Chapter 1
"If I die in a laundromat," Nobara Kugisaki said, "I want it on record that it was Fushiguro's fault."
"Noted," said Megumi, who had not looked up from his phone in eleven minutes.
"Me too," said Yuji. "I mean, not that I want to die. But if I do. Also Fushiguro's fault."
"How is it my fault?"
"You picked the mission."
"Ijichi picked the mission. I read the email."
"You read it out loud in a voice that made it sound fun," Nobara said. "That's entrapment."
It was half past one in the morning in mid-October, and the three of them were sitting on the long plastic bench of the Coin Laundry Sakura in Nerima, under fluorescent tubes that flickered at a frequency designed by someone who hated human eyes. Rain ran down the plate-glass front in sheets. Across the street a convenience store glowed, the only other thing awake for blocks. The report said a cursed spirit, grade three at most, had been tangling the clothes of late-night customers into knots so tight they had to be cut apart, and last week it had wrapped a college student's sweatshirt around his throat while he dozed. He was fine. The sweatshirt was not.
An hour ago Megumi had sent Black, the Divine Dog he had left, into the back of the shop to sniff out the residue. It had come back sneezing, which Yuji had found so charming he'd said "aw" out loud and gotten elbowed. Since then, nothing. The curse was somewhere in the walls, or in the pipes, waiting for someone to do what it liked to eat: fall asleep in front of a spinning drum.
"So we just wait," Yuji said, for the fourth time.
"We just wait," said Megumi.
Nobara stood up and went to her duffel bag.
"What are you doing?"
"Laundry." She pulled out a mesh bag full of clothes and a plastic bottle of detergent. "If I'm going to sit here all night I'm going to get something out of it. The dorm machine eats socks. I've lost six socks this month. I think it's a curse, honestly. You should investigate that instead."
"You brought laundry," Megumi said, finally looking up, "to a stakeout."
"I brought laundry to a building that is literally full of washing machines. You're the weird one for not bringing any." She fed coins into number four. "Itadori, do you have anything?"
Yuji looked down at himself, considering. "I have this hoodie."
"Take it off, I'll throw it in."
"Then I'll be cold."
"You're never cold. You're like a space heater with legs."
He shrugged and pulled the hoodie over his head and handed it to her, and stood there in his T-shirt grinning, his hair sticking up on one side. Megumi watched the whole exchange with the expression of a man watching two dogs try to share a single stick.
"Fushiguro." Nobara held out her hand.
"No."
"Your jacket is filthy. There's dried something on the sleeve."
"It's curse residue."
"So it's filthy."
"I'm not taking off my jacket in the middle of an active exorcism."
"It's not active. Nothing is happening. You said yourself, we just wait." She wiggled her fingers. "Come on. When's the last time you washed it? Gojo-sensei doesn't count as a laundry service."
Megumi looked at Yuji for support. Yuji had sat back down and was holding his own knees, trying very hard not to laugh, and failing, and the failure was making a small wheezing noise.
"Unbelievable," Megumi said. He took off the jacket.
Nobara put everything in together, the three of them sloshing around in machine number four, her pink pajama shirt and Yuji's red hood and Megumi's dark uniform jacket, and pushed the button. The drum began to turn. She sat back down between them, satisfied, and put her head on Yuji's shoulder.
"Don't fall asleep," Megumi said. "That's literally how it eats."
"I'm resting my eyes."
"That's what everyone who falls asleep says."
"Then keep me awake. Tell me something."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Something real. We never talk about real stuff. Itadori talks about movies and you talk about how annoying we are."
Megumi considered this. The washing machines hummed. Outside, a scooter went by and its headlight swept across the wet glass and away.
"My sister," he said eventually, "used to make me do the laundry. When we were kids. After our parents left. She said it built character."
Yuji turned his head. Nobara opened one eye.
"Did it?" Yuji asked.
"No. I just got very good at folding shirts." Megumi looked at the turning drum. "She'd be awake right now, probably. She never slept. She'd stay up reading and then fall asleep on the kotatsu and I'd have to put a blanket on her."
He didn't say anything about where Tsumiki was now, the hospital bed, the curse no one could name. He didn't have to. Yuji knew. Nobara knew enough. Neither of them asked a follow-up question, and that, Megumi thought, was the best thing either of them had done all night.
