Huh. No reaction. Itadori had sort of been expecting the plot here to be related to Yoshino having some secret undisclosed source of information about curses and magic that would be relevant but maybe not? Still keeping an eye out, anyway.

"I mean, it doesn't make much of a difference, does it? If the world started five minutes ago I'm still me and you're still you and we are still going to do what we are going to do and our relationships aren't fake even if they didn't exist before."

"Yes it does!! Because then reality is, is being simulated and we can be turned off and on again at anime-god's will and the implications for that are horrific both on a personal level and at a societal level, and, and. My head hurts. If reality is being affected by what we think it is, then stop thinking we're in an anime, it's not fair to everyone else present!"

"—what? I don't think I can change stuff just by thinking we're in an anime! That would be kinda terrifying!"

"Well it's the natural logical reasoning for it, isn't it? If reality is changed by how people think it works, then purposefully thinking it's one narrative or another is in some way, unconscious or not, a form of steering! You just said that if you had gone to the government about your superpowers that your genre of anime would be different. Anime is not a law of physics that was impressed upon reality, it's a thing people made. And if it's a thing people made because there's an anime-god writing us or whatever, that's terrifying, and if it's a thing people made that is now reflecting reality, that's also terrifying, and, and." He huffs, upset. "I have come to the conclusion that everything is terrifying. Again."

What a useful conclusion to have made, you really are enlightening the world with your brilliance, Junpei.

"That's... not quite how I was thinking about it. It's more..." Pause. What exactly was he thinking? "If... someone were writing a story about me... then this has to be a story that's consistent with a person I am, right? So if the person I am wouldn't end up in a government facility that must not be the story I'm in, and so I'm not in it because I didn't end up in a government facility." Perfect logic, that. "But I don't—well, didn't—it had never occurred to me that I could be changing actual stuff that happens just because of what I'm thinking. If nothing else, I died once."

"What!! People can die and then get better!!!!"

"It's... complicated, please don't try it, there were very special circumstances and I can't even tell my loved ones I'm alive—not for any supernatural reason!" he interrupts himself to say, before Yoshino can work himself up to an even bigger panic. "Just because of, um, politics. I'm going to, eventually. But I need to become stronger first."

"What!" adds Junpei, a little plaintively.

"I'm going about this the wrong way," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Let me start over. Hi, I'm Itadori Tōkan, jujutsu sorcerer in training, it's nice to meet you! Let's have a conversation about weird magic stuff in an order that doesn't present all of the bizarre conclusions in terrifying ways!"

"But I've already come to all of the bizarre conclusions and don't think I could possibly forget them now and, and." He scrunches his eyes shut and whines. "Hi, Itadori Tokan, jujutsu sorcerer in training, I'm Yoshino Junpei and I don't know what a jujutsu sorcerer is. Are there other types of sorcery? Is that a branch of sorcery?? Should I stop asking questions because I'm somehow going to ruin the conversation and make it existentially terrifying again??"

"You don't need to forget them, just hold them a bit so you can have some context for later. And questions are fine. As far as I know, the only type of sorcery around is jujutsu sorcery, but I've only known about jujutsu sorcery for a few weeks now and there might be a bunch of things I don't know about." He doesn't mention his anime logic-derived theory that there won't be anything else because the system feels narratively complete and anime tends to go for reasonably self-contained stuff.

Except Naruto. Fuck Naruto.

“I. Okay. And the thing you want to talk to me about is the, um, horrible magic murders??”

Yeah, it was pretty obvious. Itadori just nods, growing a bit more serious. "Yeah. Did you happen to see anything or anyone that could be responsible?" He lifts the little curse he's holding up to eye level. "Since you can see these."

“Um.”

Okay so on one hand, yes he definitely did, and probably should tell the strange loud insane person with magic, but on the other hand: Mahito is terrifying and could very easily do the same thing to Junpei, too, and furthermore he’s like, a baby born from evil spite magic who’s trying to figure out how to person. Probably when there is a baby you should… not immediately throw it to the baby police. Except, you know, the murders. The admittedly probably justified murders, considering the victims, but still.

