Investigation

"I just... I just don't dare think back on everything that happened that day..."

"It took everything I had to squeeze out of the crowd. I almost thought I was going to die there..."

"Money, more money than I'd ever seen... And it was because of that money that my son died... I watched him with just one person between us, but I couldn't pull him out. It was unbearable..."

Two young men in Jujutsu High uniforms sat in a tearoom, facing a middle-aged woman who was silently shedding tears of grief.

The more she spoke, the more distraught she became. Gradually, her words grew incoherent, and she sobbed so hard she could barely breathe, as though finally releasing emotions she had kept bottled up for a long time.

Across from her, the white-haired boy, who had been forced to listen to her lengthy account, could no longer suppress a yawn. But the moment he raised his hand, the Black-Haired Boy beside him stomped hard on his foot.

"Miss Yamada, we truly sympathize with what you've been through... But time is rather limited right now. Could you please help us with our investigation first?"

Suguru Geto interrupted the woman's account with a serious expression.

He and Satoru Gojo had rushed to Sendai as soon as they received the assignment, and they had already been down to Nagamachi-Minami Station.

Besides the dried black bloodstains, the scene contained a few low-level curses, emotional waste products born from the crowd's panic at the time.

After exorcising those curses one by one, Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto began investigating the Curse User's whereabouts.

For a stretch of time, interference from the Curtain had cut off the signals from every surveillance camera in the station. The footage after that had been deliberately destroyed by someone, and the police had tried everything without managing to recover it.

Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto thought of the cars' dashcams and sought out the survivors who had been there.

Unlike Suguru Geto, who firmly believed in protecting the weak, Satoru Gojo had grown up as the divine child with the Six Eyes of the Three Great Families and found it difficult to empathize with ordinary people. At first, he had managed a few responses as he listened to their accounts, but eventually, he began to find it boring.

"Sorry. Here's the dashcam footage. I know it was an accident, but I'm still counting on you."

Miss Yamada took the USB drive containing the dashcam footage out of her backpack and provided a laptop to play it on.

This was already the fourth set of dashcam footage Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto had watched. Playing it at increased speed, they spotted several familiar figures on the screen.

"Well then, Miss Yamada, we'll be going."

After confirming his suspicions, Suguru Geto gave Miss Yamada a polite nod.

Before leaving, he made a point of reaching out to steady her as she swayed. Unseen by ordinary people, the newly formed curse around Miss Yamada's neck vanished without a trace.

"Geto, say money really did start raining out of the sky for no reason. Would an ordinary person leave without picking any up?"

Walking over to a nearby vending machine, Satoru Gojo casually dropped in a coin and tossed the can of cola it dispensed to the frowning Suguru Geto.

Even Satoru Gojo, who had never had to worry about money, found those people's behavior rather odd.

"If they were extremely wealthy, perhaps. But judging by their clothes, they didn't look it. And the speed they were moving at..."

Suguru Geto pulled open the tab on his cola and gulped down a few mouthfuls.

"So we've found our people? Let's go! I want a good look at whatever Curse User we're dealing with."

Pushing up his small sunglasses, which had slipped down his nose, Satoru Gojo's eyes gleamed with eagerness.

With the police's help, they quickly obtained information on those people.

The gray-haired old man who had moved so quickly was named Wasuke Itadori, and the two children were his grandsons. As for the androgynous white-haired young person, the police had no information on them.

Knock, knock, knock-

A knock sounded at the door.

Wasuke Itadori slowly opened it, his back stooped, and found two boys in uniform standing outside.

Before Wasuke Itadori could speak, the white-haired boy shoved his face right up to his, showing no respect for personal space.

"Huh? Why's he just an ordinary old man? Where's the Curse User?"

Satoru Gojo furrowed his snow-white brows, his expression filled with disappointment.

"Who are you? Why are you barging into someone's home? And what's a Curse User?"

At the words "Curse User," a wave of anxiety rose in Wasuke Itadori's heart.

He knew the people he had been waiting for had arrived.

"Sorry, Mr. Itadori. We're investigators sent by the police. It seems you and your family passed through Nagamachi-Minami Station on the day of the stampede?"

Giving Satoru Gojo a tug, Suguru Geto smiled and handed Wasuke Itadori the special identification the police had prepared for them.

"I don't know what happened that day. We had children with us, so we left early because we were worried something might happen."

At the sight of the identification, Wasuke Itadori's expression seemed to soften. He stepped aside to let Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto enter.

The Itadori home was a detached house that had been built several years earlier, and its interior was hardly fashionable. Suguru Geto looked it over carefully as he took off his shoes and stepped inside.

"Mr. Itadori, have your grandsons gone to kindergarten?"

Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo knew Wasuke Itadori had two grandsons, and the photographs hanging on the wall confirmed it.

A few children's toys sat in a corner of the room, but the children who should have been there were nowhere to be seen.

"Oh, the children had a fright. I was worried something might upset them again, so I had a relative take them out to play."

Wasuke Itadori served Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto a cup of tea each.

"Was it that white-haired man?"

Suguru Geto took out a photograph. Uraume was so blurry in it that only a vague silhouette remained.

"...That's the children's aunt, not a man."

At Suguru Geto's choice of words, the corner of Wasuke Itadori's mouth twitched.

Whenever Wasuke Itadori thought Uraume was a woman, some of Uraume's behavior seemed distinctly masculine. Whenever he thought Uraume was a man, Uraume would seem like a woman instead.

Even now, Wasuke Itadori remained deeply uncertain about Uraume's gender.

"Is that so? Well, thank you for your cooperation."

Unable to get anything more out of him, Suguru Geto said his goodbyes.

He also asked around the neighborhood about the children's aunt.

All he turned up was gossip about two women fighting over one husband years ago and driving the first wife to her death.

"Were we really wrong? But why did they leave at such a perfectly coincidental time?"

The more gossip Suguru Geto heard, the more he doubted his original deductions.

What Curse User would be absurd enough to lose a fight with an ordinary person over a husband, then help look after the children?

But no one else looked like a Curse User. That Monk's Robe was strange enough, and there wasn't a single photograph of the aunt in the Itadori home.

Other than the white-haired one, surely those two little children couldn't be the culprits behind all of this?

Suguru Geto found the idea ridiculous.

"Who knows? Geto, I'm starving. Let's get something to eat first!"

After spending so long investigating with Suguru Geto without catching so much as a glimpse of the Curse User, Satoru Gojo had grown listless.

"All right."

Suguru Geto nodded, setting his doubts aside for the time being.