In an alternate timeline, a pair of new generation jujutsu monsters grew up feral and fighting curses together in Sendai. I'm sure this will have no major ramifications for the world as a whole. AKA: What if we did Scooby-Doo hijinks with Rika because Itadori is too tough and charming to get murdered by her? (ao3) (okkoita)
When Yuji Itadori is twelve years old, he meets a ghost.
Well, okay, it’s probably not a ghost but it looks like a ghost. It coils malevolently and desperately like he imagines a ghost might—clinging to something human until all its own humanity is gone. He’s too young to have a great vocabulary for what else to call this entity. Usually, he would follow Gramps’ advice and ignore the spooky things he sometimes sees, but the ghost is sitting on a bus-stop bench next to a kid in a West Junior High uniform.
Yuji thinks, this time, it’s kinda on his turf.
It’s the third day of the school year. Yuji struggled only moderately to remember the locations of his classes, and while he forgot where his locker was yesterday, a soft-faced girl named Ozawa helped him out and, with the certainty of a tween with mostly movies for reference, he’s decided she can be his middle-school crush. (You gotta have one of those.)
All and all, not so bad for the first week of middle school and he can safely tell Gramps that his success rate for Not Fighting Sons Of Bitches is at 100%.
But the ghost thing is weird for sure.
It’s like black smoke, coagulated into a sticky clot beside the kid, almost leaning on his shoulder like a big cat on its favorite zookeeper. It’s got physical weight. Yuji can see it where it rubs its face on him, his uniform ripples and deforms. The kid ignores it, but Yuji can see even from here there are bloody scratches along his inner forearms where his uniform is too short on him. He’s been crying.
“Hey,” Yuji says, stepping under the roof of the bus-stop bench. “You go to West Junior, right?”
The kid on the bench, wide-eyed, looks up from his shoes. His uniform doesn’t fit him very well. His sneakers look beat up, like his mom didn’t take him clothes shopping this year and he’s still wearing what he had from last year. His hair sticks up the way iron-filings do under a magnet at the top, grown out shaggy at the front. Yuji thinks he’s maybe a year or two older, but small for his age.
The word ‘underfed’ comes to mind.
Yuji points at him. “Yeah. I saw you at passing period. You’re a grade ahead of me, right?”
“I-I guess,” the kid stammers. “Are you, um, a first year?”
“Yup.” He hooks a thumb and points it at himself. “I’m Yuji Itadori. You wanna ride to school together? I get lost easy.”
“Oh. Okay. I think that would be… that would be fine.” He keeps glancing at the shadow on his shoulder, which ignores Yuji and continues to coil on him like a rotting calico. “If you’re scared of getting lost, I can help. But just for a bit. Okay? We shouldn’t—” he swallows— “shouldn’t be friends.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“I’m, uh, I’m out of school a lot. You’d be better off with another upperclassman to—”
“What’s your name?”
“O-oh. Sorry. Okkotsu. Yuta Okkotsu.”
“Okkotsu-senpai. Got it.” Yuji sits down next to Yuta on the bench, opposite the dead thing that’s latched to him. “You wanna snack?” He digs around in his backpack. “I’ve got extra.” He produces a tuna-mayo onigiri. “Gramps says I shouldn’t leave them in my bag all day. Do you buy snacks from the corner store by the park? I live in an apartment building there. Do you live nearby?”
Okkotsu, shocked to find an onigiri in his hands before he can protest, stammers a little. Now that he’s close to Okkotsu, Yuji can kind of smell him—like he hasn’t bathed in a while and his clothes aren’t washed. Up close, there are bags under Okkotsu’s eyes, his nails are ragged from chewing, and the scratches on his wrists seem fresh.
Stuff his Gramps would say are ‘bad signs’.
“You should come over after school,” Yuji declares, kicking his heels on the sidewalk. “My gramps is always working so he leaves the fridge super stocked and puts lots of movies in the entertainment system for me. It’s awesome.”
“W-What?”
“You live close by.” Yuji beams. “We should be friends.”
“I—” Okkotsu looks over his shoulder again.
Yuji’s starting to suspect the Thing On Okkotsu’s Shoulder is dangerous with how he’s acting. That or it messes with him so bad it makes him seem crazy. Yuji, only then, wonders how smart it is to invite something like that into his house or if Okkotsu is crazy from having something like that glued to him. Yuji wonders if, maybe, he should be more scared. Maybe he should—
“Okay. We’re neighbors. We can be friends.” Okkotsu balls his sleeve up over his hand and uses it to wipe his face. “You should make friends in your own grade though.” A pause. “And don’t tell people your grandpa is working all the time. If you’re home alone sometimes, like, you shouldn’t tell people that.”
“Why?”
“You could get your grandpa in trouble? They could take you away from him?”
“Oh. He’s just out for the week. It’s fine. I haven’t punched anyone at school even once so no parent-teacher conferences!” Yuji flashes a thumbs up.
Okkotsu blinks owlishly. “Huh?
“I don’t like bullies.” Yuji gestures with his food, rolling his eyes. “Gramps says punching people is bad.”
“Uh, yeah—"
“But some people need punching,” Yuji quotes. “Gramps said that too.”
Okkotsu snorts, tries to hide the laugh with his hand. His laugh sounds funny, cracks in his throat and wheezes, like maybe he’s out of practice with it. “Um, aren’t you young to talk that way?”
“Gramps says you’re never too young to learn a hard lesson.”
Okkotsu’s face does something funny. “I… I don’t think that. I think you can be too young for—” He pauses. “Never mind. It’s nice to meet you, Itadori.”
“This is awesome. I have a middle school crush picked out. And I have an upperclassman mentor. I’m killing it.”
OP: Don’t forget to have your meals on time, whenever it is. All the veggies and meat are actual food. (cr困难小食堂)
Cnetizens are asking where the OP found such tiny vegetables. Actually, many home‑gardeners end up with super‑small veggies when they lack growing experience.
but there actually are some social cues that can be taught. like the obvious one is when someone says “how are you” they usually mean “friendly noise” and are not actually asking how you are, although some people ARE genuinely asking how you are and it’s usually up to the context of your relationship to determine the difference
also that apparently “when you get a chance” usually means “when you take a break from the thing you’re immediately doing” and not “on a list among various other things you are doing today or tomorrow”
and when someone says “i’ll let you get going” they mean “please leave”
i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book
i told my dad the joke “dad jokes are just mom jokes that a man repeated louder” and he thought it was hilarious. he turned to my mother, intending to relay the joke to her, and a bare second after he opened his mouth i watched it dawn on his face that he was about to become the subject of the joke. when i tell you that man was slackjawed as he turned back to me, like he had an entire life altering realization in the span of about 20 seconds.
My uncle is really into warhammer and would win every miniature painting competition he was in. I have not very steady hands and he saw me messing up my nail polish for prom. He sat with me and carefully painted my nails and that moment meant so much to me all these years later.
there was another post on here about how all the little tiny brushes and tools and such for cosmetics are both comparable to the tools for painting and finishing minis, not to mention WAY cheaper, like the little trimmer clippers and nail files and such
