overlooked. If it was supposed to be surprising, it wasn't.
Choso looked away, to fall back into a comfortable silence. His eyes sank, his senses shifting, to see the world in the ways he had before the past few months. A space like this wasn’t far from how he’d spent most of his life. There was more furniture here. He had a pulse, and blood flowing through himself. Presumably, Yuki did, too. Choso felt his heart beat, his consciousness drifting with it.
Before that consciousness could slip, he heard Yuki break through.
“Y’know, I never asked you. What’s your type?”
For all the things Choso could have expected, he could never expect her.
Choso reached into his pocket. His fingers wrapped around a trinket he’d been given a while ago. He hadn’t thought much about it since his little brother handed it over, but, when he had the so-called ‘smartphone’, he knew how to answer.
“Arial,” Choso told her, remembering what the text on the phone had said.
Yuki sat back up. “ Aerial ?” she asked. “What, like, in the sky?”
“I didn’t choose it.”
Yuki let out a heavy breath. The shorter locks of her bangs blew into the air. “Yeah, yeah. Not like I chose my type, either. They just come out like that, y’know?”
Choso shook his head.
“I don’t know, no. The phone came this way.”
“The phone? What’s the phone got to do with your type?”
Choso wondered how Yuki could know to ask that question, and not realize where to find her type.
“It’s where the typeface comes from,” Choso said, speaking slower to emphasize the point. “On the phone.”
“Type face ?” Yuki squinted, her words stretching out with her stare. “Like, you like faces, specifically? Or…”
She didn’t finish the thought.
Choso pulled his phone from his pocket. He opened the document, and read off the screen.
“Normal text, Arial. That’s what it says,” he pointed down. “That’s the type.”
Yuki paused. She pressed her hand to her cheek. “...Choso.”
“That’s my name, yes.”
Yuki pointed down, too. Her finger stroked the screen, directly beside his. “Choso, that’s a font.”
“Yes.”
“A font isn’t your ‘type’.”
“This is typed. Writing.”
“It’s not that kinda type, bud. I mean your taste!”
“Should I know my taste?”
Yuki’s red eyes pulled together, narrowing in a squint. “...Kinda?”
In a hundred and fifty years, it was the first time Choso had heard of that. If it was a human practice, then, it was one that had taken place far away from the warehouses and storage rooms.
His expression flattened, hiding his disgust. “I have no interest in eating myself.”
Yuki’s lips curled, the tilt of a smile setting through them as if she’d just told a joke only she could hear. “Makes one of us,” she said. “I could just eat you up.”
Choso shook his head. “I wouldn’t allow you to eat me.”
Yuki pulled her hand away. She leaned back against the wall, eyeing Choso anew. “What’cha got that kinda type for, anyway? Would’ve pegged you for a Times New Roman sorta guy.”
“I’m not Roman. I’m Japanese.”
Yuki’s palm pressed against her neck, tugging down the collar of her turtleneck. Her shoulders shifted with a new chuckle. “Y’know, somehow, I figured that!”
If she’d been so sure, Choso wondered why she asked.
Choso pulled his phone to his chest, and let his eyes close. “This device can maintain contact with my little brother. The type it uses doesn’t matter, as long as he can find me.”
“Well, that’s sweet.”
“I said, I don’t care about my flavor.”
“What?!” Yuki gaped back. “I mean, like, ‘nice’! It ain’t like I’m licking you!”
Choso put his phone back into his pocket. He opened his sinking eyes, the mark on his nose creasing. He didn’t bother to answer.
Yuki grinned back his way. “Y’know, I’m starting to worry if I tell ya to keep watch, you’re gonna look for a clock on my wrist.”
“Why would I do that?” Choso asked. “There’s a clock on my phone.”
Choso could practically hear Yuki’s lungs contract with a wheeze. She shook her head. “...I’m continuing to worry.”
Choso didn’t answer that, either.
Yuki leaned across the table. She poked a finger at Choso’s shoulder, stealing back attention he didn’t mean to give her.
“Y’know, I didn’t mean type like ‘typeface’. A ‘type’ of person means, like, a category of ‘em,” she said. “Like, short. Tall. Curvy. That kinda thing.”
From the way that Yuki spoke, it sounded as if the concept should have been simple. To someone who had always been human, maybe it was. All Choso did was blink.
