Satoru's Grandmother doesn't offer any of her opinions about the situation at hand when he lays it all out for her.

Satoru knows he has created a terrible situation for himself, and that she's probably angry and disappointed. But it's an opportunity for her to get what she wants, and he doesn't really realize it until he goes to have tea with her late in the afternoon in a teahouse nestled in the gardens of the clan estate.

When he arrives, there's a woman there, Chiyo Katsuragi.

He doesn't know her well, but she's the proverbial pick of the litter as far as unmarried clan girls are concerned. Satoru mostly knows about her because his grandmother tried to convince him to court her a couple of years ago, and when he declined, the two women still spent time together and ended up becoming friends.

Chiyo is average height, pretty, with black hair and gray eyes. A nice girl, but the whole ecosystem of arranged marriages and clan stuff is uncomfortable for him and he doesn't like it.

His grandmother explains everything in a rather even tone, like she's not talking about everyone's most sensitive business.

The Katsuragi clan's elders are close to the Zenin clan, and they are well into negotiations to arrange for her to marry Naoya Zenin the following spring. Politically, this is good for them and good for the Zenins. It's incredibly bad for Chiyo, which all the involved parties know. Her family is more interested in the political gain than they are worried about sending Chiyo away to Naoya.

It's a story that's played out a thousand times in their world, and it'll keep playing out forever. Because at the end of the day, sorcery families have been practicing eugenics since prehistoric times and they're going to keep doing it forever. The ones who pay the price for this dark art are always the women that are sent here or there to bear children for powerful men.

His grandmother proposes that Chiyo and Satoru immediately elope and tell her clan that they've had relations and that she is three months pregnant. Katsuragi house will be furious, but once a pregnancy has happened, a marriage is the only reasonable outcome.

This deletes the Zenin clan from the equation and gives Satoru the ability to cover up his indiscretion because it creates a cover story for the baby that's going to show up.

Obviously, it's better for him if everyone thinks he got a clan girl pregnant and married her in a hurry than for the actual truth to get out. 'Got a girl pregnant' is bad, but it's not 'romanced a serial killer' bad.

It requires Chiyo to suffer the humiliation of being publicly known for getting pregnant out of wedlock, while her family was trying to marry her to someone else. It maybe caused problems between the Katsuragi and Zenin clans and the Gojo clan and both clans as well.

His grandmother points out that while all parties benefit from this arrangement except the Katsuragi and Zenin clans, the person that will be most helped by this agreement is the baby, who doesn't necessarily need to know the truth. It can just be their child, plain and simple, no need for scandal.

Since the Jujutsu Society is unaware of that Gojo was personally entangled with the Rekstens and they didn't know Ingrid was being held by the Gojo clan, his grandmother told him he could probably get away with just never telling them about that side of things and sticking to the story that everything that happened was because of his other investigation into the anomaly.

Short of running off from her clan, this is likely Katsuragi's last chance to avoid Naoya Zenin, Satoru's last chance to avoid the kind of reputational damage that will follow him to the grave, the only chance to make a normal situation for the baby, and his grandmother's opportunity to get him to marry her favorite.

This sort of fate was probably always inescapable for him. He wasn't expecting to fall madly in love and marry. At some point, there was always going to be some kind of deal, and so he accepts this fate just like his soon-to-be bride does.

His grandmother is sufficiently pleased with this outcome and sends them on an errand to get their marriage certificate.

Chiyo follows behind him on the path to the parking garage in a white sundress. Her hair is styled in big curls and is the kind of black that gives off a bluish glint in the sun. She's definitely easy on the eyes, but he can tell from how she carries herself that she's probably been really sheltered. In some clans, women like her aren't allowed to ever be alone with a man from outside the clan without a chaperone.

"Your hair reminds me of a raven's feathers," he comments as he looks back, offering his arm.

She takes it and blushes as she looks away.

