After having Yuji walk around Shinjuku every few days for the better part of a month, Gojo and Yuji have collected a number of clues.
It seems clear that at pivotal two distinct events happen, first an absolute bloodbath that ruins Shinjuku. Then, some time later, maybe twenty years in Gojo's estimation, another brutal showdown.
Yuji has visions of many people dying, but he also has visions where the bodies of other people are simply caught in the frame of these visions.
Yuji has clearly seen the monster in his mind, describing her as looking like him in the face, tall, slender, with smoky purple hair and black monochrome eyes. She is naked and has a frame that is female in shape, but her body lacks features, like a doll without clothes.
They've codenamed her Smoke because they have no idea what her actual name is.
Smoke is either an extremely sophisticated humanoid cursed spirit, or she is a curse user.
There seems to be some upward limit on how powerful both a curse and a human being can be, with Rika being one of the strongest curses to ever be born and Gojo being one of the strongest humans to ever be born.
Smoke is a monster far beyond either of them as far is Yuji's visions are concerned.
Yuji has seen evidence to suggest that at earlier Shinjuku, Smoke may kill around half of all known sorcerers in the Jujutsu Society in what appears to be an extremely short time period.
It is an absolute fucking wipeout event.
Blood, gore, and chaos everywhere, with most of these people either dying before they realize what has appeared before them, or sacrificing themselves trying to allow some to escape, or simply getting caught while they try to flee.
From context, it seems like the appearance of Smoke was somehow a surprise, but for some reason, basically the entire strength of the Jujutsu Society was concentrated in one place, and that fact was in and of itself confusing.
"Why were all these people in the same place at one time, if it wasn't for her?"
Yuji says, "I don't know."
"Perhaps Smoke isn't the monster they went to Shinjuku to fight. If Smoke is a cursed spirit, her birth might be tied to some other event."
Gojo carved a secret room out of his basement, where they are compiling their clues. It's not exactly a Batcave, which he apologizes for profusely, but he doesn't want anyone to know what they're doing.
Since he lives on campus, Yuji has been visiting the little housing complex there on campus, where he lives under Shoko Ieiri and next door to Nanami, who lives under Masamichi Yaga. The top units get second and third floor, and the bottom units get ground floor and basement, which is not considered favorable, but Gojo lost the top unit to Shoko years ago after a drinking game.
They hang their notes up, assembling pieces of a puzzle even though the image they create becomes increasingly grim.
One of the most terrifying facts about the two Shinjuku events is that they take place in the future but feature the same enemy, which means that after wiping out most of the Jujutsu Society, Smoke continues to live for a very long time, which suggests that those who survived were unable to defeat her.
Even in Yuji's vision of Later Shinjuku, he hasn't confirmed that she actually dies, only that she kills more sorcerers.
From some vantage points in his visions, Yuji can see beyond Shinjuku, and it seems all of Tokyo is just a debris field that extends forever, an indication that the devastation there happens everywhere.
Maybe it's not just the end of the world for sorcerers, but for everyone? The whole purpose of the Jujutsu Society is to protect humans from curses and curse users, and they're always told that if they failed in their work, everything might fall apart. Ignoring Smoke, if that many sorcerers died at once, how would they be able to do the normal work?
There are so many things that they simply can't see, that they don't know.
But what they do know is all kinds of bad.
Gojo finds it incredibly telling that Yuji has not seen him or Yuta at either of these events, although that's not entirely true. There's partial corpse called Legs on their clue board, and when adding it, he thought to himself how cruel it would be to meet this sort of end as he scribbled, 'Who is Legs?' on a sticky note.
There is an intense fear growing in Gojo's mind, one that he can't seem to shake.
What if he dies and makes the cursed transition to vengeful spirit? That really explains everything: his absence from the battlefield, the strength of the curse, the abilities Yuji saw it using…there's no part of anything that Yuji has seen that disapproves this theory.
It shouldn't be possible for negative sentiment to accumulate in a place that is so great that it spawns a curse that magnificently powerful, but there is an exception to this rule.
The most powerful curses known to exist were all vengeful spirits. Every last one.
Smoke looks like him, uses similar abilities, and he is nowhere to be seen.
In fact, Yuji has seen a character in his Later Shinjuku visions that definitely has Six Eyes and is already a teenager during that event, which is proof that he has been dead for a very long time when Later Shinjuku happens.
Is he the thing that destroys the world?
The truth neither of them know is that Alghera based her appearance on Gojo's as she was being born because he was the most powerful entity that she absorbed, and that during her time, Gojo fought her for over fifteen years as a disembodied soul in order to give his surviving students a chance to defeat her.
