The moment Itadori grabbed Sudo as he lunged at Junpei, he realized that Junpei could see curses.
Junpei’s startled eyes, the gaze fixed squarely on Sudo. A normal person might not have noticed it, but Itadori, with his superhuman dynamic vision, was different.
After pinning Sudo down, Itadori rolled once and only stopped after smashing his head against a utility pole.
“Ow!”
“What was that, a gymnast?”
“........”
Because of the sudden intrusion, Junpei stopped even as he was about to form a hand sign and looked at Itadori.
The chance to confirm his potential had already slipped away. Caught between a ruined plan and improvisation, Itadori made up his mind.
Fine, whatever. Since it’s come to this, I’ll go straight at him!
“Hey, I’ve got something I want to ask you. Come here a sec.”
Junpei’s wavering gaze, as Itadori suddenly thrust his face close, soon dropped to the button on his school uniform.
This button...
It was definitely the spiral-patterned button Mahito had mentioned.
Then this guy was a jujutsushi too?
Just as Junpei was trying to gauge the other boy’s identity, Sotomura butted in without reading the room.
“Hold on, I’m talking right now! That’s rude, you know.”
“Ah—sorry, but this is really important.”
“Important?! What kind of kid talks like that?!”
It was a blatantly dismissive remark.
Itadori’s face twisted, and Junpei also glared at Sotomura with open annoyance.
Just as he was hoping someone would get rid of this annoying man for him—
“First of all, what school are you—”
Whoosh
Itadori’s hand was faster than Sotomura’s rude mouth.
He yanked Sotomura’s pants clean off, knocked him over, and then took off at incredible speed, pants clutched in one hand.
“Hey! Stop that! Give them back!”
Sotomura, his bulky body shaking, gave chase after him in nothing but his underwear.
Junpei’s brain briefly stopped working at the absurd, ridiculous sight.
Then, when Sotomura vanished from view, Itadori, having sprinted an entire block in an instant, appeared in front of him again.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Huh? You’re fast!”
Itadori casually stuffed Sudo into his pocket and started walking.
Junpei still didn’t really understand what was going on.
Why had he wanted to see him in the first place, and what exactly was he?
With all his questions, Junpei asked the one he was most curious about.
“...Even if you were going to do something like that, you could’ve just dragged me away alone.....”
“Well, yeah, but... you don’t like that guy, do you?”
“!.....How did you know....”
“No idea. Just a hunch, I guess. Oh, wait, was I wrong?!”
“No, you weren’t.”
“If there’s some guy you hate camping out in front of your house forever, that’s kind of a pain. Want to move somewhere else first?”
He had an oddly confident attitude, as if Junpei would naturally follow even though he hadn’t even decided yet.
But though he seemed like a stubborn loner on the surface, there was a casual kindness underneath it.
Junpei didn’t dislike that sort of consideration, especially when it meant taking the trouble to help a boy he had just met.
“...Mm-hm.”
---------------------------
Boom
“Huh, did the ground just shake?”
“Yeah. Maybe around a magnitude 2?”
Now that Itadori had dragged Junpei to the stream, his mind was in knots.
Ijichi, who was supposed to meet them at the rendezvous point, wasn’t answering his phone. Investigating without orders from a superior was a little too much even for a gutsy guy like Itadori.
For reference, that same Ijichi was currently desperately chasing the one Sudo Itadori had missed.
Hmm. Should I just ask him directly? More importantly, how much am I supposed to tell him about Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School?
As Itadori scratched his head and agonized, Junpei, left alone, recalled what Mahito had said before.
If you meet a student wearing a button with a spiral pattern, befriend them. They’re a jujutsushi. You’ll get along well.
How much of that was he supposed to believe?
Weren’t jujutsushi Mahito’s enemies, since Mahito was a curse? Why had he told him to get along with them?
He didn’t for a second think it was kindness born from wanting him to have a friend. Was Mahito plotting something through him?
“Agh, forget it, forget it. I’ll just ask!”
Itadori’s irritated muttering cut off Junpei’s thoughts.
After mumbling to himself for a while with his phone in hand, he pulled Sudo out of his pocket and strode over to Junpei.
“Hey, someone died at that movie theater you went to last time.”
“!”
“Did you maybe see anything? Something that looked this nasty, for example.”
So that’s what this was about.
Junpei denied it for now.
There were no witnesses, and if he tried to act like he knew too much, it might end up hurting Mahito.