He says, "I don't really have the bandwidth right now to be married, and I don't think you really want to be living that life for now, so I think we should just chill out and do things on our own time. Are you okay with that? I'm grateful to you for saving my ass here, but there's a lot going on right now. I need to be with my students. I don't think you want to plunge right into being married to me either. After all, we don't know each other."

She answers, "I would appreciate that, actually. I like to think I'm a very bold person, but I don't feel that way right now. You can leave this baby situation to me. I can handle that much for you."

They are cautiously pleasant to one another, and he opens the car door for her, does all the gentlemanly things.

Once they get their certificate, he takes her back to the clan estate, gives her a tour of the master's wing of the main house, and then after dinner in the garden, returns to Tokyo via warp because there was just no way he was going to drive his car back. Maybe he would get someone else to do it, maybe it would be stranded in Kyoto forever.

The only reason he brought it instead of warping everywhere was so he could perhaps kidnap a woman who might not reasonably tolerate being warped across the countryside due to the fact she has no cursed energy and is pregnant. Totally normal stuff a guy does, right?

He knows his grandmother is right about keeping his situation with Ingrid a secret. If the Jujutsu Society elders find out, they'll probably insist on taking her into custody, and then who knows what will happen. Whatever trouble she gets into also happens to the Gojo baby, so not only as the father but also the head of the clan, he has a responsibility to do what he can.

Chiyo creates an avenue he can use to paint a different picture about what happened. The fact that he's married is a matter of public record, and lying about Chiyo being pregnant is the kind of gossip that is going to rip through the sorcery community like wildfire. Everyone was probably going to know within twenty-four hours, that's how hot that gossip was going to be.

He tells the elders the next morning he took off work because he found out his secret girl was pregnant and when they were secretly meeting about it, they happened to be in Hamamatsu. While there, he coincidentally happened to sense with Six Eyes that Reksten was about to be attacked by special grades, and he tried to diffuse the situation with minimal casualties.

It's obvious they don't fully buy his story, but they don't have grounds to question him either. Knowing he was lying about some things didn't mean they would ever get the truth, and it wasn't the first time he'd lied to them. They also lied to him whenever it suited them.

By the time the next morning comes around, gossip is already floating around that Gojo disappeared for a few days because he'd been having illicit relations with a girl who was going to be married into the Zenin clan and she got pregnant, prompting them to run off and elope without permission from anyone.

Checking his phone, he has missed calls from the old man at Katsuragi house, from Naobito Zenin, even from Naoya Zenin. Gojo has no interest in talking to any of these people, so he simply continues to ignore all of them. After all, in this false but juicy story, Chiyo is already pregnant. It's not like the Zenin clan would want her now, or that the Katsuragi clan wouldn't be freaked out if he didn't marry her.

The outrage is hilarious, as making up a fake pregnancy is one of the bitchiest, most dramatic things a human being can do, and yet they are doing it to cover up something even more scandalous. The drama is so juicy that it keeps people from asking any other difficult questions.

A courier drops off a package early from his new wife which contains a platinum wedding band, some framed pictures of her that he can sprinkle around his universe for authenticity, a list of quick facts people might ask him about her, and a cardboard cake box that contains homemade chocolate cupcakes.

Gojo puts on his wedding band, places a picture in his apartment, in his office, in his classroom. He quickly memorizes his quick facts, so no one realizes he didn't know how old his wife was or literally anything about her, like her age, and if she has siblings.

The idea that he might marry someone who would send a courier from Kyoto to Tokyo with cupcakes is believable.

Sugar and a sincere belief that his personal life might actually be okay lift his spirits and allow him to turn his attention back to what really matters: his first years were perhaps stalked in public, and Yuji has apparently been experiencing traumatic hallucinations.

He catches up with Yuji privately first, meeting him in the courtyard with a smile and an offer of treats.

"You're back!"

"Yep! Sorry about my absence. How did you guys manage with Nanami?"

"We had a good time. Nanami is great."

"Right? But anyway, I hear you've been hallucinating."

