"Let's see. It surely isn't Megumi. You did say you two get along really well, but I'm not betting on him. Kento? He could barely survive a full day with you, gi–" I interrupted her, scandalized.
"Excuse me?! Why wouldn't he? I get along great with him!"
"Oh really? That sounded a lot less cheerful the last time."
I hurried through my thoughts, trying to remember what I had told her last time.
Cold. Ignored me. Looked down on me. Only spoke the bare minimum.
"A-ah," it clicked for me, "okay, yeah. No wonder you still think that, but I've cracked Kento's hard shell by now, and I think he's less skeptical of me. We even cook together sometimes and run errands too, but otherwise? He's pretty cold – but he's like that with everyone. So, I don't think it's just because of me."
That he occasionally took me along on his assignments to exorcise curses—I left that out on purpose.
"Well, I'm happy to hear that. So, he's still single and available, that goddamn hot guy?!"
What was I even thinking?! I grinned from ear to ear. I should never have sent her photos of all of us together. She was head over heels for Kento. Totally. She didn't even care about the distance. Granted, it was all just a crush, but ever since then, I had to keep feeding her pointless updates about him.
"Yeah, still single, and believe me, I'd bring him along for you, but that's sadly not possible."
"Oh, too bad. But I'll definitely come visit you in your new home, and then I hope I'll meet him. My future stallion."
We both burst out laughing. Hitomi never let anything go to waste. If it wasn't up in a tree by the count of three, it was under her—naked and breathless. Not that I'd ever been present, but by her stories, the girl was more than well-versed in the subject.
"Okay, so if it's not Kento, then the only one left is Satoru, right? You didn't have that close a connection to Shoko, did you?"
If only you knew, Hitomi.
I simply couldn't tell her that I had been attacked by a curse spirit today and had escaped death by a hair's breadth. She wasn't a jujutsist and probably wouldn't understand a thing about it.
That I now lived here at the Jujutsu Academy—I had covered that with a shared apartment excuse.
Anything else, she wouldn't have believed anyway, and strictly speaking, it wasn't entirely false.
"Yeah, not really until earlier, but you know me. Clumsy me. Something always happens. So this morning I messed up my leg pretty badly, got a high fever, and had to be treated by Shoko. So, I wouldn't say I know her, but we talked more today than before. So nope, not Shoko either."
"God, what kind of stuff do you get yourself into?!", she asked, shocked, and I thought I heard a sound that resembled an electric crackle.
Hitomi sharply inhaled, and I could hear her flinch from the rustling of her clothes through the phone.
"... What?! So it is Satoru coming with you?!" she guessed—deflecting.
"Got zapped again?"
"Of course. When don't I?", she sighed in frustration, "feels like I've been cursed with this my whole life."
I chuckled. She wasn't wrong. You could tally how often she got shocked by something each day.
"Yeah. Satoru's coming with me."
Hysteria in 3...