He also made sure to act as confused as possible.
“No. I didn’t see anything. It only started looking this clear to me recently.”
“Really...?”
Itadori clicked his tongue with a disappointed look and plopped down beside Junpei.
“Then I don’t have anything else to ask!”
“Huh, already?”
That bright, guileless face didn’t seem like a lie.
This person had really come just because he was curious about the details of the incident.
“Still, could you wait until my boss-like person gets here?”
“Sure, I don’t mind...”
“And since we met like this, why don’t we just talk for a bit? So, what did you watch at the theater?”
He had time to spare anyway.
Junpei decided to humor the boy in front of him for a while.
“It was a re-release of an old movie, so you probably wouldn’t know it even if I told you.”
“It’s fine! Tell me!”
“Worm Man 3.”
As soon as the title of that famously bizarre series came out, Itadori’s expression soured.
It was one of the movies he’d been forced to watch during Gojo’s training.
It was disgustingly unfunny and needlessly gory, so his concentration kept breaking, and because he’d been hit over and over by the commentary book he was holding, it was especially memorable.
“What the hell, that one was awful. I got hit so many times because of it.”
He’s seen it...? Wait, hit?
“Yeah. But it’s a splatter film, so maybe we were the ones wrong for expecting anything beyond that kind of depiction...”
Still, the second one—
“But the sequel was kind of fun!”
Oh.
Junpei’s face brightened noticeably.
It felt like the memories of his high school film club were coming back to life. When was the last time he’d found someone whose tastes matched his?
This guy actually knows what he’s talking about...!
“Yeah!! Exactly!! The sequel has that kind of charm!”
“Uh, uh-huh....”
Junpei, who had armored himself with indifference so he wouldn’t get hurt, was naturally starving for human connection.
As his face lit up, the words he’d been holding back began pouring out of him.
Itadori looked a little flustered but listened carefully, soon surprised by how entertaining Junpei was to talk to.
The two boys quickly began to build a warm, lively atmosphere around the topic of movies.
And someone was watching them from the overpass.
“Perfect.”
The man with a slimy smile turned and crossed the overpass.
He was heading toward Junpei’s house.
---------------------------
“The second one may look, at a glance, no different from the first and third, but it really captures the emotional movement of a perfectionist human throwing everything away.”
“Ah, so that’s why the second one was worth watching.”
“At first I couldn’t figure out why it was fun, so I watched it three times on purpose. The grotesque parts were worst in the second one too, so that was rough...”
“Why would you go that far?”
“Do you like movies, Itadori?”
“I’ve had some circumstances, so lately I’ve been deep in movies. Not exactly in a real theater, though.”
“Aw, but the thrill of finding a good movie in a theater is huge. VOD is convenient and all, but it has its own flavor.”
“Hmm... when was the last time I went to a theater...? If you’ve got a recommendation, take me next time.”
At that, Junpei froze.
He’d only meant to keep him company for a little while, so how had the conversation ended up like this?
He felt a little embarrassed that he’d gotten carried away and talked so excitedly, forgetting himself.
Itadori took Junpei’s reaction the wrong way and pulled out his phone, offering it to him.
“Why? Oh, contact info? Here.”
Just as Junpei was wondering whether to take the hand or not, a familiar voice called down from above.
“Oh? Junpei. What’s this?”
“Mom!”
Yoshino Nagi was carrying a shopping basket with green onions sticking out of it in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Seeing her son hanging out with someone else for the first time in ages, she smiled brightly and came down the stairs.
“A friend?”
“No. I only just met him.”
“We only just met, but I think we could be friends!”
Even when Junpei drew the line out of habit, Itadori ignored it and unleashed his natural friendliness.
“What’s your name?”
“Itadori Yuji. Ma’am, those green onions really don’t suit you!”
“Oh? You noticed. I’m aiming to be the kind of woman who doesn’t suit green onions.”
What is she talking about.....
Junpei didn’t much like this awkward atmosphere.
He didn’t even know exactly why, but it was close to the adolescent boy’s instinctive urge to keep his family at a distance and not let his social life be seen.
In that mood, he took out his frustration on the cigarette hanging from his mother’s mouth.
“Smoking! I told you to quit, didn’t I?!”
“Yes, yes. Oh, right, Yuji. Why don’t you stay for dinner at our place?”
“Please don’t! That’d be a nuisance!”
“Huh? My cooking is a nuisance?”
While mother and son bickered, a thunderous rumble sounded from Itadori’s stomach as he stood there blankly.
