"'It'? Oh. Us sparring. It was very short and one sided, you didn't miss much." Just the chance to make some innuendos about two teens awkwardly fumbling in the dirt. Which she is still very glad he wasn't there to see.

"Do one more!" He drops onto the dirt, cross-legged, keeping a hand on top of the sheep's head as it bleats.

"I don't see the incentive."

"The match was really quite tragic," agrees Hayashi. "I am really not used to both fighting other sorcerers, and using pie weights instead of things that are actually deadly."

"You can apply whatever you learnt from the first match and see how you go next!"

"I feel like you are less interested in our growth as sorcerers and more interested in something else."

"...I will admit that that is part of the motivation, yes, but most of it is wanting to see real jujutsu sorcerers use real jujutsu sorcery. I was a muggle until the other day remember? And believe it or not I can separate work from fun!"

"You're right, I don't believe you."

Itadori leans forward to prop his face on both hands, and the sheep accordingly stops bleating. "Come on, Fushiguro-san, you're being unfair. I will stop joking around if it bothers you that much, it did not seem to me like it did but..."

Fushiguro runs a hand through his hair and sighs. "You're right. I'm not any... good... at not taking everything seriously."

Hayashi feels like her classmates are having some sort of elaborate teenage boy mating ritual, and she's shown up midway through and thrown it off with her presence. She also feels like she doesn't want to be witnessing any of this, and would kind of like to be literal wallpaper right now. Elaborate teenage mating rituals are complicated enough when it's just her and someone else, thanks, she doesn't want to witness another pair of teenagers flailing incompetently at each other.

".... Do... you two need a minute?" she asks, delicately.

Itadori raises both eyebrows and looks at the other boy. "I don't know. Do we, Fushiguro-san?"

He was having a cool time with Hayashi here, and he'd also been having an actual okay time with Itadori prior, but now he's around the two of them and he's not sure what kind of time he wants to be having and this seems very much like the last thing he wants in the world is a minute to talk to Itadori in!!!!!

"Aha!" says Gojo, from his phone. "Good news! A window's spotted something nasty in Ginza."

"... How is that good news, precisely?"

She bets Fushiguro is very glad for the distraction, the poor thing looks like he's going to self destruct from social anxiety, but she doesn't really think of curses running rampant as 'good news.'

"We have an excuse to go to Ginza! It'll be great, you three can go handle the curses in the barrier that's up, and I can go shopping!"

Oh okay Gojō-sensei being an absolute nutcase and fighting curses are both things he is much more comfortable dealing with than, than this whole "making friends" thing, especially when one said friend has made it clear that he's DTF and Fushiguro's romantic and sexual experience is "haha no" and he's kind of tempted but also Hayashi's nice and mature and pretty and has a really cool cursed technique and

and he will stop thinking about that right now, melt his dogs, and walk away.

...he's adorable, it's kind of unfair.

"So, I take it the time was productive?" he asks Hayashi, taking a bit to get to his feet and get moving to allow Fushiguro a headstart on them.

Oh noooo, poor Fushiguro!! Precious introverted cinnamon roll that must be protected and cherished!!! ... It would probably make things worse to go over and try to reassure him, it looks like having something familiar is doing a better job at that than girl-he-met-yesterday would. Probably Gojo did that on purpose. Huh. She guesses she approves of Gojo slightly.

"I... think? It was very instructive on how much I have to learn about combat against another sorcerer, or a curse user. Which is 'very much.' I also need to figure out literally any nonlethal ways to fight things, because I mostly don't have anything in between 'eviscerate' and 'not.'"

She stands as well, dusting her skirt off. Yes, give the poor precious cinnamon roll time to cool off.

"What was it like?"

She gives a little awkward shrug.

"One sided? There really wasn't much to watch."

Is that a faint blush to her cheeks? No. Lies. Lies! She is going to ignore it and then it will go away.

"Anyway, we should go do something I'm actually good at, so my poor wounded ego can recover," she says, because actually yes having a distraction sounds great right now.

"Ittekimasu!" he calls, turning his walk into a march instead.

This earns him a little amused snort.

Gojo ferries them to Ginza, give them his number, and tells them to text him if they run into any trouble! And then he's off to go shopping. Probably. According to him, anyway. It is unclear what he will actually be doing while he's making his students do dangerous work that is probably actually his responsibility.

Ginza district, housing upscale stores and restaurants, flagship shops and fancy pubs, would not be a place one would expect to see curses very often. But the specific location they are taken to is closer to the outskirts, and seems to be a construction site for some new store. It looks ordinary, if creepy in that way construction sites are creepy when no one is actively working in them like right now. But of course, the three of them can feel the aura of

dark

w et

a way

oh gods it's hu ge don't let i t eat me

los t

drowned

ad v en ture

wrong

that emanates from it as soon as they step through the curtain that was set up around it in advance. It is darker within it, and the passersby don't seem to notice it, but they do seem to subconsciously veer away from it, some of them going as far as even making faces at it when they do.

"Senpai," asks Itadori when they step through and feel the chill of the barrier cover them from head to toe before allowing passage, "Gojō-sensei said a 'window' spotted a curse...?"