"Thank you, sir. I will do my best to keep up and not hinder you."

"I wouldn't let you hinder me regardless. And if you fail to keep up I will send you back to your actual sensei." He turns to go. "Come along, then, I've been asked to investigate a series of incidents in Kawasaki."

"You'll do great!" assures Gojo.

"Yes, Sensei! ...also, um, Nanami-san, why did he call you 'ex-salaryman'?"

"After several years at the Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College," this might have been the first person to properly use the school's full, actual name, "I decided that I hated sorcerer society, hated hunting curses, hated all of my peers, and most of all hated the thought of continuing my life in this wretched torturous hellhole filled with scheming vipers and monsters that make horror stories look quaint. So I left for the corporate ladder."

"...and yet you're back."

"Yes. After several years at the tender mercies of the modern business world, I came to realize that I hated all of that, too. My fundamental problem was that, as a general rule, I hate people, do not understand them, hate the entire structure of the society that we as a species have painstakingly created to trap ourselves in, and that people themselves are and have always been capable of just as much evil as whatever curses might inflict. So if I hated everything equally, I might as well do what I'm good at."

.........this man needs a hug.

But Itadori already has one little autistic nonverbal boy to contend with, he should not acquire a second. "That makes sense," is what he says instead.

"Really? Gojo thinks it's the darkest and most depressing thing he's ever heard."

"...hmm, I guess it might make my top ten, but in terms of reasons for doing things it seems sound enough to me."

"Most sorcerers have disturbing psychological stances for why they take up this profession. At this point, I assume they all do until proven otherwise."

"I suppose you have to be a bit weird in the head to want to keep doing this."

"Indeed."

"Well. Tell me more about the Kawasaki incidents?"

"Several victims have had their bodies unnaturally warped, all near the same area, but not centrally located in one location that could be contained within a barrier. Which means there's a curse of sufficient strength and intelligence to move around, or a curse user."

"...warped? Sounds awful. Are we going somewhere to investigate it?"

"We'll be investigating the previous incidents, which will likely give us clues as to what we're dealing with, but not lead us to where the culprit might be hiding. While we're in the area, we'll wait for another incident to occur that we can investigate, preferably within the hour of its occurrence, which will be much more conclusive."

"I... see. Well, lead the way, ah... should I just call you Nanami-san?"

"Yes. And I will call you Itadori-kun."

"Sounds good."

It's very narratively convenient, the way another incident occurs very soon. It's also narratively convenient, the way it's raining. The cinema is surrounded by police tape and reporters, and the three high schoolers' bodies, covered in black tarp, are being moved into vans to be taken to wherever it is they're going to be taken for examination.

(To Ieiri Shoko, is where they're going to be taken.)

The black tarps are not enough to hide the hideous malformations of the boys' skulls. In overall volume they more than doubled, but each of them has had unique changes: one's eyes and eyesockets expanded upwards and outwards into two thick antler-like appendages; one's mouth has been enormously vertically distended while the top of his head has been stretched up to nearly three times its normal height; and the third's jaws have been pushed down and forward with a cyllindrical dent separating them from the rest of his head.

Inside the room where the showing was held, the row where the kids had been sitting is also blocked off by police tape, but the copious amount of blood they lost has extended to the rows before and after theirs, too, making it somewhat moot.

It is a grisly scene. Nanami surveys it with cold analytics, and leaves it at that. Feelings don't come into it.

"Did Gojo walk you through sensing cursed energy signatures?"

"...no, but I think I know how to do it. I did a bit of it on my first official mission a few weeks ago."

"Then tell me what you see."

Itadori squints and looks around, then points. "I don't think I... see... them. So much as sense them. Does that make sense?" He points at one of the exits. "It's going that way."