Grrrrooooooowl
“Anything you hate?”
“Nope!”
“Sigh....”
And so, dinner was decided.
The meal, with home cooking and salad on the side, was excellent.
That was thanks to Nagi’s superb cooking.
“So then Takashi was all confident like, ‘It’s an alien larva!’ and when I picked it up, it was just the shirataki noodles from school lunch!”
“Pffft—hahahahahaha!!! Shirataki noodles! She said shirataki noodles~!!!”
“Mom, you’re drunk.”
Nagi and Itadori became fast friends in less than an hour.
They were both lively, both liked making friends, and Itadori’s stories were insanely entertaining.
After a few cans of beer, Nagi got drunk and started clinging to Itadori.
“Come on, Yuji. Show me some comedy with this.”
What a terrible drunk.....
“Wilson! Wilsuuuun!!!! Hwaaaah!!!”
“Pffft!”
“What was that?”
“Cast Away, right?”
“Correct!”
No matter what topic was thrown at him, Itadori smoothly made the mother laugh. For the first time in a while, Junpei could laugh without holding back too.
The more he got to know him, the more he felt what a good person Itadori was.
Junpei, who had been drawing a line by calling him “just a kid I met recently,” had already started to think of Itadori Yuji as a friend.
The first one to go down was the drunk Nagi.
Junpei carefully draped a blanket over her back so she wouldn’t wake.
“Your mom’s a really wonderful person.”
“...Yeah.”
He was too embarrassed to say it out loud, but he was always grateful to her, and he loved her too.
He didn’t want to admit it, but she was his proud mother, and the woman who somehow suited cigarettes better than anyone else in the world.
“What about your mom?”
“Ah— I’ve never met mine. I barely remember my dad. But I did have a grandpa.”
Vrrrrr~
“Ah, sorry. I’ll take this. Hello? Oh, Ijichi. From now on, the movie—”
Itadori said he was answering the phone, but all he did was tell the other person what he wanted and hang up.
Junpei let out a dry laugh, checked once more that Nagi was asleep, and then asked him the question he’d been keeping in his heart ever since he met him and learned who he was.
“Itadori, you’re a jujutsushi, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever killed a person?”
That made Itadori’s expression stiffen a little.
“No.”
“But someday you’ll probably fight bad jujutsushi too, right? What will you do then?”
“......I still wouldn’t want to kill them.”
“Why? They’re bad guys.”
Even if you kill them, there’s no meaning in it.
It’s all a life that will vanish sooner or later anyway, so why bother?
He couldn’t bring himself to say that much.
After a moment’s thought, Itadori slowly spoke with a seriousness Junpei had never seen before.
“How should I put it... once you kill someone, I feel like the option of ‘killing’ would sink too deeply into my daily life.”
I’m afraid life’s value would become blurry,
and I’d no longer be able to tell the value of the people I care about, either.
That scares me.
Junpei had no answer for that.
Fortunately, Itadori didn’t seem to place much weight on the question, and he soon returned to his bright expression and suggested they watch a movie. Junpei went into the room to get the VOD.
After that, until Itadori left, the two of them watched movies in silence for a long while.
After sending Itadori off and lying down on his bed, Junpei mulled over their last conversation.
If everything is meaningless and worthless,
then what about my mom?
If life has no value, then is the love parents give their child from the moment of birth, and the love a child gives their parents, just a false illusion?
It was a question he would have to think about more.
Human beings have no hearts.
That thought had saved him.
And it had granted him power.
But if, by killing someone, I would stain that soul...
I can’t kill people.
Junpei fell asleep thinking that.
And while Junpei slept, Nagi woke and discovered something.
“A finger?”
--------------------------
“Hoo.”
Nanami, pressing down on the wound at his side, let out a sigh.
He didn’t like life-or-death battles.
But there were times when you had to do what you hated.
That was what it meant to be an adult.
That curse is a child.
He recalled the ragged curse he had just fought.
Words and actions driven purely by curiosity.
Innocence as it delighted in confirming its own achievements.
And yet inside it was a bottomless, murky power and malice.
He was still able to fight it on roughly equal footing for now, but given the way it greedily enjoyed growth, it would soon reach the level of [Domain Expansion].
Judging by the number of modified humans it had stockpiled, the number of victims was far beyond what he had expected.
If he didn’t exterminate it as fast as possible, something irreversible would happen.
Please, let it not be too late.
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