Yuji tells him of the four times he's seen these strange visions: when he approached Nanami in this very courtyard and saw him explode from the waist up, and when he met Nobara and saw a vision of her head exploding. Then in Shinjuku, he saw the area destroyed and overgrown, like it had been totally wrecked and never cleaned up for years and years with plants growing all through the rubble. And secondly, he saw it in a state that seemed to be more recently destroyed, with no plant overgrowth and smoldering fires, like the destructive event had just happened.

Is he unwell?

Yuji, glad he's finally getting to talk to Gojo about what's going on with him, explains that while he understands why Nanami thought it was stress, he didn't agree. Despite all the changes in his life, Yuji felt happy in the sense that he was enjoying training and school and was even having a good time with Ryokun.

The truth that Yuji was learning about himself was that he was really okay with everything that was happening so far except for these strange visions.

"In the vision I had of Nanami and Kugisaki, the same person or thing or whatever killed both of them. It was a curse with these weird stitch marks on its face. Frankenstein-ish. I'm not an artist or anything, but I sort of drew a picture of it with Ryokun's crayons.

"When I woke up the next morning, Ryokun was staring down at it like he was mad and he said this name, Mahito, and I just somehow knew that was the guy's name."

This is a weird and bad coincidence, because Gojo just saw a curse with weird stitches all over his face too.

Gojo had also sketched the three curses because curses can't be photographed and therefore learning how to depict them is actually a pretty foundational sorcery skill. The sketches that sorcerers make of curses are the only images that ever exist of them, so being able to accurately depict and describe them is critical.

He takes out his phone and shows Yuji a picture of the stitched curse.

"Oh my god, that's him. Did you have a vision too?!"

With a shake of his head, Gojo answers, "I ran into this guy in Hamamatsu while I was out."

"So he's real."

"Yes."

Gojo is quiet for a while, and Yuji asks, "Is it possible that I'm actually seeing the future, is that a thing? Are there techniques like that?"

"I don't think that's what's happening here."

"Then what?"

They talk for a while, and Yuji does his best to answer Gojo's questions, many of which center on the strange sentiments that Yuji feels at times: a powerful sense of déjà vu, the feeling he already knows people when he meets them, the strange sensation that he hasn't seen someone he just met for a very long time, the relief and job he felt when he saw both Gojo and Nanami for the first time, how he called Nanami 'Nanamin' under his breath before even meeting him.

The fact Ryokun already knew their names when he appeared in the world seemingly out of nowhere is perplexing as well.

Ryokun is a baby who has no recollection of a past and can't even accurately answer simple questions about what happened to him last week, so Yuji is probably the only source of useful information.

Yuji says, "In some ways, I feel like myself, but since that night, maybe I also feel like someone else."

Knowing that Yuji is seeing these images, there is a clear possibility that presents itself to Satoru, one that almost scares him.

The anomaly was to his senses, a 'slice' that cut through the fabric of reality, a force against their world from somewhere else. According to Tengen, this slice even affected the flow of time, suggesting it was a cut not only against the world and its three dimensions, but also the fourth dimension.

After seeing Reksten use Temporal Distortion, Gojo feels like that technique could have created the unexplainable elements of the anomaly, but Reksten certainly wasn't strong enough to do it.

The fact the primary mechanism of the anomaly is a cut and both Yuji and Ryokun have a cutting technique seems incredibly relevant.

They go to an empty classroom together, and Gojo continues to try and digest the information, because there is enough of it that he should be able to understand at least something. If he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle with five thousand pieces, the first thing he'd do is group the pieces with similar coloring and start fitting them together. If he repeated this process, he would eventually be able to see the image that the pieces form.

What can they discern based on what is known?

Ryokun's memory is not reliable or useful, but Yuji doesn't have any holes in his mind. While Gojo as a sorcerer forgot a massive amount of information that night when the anomaly happened, Yuji doesn't have any gaps in his memory as far as Yuji himself is able to tell. This leads to the obvious conclusion that whatever information was erased, it was related to sorcery and because Yuji had nothing to do with the sorcery community, he didn't possess any of it in the first place.

