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...?"

"Oh, uh. Not everyone who can see curses necessarily wants to dedicate their lives to fighting them. Some people see them, maybe set up a barrier to keep the curses in and keep other people away from them, and then report them to their local sorcerer organization. People who see and report are 'windows'."

"Ah, that makes sense," he says, nodding.

Fushiguro has his brows furrowed, though, like something's nagging at him.

"—something wrong, Fushiguro-kun?"

"Yes. I don't know what this curse should be. There aren't graveyards or schools or hospitals or anything like that, here."

"Construction accident, maybe? Terrible boss and miserable construction workers..?" she theorizes, then furrows her brow and trails off. Hayashi touches the barrier with a hand, giving a thoughtful hum.

"... no. This is not a young curse. I wouldn't have expected such an old one to just be hanging around in Ginza. Are sorcerers really stretched that thin in Tokyo?"

That seems enlightening, and Fushiguro snaps his fingers when he gets it. "No, it was buried."

"The Ginza district used to be a swamp, four or five hundred years ago," he explains. "And then it got filled in. This must be a curse that was buried by construction and progress, here, and this site must have... dug it up, from underground, by accident."

"Lovely. So it'll be good and entrenched," says Hayashi, wrinkling her nose. "I hope it's sleeping, because if it's four or five hundred years old this could get messy. Especially if it's set up a domain. I hate when they set up domains."

"Translation for the newbie?"

"An innate domain is an area created within a being's mind that represents their self and their innate techniques. It is possible to manifest it into reality, which makes the owner virtually invincible inside it, but it is very expensive and requires a lot of cursed energy. Which a four hundred year old curse would have in spades."

"Mm. Which is not great. Not as scary as a young curse that's powerful enough to set up an innate domain, but not great. It's actually kind of a good thing it's been buried for so long, I doubt it's been eating very much. The curse equivalent of living off of discarded garbage. But." She fidgets with the hem of her jacket; she's already been given a uniform. Probably helps that she didn't ask for any customizations. "Like I said, could get messy. I can probably rip us a hole out of it if it's one of the sticky ones, though. If we decide to go brave it."

"...you can what."

"Oh. Uh. I have my own domain. It's not very, uh, refined, but if I get to the edge of a curse's domain it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be enough to disrupt it so I can run through. It's actually how I change the direction of momentum. Without it, I need to actually have things moving in the direction I want to sympathy impress it to. Why did you think I've been so obsessed with economics of cursed energy?"

"That is... impressive. You might want to ask Sensei for help with it."

"Thank you! I will. My first priority is getting a better grasp of basics, though. I will take practical things I can always use over big fancy expensive techniques, you know?"

"Sensible.

"Shall we advance, then?"

Nod.

"Please be sleeping. Think sleepy thoughts," she mutters to, presumably, the curses inside the barrier. And then they can go inside and see what they're in for.