Gojo also doesn't know about the Culling Game or the consequences it will have; he only knows that he dies and a cursed spirit that looks like him and has his powers kills basically everyone he knows and probably a lot of people he doesn't.
It terrifies him, really.
Even if he knows it might happen, how can he stop it?
He decides to try his luck and consult Tengen again, and surprisingly, she allows him to come and speak with her again.
Since Tengen doesn't meddle in politics, he doesn't think there's any risk in telling her about Yuji, especially since Tengen already knows someone used a time manipulation technique at the time that he and Yuji met. Certainly, someone like Tengen already has her suspicions about what is going on.
Sitting on the tree roots again, he explains the situation, and Tengen becomes increasingly tense.
The fact that they don't even know if the future sorcerers ever killed Smoke is maybe the most terrifying thing of all—the idea that basically all the sorcerers might be killed and still lose is something beyond scary.
Tengen says, "It is difficult for me to imagine the circumstances that might cause you to die in the first place. I am not aware of any sorcerers anywhere who might be able to defeat you in your current state, which is a boon for us while you are a human. As a vengeful spirit, you could certainly inflict an incalculable amount of hell upon the world.
"Even though your deductions seem correct, I believe your conclusion is wrong. A vengeful spirit contains a twisted imprint of the person it used to be. In all likelihood, if you became a vengeful spirit, you would still possess the sentiment that you would rather die than harm your students. I would assume you would eliminate the leadership of the Jujutsu Society, perhaps me, maybe your clan for refusing your humanity…but not the students.
"It seems possible that this creature is actually a curse user with transformative abilities or the ability to copy or use the techniques or appearance of others. Perhaps it is a curse that fashioned itself after you in order to torment your students."
Gojo is relieved by Tengen's assertion that he would not kill his students even if he did turn into a vengeful spirit. As someone with her age and experience, he decides he will trust this belief.
Tengen goes on to admit that the possibility rise of an unbeatable entity, regardless of its nature, is cause for high alarm. While Satoru could wipe out humanity at any time, Tengen points out that he continually chooses not to do that, even though many powerful sorcerers eventually succumb to their own darkness.
She doesn't mention Suguru Geto by name, but she implies that his case isn't isolated no matter how much the higher ups pretended it was.
"Are you certain that you do not survive in this future?"
Satoru crosses his arms and leans against a big tree root. "Yuji has seen some kid with Six Eyes in his vision. A little mini-me. White hair, glowing blue eyes, the whole deal. Even had a black blindfold."
"Certainly, if there is another Six Eyes user, the requirement is that you would have to die before that person was born. Six Eyes is a curious gift, it's odd that it would appear in the world consecutively. You can think of it as a balancing tool, something fate will throw on the scales when an imbalance or threat emerges. If you perished and another one like you was born, we could assume only one of two things must be true."
Gojo holds out his fingers. "First, there were two massive events in the world back to back. Second, I fail, die, and my burden passes on to someone else."
Tengen nods. "That would be my belief."
Gojo's fear had been that he would die and become a vengeful spirit and kill everyone including his dear students, but Tengen believes the threat may be something they don't yet understand and can't predict based on their current knowledge.
Yuji is meanwhile having a very normal day.
At least, it's normal for a sorcery student.
After his daily meeting with Gojo, he goes to class, works out, and spars with Megumi and Nobara, which is hard for him at times because he has now seen both of them die.
At around two in the afternoon, Masamichi Yaga, who instructs them on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, decides to let them go early because they were out late on a mission the night before.
Yuji returns to his dorm room to decompress a little before he needs to retrieve his lovable little demon from daycare. When he flops down on the bottom bunk, he subconsciously reaches with one arm to retrieve a hard plastic toy car out from under him where it presses into his back and scrolls through his phone for a few minutes.
When he idly scrolls through his contacts, he sees Yuko Ozawa's name and feels a compulsion he cannot explain to hear her voice again. It's almost involuntary, how he clicks that call button and waits.
Yuko is in class, so she doesn't answer.
Yuji thinks about her.
Really thinks about her.
Her voice, her smile, all the little things he likes about her.
His body reminds him that he is fifteen, and it's incredibly rare for him to have any privacy at all to do normal teenager things. So he has a rare moment of indulgence to himself, and after he cleans up, wonders why she's on his mind.
Yuji goes to retrieve Ryokun from daycare and discovers that no, today is not a Golden Apple Day. Ryokun jumped another toddler and hit him, and then laughed at him for crying.
Another apology, another day spent wondering what is wrong with this wild little boy.
As they're leaving, a girl with auburn hair and freckles runs and gives Ryokun a hug.
"You're my hero!" she calls.
"Okay," Ryokun answers.
"Byebye, Ryokun!"
"Bye, Poppy."