Since Tengen mentioned that there was a time manipulation facet to the anomaly, Gojo has wondered if the anomaly was a time travel phenomenon. It sounds ridiculous, but he just knows that he saw something spectacular. Maybe something that had never happened in the history of the world and might not ever happen again.

Did Yuji's soul come from the future?

It was silly to think sorcery could do that.

Still, Satoru is left with his puzzle pieces.

Yuji notes that Gojo has become incredibly quiet and uncharacteristically absent after he finishes asking questions, and he can practically hear all the poor gears in Gojo's head that the teacher is forcing to turn.

Gojo thinks he is intelligent, but there is a difference between the level of intelligence required to do normal things and whatever the hell is going on here.

Yuji feels like he's caused a lot of trouble for all these people.

Gojo asks, "Deep inside, in your gut, do you think the things you're seeing are fictional?"

"No. I think maybe they're visions of the future, and that scares me."

The existence of Patchface is proof that Yuji's visions aren't entirely false. After meeting him only one time, Gojo is absolutely certain he could definitely kill Nanami if he got a clear shot, and a student wouldn't be an issue. The fact Yuji knew his appearance and his technique is very telling.

At some point, the most obvious theory becomes the one that Satoru can't cast reasonable doubt on within his mind anymore.

"Yuji, I believe that you might be a time traveler…like, maybe a later version of yourself came here and merged with you. The fact that Patchface is real means that you do have knowledge of things you haven't experienced. No one in the Jujutsu Society knew about Patchface, and before I told you he was real, you knew his face, his name, and the means by which he could kill a sorcerer.

"On the night that we met, some sort of massive curse ripped open this world and someone came in from the outside. I've been convinced it was either you or Ryokun, but probably both of you, honestly. Maybe you are similar enough that you were mistaken as one person.

"DNA tests with sorcerers can be a little weird because we're genetically a little different. Ryokun could be your kid from the future or something. Maybe the future just went really wrong, and you found a way to go back and fix it, and you brought him here."

Was Ryokun his son? Was he a dad?

The question 'am I a dad' makes Yuji feel inexplicably sad and angry, and his eyes sting, like with Nanami.

Gojo asks, "Eh? What's wrong?"

Yuji dabs tears from his eyes. "I was just trying to figure out if I feel like I'm a dad."

"That's concerning."

"No kidding. Shit."

At the same time, the question 'is Ryokun my son' is met with a resounding sense of 'ABSOLUTELY NOT.'

Yuji quickly pushes the question out of his mind; whatever is in that box, he knows he doesn't want to look inside.

Gojo says, "My working theory is that your soul came and merged with your existing soul in your body. Since humans store memories in their brains, probably the only information you took with you was the stuff that affected your very soul. Your happiest, scariest, saddest, angriest moments."

"That doesn't seem very useful."

"If you were involved in all the key stuff that happened, these little visions might give us more clues we can use. I don't want to make light of the fact this obviously seriously affects your mental health, and mental health is incredibly important, but if we could cause you to see more of these flashes, we might be able to find a better future for ourselves."

Yuji frowns. "You want to try and make me see more visions?"

"Yes. I believe we can probably avoid some of these events if we know they are coming. I'm about to call Yuta Okkotsu home and tell him to follow Kugisaki around every time she leaves this campus no matter where she goes. Therefore, when the convergence of you, Nanami, and Kugisaki happens, Yuta will be there too. That will probably change the outcome."

Had Gojo had known about this vision before he met Mahito, he would have pursued him and just accepted the civilians who would be killed. If asked how many civilian casualties he would allow to die save one sorcerer, the answer was a lot, because every sorcerer saved thousands of human lives. Sorcerer lives were just more valuable. One hundred and fifty million people lived in Japan, but there were only a couple of dozen like Nanami. Taking even one away meant consequences for everyone.

