"... Then I have no idea why I'm alive," mutters Junpei.

He looks up, again, at Yoshino. "Can you tell me? Who or what it was?"

"Um." This is totally going to get him killed, isn't it. He's the extra in a horror movie, a dead guy walking.

But he won't be a stupid one.

"... Creepy stitched curse person. Grey hair, pale skin, eyes two different colors. Uh. Hangs out in the sewers. Can carry on a perfectly polite conversation. Explained some things about magic to me."

"...okay. I—curses don't usually—can't usually carry conversations. So most likely a curse user..."

"No. Definitely a curse. Invisible to other people, and there was the, the. ... Curses have an, an aura? All of them? Like they're badness incarnate. And it was big.”

Blink. "But—then—a curse that can converse—not even the special grade I fought—Yoshino-san, this is incredibly serious—" The only curses he knows of that can talk like that are volcano head and Sukuna, so if this curse is at that level...

He reaches into a pocket to grab his phone but drops it at a sudden tremour.

Junpei shrinks a little and gives a small whine. It's probably a coincidence but maybe it's not and maybe he just pissed something off.

"D-do they all have to be bad, though? He, they? It? seemed, uh. New. Experimenting."

"The... I only know of two other courses that can talk; one tried to kill my Sensei, and the other was the one that killed me. And... he did it for fun. Just to make my friends suffer." He shakes his head and reaches down for his phone again to call Ijichi. "Curses are formed out of the negative emotions of humans. But so is jujutsu sorcery. So I—don't want to declare that it is impossible for a curse to exist who isn't evil. But... if so then this one will need to be taught some manners."

He frowns and looks at his phone, then tries dialling again. "—sorry, I forgot to say earlier, but, uh, given that you have the ability to see them you probably have the ability to do jujutsu sorcery, yourself, and I think my organisation would really like to help you learn how to use it."

"Um. Okay. But... um." Wince. "I'd feel really bad about turning the first person that was nice to me for no reason in to the authorities, so, um. ... Please try to be nice?"

"...yeah. Okay." He looks at his phone in frustration again. "What is Ijichi-san doing." Sigh. "Well, nothing to it. Does this curse know where you live? Do you have any family it—they—could hurt or threaten?"

"Uh, I don't think so? But maybe. And, um. ... My mom."

"Hmm." He closes his eyes and thinks. What's the next plot beat in this story? The curse could actually be a good person, or, well, a confused person anyway, and the story goes in the direction of humanising curses. Or it's actually very evil and trying to manipulate Yoshino for... what reasons? Fun is one possibility; Sukuna's sadism is not atypical for the kind, and a powerful smart curse wouldn't really need someone who has no training, not without spending a lot of effort doing that training. Or maybe Yoshino is bait? Trying to pull at their—his—heartstrings, and damn it if that was the ploy it was working, Itadori could feel himself caring for the boy and wanting to, to avert whatever horrible fate this story wanted to inflict on him—

—this is real life. It may be operating on story logic but story logic needs to still go through regular logic.

He can't reach Ijichi. So what are his options? He shouldn't leave Yoshino alone, not without checking in with the grown-ups (even though the grown-ups tried to have him killed... well, it was different grown-ups). So either he follows Yoshino or Yoshino follows him. If they go to Yoshino's place then the curse could be following them and he isn't skilled enough yet to hide his own cursed trail—

—no, damnit, he visited Yoshino's porch, that ship has sailed. But he didn't know it was this bad, at the time, a talking curse was just out of anything they'd considered. Therewas Sukuna, and volcano-head, and while Gojō-sensei is much more powerful than the latter and claims to be more powerful than the former, there's only one of him.

So given that his own cursed trail is already there, there would be no additional harm in following Yoshino to his place, and maybe placing some protections there. He definitely needs to talk to Gojō-sensei, though.

Itadori releases a breath and blinks his eyes open, realising he's been quiet for perhaps rather a long while.

"Sorry! I got distracted thinking. Uh, I think... we probably should find your mother and get you somewhere safe before anything else. If your stitched person friend isn't bad then it'll be wasted caution and if they are then better safe than sorry."

"... Kay. Uh. But then. Where would we even go? My mom's got, you know. A job."

"This is probably more important, but... I don't know. I can't reach my point of contact but I could maybe call some other people? Curses that can speak are really powerful."

"Uh. Okay. But you get to be the one to explain it to her."

"Yeah! Can do."

"You should probably open with, um, the magic powers. Or whatever. Er. Not that she's home right now? She'll be at work for another couple of hours."

"Where does she work? It's probably too paranoid to want to follow her. Or is it? —hey, did stitched curse person ever teach you how to do any jujutsu? Wait no you said they didn't? I think?"

"She works in customer support, uhm. I have, like... I don't know if it's properly jujutsu, it didn't seem very useful for things that aren't, fighting and stuff? It's not very good for proving that I have magic powers. Whereas you just. Seem to have some kind of physical... whatever it is?? If you can pick up our couch by yourself then that'll work fine."

"Most jujutsu is only good for fighting! Kind of. It's all the negativeness of spirit. I don't have a cursed technique, though, because I barely have any cursed energy of my own, so it's really cool to see other people's." He stands up and stretches. "I can pick up a couch though no problem!"

"That'll work, then. Um. My thing is poison. Through a jellyfish, but. It's invisible to everyone and not... very big. So. Not very interesting."

"Oh, like a shikigami? That's actually really cool! I have a friend who can do shadow shikigami. Can you show me?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure, um." Junpei closes his eyes and then summons a transparent jellyfish, pale blue and floating through the air like it's water. It's small enough to fit in the size of a palm, and obviously made entirely out of cursed energy; invisible to normal people.

"This is as big as I can get it," he admits, embarrassed. "F-for right now, anyway! Apparently I'll be able to change its size, at, uh, some point, but I was. ... Working on refinement to get it to be a numbing agent. Um. Instead of just. Being poison that kills."

"That's so cute! Does it have a name?"