“Oops, sorry! I guess I was nodding off. I was having the weirdest dream!”
“What kind of dream was it?!”
“It’s kinda fuzzy now,” Itadori responded. “Anyway, we’re going out?”
“If you’re sleepy, there’s no need to force yourself. Feel free to stay here and sleep.”
“N-no, I wanna go out! I need to photosynthesize!”
“Um, human beings aren’t built for that.” said Ijichi.
“Oh right … and I can’t let anyone know I’m alive.”
“Right. But while you shouldn’t be walking around in a slapdash disguise, a little drive wouldn’t hurt. Gojo did say you should get some fresh air soon.”
“Oh, he said that?” Itadori rose from the sofa. He was bored stiff and wanted to go outside if at all possible.
“Here, wear these,” commanded Ijichi, holding out a pair of sunglasses.
“Cool! Like Men in Black!” Itadori accepted the sunglasses, which were a little big. He held them up to the sunlight. “Are these yours, Ijichi?”
“Yes, they are a personal item.”
“Do you dress, like, super flashy when you’re not working?”
“No, not at all,” replied Ijichi. “But curses are extremely perceptive when it comes to eyes. I do a lot of investigative work, so it’s important to conceal where I’m looking.”
“Oh, I get it. Gojo hides his eyes too.”
“No, that’s for a different reason.”
“Where do they sell blindfolds like that, anyway?” Itadori asked. “If I wore one, would I look like a pro too?”
“I don’t think they sell those anywhere.”
Itadori put on the sunglasses. Then he looked back and forth between the mirror and Ijichi. He put a hand to his chin and struck a pose. “How do I look, Ijichi? Like a secret agent?”
“Um …”
Ijichi thought Itadori looked like a young hooligan, but Ijichi was an adult, so he kept this thought to himself.
Itadori hadn’t had many opportunities to see Tokyo from the inside of a car. His eyes shone as he gazed at the scenery streaming past the window. Even though he was a TV child, this was more rewarding than a food program about a corner of the country he might never visit.
“Wow. I’ve never been on the highway in Tokyo.”
“The regular streets are kind of crowded at this time of day. Is it really that interesting?” Ijichi asked.
“Yeah! There might be street racers!”
“That doesn’t really happen anymore. Where did you hear about that?”
“The game center,” Itadori said.
“Ah, of course. Racing games. I used to play those too.”
“Oh, is that why you have this expensive car?”
“No, this belongs to Jujutsu High. That’s why I’m so careful not to scratch it. I avoid roads where it might get scraped.”
“Right,” Itadori said, considering this. “Sounds hard.”
Itadori sensed that being an adult with a car wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
As they engaged in this meandering conversation, which was more than they had managed back at the apartment, Ijichi exited the highway and began threading through streets heavy with traffic. After what Ijichi had said, Itadori worried from his place in the back seat about scratches every time a car came near.
After thirty minutes, they arrived at their destination, a gray building that looked like a stack of boxes.
“Is this the ward office?” Itadori asked.
“Yes. I have to deliver a document.”
Ijichi removed a set of documents from his work bag. When Itadori took a look inside the bag, he saw that it was full of even more documents, all meticulously sorted into clear folders and binders.
“That’s a lot of docs. Do you really need all those?”
“Yes. The paperwork for submitting to public institutions can be quite hefty.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to do online?” asked Itadori.
“Yes, of course. Many things are easier that way. But have you ever noticed how video games each have to be accessed through specific devices and operated in different ways?”
“Yeah, for sure!”
“That’s just how electronic data is these days,” Ijichi explained, “But paper documents are accessible to everyone in the same format. Besides, even now local government offices tend to place their faith in physical documentation. That’s one reason fax machines have never died out.”
“Oh, I get it. Hm? Do you have to stamp each one of those? Isn’t that a pain in the butt?”
“It does take work, but I can keep copies or get rid of them if
I want.”
“Right.” Itadori wasn’t sure whether he understood or not. At the very least, he was beginning to understand that Ijichi was precise and reliable, not one to cut corners. “Anyway, what are those documents?”
“Applications for permission to use sites in need of cursed spirit countermeasures, requests for closure of public facilities, applications for permission to perform roadwork, rosters of on-site personnel with accompanying proof of insurance, and so on.”
“Roadwork?” Itadori tilted his head in confusion. It was not a word that Itadori often encountered as a sorcerer and a student.
“Suppose a cursed spirit appears on a mountain road where there’s a high incidence of traffic accidents. We need a way to close it,” Ijichi explained.
“Can’t you just put up a curtain for something like that?”
Itadori thought of the events at the juvenile detention center he had recently visited. A curtain was a barrier used for keeping away ordinary citizens. Itadori vaguely recalled Fushiguro’s explanation.
“That would indeed keep people away, but eventually they would begin to wonder why they couldn’t use that road.”
“Oh, right.” Itadori clapped his hands together.
Ijichi pushed up his glasses. “If solving the problem took a long time, people would begin to wonder what was going on. If we don’t provide a reason, then something would start to seem out of the ordinary.”
“But isn’t there, like, a tacit understanding for that kind of thing? I thought Jujutsu High and the metropolitan government would cooperate with each other.”
“Yes, but to all appearances, Jujutsu High is a private school, so it requires the documentation of a private school. And if that isn’t enough, further documentation is necessary to prove to regular society that nothing unusual is going on. Thus, putting up a sign reading ‘Falling Rock Removal’ requires paperwork.”
“Oh. It’s more of a hassle than I thought.”
“Of course,” Ijichi said. “And I also have to provide explanations in person.”
Itadori suddenly realized something: knowledge of the existence of cursed spirits was a normal thing for him now, but Ijichi’s comments were reminding him that not long ago, before embarking on the life of a sorcerer, he hadn’t known about any of that stuff.
Itadori continued to mull this over as he watched Ijichi get out of the car. Sorcerers fought and exorcized cursed spirits. They did it to protect not just people’s lives but their ways of life. Since human fear gave birth to curses, allowing anxiety surrounding the existence of curses to spread would be incredibly dangerous. The human heart was what gave birth to curses. Therefore, preventing fear was important for protecting people.