Gojo wonders how time travel works? Like, how did it happen? Could they utilize it again? Since a massive amount of information was apparently erased from human consciousness at the moment this happened, Gojo thinks Tengen is right that since humans have done it once, the gods erased all the footprints because who wouldn't want to go back in time and fix a problem?

What would he do what that kind of power?

There's a face that comes to mind…

Yuji says, "If I did travel through time, kind of inconvenient I can't remember anything useful."

Gojo answers, "Well, we store our memories in our brains, and in theory, it's probably not possible to send an actual human body back in time."

"Why?"

Gojo says, "You would violate the laws of existence. Everything that has ever existed or will ever exist has existed since the moment of the Big Bang. Every atom in your body started out as energy, and then became subatomic particles, and then achieved mass and became a hydrogen or helium atom, only to be smooshed in a star into sometimes more complex atoms before the star explodes and hurls them out into the universe, where they'd begin gravitational spin with other atoms and become part of a new star and begin the process again, until they ended up in a swirling dust cloud that became our solar system where they ended up spinning into this planet, where eventually biological machines that churn matter evolved to harness the energy of the world.

"Every atom in your body has its own timeline that begins at the creation of the universe before it was even an atom and continues into infinity after the universe has experienced heat death. It has to exist in the correct location at the correct moment because the entire universe requires it. So first of all, the atoms that make up your body in the future are mostly different than the ones that make up your body now due to cellular regeneration, and second, the atoms that make up your body in the future already have somewhere to be right now.

"Human souls don't appear to be bound by the other laws of the universe, are not made of matter or energy, and without getting into the really weird questions like 'why are we the only machines that have them' and 'what is a soul in the first place,' it seems that because the soul is not bound by the rigid structure of the universe, yours was able to move along the fourth dimension. I wonder if my future self is the one who did it."

Yuji says, "I don't know if this is a bad time to mention this, or if I should say anything at all, but the first time I saw you, my feeling was that I was so happy to see you again. Like we hadn't seen each other in a really, really long time. Like maybe you don't…maybe you don't exist in the future."

Gojo laughs this off. "Don't be ridiculous. You don't have to worry about me. I'm the strongest. There's no one who could kill me."

Yuji says, "Sorcerers can die from natural causes, right?"

"Sure. I'm very healthy. I almost never get sick."

Yuji turns and says, "Diabetes?"

"Never heard of him. What's his technique?"

"Your toes fall off."

"Nasty. Want another cupcake?"

Yuji asks, "Can we save one for the kid?"

"Of course. The demon needs his sugar."

Gojo convinces Yuji to keep his visions a secret going forward, because while he believes Yuji and Ryokun are somehow from the future, it would be impossible to successfully sell that story to the old men in the room. Even if he could make them believe it, out of their conservative stupidity, they'd approach this strange phenomenon with the same insight and intelligence as everything else.

Inevitably, they'd decide that if Yuji and Ryokun are trespassers from the future, the best thing they can do is eliminate them in order to maintain the status quo, although if Yuji's visions are correct, the status quo is going to bring them to disaster.

That said, he does find Nanami after lunch because saving Nanami's life is incredibly important to him.

Nanami has just finished a week of substitute teaching, only to hear from the rumor mill that Gojo had to take a week off because he stole Naoya Zenin's likely marriage partner and got her pregnant. To call that kind of behavior inappropriate and ridiculous is an understatement. Nanami is an outsider and even he knows that among clans, that's extremely unacceptable behavior. If anybody else did it, somebody would probably get killed.

The door suddenly flies open, and Gojo exclaims, "Nanamin! Did you miss me?"

"No. I have a lot of worth to catch up on since I was diverted from my standard work activities for some time due to lapse in moral judgement by one of my colleagues."

Gojo laughs. "The rumor mill turns fast around here. You want to get a beer tonight?"

"Go home to your pregnant wife."

"She's staying in Kyoto with my family."

"That's not a problem for someone with your abilities, is it?"

