He is silent, for a long while.

"Yeah?" says Gojo. "And what would your advice be if you told them to walk out into traffic? Don't fight the buses?"

He opens and shuts his mouth several times, but can't come up with a response to that.

"Sending first years to rescue five people who may already be dead should have been out of the question," he continues, in a dull sounding monotone. He lets out a soft laugh that sounds anything but humorous. "I knew they were mad, but this?

"Maybe I should just cut to the chase and go kill off all of those higher-ups."

"—what? You th-think it was on purpose?"

Gojo doesn't dignify that with an answer.

"Murdering all of the fools at the top would be an easy task," he continues, instead. "But not a fix. They'd just get replaced by another set of kowtowing nitwits, none of which would be willing to listen to a word I say. Because I'd be the bad guy." His fists clench. "They send promising and talented teenagers into a meatgrinder out of petty wounded pride, and I would be the bad guy for killing them for it."

He's trembling like a leaf, now, hand covering his mouth. "B-but n-no one knew i-it was going t-t-to b-become a special grade w-when the dispatch was c-c-called—"

“The kids reported the curse had eaten one of Sukuna’s fingers.” And then, softly: “And a detention center? … Coincidence, or did someone create a curse just to prove a point?”

"That... would be..."

    The door to the morgue opens, and a woman in a lab coat walks in. "You're not usually this emotional."

Ijichi nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound, but he immediately turns around, grateful for a distraction, and bows many times. "It's good to see you, Ieiri-san!"

“These are unusual circumstances.”

"Are they?" she asks, twirling a finger in her hair. "It seems to me like you've taken quite a liking to your new students."

“I am a kind and empathetic instructor, and I care about all of my students.”

She chuckles a bit and shakes her head. "Don't torment Ijichi too much. He's got it tough, stuck between us and the higher-ups."

    (If the still-bowing Ijichi is blushing a bit, that's no one's business.)

“My sympathy for his welfare runs as deep as the depths of his noble soul.”

    (...Ijichi takes a while to get that one.)

Ieiri chuckles again. "Is that so?" she asks lightly as she turns around to look at the body. She removes the tarp covering it and says, "So this is Sukuna's vessel?" She eyes the body with a detached, cold, clinical air. "I can take him apart as I please, right?"

“Just… make it count. Don’t waste him.”

"Of course." She looks over her shoulder at him. "Who do you think I am?"

He gives a sigh, and turns his head away.

Fushiguro Inori has a number of visitors during his stay at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Hospital, but most of them aren't there for a social visit. While Gojo's visit may or may not have counted as social, considering their relationship, he was terrible company for its entirety. Just a short 'We'll talk about things later, it's too busy for a proper chat right now,' and a wish for him to get better quickly. And an apology, that he does not expand on, and probably doesn't need to.

Then, aside from the nurses showing up at every odd hour of the day and night, he is left alone.

...he.........

He hates this.

He usually likes being alone, but..........

............but now he'd like to not be.

And then he gets a visitor.

"Excuse me," asks a woman with a familiar color of hair. She looks to be somewhere in her early forties, maybe late thirties, and... is probably Hayashi's mom. "Is this the room of Fushiguro Inori?"

He looks up at her from where he'd been idly browsing on his phone. "Yes," is all he says.

"I'm Akiho's mother, Hayashi Honoka. It's nice to meet you. Would it be all right if I put in the request that you and my daughter should share a room?"

Fushiguro blinks twice, and lets out a long, relieved breath. He had been half-expecting her to come here tell him her daughter didn't survive her wounds.

He nods, once.

"All right." She smiles. "Akiho-san is doing well. Bored out of her mind already. I thought it might be prudent to solve one bored teenager with another."

That draws a small smile out of him. "Thank you, Hayashi-san."