Understanding that he hadn’t understood, Yuki scooted forward. The kotatsu bounced where she nudged in, her legs entwining with his own. “Okay! So, imagine you’re taking to a girl—”
“I am talking to a girl.”
Yuki shook her head. “Imagine you’re talking to a different girl. Now, look here.”
Yuki reached across the table, brushing the bowl of oranges away. She took his hand, and pulled his attention towards her.
“She’s the best girl you’ve ever seen. Drop-dead gorgeous, total dream girl. So, what’s she like? Does she have short hair, or long? Is it red, brown, black, blonde? Pink, even?”
As soon as Yuki had said the last color, her eyes shifted to the side. “Wait, Itadori’s your brother, right?” she added, still thinking. “So, maybe not pink. That could get kinda weird–”
“Yes.”
Yuki squinted. She pulled back. “Yes, that’s weird, or yes, it’s pink? I wasn’t trying to give ya a brother complex.”
“My little brother is simple. He’s worth everything.”
Yuki’s hand tucked under her chin as she muttered to herself, “Guess I didn’t give it to you. You already had that.”
When Yuki looked away from him, Choso let himself move in, too. “Yes, she’s one of those things.”
The answer to a former question seemed to draw Yuki back in. Her eyes met his, the color of her stare turning dark, gleaming less like blood than a garnet.
“I didn’t mean in general, that she’s one of those things,” Yuki tried to correct. “I meant, like, which one of those things is she?”
Somehow, Yuki found even more room under the kotatsu. Her legs crossed, folding around Choso’s as she leaned past the fruit, towards him.
“Like, my type of guy’s someone good at getting roughed up,” Yuki poked Choso’s nose. “Like his face ain’t complete until there’s blood running down it, at least a ‘lil! That’s the guy I wanna spend time with. Cause if I get rough, he’ll keep up. That’s what I mean by ‘type’.”
The idea should have been foreign. It still was. Even so, when Choso watched this woman, he understood implicitly. If there was a type beyond his phone, the answer had always been part of him. Like blood. Like breathing.
“I don’t care about appearances. What matters is that they’re someone who will protect my little brothers,” Choso told her. “Someone strong, who won’t judge them for who they are. That’s all I want.”
It wasn’t until Choso had finished giving the answer that he looked at Yuki, and saw her.
The next thought cracked in his throat before he could say it. He thought so clearly, it felt like he was speaking it.
Thank you .
Choso didn’t know the details of why Yuki was here, with him. Whatever her motives were, in the end, Yuki being here was helping Choso’s little brother when she barely knew him at all. There wasn’t another type of woman he could think of wanting to be near more than that.
Yuki scooted closer. Her hand touched his own, her palm cupping the back of his hand.
“You’re not crying again, are ya?”
Choso didn’t answer. He pulled his free hand over his face, hiding himself.
Yuki’s legs shifted, unfurling from his own. The kotatsu shook, a little bit of warmth disappearing as she moved away. Choso didn’t peek at what was happening. His shoulders shifted, holding himself in place. It wasn’t until he felt new pressure that he knew that when Yuki had moved, she’d moved towards him.
Yuki collapsed against Choso’s shoulder, the rest of her flopping across the floor.
“Aww, don’t shut down on me, pigtails! I’m gonna get bored again.”
Choso hadn’t meant to feel Yuki. He hadn’t touched her on purpose. Even so, where her neck brushed his shoulder, he could feel her heartbeat, too. The sense of her pulse made his own quell—as if, even with Yuji far from his reach, and his other brothers locked away or gone, Choso wasn’t alone.
Yuki’s arm draped over Choso’s shoulder, cozying up against him. Her voice fell further, her breath settling warm against his collar as she whispered. “If you don’t wanna talk, we could always make out.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Instead of an answer, Yuki let out a laugh. She wrapped against him, even warmer than the blanket of the kotatsu on his lap.
“I wouldn’t ask, but, what you said—” Yuki chuckled. “All that stuff? It almost makes me think I’m your type.”
Yuki’s eyes stayed open. She beamed with the same smile, twice as light as the glow outside the panels and paper that held them in this nearly ordinary room.
Choso didn’t spend much time imagining a dream woman. What little imagination he had couldn’t picture a girl he would want more than this one.
Yuki nodded, still speaking to herself. “Y’know, I don’t mind that. Being your type.”
Neither did he.