Satoru asks, "Since when are you the police?"

Nanami looks up at him over his glasses and says, "You really could be setting a better example for your students."

"I never said I was a role model."

"You're a teacher."

Gojo sits in a chair across from his desk and says, "Anyway, about the vision Yuji told you about… You need to watch your back, Nanami. Almost our whole generation is gone, and we haven't even made it to thirty. We can't disappear. There's a gap behind us because of those stupid old men and everything will fall on the students."

"I don't have any intention of being killed by some curse. However, I will be mindful."

The conspiracy theory runs rampant in closed circles that the elders of the Jujutsu Society, starting around the time that Gojo became unmanageable, allowed students to be placed in circumstances where they might be killed if they showed signs of being a little too independent or a little too powerful.

At least from Nanami's perspective, it seems like the elders would prefer to have a larger number of weaker sorcerers than a smaller number of stronger sorcerers, so they could be like generals of an army, making all the decisions and controlling all of the power.

The fact remained that for a number of years, every single strong student died, yet the mediocre ones fared a little better, leading to a larger field of weaker sorcerers who didn't make trouble.

The problem with that is that there is not a number of second grade sorcerers that is enough to take out a special grade curse. It takes a monster to kill a monster.

This weird trend of powerful students dying stopped the instant that Gojo decided to become a teacher. Not one student in Tokyo has died on his watch and miraculously, Kyoto students are faring better but were being saturated in anti-Gojo sentiment.

It was almost like they'd kill the strong students to protect themselves, but now they had to keep some of them alive in order to have power that wasn't loyal to Gojo, leading to acrimony between the two schools and increasingly violent 'competitions.'

Nanami knew Gojo didn't care if the students weren't loyal to him as long as they were alive.

After finishing up with Nanami, Gojo finds Kugisaki to tell her she's going to have a bodyguard. There is a miscommunication, and Kugisaki assumes he is African. Yuta Okkotsu probably doesn't sound like a very African name, but Gojo decides not to correct her because he thinks it will lead to a humorous misunderstanding.

Yuji finishes his classes for the day, and goes to collect Ryokun from daycare, where he is in the middle of a nap in a room adjacent to the entrance.

When the worker lightly nudges him, Ryokun grumbles in his little toddler voice, "Begone woman, I slumber."

"What the hell?" Yuji whispers under his breath.

This is the fourth time he's heard Ryokun say something weird, in a different accent, while he was half-asleep. Toddlers are strange and will emulate accents they see on television or just talk crazy for no reason, but it's still just very odd. Where did he even learn 'begone' and 'slumber?'

The worker covers her mouth in an attempt not to laugh and wake the other children.

When he realizes that Yuji is there to get him, he runs to collect his art for the day, a swirl of scribbles, and his little backpack, and he meets him, his hair still messy from sleeping.

As he's putting on his shoes, the worker takes the paper spool of golden apple stickers and tears not one but two off for Ryokun, who proudly accepts this reward.

Yuji asks, "Were you good today?"

The worker says, "Ryokun was very, very good today. Very peaceful. Very serene. He's starting to become quite friendly with the girls. They're really taking a liking to him because he doesn't try to fight them. They think he's very handsome. He's been giving them little food nicknames, it's very cute. Today he did puzzles, and he played pretend very nicely."

It is news to Yuji that Ryokun's terror has been limited to boys.

"Good job, buddy! I'm proud of you!"

"Okay."

Ryokun clearly wants Yuji to praise him, and then when he does it, he acts like he never wanted it and it's dumb. It reminds Yuji of a cat meowing for attention, and then when the owner reaches out, the cat turns and leaves and ignores him.

As they're walking back, Yuji says, "I didn't realize you were such a ladies man."

"What's that?"

"A man who likes to date lots of women. Has lots of girlfriends? Do you get what I'm saying? Did the boys tease you for hanging out with the girls?"

Ryokun says, "I will hit them. They know."

