Itadori Tōkan wakes up.

"Good morning!" says the mysterious mentor figure, from a chair in front of him, leaning his head on a palm. He gives a cheery wave. "And who is it that I'm greeting today?"

Itadori might notice that his hands are bound behind his back. And that they're in a small, enclosed space, covered in hundreds of little slips of paper on the walls.

Itadori looks around and blinks blearily a bit, then looks at the mysterious mentor figure again. "Itadori," he replies. "Not Sukuna."

"Neat!" He leans forward. "Hate to say it, but I could not talk the higher-ups out of execution. Sorry, kid."

There's a smirk to his lips that hints that there's a catch, though.

"Execution. What. Wait, Fushiguro-san's thing was serious?"

"Oh, deadly serious. Everyone's agreed, you really do need to die, for the curse that you've taken into yourself."

"And the reason I am not, currently, dead...?"

"Well, the big debate is when." He sits up, pulls something out of his pocket, and twirls it around his fingers.

Itadori might recognize it. It looks just like the finger he ate.

"See this? There are eighteen more like it, out in the world, making it worse." He tosses the finger into the air and hits it, with a speed and a power that does not seem possible. It impacts into a wall, leaving a crater.

And then the blindfolded man stands, retrieves it, and shows it to Itadori again. It looks absolutely no worse for wear.

"But we can't destroy it. All we can do is wrap it in protections and tuck it away, and you saw how well that goes, sometimes."

"You want me to eat the other nineteen. And then kill me."

"Absolutely right! You've got a real feel for how this works. When you die, the curse, or curses, you've eaten die with you. And then they are really, actually gone."

"And the last piece of the plot falls in place," he says, nodding. "I'm in."

"Ha! And I didn't even get to the part where you're special, and probably no one else will be able to hold Sukuna after eating even just one of his fingers." He tosses the finger in his hands in the air once, amused, then takes a step forward. "Well, first, proof of concept, open up. Gotta verify that you can house more than just one before we can move forward."

He holds out the shriveled and mummified finger to Itadori, just within reach of his mouth.

"You didn't say it now but you said it before," he says, shrugging. "And that is clearly the plot." With that, he stretches his neck forward, grabs the finger between his teeth, then throws his head back and swallows it whole, making a face. "Tastes like soap."

He jerks in his restraints, then, sudden and forceful. The markings return to his skin, appearing more quickly than the first time, and his muscles bulge under his skin. His four eyes open—

The mysterious mentor figure raises a single eyebrow.

"Hey there, your majesty. Just so you know, even with all twenty fingers in that kid, I could and would kick your ass from here to Mars and back, if you ever come out to play. Anything to say about that?"

He looks up at Gojō, glaring daggers, opens his mouth—

—then coughs and sticks his tongue out in disgust, the markings and eyes disappearing even more quickly than they showed up. "Bleaghh."

This earns an amused chuckle.

"Well! And even if I say that Sukuna is an overrated old hack that couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, much less those restraints?"

That makes Tōkan start laughing. "He really hates you, you know. I'm sure some of the words he is using are older than the Edo Period."

"Aw! How quaint. Well I'd hate him back if he were worth my time!" says the cocky sorcerer, brightly. He gets up and releases Itadori from his restraints, watching with clear amusement.

Itadori stands up and rubs his wrists, stretching his legs at the same time. "—how are my friends doing?" he asks, suddenly.

"Alive, all of them. One's in the hospital, though. Hear it might be chancy. Shall we go check?"

"...yes, please."

Off they go! The mysterious mentor waves off any security that tries to stop them, saying he's running some tests with 'The vessel.' None of the security seems particularly happy, but they grudgingly accept it and do not follow.

Itadori is allowed into the hospital by himself; the blindfolded man opts instead to wait outside on a bench. "Someone will be by tomorrow to remove any latent cursed energy on him. If he makes it that long, that should tip him over the edge to surviving," he says, from where he lounges.

Inside, his classmate is wrapped in bandages. The nurse says something about the school being old and crumbling with him in it; he fell a couple stories. Unlucky, but lucky this happened after hours, and more people weren't hurt. Absolutely no mention of curses or horrible monsters is made.

Sasaki—one of his friends from the Occult Club, less beat up but still with one arm in a cast—is there when Itadori arrives, sitting by Iguchi's bed, staring listlessly at nothing. She looks up when he walks in, but it's almost like she's looking past him, or through him. Her eyes are empty, and it's clear she's cried herself dry and then cried some more.

"Itadori," she says in a matching tone of voice. She does not mention the new additions to his face.