One day, on the outskirts.
Yuji Itadori, Nobara Kugisaki, and Megumi Fushiguro were walking down a street in a somewhat aging residential neighborhood.
They had come to carry out a mission.
A series of deaths that seemed ordinary, yet carried an air of strangeness.
June, July, August-over three consecutive months, three victims had died in the same way.
It was the work of a cursed spirit.
The three had been tasked with investigating the connection between these incidents, finding the source of the curse, and exorcising it.
After some investigation, they had learned a great deal, and also discovered... that Megumi Fushiguro's older sister, Tsumiki, had already been cursed.
[I don't want to pad this out too much.]
Fushiguro's body jolted. His face instantly went deathly pale, his pupils contracted sharply, and he froze in place as though struck by lightning.
"Fushiguro?" Itadori noticed something was wrong and immediately stepped forward.
Fushiguro did not answer.
His lips trembled slightly, and fine beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead at a visible rate.
(Carp's Mouth Gorge... Yasohachi Bridge...)
(Could it be...)
A terrifying thought slithered into Megumi Fushiguro's mind like a venomous snake, instantly freezing his blood.
"No... impossible..." he murmured, his voice so hoarse it hardly sounded like his own.
"Fushiguro!?" Itadori gripped his shoulders hard, forcing him to look at him.
Megumi Fushiguro did not answer.
He simply stood there, trembling slightly, his eyes vacant, as though his soul had been torn out.
His mind went blank.
His thoughts stopped.
All he could hear was his own frantic heartbeat and the imagined roar of the river beneath the bridge.
(Tsumiki...)
(She's been cursed...)
(No... please, no...)
Seeing Fushiguro so utterly distraught, Itadori's heart sank.
He knew how important Tsumiki was to Fushiguro.
If something happened to Tsumiki...
"Fushiguro!