Poppy is one of Ryokun's 'queens,' his little social circle that just consists of him and five girls. She received her nickname, Poppy,' because her freckles remind Ryokun of the poppy seeds in lemon poppy muffins, which are his favorite.
Yuji knows all about Poppy because Poppy's mom adores Ryokun. There was a mean kid that was bullying Poppy for her freckles, calling her Pochita the Dog, but Ryokun had a pure soul in the sense that he just thought her little freckles were neat. It never occurred to him to make fun of her for them.
Ryokun has discovered a fun loophole in the laws of polite society, where he is forbidden to initiate violence, unprovoked. If he hits someone for no reason, he will face serious consequences. But if he hits someone who is being bad to someone else, the consequences are significantly less serious. So he waits for the other kids to be bad, and then hits them.
Truly, a hero for the people.
The little fraud walks with his juice box, and asks, "So did any girls hug you today?"
"No."
"Lame."
"Where did you learn to say that?"
"Dunno."
His phone rings, and he quickly answers it because it's Yuko Ozawa.
"Yuko! I mean…Ozawa! Hi! Hi…Like, hi. It's been a really long time, and I was just thinking I wanted to hear your voice. Is that weird? I'm going to stop talking now."
Yuko is so happy to hear from Yuji that she blushes as she makes her way to the station to go home. She's had the worst month, with her father abruptly getting transferred to Tokyo. Just when she was getting used to high school, she was starting over, in a new city.
She hadn't had the nerve to call him after junior high graduation, even though they exchanged numbers once while they were working on a school project. At times, she thought that he'd probably forgotten about her by then.
Some part of her knew he'd be so popular in high school, favored by girls and popular with everyone, because that was just how it was.
"Itadori, it's been a while. I've been thinking about you too lately. My family recently moved to Tokyo, so it's been kind of hectic for me. How have you been?"
"You're in Tokyo? I live in Tokyo! Can we meet?"
"Of course! I'd love to catch up."
"How about right now?"
Yuji very clearly understands he is acting like a madman, but hearing this girl's voice only urges him on, like his soul is desperate to be near her. It doesn't make sense; he doesn't comprehend what is happening to him. But every unexplained feeling he's had up to this point has only been bad and this one is very good.
And then, he remembers. "Oops, I forgot I have my little brother with me."
"I have three little brothers. I totally understand. You can bring him."
They make plans to meet at a park near her family's new home, since Yuji doesn't want her to travel far in case it's dark when she's making her way home.
Yuji lectures Ryokun thoroughly, and makes sure he understands that he better stick close since they're going to be getting off at Shibuya Station, and on a Friday evening, that meant there were going to be so many people. It was perhaps foolish to take a small child through that crowd, but he had faith in Ryokun. He wasn't stupid; he was just a pain in the ass.
It's just that he's so excited to see her again?
She wants to see him.
He wants to see her.
Ryokun is interested in going on an adventure.
None of the involved parties know that it is a mistake for Yuji to get off the train at Shibuya Station, because grim memories have been waiting for him there since he came to this time.
They also don't know that Kenjaku has figured out that the thing that doesn't belong in this story is the toddler. There's no way he is actually Yuji's brother, because while Kenjaku cannot remember why he made Yuji, he is sure that he terminated his parents. There is no brother. And a basic investigation proved that there was no proof he even existed until the night of the Forgetting.
Kenjaku doesn't believe he is an ordinary child, despite spies seeing him doing mostly normal things while he is at daycare. Eerily, no matter how far they watch him from, every now and then, he'll turn from what he is doing and stare directly at his stalkers.
The sorcerer believes that if he gets his hands on this kid, that something will happen. Maybe it will be bad, maybe it will be good, but he thinks there is a chance that he can regain his memories.
Standing before his board of clues, he wonders if anyone is gathering clues about him?
A noise catches his attention, and he walks past Tore Reksten's room in the cottage he uses as his main safehouse, where Reksten lays in bed, being cared for by a couple of Geto's cult members. Over time, he seems to have gained some minimal human understanding that they are caring for him, but that is only because Kenjaku can't have those limbs atrophied or covered in bed sores.
Reksten's life is one of misery; he receives meals through a feeding tube, and while he does awaken most of the time, has lost his intelligent mind, making guttural, animalistic noises from time, soiling himself, unable to do anything or think anything.
It's a bit ridiculous because his technique could have made him an absolutely generational talent. The only thing he would have needed to do to have his way in the world is the same thing Kenjaku has to do: find a way to do what he wanted to do without being killed by Satoru Gojo.
Kenjaku had not contained the famed sorcerer yet, and feared that if he took too many risks, he would be forced to drink from the same cup as Tore.
