The quiet hum of the overhead lights filled the room, a soft backdrop to the rustle of ancient scrolls as you unrolled one across the table.

The paper was yellowed with age, corners brittle, ink faded in places—but still legible.

Your eyes scanned the lines carefully, translating old dialects in your head, trying to make sense of the symbols tied to some long-lost curse technique.

It was slow work, the kind that demanded silence and stillness. Yuji, predictably, was neither silent nor still.

He sat beside you on the floor, his knees pulled up, cheek squished into his palm as he leaned lazily against the edge of the low table.

You felt his presence like a soft weight, the occasional shift of his body making the floorboards creak. For a while, he’d behaved—quiet, almost impressively so.

But Yuji Itadori wasn’t built to sit still for long. You barely noticed the first touch.

It was just a brush of something cool against your arm—gentle, fleeting. You thought it was an itch or maybe your sleeve had shifted. But then it happened again, and this time, you glanced down.

Yuji had a pen in his hand. And he was drawing. On you.

You paused mid-sentence, eyes shifting from the ink on the scroll to the ink now slowly appearing on your forearm.

His tongue was sticking slightly out between his lips in focus, brow furrowed like this was the most important task in the world.

He hadn’t even realized you’d noticed. A small, uneven cat had begun to take shape on your forearm.

Its body was more potato than feline, and the tail looked like a squiggle, but it had little triangular ears and a heart next to it. Yuji glanced up when he noticed your movement.

“Shhh, I’m working,” he said in a dramatic whisper, squinting like a serious artist at work. He continued sketching.

Next came a dinosaur—if one could call it that. It had comically short arms and jagged teeth, roaring beside the cat in a tiny speech bubble.

Then came a flower, then what you assumed was supposed to be a frog. Each little doodle was worse than the last, but it was hard not to feel the warmth in it.

His inked creations trailed up your arm like a whimsical tattoo sleeve in progress. Every time you looked back down at the scroll, thinking you could refocus, he added something new.

A little sun, a clumsy ghost, a weirdly buff stick figure with “YUJ” written beside it like a signature.

You didn’t say a word. But he kept going, sometimes humming softly under his breath, clearly proud of his work.

The closer he scooted to get a better angle, the warmer his shoulder pressed against yours. After a while, he finally put the pen down and admired his handiwork with a satisfied grin.

“There. All done,” he said proudly, stretching his arms behind him with a soft yawn. He tilted his head to peek at your face, eyes glittering with mischief and something quieter underneath—something fond.