His young peers have in some vague sense, came to the same understanding as the sorcerers of Alghera's age: if Ryomen Sukuna was entertaining himself peacefully, it was best for everyone if he was simply allowed to continue without disturbance.

The toddler says, "I played king and queen with the girls. I was the king. They were mad about who got to be queen. So I said all of them could be. Kiwi says my hair is soft and she likes to touch it. I like that. And," he holds out three fingers, "this many girls hugged me today."

Yuji realizes that this child had a good day at daycare and didn't punch anyone in the stomach today because he established a toddler harem and spent the day being doted upon by girls calling him King Ryokun. He feels like this is just menacing behavior of a different variety despite the fact the workers thinking it's cute.

"Did any girls hug you today?" Ryokun asks.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Is it because of your face?"

"We have the same face, dude."

"But I'm so handsome. Everyone says so."

Yuji feels like he's going to be miserable when Ryokun figures out how to make longer sentences and can properly mock him, but for now, he just has these little moments, where he feels judged by questions or short statements.

When he gets Ryokun back to their room, he gives him the cupcake after they put his golden apple stickers on the project board.

"It's good. Where did it come from?"

Ryokun is very food motivated and has a lot of curiosities about food; if he eats something he likes, he always wants to know where it came from, and he seems to retain this information better than anything else.

"Gojo's wife made it."

"Yuji."

"What?"

"She probably gives him hugs."

Since they were having a baby, Yuji assumed they'd done a lot more than hug, but that's not the point. The point is that he's being trolled by this little monster who discovered it was nice having a bunch of girls pay attention to him and wants to rub it in his face.

While Ryokun sits and scribbles, Yuji considers Gojo's suggestion that somehow or another, they're from the future and the future might suck a lot.

He wonders why they would make this journey together?

If he must have been an older adult who made the journey to become a teenager again, what life state was Ryokun in? Was he an adult in the future, but a toddler in this time? Did he know this wild little monster as an adult? Was he a pain in the ass in the future?

The idea of Ryokun being adult-sized is kind of scary, actually.

Yuji tries to indirectly poke at him and see if he has any premonitions or sentiments or anything like that. Ryokun has reliably called a number of people by their name without being told, and Yuji only knew Nanami's name. It seems like he maybe has a better idea, but he's also a giant baby and had a kangaroo as an imaginary friend who was actually a giraffe because he got his animals mixed up.

While they chat and Yuji tries to figure out if he can extract any information from Ryokun, the child peels the label off his white crayon, and then breaks it in half before laboring to balance the flat bottom half of the crayon so it could stand.

Yuji quickly puts the crayon away before Ryokun can try to explain the odd image in his mind, and Yuji asks, "Do you ever have dreams about anything? Not including that nightmare about your shoes trying to eat you."

Ryokun simply moves on; he sees the image in his mind, but he doesn't really understand it.

There is something that does matter.

"Blueberry."

"You dream about blueberries?"

"No, Blueberry. Blueberry is a girl. The best girl ever."

"A girl from daycare?"

"No."

"A girl who is around here?"

"No."

"Where do you know her from?"

"Dunno."

"What does she look like?"

"Dunno."

"What do you remember?"

"That I miss her."

A tear falls on the paper he's scribbling on, and Yuji realizes the subject of Blueberry actually makes Ryokun very sad and triggers his toddler feelings, causing him to actively choose to be in a horrible whiny mood for a while.

Yuji decides that if they are from the future, that future must have been quite sad.

Yuji puts some cartoons on, and Ryokun insists that that Yuji watch them with him, then proceeds to climb all over him to find the right position for watching and snuggling.

"You want hugs from me? I thought you had a bunch of girls for hugs."

"I hug you. No one else will hug you. 'cept me."

Yuji answers, "Hey brat, do you think of me as your friend?"

"Yea. We help each other. Mostly me. I help you lots," he sticks out his tongue.

The strange truth of the broken white crayon, including the fact that Ryokun understands that he is the one who snapped it in half, remain unknown.