"You should have stayed out of Japan, my friend. For in this land, gods walk among humans, who must accept our passions, our plans, our wrath…you could have ascended to become one of us, but you made such a foolish choice. Well, I suppose it seems foolish because you were caught. If you'd gotten away with it, you would have been considered a genius. That's how it is. You're a genius if it works and an imbecile if it doesn't."
There are zero signs that Reksten understands Japanese, or any language at all, but Kenjaku doesn't really talk so that others can hear him in the first place.
In the weeks since he came to possess this stunning specimen of a vegetable, Kenjaku has come to strongly suspect that the incident caused Gojo to wake up one day and hunt this man down without any possibility for mercy is that the siblings ran their scam on someone in the Gojo clan, someone close to Gojo, or maybe even Gojo himself—wouldn't that be something?
The fact Kenjaku cannot find Ingrid Reksten anywhere really only reinforces the belief that woman might be incubating a kid with a technique worth taking, and if he could easily access her, it would be such quick profit for little effort. It's easier to take candy from a baby than a special grade sorcerer, after all.
Kenjaku suspects she might be at the Gojo clan estate, but he can't assault a location like that until Gojo himself is contained.
What an exciting time to be alive!
He receives a text that Yuji is taking Ryo Itadori somewhere alone, somewhere away from the campus.
Unaware of the peril ahead, Ryokun gets bored with walking after a few minutes and Yuji carries him piggyback to the station. Resting his chin on Yuji's shoulder, he tells Yuji about his imaginary friend, a penguin name Choco-Choco.
Yuji wonders how lonely he would be without the constant attention from Ryokun. The longer they spend together, the more he feels glad he's there. As someone who grew up without siblings or cousins or even parents, and a grandfather who really wasn't great, sometimes Ryokun seems like an unexpected blessing.
"There's going to be lots of people here, so don't let go no matter what, okay?"
He feels Ryokun's hands dig into his shirt.
As soon as Yuji steps off the train platform, he feels a kind of dread that he cannot even explain, seeing disorganized flashes of the platform, lit by fluorescent lights and covered in indescribable piles of…people, and later, in darkness, where those piles have mummified at some point in the future.
It makes him feel a little sick, and he dashes to the bathroom, where he has visions about almost being beaten to death during a torrential downpour of toilet water.
When he runs out of the bathroom, he only has more flashes.
He is hyperventilating, bumping through a sea of people with a small child holding onto him for dear life, seeing some other horrible thing every time he blinks his eyes.
He suddenly feels a cheek pressed against his, and hears Ryokun ask, "Are you okay, big bro?"
He has a moment of clarity and decides the best thing he can do is leave the station and go outside, only to unknowingly walk into the hallway where Nanami and Kugisaki were killed in his first visions.
Just making it to the street is an effort, and his trauma goes unnoticed in a wave of people that continually washes him away from the station.
Since he's been to Shinjuku a number of times, he tolerates his strange flashes of the future a little better, but it's still incredibly intense and he is disoriented.
Yuji manages to make it to the park where they will meet, with Ryokun occasionally patting him on the head and telling him that he's okay because that's what Yuji does for him when he has a little moment.
Just a little comfort through memories of his Shibuya trauma, by the largest cause of his Shibuya trauma.
When he sees Yuko Ozawa, he runs like a man possessed, almost gets hit by a bus, and then trips on a curb, sending Ryokun flying like a person flying forward.
Ryokun is a very durable little tot, so he mostly just rolls across the grass at the park, but he is annoyed because crossing the street is a frequent thing that they talk about. The rules for crossing the street are to only cross at the right place, when the light is on, and always look.
As he dusts grass off himself he yells, "Did you look both ways?!"
Toddler achievement: Sarcasm.
"Sorry about that, little buddy. Are you okay?"
"No."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
Yuko runs over, asking, "Oh my goodness, are you two okay?"
Yuji forgets about his conversation with the perturbed boy and has a cascade of brief visions, smiles, embraces, kisses, a baby, another baby. When he realizes that the eagerness that he feels is his future self trying to find his wife and the mother of his children again…
When he pulls her into an embrace, she simply melts into it, like she is suddenly a character in a romance manga. It wasn't like she hadn't spent three years since they started junior high together fantasizing about this sort of thing. She thought during most of that time that she was invisible to him, because she was overweight and not a cute girl at all, until one day when she overheard him say that if he had to pick a girl, it would be her.
Yuji was not unlike Ryokun in his consideration of other people; in the same way that Ryokun never thought about disliking the girl over her freckles because they made her cute, Yuji saw all kinds of things he liked in Yuko, and if he'd really been asked, he thought she was cute when she was short and soft too.
