Chapter Text
The first thing Nanami noticed upon entering the shared common room was the smell.
Not bad.
Not rotting.
Just strange.
Like old paper, dust, damp wood and something faintly medicinal. The second thing he noticed was the skeleton on the table. Not a full skeleton. Thankfully. Half a fox, meticulously arranged atop several newspapers with such care that it looked like an archaeological display.
Small vertebrae had been lined up in perfect order. Ribs separated by size. The skull sat near the edge of the table, tilted slightly upward like it was participating in the conversation.
And in the middle of it all sat her.
Cross-legged on a chair.
Covered in dirt.
“Ah,” Haibara said brightly beside him. “She found something again.”
Nanami blinked slowly.
Across the room, Satoru Gojo was sprawled dramatically over the sofa upside down, long legs hanging over the armrest while Suguru sat beside him reading a book he clearly had not turned the page of in fifteen minutes. Shoko lounged in another chair smoking with the expression of someone who had accepted death early in life.
None of them appeared alarmed by the table skeleton.
In fact, Satoru looked delighted.
“Our cryptid returns,” he announced.
She looked up immediately, eyes bright, “I found a fox.”
Nanami looked at the fox skeleton. “Yes,” he said carefully. “I gathered that.”
“It was already dead,” she clarified.
“That somehow makes this worse,” Shoko muttered.
“It does not,” she replied with complete seriousness. “Actually it is very sad. Judging from the fracture on the pelvis, it was probably hit by a vehicle.”
She gently picked up the fox skull. “Poor thing.”
There was genuine softness in her voice somehow that was more unsettling than if she had been excited. Haibara, meanwhile, leaned forward eagerly. “Can I see?”
“You absolutely cannot,” Nanami said immediately.
Too late.
She was already passing Haibara the fox skull with the care of someone handing over fine china.
Haibara gasped. “Whoa.”
Nanami stared at his classmate in betrayal, “You’re encouraging this.”
“It’s educational!”
“It’s horrifying.”
“Look at the teeth,” she said enthusiastically. “See the wear on them? It means it was older than I originally thought.”
Nanami rubbed his temples.
This school was a mistake.
“You know,” Satoru said conversationally from upside down on the sofa, “when she first got here Yaga thought she’d grow out of this.”
Suguru hummed. “That was optimistic.”
Shoko exhaled smoke. “That man used to have hope.”
As if summoned by suffering itself, the door to the common room slid open. Yaga stepped inside and stopped.
Silence filled the room.
Yaga stared at the fox skeleton and then at the dirt covering the floor. His gaze fell on her and then at Satoru, who waved cheerfully upside down.
“No,” Yaga said immediately.
Nobody had spoken.
“No to what?” Satoru asked innocently.
“No to whatever this is.”
“It’s a fox,” Haibara supplied helpfully.
“I can see that.”
“She found it near the forest,” Suguru added.
Yaga looked exhausted beyond human comprehension.
“How did she get it into the building?”
Everyone slowly looked at Satoru.
Satoru pointed at himself. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Because you helped,” Shoko said.
“You can’t prove that.”
“You carried an entire deer skeleton into the dorms last month.”
“That was teamwork.”
“That was a crime.”
“It was educational,” Satoru argued.
Yaga closed his eyes briefly like a man standing at the edge of sanity. “She is not keeping roadkill in the dormitories.”
“It’s not roadkill anymore,” she corrected softly. “It’s osteological preservation.”
Nanami nearly choked. “You named it worse.”
“It’s clean,” she defended.
“That is not helping.”
She looked genuinely confused by this. “But bones are beautiful.”
There it was again.
That sincerity.
That deeply concerning sincerity.
She carefully adjusted one of the ribs. “Everything leaves traces behind,” she continued thoughtfully. “Scars. Fractures. Illness. You can tell what hurt them. Sometimes even how they lived. It’s fascinating.”
Nanami did not know how to respond to that.
Neither, apparently, did Yaga.
Satoru, however, sat upright suddenly with all the energy of a man about to make things significantly worse.
“Tell Nanami about the Victorian mourning practices.”
Nanami immediately pointed at him. “Don’t.”
She lit up instantly.
“In the Victorian era it was common to keep hair from deceased loved ones.”
Nanami stood up.
“No.”
“They made jewelry from it.”
“No.”
“Sometimes entire wreaths.”
“No.”
“Postmortem photography was also common-"
“WHY DO YOU KNOW THIS?”
She blinked at him. “Because it’s interesting.”
“None of those words should ever be connected.”
Haibara looked fascinated. Suguru was openly amused now. Shoko looked like she wanted popcorn and Satoru looked moments away from falling off the sofa from laughter.
“She told Gojo about corpse preservation once,” Shoko said.
Nanami looked horrified. “Why would you allow that?”
“I didn’t allow anything. He asked questions.”
Satoru grinned. “She knows how bog bodies work.”
Nanami turned slowly toward her. “You know what bog bodies are?”
“Of course.”
“Why.”
“They’re scientifically important.”
“She said that exact sentence while holding a bird skull last week,” Suguru added.
Yaga looked about three seconds away from retirement.
“She is not bringing any more bones into the dorms.”
Silence.
Then she tilted her head slightly.
“What about teeth?”
Yaga looked physically wounded.
“No.”
“Antlers?”
“No.”
“Bird skulls?”
“No.”
“Partial skeletons?”
“No.”
“What about-”
“No.”
Satoru raised a hand. “Hypothetically-”
“No.”
Suguru smiled faintly. “What if-”
“No.”
Haibara looked genuinely disappointed. “Even small ones?”
Yaga looked at the ceiling. “Why are you all like this?”
“Friendship,” Shoko said flatly.
At the table, she carefully picked up the fox skull again, brushing dirt from it with startling gentleness.
“You know,” she said quietly, “foxes scream.”
Nanami froze, Satoru immediately burst into delighted laughter. Haibara looked alarmed. “Why would you say that so casually?!”
“It’s true.”
“That somehow makes it worse!”
“They sound like women being murdered,” she continued thoughtfully.
Nanami sat back down.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like his body had given up.
“You are the most terrifying person I have ever met.”
She looked genuinely pleased by that. “Thank you.”
Yaga pointed at Satoru immediately. “Stop encouraging her.”
“I’m not encouraging her,” Satoru said while very clearly encouraging her. “I’m appreciating her.”
“Our cryptid,” Suguru agreed calmly.
Nanami looked between all of them in disbelief. “This is normal to you people?”
“Yes,” Shoko answered immediately.
“Concerningly so,” Suguru added.
“She once disappeared for seven hours and came back with a perfectly preserved owl,” Satoru said proudly.
“She wrapped it in my scarf,” Shoko said.
“It was respectful,” she defended.
“It leaked on my cigarettes.”
Haibara leaned toward Nanami and whispered loudly, “I think she’s cool.”
Nanami stared at the fox skeleton, at Satoru hanging halfway off furniture. Suguru enabling all of this with the expression of a patient cult leader. Shoko smoking through the collapse of civilization. At Yaga visibly aging in real time. Then finally at her, carefully cleaning dirt from tiny bones with the concentration of a surgeon and the aura of a haunted Victorian child.
“I want to go home,” Nanami said quietly.
“You live here,” Shoko reminded him.
Nanami looked genuinely devastated by that information.