And now Mahito is standing right behind him, looking into the tunnel, too. "People," they murmur in lieu of replying, "have always feared the earth. The forests. The oceans." They turn their gaze to Junpei himself again. "Because the cursed energy directed towards those is far too big, they gained wisdom long before they took shape, and remained in hiding up until now. I'm proud to call them all friends."

Wow, the terrifying stitched curse person has more friends than Junpei. He knew he was pathetic, but that's just rubbing it in.

"... Sounds nice," he says, because it does. And, actually, yeah, he could see how you could be friends with things made from those kinds of primal fears. "Just because they're feared doesn't mean they're necessarily bad, though. Bad for humans isn't the same thing as bad, and feared by humans isn't either. The earth and forest and oceans don't mean to cause harm, it just happens as a result of what they are. Which is nicer than what a lot of humans could say."

"Bad and good... are themselves also very human concepts, are they not?" Mahito leans closer to Junpei and places a finger on his forehead. "How about you?" they ask, slowly sliding their finger to the left to push Junpei's hair away, revealing all the cigarette burn scars there. "What do you fear?"

"Ev...erything?" winces Junpei, wishing that he could be literally anyone else. Maybe someone that doesn't hate himself, that sounds nice. "I'm afraid that this is all there is, that this is all I'll ever be, that this is just. How the world is. How people are."

"It probably is," grins Mahito. "How people are. And that's how I was born. Because people... are like this."

"You were made from... the fear people have of other people?"

"Mmhmmmm," they say, running their finger lightly on alllllll of those cigarette burn scars on Junpei's forehead.

Junpei gives a little unhappy whine and leans away.

"... I guess I probably helped make you, then. At least a little." He's plenty scared of people.

"Probably," agrees Mahito, stepping away and hopping back onto their hammock to resume reading their book. "And for that, I am grateful."

The reports from windows on recent residuals, unnatural deaths, and disappearances have been organised into a map, with details attached to each pin that references an incident. And while that helps, it's still not a direct lead. Instead, while Nanami is tasked with trying to figure out the culprit's hideout, Itadori has a different task.

Nanami originally flagged Yoshino Junpei, the boy who was in the cinema at the same time as those three victims, as unlikely to know anything about it; his behaviour suggested civilian rather than sorcerer or curse user. However, it turns out he studies at the same high school as the victims, which changes the calculus. Therefore, Itadori and Ijichi are both to investigate the boy further, and see if they can find anything.

Which is how they find themselves in a car, following an unsuspecting Yoshino Junpei from a slight distance.

"He's wearing casual clothes," notes Itadori.

    "It looks like he hasn't attended school in a while," explains Ijichi, "at least since the incident."

"I see..." Well he would have been traumatised as fuck if three people he knew had suddenly been headsploded right before his eyes like that and he didn't know anything about curses, so he can't blame Yoshino. But the "didn't know" part is something they mean to investigate today.

    "We can stop here," says Ijichi, pulling up and turning the engine off. They both get out of the car and resume tailing Yoshino on foot, looking entirely normal except for how Itadori is carrying a small empty cage covered in paper seals in his hands.

Only it's not empty, not to the eyes of anyone with the ability to see curses. Two small spirits are there, weak enough they only get classified as "grade 4" for lack of a grade 5. The cursed seals are probably not even necessary to keep them trapped, really. And they'll be used as bait.

The idea here is trying to gauge Yoshino's reaction to them. If he's a normal person with no cursed senses, he'll get into a small funk but Itadori can just kill the curses to fix that; if he can see curses but doesn't have any jujutsu, Itadori can again kill the curses and then they will question the boy about the day of the attack in the theater; if he has the means to exorcise the curses himself, then Itadori is to restrain him so they can find out if Yoshino is a curse user. Technically, Itadori is not meant to engage at all if Yoshino turns out to be grade 2 or higher, in which case they are just meant to return to Nanami to regroup, but he feels like he can take a grade 2 sorcerer if push comes to shove.

But plans seldom go exactly as planned, do they?

"Yoshino," calls a large man sitting right on the steps in front of Junpei's house's gate. Sotomura-sensei, from school. "Where were you?" he asks, ponderously getting to his feet and patting his forehead dry of sweat with a handkerchief. "You know you shouldn't be skipping school."

Junpei thinks that if a teacher doesn't want him to skip school he should instead make a concentrated effort to make school less hellish. Instead of what this teacher does, which is ignore any and all bullying going on because it's inconvenient and awkward.

He forces an awkward smile anyway.

"Oh. Hi. Uh, yeah, something. Came up."

"So did you not hear? Sayama, Nishimura, and Honda are dead," he says. "You were friends with them, weren't you? They spent a lot of time with you when you had no other friends, right?"

Junpei stares at his dumbass teacher. He was not friends with them. He was the opposite of friends with them. He hated them, they hated him, he is kind of okay with how they're dead and is cozying up with their (terrifying) murderer even if he has some trauma about how they died gruesomely. How his teacher could somehow think that his bullies were friends with him is just... beyond him.