He wants to hold her forever, and Yuko just eats it up, because how romantic was this? That he lost himself when he saw her, and missed her so much? How many silly fantasies had she had?
At some point, Yuji realizes he is acting a bit forward and releases her, and she stares up at him, starry-eyed, he says, "I really missed you, that's all."
"I missed you too. It's been a long time."
They are interrupted by a little voice that's actually quite jealous that someone else is hugging Yuji. "Excuse me!"
Yuji looks down at Ryokun. "What is it?"
"We almost got hit by the bus!"
"Sorry about that."
Ryokun saw a bird get hit by a car and therefore does not think this casual apology is sufficient. He doesn't exactly understand the state of the bird after it landed on the sidewalk, but it was no longer-bird shaped and so Ryokun assumes that being hit by a bus would make him no longer boy-shaped and he did not want that.
He is about to argue when Yuji points. "Look, ducks!"
"Ducks?!"
His attention span is instantly reset, and he runs to see about the ducks instead of pestering Yuji.
Yuji sits on a bench with Yuko, and they talk about everything that's happened since they left junior high, although he leaves out all the weird stuff about fighting monsters and having superpowers. It's like they've known each other for a hundred years, and he wants to stay there forever.
While he doesn't know everything that happened in the future, he is sure that he lost his family somehow or another, and so, in a way, he's been given a second chance.
A second chance to fall in love, share his life with this girl, have a family, build a world where they can survive and live safely together…
It's a moment where he feels fifteen and at the same time, not fifteen, because fifteen-year-olds aren't planning out to marry and have babies. Except Yuko definitely is because Yuji seeking her out and passionately embracing her just threw gasoline on every girlish fantasy that she has ever had about him.
While Ryokun tells some ducks about his day, and they quack and listen to him like they really understand.
He wonders if he'll get in trouble if he goes in the pond, like just a little, but water is death since he doesn't know how to swim.
"Hey there, little boy. Do you want to pet my dog?" a woman asks, attempting to place herself between Ryukun and Yuji under the guise of showing the boy the dog.
When Ryokun thinks of dogs, he thinks of Megumi's demon dogs, and YES, he absolutely wants to pet a dog. He wants to pet all the animals, and to be friends with all the animals.
But when he turns, he sees a bug-eyed, flat-faced little thing with its tongue hanging out, huffing for air.
"What's that?"
"It's a dog."
"No."
"It's called a pug, it's a special kind of dog."
"Did something bad happen to him?"
The toddler argues with his would-be kidnapper about whether a pug is actually a dog, because he is convinced it is not.
Ryokun decides this woman is stupid, because clearly, this is not the same manner of creature as Megumi's demon dogs, or Mr. Nanami's big fluffy dog, or the dogs on tv or in books.
"Do you want to come with me to my car? I have puppies? Baby dogs?"
"Do they look like that?"
The woman joined Star Religious Group, saw it through to its success, converted to Suguru Geto's New World Vision, and remained loyal. She has suffered countless indignities and at age forty-two, has spent her best years pursuing dreams that perhaps no one would understand.
But possibly no task she's ever been given is as humiliating as having some child speak of her beloved dog in this manner.
She sighs. "What if I told you I had fluffy little kittens in my car?"
"Why would you put animals in your car?"
She starts to explain herself, and he does to her what he does to Yuji; he asks the question and then he walks off and goes to do something else, signaling that he is finished with the conversation.
"Listen, Ryo Itadori. If you don't come with us, I'll hurt your big brother."
"But Yuji can beat up an old lady."
With a smile, she asks, "I have candy in my car."
Ryokun doesn't really feel like he's in any sort of danger, and to Yuji, a lady is showing her dog to Ryokun. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, but Ryokun does not believe this woman's claims that she has, in her car, lots of puppies and kittens and candy.
The woman is not a professional kidnapper and has failed to persuade even a toddler. All she got for her troubles were insults for her and her precious pup.
The probability that she could grab the kid and get away with him on foot is laughable; according 'Master Geto,' Yuji Itadori has extraordinary athletic capabilities. She is a forty-something-year-old woman holding a ten-year-old pug.
Plan B it is.
Then the toddler turns his attention back to the ducks, which, like the woman, initially seemed nice but are not very nice at all. Ducks are, actually, jerks. He plans on telling everyone that he knows about this information.
A cursed spirit suddenly dives down from high above the clouds. Like a huge feathered dragon, it descends with open talons.
Ryokun is a baby sorcerer, so he sees it just fine.
"YUUUUUUUJI!"
Like any parental guardian, Yuji knows the tone of yelling his child uses when he believes he is in mortal danger. Perhaps it is his shadow, perhaps it is the idea that something may lurk under the bed, perhaps it is an unsliced cherry tomato on his plate.
