"No. If it's any comfort, if there was anything of them still left inside, they probably would have thanked you. But I didn't observe any manner of thought processing left." He sighs, and finishes his own once-human creature with a final stab to the head. "Welcome to first and special grades. Still believe you can swim?"

Tōkan swallows dryly and nods. "Not... anything else we could have done for them. Whoever or whatever did this to them..." Is his target.

"Is ultimately responsible," agrees Nanami, with a firm nod. He glances around, the closes his eyes. "... It seems these were the only ones left for this trap. Do you see any more signs of a trail?"

He does not want to lead Itadori's conclusions, but... he can't sense anything. Which does not bode well at all.

"No," he says immediately, then frowns at himself and looks around more carefully. "No," he repeats, more certain of his conclusion.

"Neither do I." Sigh. "Let's return to Ijichi-san. Ieiri-san might have more information on the other victims by now. And we'll want to have someone come by to pick these up and attempt identification."

"Yes, Nanami-san."

"There are cursed spirits known as 'special-grade potential apparitions'," says the stitched person. They're holding a book and flipping through the pages idly, lounging on a hammock somewhere in the sewer system. "Cursed spirits are made of the cursed energy emitted by humans, so shared images of fear, even if they're not real, make it easy for powerful curses to manifest."

Talking to the terrifying stitched person has been, as expected, completely terrifying, but Junpei is kind of used to everything being scary, by now. At least this scary thing is being nice to him and teaching him neat stuff about magic.

"So, like the Slit Mouth Woman and other famous ghost stories? Or—or actually can it be more than that, even recent stuff, can the monsters in horror movies become real and proper cursed spirits, too? Because they were put into movies?"

"Exactly! Like Toilet-Bound Hanako-san or the nine-tailed fox." They show Junpei a picture of the latter on the book they're holding and smile at him. "Jujutsu sorcerers keep track of these, and the fact that any unknown unclassified special-grade gets labelled as a potential apparition makes it look like that's all they're focused on."

They turn a knowing look to Junpei himself. "But people constantly fear way more than just fairy tales, don't they?"

"Well, yeah, of course. The scariest things are the ones you can't tuck into the pages of a book, or the runtime of a movie. But without a, a template to follow, what do the cursed spirits end up like? Anything at all?"

Mahito grins and says, "Anything at all. I like how stress-free it is, talking to you."

Just then, though, a loud grunting moan echoes through one of the tunnels right next to Junpei.

Haha if only Junpei could say the same!

"Really?" His eyes turn towards the tunnel the moan originated from, and he frowns. Do not go investigate the sound of the moan, Junpei, you have watched a lot of horror movies, you don't know exactly what's over there but also you kind of do. At least it's not him. "I-I'm kind of a nervous wreck who gets super caught up in trivia."

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."