"I was in the theater with them. At the time," he says. "So. No. I didn't just hear."

"Oh? But you didn't even attend their funerals. Honestly what's up with you? You should go light some incense for them. I'll even go with you."

"Thanks," he says, almost brightly, "but I think that I would—" really rather jump off a bridge instead! dies in his throat as he spots something.

Uh. Uh. Is that a curse? That's totally a curse. Headed right for him! Uh! Uh! What does he do!! What does he do!!! Actually Mahito did teach him something about how to use sorcery, a little, Junpei was very insistent about learning literal magic, but, like, what! How does that translate to, like, fighting a thing??? Does he run? He should probably run! But wait, it'd probably go after his teacher, which. ... He's also okay with but not okay okay with, it's the kind of thing that if it were really actually not his fault he wouldn't mind, but being directly responsible by inaction sounds. Worse, somehow. And he does technically know how to maybe defend himself! Maybe? Maybe that means he has a responsibility to? But that's so scary though, and it's for this guy, and he might literally die doing it!

While he has this internal debate, he is standing completely still, like a deer in the headlights.

    The curse is tiny and flying right at the mundane teacher, who looks somewhat concerned by Junpei suddenly freezing like that? "What's gotten into you? Self-isolation making you a bit crazy? Hahahah just kidding."

"STOOOOOOP!" yells a—boy? about Junpei's age?—in English as he leaps from kami know where and grabs the curse out of the air just as it almost lands on the teacher's head. Except of course now he has too much momentum and even as he spins a bit in the air to try to regain balance he ends up landing facefirst onto the light pole. "...ow."

What is going on.

Who is this strange loud person who so easily jumped out of nowhere to grab a curse like that?? Why was there a person hiding in the bushes or something to grab a curse? This didn’t happen to him before. Why is it happening now??

“Um.” He stares, blankly, at the boy. He looks at the curse. He looks at the boy, again. “Are you… okay?” The implication is physically, but he is wondering a bit if this strange curse grabbing boy is okay in the head, too.

His teacher looks equally nonplussed—more, even, since he couldn't see the curse. The boy is holding onto it (it's small, about the size of a teddy bear) with one hand and clutching his forehead with the other, making pained noises as a reply.

    "What the.... You a gymnast or something?" the teacher asks.

That seems to shake the boy out of it better than Yoshino's inquiry after his well-being, and he quickly hops to his feet and sprints up to Yoshino. "Hi! I wanna talk to you!" he says, with his most winning smile.

    "Hey! Don't you see we were just talking? That's rude!"

Strange loud person makes strange choices that Junpei does not understand. Like wanting to talk to him! Who would do that, he's not very good conversation. The terrifying stitched curse man Mahito will lie to him about liking talking to him, but Junpei is pretty sure he just likes watching Junpei squirm while trying desperately to acquire magic. Which is not, actually, the same thing.

"Uh. Why," he says, still incredibly confused. That would be 'why do you want to talk to me' instead of 'why is interrupting two people having an unpleasant and one-sided conversation rude.' He knows the answer to that second one, and it is because social graces are liquid insanity that society is eternally drunk on.

"It's, you know, about the thing. I'm sure you know the thing I mean."

    "Excuse me? Young man?"

Now he turns to look at the teacher. "Hello," he says cheerfully, which kinda discombobulates the teacher for a couple of seconds before he manages to rally:

    "What could you possibly have that's so important? You're children! And what uniform is that, anyway? Shouldn't you be in school, whatever your—"

Before he can finish that sentence, Itadori decides that the best way he'll find of talking to Yoshino will be getting rid of this clown here so he summarily (and with superhuman speed) pulls the teacher's trousers down. Then some further superhuman displays of strength and athleticism are enough to pull them clean through past the teacher's shoes, despite his protests and attempts to push the boy off, and Sotomura is on his bottom watching the strange boy run into the sunset (sunrise? sun... middle?) with his trousers.

    "What are you doing?!" he calls once he's recovered enough presence of mind to say things, and enough presence of mind to say things is enough presence of mind to get back on his feet and go chasing the weird crazy kid.

...Okay, that is admittedly pretty funny. And if there was a better way to get rid of that guy, Junpei definitely didn't know it at all, so. Good solution?? He guesses??? If very strange??? This person is very strange.

But he does elicit a bit of a snort from Junpei, as he watches his terrible, terrible teacher chase after the weird crazy kid who stole his pants. What is going on. Why is this happening.

The amount of time it takes for Itadori to show back up, coming from the opposite direction—and still holding onto the curse, though Sotomura-sensei's trousers are nowhere in sight—is even more superhuman than all displays shown so far.

"Okay! Now that that's taken care of," he says, slowing down to a regular walk before stopping at a reasonable distance away from Yoshino. He lifts a hand and grins again. "Itadori Tōkan, at your service."

"Uh. Hi. Yoshino Junpei. How did you...? But you're human, he could see you, how did you do that??"