Your Life As A Tokyo Jujutsu High Background Student

Chapter 34 - Legacy Meatballs

The smell of simmering broth and freshly minced ginger wafted through the common room as Yuji diligently prepped his legacy meatball hot pot. In the corner, the man himself had managed a little cooking station, somehow scraping up all the necessary ingredients and utensils just in time to avoid incurring Maki's wrath upon her return.

As Yuji ground the chicken into the perfect meatball consistency, Megumi hovered nearby, meticulously slicing and mincing an almost obscene amount of ginger with all the obsession of a serial killer. The boy had claimed he didn't trust Yuji to include enough ginger to meet his absurd standards. Although, knowing Megumi's emotional intelligence fell somewhere between a brick and the kid who ate toothpaste in kindergarten, he probably thought wanting to help his bro cook was too bromantic to admit out loud.

While the two culinary sorcerers worked their magic, the rest of you lounged around the common area like the lazy bums you were. On the opposite side of the common room, Nobara had molded herself around Maki like a clingy human koala refusing to detach from its tree trunk. Maki didn't seem to mind it much, too engrossed in the dramatic retelling of her latest mission. Nobara was completely enraptured, wide eyes shining with unbridled admiration.

Meanwhile, you, Panda, and Inumaki had formed a sad little huddle on the floor – a support group for the socially inept. Panda was utterly distraught. His lush fur was shedding in thick clumps that littered the floor around him.

"You gotta trust me on this!" He fretted in panic. "My fur fell off right before last year's Night Parade of 100 Demons too! Something terrible is gonna happen—I just know it! I'm so stressed out!"

You had to resist the urge to point out that, ya know, being a literal panda kind of obligated him to shed fur once in a while. All bears did that. Instead, you tried to be a supportive senpai, gently combing through the tufts on his back with his special brush in an effort to cull the falling strands.

"Maybe it's just falling out because you're so stressed?" you offered, channeling your inner therapist.

Panda shook his head furiously, sending another flurry of strands sailing through the air and right into your face. "No, no, you don't understand! This is an omen, a sign of terrible things to come!" He clutched at his fluffy ears. "We're all gonna die!"

Inumaki, always a model of articulate reassurance, chose that moment to declare, "Salmon roe."

You nodded in reluctant agreement with Inumaki's assessment of Panda being a drama queen, spitting out a wad of fur that had made its way into your mouth during the shedding frenzy.

"No one's going to die. You're probably just sleep-deprived or something," you reasoned, carefully brushing Panda's back. "My hair goes into full abandonment mode when I don't get enough shut-eye too. Now sit still and let me get the rest of those strays."

You continued your dutiful combing while avoiding pulling on his fur. "And if you're still worried after this, we can talk to Ieiri-san," you added. "I'm sure she's got some sort of herbal blends for excessive shedding."

Truth be told, you had approximately zero confidence in Shoko's ability to treat what was presumably a bear affliction. She was peerless when it came to mending human bodies, but bears likely fell outside her typical scope of expertise. Still, offering false hope seemed more sane than confirming Panda's fears of impending calamity.

Inumaki, however, had taken a different approach to calming the distraught Panda. Sometime during Panda's whining, Inumaki had begun collecting the discarded fur into separate piles of black and white. With unnatural ease and dexterity, he molded and sculpted the strands into a miniature panda figurine. Honestly, you shouldn't have expected anything less bizarre from Inumaki at this point.