The table between you is overflowing—plates stacked with smoked salmon, rows of tiny tarts, delicate crackers topped with ridiculous little towers of caviar. Everything smells expensive, but the kind of expensive that makes you suspicious. You’re not sure if it’s the shock or just Yuji’s presence beside you, but it almost feels... cozy here. Safe, maybe.

Yuji picks up something unfamiliar and squints at it like it personally wronged him. “I thought this was tofu,” he mumbles, “but it’s, like... whipped fish?” He shrugs and eats it anyway.

It’s strange how easily he settles into the moment, given what the day’s been. You still haven’t figured out how he does that—how he carries everything and still has room for laughter. Even now, even after all of it, he looks over at you with that crooked grin that makes him look younger than he is.

“Okay, so,” he says, reaching for a second tart, “not technically the banquet boat we were promised. But I’m willing to let it slide if I keep getting food like this.”

His voice is light, but you can hear the wear underneath. You all boarded that boat thinking Gojo was, for once, being genuine. A reward for nonstop missions, a break. Nobara had insisted on new outfits, dragged you and Megumi into the city to shop. Yuji had carried every bag without a single complaint, beaming like he already tasted the dessert. But of course, the second you stepped on the ship, things started to sour. The empty halls. The cursed spirits. The silence in the wheelhouse.

It hadn’t been a banquet. It had been bait.

Yuji chews slowly, and his leg bounces under the table. Maybe it’s the adrenaline still wearing off, or maybe it’s the leftover energy of having survived something you weren’t entirely meant to. “Megumi was right, by the way,” he says after a pause. “He said it’d be too good to be true. And I said he was being dramatic.” He leans back in his seat with a groan. “I owe him, like, three favors.”

He doesn’t bring up the siren-like curse, or the possessed sorcerers on the island, or how close Nobara came to getting caught in that thing’s grip. He doesn’t talk about the cursed energy that tore up the sea or the way the sky looked before Gojo finally appeared, smug and polished, to clean it all up in one dramatic, effortless blow. That part lingers between the silences, but it doesn’t need to be spoken aloud.

Instead, Yuji tries a pink dessert and immediately lights up. “Yo, this one’s crazy good. What even is that—strawberry? Lychee?” He pushes the plate a little toward you, wordlessly inviting you to try it too.

Outside the window, the port is calm. The boat that dragged you into chaos is docked somewhere out of sight, almost like it never moved on its own, like it never sang. You can still hear Gojo across the table joking with Nobara, her voice raised in annoyance, Megumi too tired to intervene.

Yuji leans forward, propping his chin on his hand as he watches the fireworks begin outside. The colors reflect softly in his eyes, golds and reds flickering across his face. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just stares upward through the glass.

Then, softly—more to himself than to you—he says, “Still kind of a nice ending though, huh?”