PERHAPS IT IS A MONSTER DESCENDING FROM THE HEAVENS TO EAT HIM.
Yuji is there in an instant, snatching him off the ground to shield him.
Yoyogi Park starts to fill with cursed spirits, a gift from Kenjaku, and Yuji doesn't know if he should fight? Isn't that what sorcerers do? If he just uses his technique on 'gut instinct,' maybe it would work, but what he can actually do isn't much and trust on a miracle is too dangerous.
Yuko is here, and Ryokun is here.
So he decides to flee.
Yuko is terrified, because she can evidently see cursed spirits which Yuji did not know, and they're surrounded, so he throws her over his shoulder so that he has her over his shoulder and Ryokun under his arm, and he runs, kicking curses out of the way as he attempts to escape.
This is actually also very scary for him too, because he'd seen a few little curses, but seeing an entire swarm and having that swarm chase him while carrying the two most precious creatures living on earth is stressful.
There are hundreds of people fleeing from the area because while none or nearly none of them could see the curses, they could hear them, see the way the big one's feet tore up the grass and even the asphalt as he chased, and he was definitely chasing Yuji.
Cursed spirits are all over one of the busiest places in Japan, surely help will come.
Then he starts remembering the flashes he had in the station, and incorrectly begins to fear that this event is part of that, and that when help comes, it'll be death and gore and blood and fire.
Yuji's ill-conceived fears take root and spread through his body as he slides around a corner and finds the huge white nature spirit, the one that Gojo sketched from his battle in Hamamatsu.
Is this his inescapable fate? To be cornered by monsters and to lose the things that matter to him?
As he tries to figure out what his next move will be with two seconds to spare, suddenly he is on a rooftop, and for a tenth of a second Yuko and Ryokun fall, only to be caught by the arms of a very large man with a top knot.
He throws, yes throws, Ryokun and Yuko up, trusting Yuji to catch them.
Among the complex variables that no one had time to consider is the fact that Aoi Todo has traveled to Shibuya in order to shake a certain celebrity's hand, and this time the unlucky soul he has talked into making the journey with him is Noritoshi Kamo, who arrives on the rooftop, bow in hand.
"Sorcerers?" Yuji asks.
Noritoshi looks down at him. "We are third year students at Kyoto. Are you?"
"I'm a first year at Tokyo. This is my friend Ozawa. My little brother, Ryokun."
"Stay up here if you're a first year. That big white curse is dangerous," he instructs, but Yuji has already jumped, leaving Yuko and Ryokun on the roof behind a ledge.
Ryokun's mental state allows him to hold onto Yuko for dear life and scream Yuji's name at her chest. Nothing else.
"Listen, you have to stop screaming. If you don't scream, they won't look at us. They are distracted right now. Okay? Please…" Yuko says.
Kamo looks down at her, asking a certain question without asking, and she says, "My parents are windows."
This explains why she knows to keep the child quiet and out of line of sight for the curses, and why she's terrified they are there, but not that they exist. The kind of horror people experience the first time they see them is usually distinctly different.
It's hard for anyone to tell how or why any of this started, but Kamo and Todo both feel it has a very Night Parade feel about it, seeing dozens of curses act in coordination with one another, except the most powerful one, who seems to move freely.
The situation is rough all around, since it's in public, happening in late afternoon, involves a very powerful curse that could clearly do the numbers if it wanted to. Even with Todo, Kamo knows they're underpowered even though the first year is a surprisingly talented brawler like Todo is.
Luckily, they're in Tokyo, and that means they don't have to win.
They only have to hold off the curses long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Despite the fact that Kamo is frequently subjected to anti-Gojo rhetoric where his politics and character are questioned, no one can argue with the fact that there's no one better to show up in a situation like this, and unless he was off somewhere on a trip, he was going to come.
As he takes aim to fire another shot into the swarm of curses, Kamo is suddenly frozen on the spot.
While he can't even turn to see the icy assassin that has successfully disabled him, Yuko can and sees a white-haired sorcerer with red blotches in her hair.
Yuko isn't a fighter, but she tries while still holding Ryokun with her right arm and ends up with a spike of ice stuck through her left hand.
Uraume rips Ryokun off despite how hard he is clenching her school blazer.
He fights her like she's picked up a feral cat, biting, scratching, kicking, and she accidentally drops him quite hard on the roof, where he lands face first, busting his lip.
When he looks up at her, crying, he stops for a minute and then sobs, "Uraume?"
Uraume cannot remember why or how or any of the details, but when Ryokun says her name, she simply knows that he is the reason that she came to this era. He is the reason she has been doing what Kenjaku says. So she can find him again. He is her master, and the most sincere desire of her heart is to serve him.
