Three days later-

Yuji wasn't sure how to feel about the latest case he and his friends had been assigned too. But the fact that Gojo-sensei, for once, had accompanied them was very telling as far as the level of danger that they would be facing went given the fact that they were there to exorcise a cursed spirit that likely had human lackeys.

Still...if he had known that he would be working such a difficult case today- then he would have tried to call his mom and talk to her for a few minutes.

Ya know, just in case today was his absolute last day alive.

So far, he'd failed to keep in touch with her like he'd promised he would when she'd had to leave to go back home. And he was betting that that was going to really come back to bite him in the ass once she finally finished up whatever business she had back home.

"Is everyone ready?" Gojo asked, sounding a bit more sober than normal.

"Ready as we'll ever be." He heard Fushiguro reply. Next to the dark haired teen, Nobara nodded her head. Which only left...him.

Oddly enough, for once, Gojo noted that Yuji didn't seem to want to be the first one to charge in like he usually did. In fact the boy was hanging back and staring at a certain part of the spirit's domain as if he were expecting it to split open and something horrible to come pouring out of it or something.

The intense look of concentration on the boy's face should have served as a warning of some kind for them. But since he rarely wore such an expression, they weren't really sure what to expect. Either from him or the cursed spirit currently running amok.

"Something on your mind, Yuji?" Gojo asked, wondering just what it was the boy was doing. In all honesty he was starting to get worried when the kid finally asked in a low tone.

"Can you feel that?"

Gojo cocked his head for a second and tried to reach out with his senses and see just what it was that his student was referring to. Unfortunately, whatever it was that had Yuji acting so odd seemed to be beyond his ability to sense. Which was incredibly weird given the who he was.

The fact that Yuji could sense something that he couldn't was also strange.

And as much as he would have liked to dismiss whatever it was an simply something non-threatening. Doing so would be bad. Especially if it was an unknown cursed spirit or something else similar.

"What does it feel like to you, Yuji?" He asked curiously as the boy frowned.

"It feels human. But at the same time not." The boy didn't sound entirely sure what it was.

But the mere idea of someone- human at least- being trapped and fighting for their life in this particularly nasty mess was enough to make all of them groan in unison.

"Dammit!"

"Why?"

"Awww! I wanted to finish up this job and go to a bakery I found that had just opened recently."

Yuji stayed uncharacteristically quiet while the rest of them bitched and whined about now possibly having to go and save someone. Which...should have also served as a warning to them of some sort of impending disaster.

After all, Yuji took his job as a Jujutsu sorcerer incredibly seriously and tended to chide them all for whining whenever they had to save people. So his silence was pretty unnerving to them.

So much so that their whining cut off abruptly and they stared at him expectantly up until Gojo leaned over and whisper/asked Nobara, "Is it just me or is he creeping you out too?"

The girl gulped slightly and nodded her head curtly as Fushiguro whispered, "Do you think he has a stomach ache? From lunch?"

"If he does then it's Gojo-sensei's fault." Nobara deadpanned unsympathetically.

"What?!" Gojo practically shouted at them- he then turned his head to shout/ask if that was what was wrong with Yuji when they all heard a weird cracking sound a split second before the domain that had been created by the cursed spirit, suddenly collapsed.

Stunned to silence by the fact that something had just either done serious damage to even destroyed the cursed spirit- they all eyed the area that had been inside of the domain- slightly suspiciously.

They honestly were expecting the cursed spirit to maybe be playing a really mean trick on them.

After all, laying traps was something that many of them excelled at. Especially if it helped them to pick the Jujutsu users off.

So none of them were expecting to find someone standing in the middle of the used-to-be-domain, alive. Much less fairly uninjured.

But someone was.

Yuji let out a weird strained whining sound and then suddenly shouted, "Mom!" in a high pitched almost girly sounding voice as he started running towards the person as fast as he could.

Leaving the rest of them standing there exchanging puzzled looks as they all echoed, "Mom?" As Yuji finally reached the person's side and scooped them up in his arms and was attempting to cuddle them while they flailed and started screaming.

"That's his mom?" Fushiguro muttered in a scandalized tone.

"I was pretty sure that he was an orphan." Nobara said in shock.

Gojo looked particularly uncomfortable at this weird new development. And he prayed to god that Yuji's mom hadn't been searching for him all this time.

He was already irked that the kid had kept the fact that he had a living relative secret from him. He was pretty sure that his 'irked' feeling would quickly turn to 'pissed off' if he found out that the woman had been handing out Missing flyers for the past four months he'd been at the school.

Plastering on a smile that was as close to normal as possible to hide his ire from the boy, Gojo went walking over to the kid calling out, "You-hoo, Yuji! You little dumbass. Who've ya got there?"

Fushiguro and Nobara both visibly cringed a little bit at their sensei's faux cheerful tone knowing damned well that the man was upset that something important like a 'parent' had been kept from him.

Especially given their friend's precarious situation amongst the other exorcists at their school.

Bringing a parent into things- while it might be messy as hell- might also manage to jog the teachers into the realization that Yuji was, or at least had once been, entirely human. With family, friends, connections, and people who would not only mourn him- but cause a fuss.

And flat out killing him without exhausting all other resources to save him- because of his current circumstances as Sukuna's vessel- would come with more repercussions than any of them were prepared to or even wanted to deal with.

"He's dead." Nobara muttered.

"So dead." Fushiguro agreed with a nod as they saw Gojo get close enough to punch the boy in the back of the head while introducing himself to the woman.