"My grandpa," said Yuji, "used to iron his handkerchiefs. Every single one. Even the ones he just used for sweat. I asked him why once and he told me to mind my own business."
"Great story."
"I'm not done. Then he said a man should have one thing in his pocket that's neat, so that even on a bad day he can take it out and remember he's not a slob." Yuji smiled at the floor. "I think about that a lot, actually."
"Do you iron handkerchiefs?" Nobara asked.
"I don't own a handkerchief."
"So what was the point of the story?"
"I don't know. It's just a thing he said."
Nobara snorted, then went quiet. "There was a girl in my village," she said. "Saori-chan. Older than me, moved out from Tokyo. She had a laundry line between her house and the persimmon tree, and in the winter her clothes froze solid on it. Like boards. I used to go over and knock on her shirts. The village ran her family out when I was a kid. Everybody just stood there and let it happen." She stopped. "That's part of why I came here. So I'd never be one of the people standing there."
"Did it work?" Yuji asked.
"Ask me in a year." She shrugged against his shoulder. "I think so."
Number four clicked into its spin cycle. The whole bench started to vibrate.
And the lights went out.
No flicker, no warning: every tube at once, and the convenience store across the street was suddenly very far away. In the dark the washing machines kept turning, and from somewhere under the floor came a wet, dragging sound, like a sheet being pulled through a drain.
"Oh, come on," Nobara said, already standing, already reaching for the hammer at her hip. "Not during the spin cycle."
The curse came out of machine number seven, the dryer in the corner, pouring itself through the round glass door like a tangle of wet hair. It had a face, sort of, made of buttons and lint. It went for the person closest to it, which was Megumi, in his shirtsleeves, with his hands already together.
"Divine Dog," he said, and the shadow at his feet tore open.
It was over in maybe forty seconds. The dog pinned it. Yuji hit it so hard it folded around his fist like a towel. Nobara put three nails through the button-face and said "Hairpin," and the whole thing went off with a damp pop, and a smell like a mildewed basement, and then nothing. The lights stuttered back on, one by one, buzzing.
They stood there, breathing, in the middle of the Coin Laundry Sakura, looking at a scorch mark on the linoleum.
Machine number four beeped three times, cheerfully, to say it was done.
Nobara got there first. She opened the door and pulled out the wet tangle of their clothes and then stopped, holding them up, staring.
"Oh no," she said.
Her pink pajama shirt was now a soft, even, apologetic shade of red. So was the white lining of Megumi's jacket. So, faintly, was the jacket's collar.
Yuji's hoodie looked exactly the same as before.
"Itadori," Megumi said, very calmly.
"It's not my fault! It's always done that! I told you I didn't want to put it in!"
"You did not say that at any point."
"I thought it! I thought it really hard!"
Nobara started laughing. It started small and got bigger, until she had to hold onto the machine to stay upright, the dripping shirt still in her fist. Yuji caught it from her, the way he caught everything, and then the two of them were bent over and wheezing in the empty laundromat at two in the morning, and Megumi stood there with his ruined jacket and an expression of total suffering.
And then, at the very edge of his mouth, something gave.
"Wait," Nobara said, fumbling for her phone. "Wait, wait, don't move, Fushiguro's smiling, I need evidence—"
"I'm not smiling."
"You are, you absolutely are, get in, Itadori, get in the picture—"
She held the phone out at arm's length. Yuji threw an arm around Megumi's neck and dragged him down into the frame, and Megumi said "Itadori," in a warning voice that warned nobody, and Nobara put her pink-red shirt on her head like a bandanna and the flash went off.
Looked at later, the picture was blurry in ways none of them noticed at the time: Yuji's face half out of frame, Megumi's eyes closed, Nobara's mouth open on a word. The time stamp in the corner said 02:07, October 14th. It was raining in the background. The dog was there too, if you looked, a dark shape at the bottom edge with its tongue out.
Nobara would keep it as her lock screen for exactly as long as she had that phone.
"Send it to me," Yuji said, on the walk home, the three of them under one convenience-store umbrella, the wet laundry in a bag.
"Send it to me too," said Megumi, after a moment, not looking at either of them.
Nobara smiled at the rain and said nothing, and sent it to both.