“I feel like you know the answer to this question already, and you’re seeing how I answer it, which makes me want to shrink into an unhelpful witness ball who hides behind a lawyer that I don’t actually have, and actually did you set up the curse showing up to see if I would see it??”

Blink blink. "Did I mention I like you? Um, sorry about the unhelpful witness ball. I wasn't personally the one who set the curse," another opportunity for Yoshino to react, but Itadori thinks he won't, "there but I was part of the plan, yeah. If you couldn't see it then no foul, I'd get it later; if you could see it and could kill it then we have an unknown curse user; and if you could see it and didn't kill it—well, here we are. Didn't count on the teacher, though." Sigh. "Ijichi-san should really learn to think before he does things, and look before he thinks." He gives the curse a squeeze and it squeaks like a toy. "This one is harmless, the worst it can do is make you have a bad day, maybe a headache or your pencil breaks or your lunch bag leaks into your backpack or something like that."

He looks at the curse dubiously. See, those things sound minor, but they can also help add up to a greater whole that is definitely not harmless.

“… could see, couldn’t do anything about,” he says very quietly. “I-I‘ve seen them for, um, months now? But I don’t have any cool magic powers or anything. So.”

Now here's the nearby river! Itadori takes the steps down towards its grassy bank, folding his arms heedless of the protests by the curse. "Well. I'm sorry you had to witness—that. At the theater. It looked awful, even if the kids themselves were awful too."

"Oh. Uh. Thanks. Er. How'd you know, did you do, uh. Research and stuff?"

...hmmm. Yoshino didn't seem to react to the word "curses" the first time, but it looked like he'd been nerdsniped, and the word "sorcerer" did get a reaction. But then he said he did see—no, he did know who or what did that to the other kids.

But is Jujutsu High even a proper secret? Every jujutsu sorcerer knows about it, every curse user worth their salt does, too, and everyone who isn't worth their salt is no threat.

"Yeah. Those three weren't the first. Or the last. I'm, uh, with a group of people looking into it. You're the only actual witness we've found, so far."

"Oh," says Junpei, softly. Wondering.... why that is.

".... what were the other victims like? Was it the same sort of, of. Was it people like them."

"...no. No it wasn't—the school records weren't that clear about what they were like but I read between the lines—no, it wasn't all horrible bullies with no empathy."

"But I mean—how can you be sure? You read between the lines on the school records, but, but. ... I think a lot of people miss how shitty people can be."

"I... know. But..." How to phrase this. "Those horrible fucks, I've met them before. Not them, them, but, people like them. You know? And," you don't need to be a genius, talk to Yoshino for five minutes and you know exactly how cruel those kids were, "I'm not really sure how to say this in a way you'll believe me. Most people aren't like them. And I'm not saying everyone else, who never did anything about it, are saints or anything. But the kind of shit those kids did, the kind of, of petty cruelty—most people aren't like that." He runs a hand through his hair and then walks over to the bottom step of the stairs leading to the riverbank to sit down. "Most people are just sort of—they don't think much about these things, they see you being bullied and they convince themselves it's not that bad, and it's not their problem anyway. The teachers, they create a story where it can't be very bad because if it was very bad then it would be their fault for not catching it sooner. And most people want to believe they're good, but that narrative doesn't survive if they let themselves really see the kind of horrible things that happen right under their noses.

"And all this is to say, I don't know if the other victims were great people. Probably not. But they probably weren't horrible like your bullies, because very few people actually get that bad. And the important thing is—whoever, or whatever did this, is not looking specifically for bad people to kill." Not that killing bad people is good, but he's not about to discuss the sanctity of the life of the people who probably made Yoshino thinks his own life isn't worth living at times. "It's random people. It's this fifty-something lady who lived alone and had no children, it's a police officer who was at the wrong place, it's—" He swallows, dryly, and shakes his head a bit. "It's a group of ten-year-olds who were chasing a ball they accidentally kicked into an alley while playing with it in the nearby playground."

"Those are. Direct, actual examples, not. Metaphorical?"

"...yeah."