The cafeteria smelled like something between pizza and institutional mystery meat, which Jin was slowly learning was just how large communal kitchens worked. He'd stood at the entrance for a solid thirty seconds, watching students move between tables with the ease of people who'd been doing this for years, before pushing through the double doors.
The noise hit him first. Not loud exactly, but dense—the kind of ambient sound that came from dozens of conversations happening simultaneously. Jin moved toward the food line, keeping his head down and trying to look like he belonged there, which was harder than it should have been when you had white hair and pale skin that made you look like you'd escaped from some sort of gothic novel.
"You're the new guy."
Jin looked up.
A girl with dark hair was standing beside him in the food line. She had that particular kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly who she was and not particularly caring what anyone else thought about it. Couldn't have been more than sixteen, maybe seventeen, and she was studying him with the kind of unfiltered curiosity that suggested social convention was more of a suggestion than a requirement for her.
"I am," Jin said, figuring honesty was probably the safest bet. "How'd you know?"
"Logan mentioned someone was staying here," the girl replied, grabbing a tray and starting to survey the food options. "White hair, mysterious, showed up unconscious. Wasn't exactly hard to piece together." She glanced at him while reaching for some chicken. "Plus you've got that look about you. New person energy."
"That's a thing?" Jin asked, genuinely curious about how people could just read situations like that so easily.
"Absolutely," she said, loading her plate with a kind of practiced efficiency that suggested she'd done this more times than she could count. "You get good at reading people when you live in close quarters with them. Everyone's got their tell. Yours is that you're trying very hard not to look like you have no idea where anything is."
Jin couldn't really argue with that assessment. He'd been awake for less than twenty-four hours and most of that had been spent either talking to Xavier or being shown around the school by Logan. The cafeteria was definitely new territory.
"The chicken's not terrible if you don't overthink it," the girl continued, pointing at the steam trays with her serving spoon. "The pasta's okay in a pinch. And seriously, whatever that is in the green bean casserole has been there since yesterday, so we're all doing ourselves a favor by avoiding it." She made a face that was probably meant to be humorous but mostly just looked like genuine horror at past cafeteria experiences.
Jin grabbed some of everything except the casserole, following her lead more because she seemed to know what she was doing than because he actually had preferences about any of it. His stomach was loud enough about wanting food that he was willing to eat basically anything at this point.
They moved down the line together, and the girl kept talking in that easy way that suggested she didn't need much encouragement to keep a conversation going.
"So what's your deal, anyway?" she asked, piling vegetables onto her plate. "Logan said you just showed up, got put in some kind of medical thing, and now you're awake and apparently mysteriously strong? That's the official story anyway. Kids have already started their own theories. One of them thinks you're a secret government experiment. Another one's convinced you're an alien."
"I'm not either of those things," Jin said, which was technically true if you didn't count the whole system and template situation. "I just... woke up. That's really it."
"That's the least interesting answer I've ever heard," the girl said, but she was smiling when she said it, like she found his attempt at being boring kind of entertaining. "Well, I'm Rogue. Before you ask, yes, that's actually what people call me. Long story involving bad decisions and worse choices, but it stuck."
"Jin," he replied, deciding that fair was fair on the name introduction front.
"That's a short name," Rogue observed, heading toward the beverage station.
"I've noticed," Jin said, grabbing a drink that looked like it might be lemonade or possibly some kind of fruit punch. The labeling wasn't clear.
"You get the sense of humor too? Great," Rogue said, and there was definitely laughter in her voice now. "Come on, there's usually space at one of the middle tables. The kids there are less likely to interrogate you about your entire life story."
Except that turned out to be somewhat optimistic, because the table they ended up at filled up within minutes of them sitting down. There was a boy with dark hair and sunglasses who introduced himself as Scott and seemed to have opinions about approximately everything. Two other students whose names Jin caught but immediately forgot because they talked over each other constantly. A girl with red hair who seemed mostly amused by the chaos. And someone whose skin had a slight blue tint to it, which Jin was learning to accept as just part of the general aesthetic around Xavier's school.
"You lifted that couch yesterday," Scott said at one point, apparently deciding that small talk was beneath him. "Just lifted it. Like it weighed nothing."
Jin paused mid-chew, considering how to answer that. He'd been moving furniture in his room, trying to figure out what space felt like when he had access to cursed energy, and apparently he'd been less subtle about it than he'd thought.
"I'm just naturally strong," he said, which wasn't exactly a lie. Gojo's body came with a baseline of physical capability that was probably above human standard, even at only 21% synchronization.
"In your sleep coma?" Scott raised an eyebrow over his sunglasses in a way that suggested he'd practiced that particular gesture. "That must have been some dream training you were doing while you were unconscious for three weeks."
The other students at the table were definitely paying attention now, which probably meant Jin's attempt at a casual explanation had failed spectacularly.
"Human bodies are capable of interesting things," Jin said, which was vague enough to be technically true without actually explaining anything. "I'm still figuring out what I'm capable of."
"That's better than your couch explanation," Rogue said, kicking his shin lightly under the table. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to get his attention. "At least it's honest."
The conversation shifted after that, which Jin was grateful for. They moved on to arguing about something that had happened in some class he hadn't taken yet, complaining about a teacher's grading system, and debating whether the new training module in the gym was actually an improvement or just a creative way to make sure nobody had an easy time of anything.
It was strange. He'd expected this to be awkward or difficult or require some special protocol for being the mysterious new person. Instead, it was just... normal. They were talking about school things the way students probably talked about school things everywhere. Complaining about assignments, making jokes about teachers, the kind of low-stakes social interaction that didn't require him to explain his entire existence.