Is he supposed to be a tiny child? She can't remember.
Her master is crying because of this stupid scheme. Kenjaku was going to kidnap him and probably do very bad things to him. Now, he was hurt and he was crying, and it was partly her fault.
She bows, placing her head on the roof. "Young master, please forgive me! I acted out of ignorance. Tell me what you wish, and I will do it."
The only word Ryokun heard was wish, and, wiping blood on his forearm, he cries, "I wanna go home with Yuji!"
"Then so you shall, young master."
After unfreezing Noritoshi Kamo, Uraume joins the fight in earnest, killing the curses Kenjaku unleashed and even assisting the student sorcerers in their battle against Hanami who Uraume called by name when ordering her to leave the battlefield.
There was a clear sense of betrayal, but the attack abruptly ended once it went past five minutes, and the curses retreated before reinforcements could arrive.
After hesitating, Uraume also fled, although in a completely different direction.
When Gojo arrived, he was treated to one of the most peculiar stories he'd ever heard in his life. There was no part of what happened that seemed normal, beginning to end.
Yuji got some sort of sentiment about a girl who was apparently his wife in the future, who comes from a family of windows, sighted people with no cursed energy. They were crushing so hard they couldn't wait to see each other, so they made a date after school and Yuji just brought Ryokun along.
Yuji then proceeded to have graphic, violent visions of some terrible incident at Shibuya, the event where Nanami and Kugisaki are evidently killed, and absolutely undeterred by this, he still went to see the wifey.
They were attacked by curses, and whatever was going to happen, almost happened. It was only stopped because the third years from Kyoto happened to be right there due to Todo's very weird and active fantasy life.
Then the ice user got an opening to take Ryokun, which might have been the purpose of all of this, but instead she apologized and started taking orders from him like he was her boss?
One of the most spectacular facts about all of this is that Yuji and Yuko didn't plan any of this. It literally just happened, accidentally. That makes the attack quite special as the person who planned it must have done so with little notice.
By the time he arrived, Yuji had already healed Yuko's hand with RCT, which was a big, big no-no. Cursed energy was poisonous to people who weren't sorcerers, so it wasn't like someone with RCT could just walk around healing people. He knows she'll be sick in a few hours, so he sends her with Ryokun back to the campus so Shoko can look after them.
Gojo doesn't even know where to begin with all of this. It's clear someone wanted Ryokun, and they were waiting for an opportunity to grab him. His normal daily routine is just daycare and home, and the daycare is so close to the campus that it was in the five block radius outside the property line that served as the outermost detection layer of Tengen's barriers.
One couldn't pull something like that off close to the campus without expecting an all-out war.
The scene is a mess in terms of containment, and the Jujutsu Society quickly decides to go with the excuse that a truck carrying chemicals crashed and emitted gases that cause hallucinations. Since most people couldn't see the curses, this was easy for them to accept since hearing a sound and not seeing the thing that caused it obviously doesn't make sense. The people who can see curses will already know it's a coverup and keep their mouths shut anyway.
Why would someone target Ryokun?
It wasn't possible to extract useful information from him. Ryokun would not provide accurate information if asked what he ate for breakfast at 11 am. He wasn't a clan baby that could be used for hostage negotiations of some sort. Yuji doesn't have any influence in the sorcery world at the moment.
He considers that maybe Tore Reksten had somehow recovered from achieving enlightenment, had taken control of this group he fought before, and that he might want to steal Ryokun's technique because it had special grade potential.
Gojo feels like that idea has to be false because he's just having a day of bad ideas.
Kamo and Todo being literally right there was such a lucky break, but there had still been a few civilian casualties caused by the curses crashing through nearby buildings after they left the part. Even though the students showed up and did all the right things, he makes a point to tell them they did well because it's always sad when a sorcerer does their best and innocent people still die.
They're sitting in a café the Jujutsu Society is using to coordinate cleanup in the evacuated blocks of the nearby area, and when he attempts to encourage them, he finds he is met with steel eyes and set jaws.
Gojo thinks they're upset about the casualties, but Kamo's pursed lips finally part and he says, "There was something familiar about the cursed spirits used in the attack today. The attack was very similar to the Night Parade."
"That's interesting."
Kamo says, "The Night Parade, which was caused by someone you had a personal connection to, who you said you killed, but then…nobody saw the body, right?"
The real question was whether he actually let Suguru Geto go and lie about killing him, because if he did, this attack certainly seemed like it had been caused by him.
It is a hurtful line of inquiry, and it does make him feel a little betrayed, but he also doesn't blame them for asking. First of all, they are being influenced against him on a daily basis, and secondly, this isn't the first time this particular theory has been spoken into the air that he has to breathe.
Kamo says, "As heir to the Kamo clan, I wish to see proof. It's not personal."
"If it wasn't personal, you wouldn't have that intense look in your narrow little eyes," the teacher answers, before giving them a bit of a forced smile, "but we're going to be better than our elders and hold each other accountable, and sometimes that means asking difficult questions. I would rather you ask than to hold it inside, doubting me as your ally, or fearing I might use my strength against you."
Gojo gives them each a firm pat on my shoulder. "Because of Geto's unusual body, I didn't want the Elders to have it because I knew they'd probably do experiments on it, so I removed Geto's heart and gave it to them. I am certain they verified with residue and DNA matching, and that they still have it. Noritoshi, your father is one of the Elders, so I am certain he can give you two access. Keep asking questions. It's the thing they hate most."
Every word came straight from his heart, because he didn't want his students to think he was beyond reproach, or that any of them should be when they got older. The whole point of him trying to change the system from the inside instead of ripping it to shreds—a thing that would be much easier for him—was so they could learn a better way.
The fact remained that both of them fought against Geto's curse hordes, and even though they were wrong to accuse Geto, there was something significant about both of them firmly agreeing that their experience was similar to that.
Gojo didn't know what that significance was, but he knew that in the end, they'd look back on it as a clue.
While Gojo works on the joint investigation, coverup, cleanup team, Yuji finishes his interviews with the Jujutsu Society investigators and is driven back to the campus, where Yuko is resting in the infirmary. Shoko reports that Her hand is turning into a huge bruise around where he 'healed,' her, and says she'll probably be sick for a few days, but it would take two months for stab through the hand to recover naturally.
Shoko says, "As for the kid, he just had a few cuts and scrapes. He's not talking and seems to be a little bit shellshocked right now. For this kind of experience, that's probably as well as you could hope. He's naturally tough, so I'm sure he'll be back to terrorizing everyone soon."
When Yuji continues on to the room where they're resting, Ryokun is still clinging to Yuko for dear life, while she holds him, humming softly in his ear.
Yuji pulls a chair up to the edge of the bed and takes his brat from her.
"Sorry about everything. All of this is my fault. If I hadn't called you, none of this would have happened."
Yuko says, "So was that a date or what?"
"That's what you want to know?"
"I mean, we could just not talk about the rest. As far as I'm concerned, my day ended while we were sitting on that bench, and I was blushing because our pinkies were touching. I was going to write about it in my diary, and I think I'm still going to. I'll just leave out the whole 'chased by curses' part. And apparently your little brother has a servant?"
"I have no idea what's going on in my life. I had no idea your family knew about sorcery. windows are people who can see curses, but they can't use sorcery so they just report stuff, right?"
Yuko nods. "Let's say you have a sorcery clan. There's like one branch that has all the techniques and so the further and further away you get from that branch, the less cursed energy you have and the lower chance you have to receive a technique. Most windows are people that fell off sorcery trees so long ago many don't even know which family they're related to. Eventually, even being sighted disappears."
He answers, "I just found out cursed spirits exist in June. Now I'm a sorcerer. It's been kind of crazy for me. There's a lot going on in my world right now. And I've got this guy to take care of on top of it, but he's good company."
Yuko asks, "Do you have any other family?"
"No. Just Ryokun."
"So tell me how you're going to go out and fight every night and see all the scary awful things, and go through all the horrible things sorcerers go through, and you're going to take care of everyone…when there's nobody taking care of you? Maybe I'm being too bold. It might be the meds."
Yuji answers, "Oh for sure. Shoko is not a real doctor and if you get hurt, she will send you straight to the moon so that you suffer as little as possible while you're here."
Yuji is torn between the ideas that he should leave her alone and let her live a normal life in the normal people world doing normal things. She'll probably live to be old that way, and have a family with someone else who doesn't hunt monsters for a living.
OR
He can get even stronger than he was in whatever future where this all went so wrong, and keep his wife and family with him. Holding a toddler and rubbing his back to soothe him while they talk is so familiar to him that he feels like he is somehow more himself in this moment when they are sort of family-shaped.
Man, woman, baby.
Yuko was sweet to Ryokun too, and even tried to protect him.
Yuji eventually takes Ryokun back to their room, and after trying to get him to eat, just helps him get a hot bath and lays down with him. He's so quiet, but quite awake. He just wants to snuggle with his big bro and is stuffy orange cat toy.
In the morning, Ryokun seems miraculously better, hungry, quite vibrant.
"You doing better, buddy?" Yuji asks.
"Mhmm. I had a dream."
"Was it good?"
He nodded. "In my dream, a giant said if I'm scared again, he would help me."
"A giant, huh?"
"He was really big! And he had four arms."
