Seeking answers, Josuke asked Norisuke to teach him how to ride the motorcycle stored in the family garage. The two of them walked off discussing what they would need to get before Josuke could ride, but obviously the bike was just a front. Josuke did not care about learning to ride. He simply needed an excuse to get Norisuke away from the rest of the family so that they could speak in private.
Once inside the garage, Josuke pulled up the security camera footage from the Higashikata estate, specifically a clip captured at 4:08 a.m. Norisuke watched, frozen in shock, as what appeared to be a solid rock slowly morphed into the unmistakable form of his elder son, Jobin. The footage showed Jobin intently examining a specific branch hidden deep within the family orchard.
Norisuke struggled even to process the sight, trying to rationalise that Damo had been the syndicate's boss, and that since the rest of the crew had already been wiped out, there should not be any allies left.
Josuke laid out the cold facts. There was damning evidence that Jobin and Damo had been actively in business together. Not teamed up as such, but in a business relationship. Josuke believed it had been Jobin's specific role to launder the smuggling ring's massive revenue, using the Higashikata fruit parlour as a perfectly legitimate front to import the legal Locacaca into the country.
Norisuke's blood boiled over at the accusations against Jobin, and he claimed the footage was no more than his son examining plants.
But Josuke remained completely unshaken. He was fiercely determined to locate the exact tree holding the grafted Locacaca branch and save Holly's life. Due to the constant aftershocks, the wall eyes had violently shifted the landscape, and now it was impossible to distinguish the grafted branch from the hundreds of ordinary fruit trees in the orchard. But he could tell it was alive. And if it was alive, he should be able to get it to grow another Locacaca.
Josuke sincerely thanked Norisuke for taking him in and sheltering him, but told him he would not allow a single soul to stand in his way. If he had to hunt down the branch entirely on his own, he would.
Hearing this, a wave of profound guilt washed over Norisuke. He remembered that his grandson was also suffering from the family's genetic illness, and realised he could not simply let Josuke go at it alone.
Making a choice, Norisuke handed Josuke a phone containing a number of highly classified photographs of some new product. He went over the prices of each, but what he mainly wanted to talk about was the man who cultivated these beauties. His industry secret was a plant appraiser, a man only Norisuke knew about, who possessed the unique expertise to identify a grafted branch from the original. Norisuke instructed Josuke to go and find this man immediately, and as Josuke turned to leave, he reminded him that he would not let Jobin discover what the two of them were up to.
The moment Josuke departed, Norisuke caught sight of Kaato, casually relaxing on a hammock in the garden. Storming over, he angrily reminded her that he refused to give her a single cent of compensation, and demanded she get out of his sight.
Left completely alone in the sun, Kaato casually grabbed her phone and called Jobin, alerting him that his father and Josuke were up to something. Jobin quietly thanked his mother for the crucial tip, his mind flashing back to the horrific sight of Josuke brutally executing Damo in that alleyway days earlier.
Knowing the walls were closing in, Jobin drove out to a secluded shrine. He carefully pulled on a pair of gloves before stepping out to toss pieces of fried chicken near a quiet pond.
Making a sharp clicking sound with his mouth, he called out, and a grotesque rock human with absolutely no arms or legs emerged from the shadows. Seeing the creature try to bite him, Jobin dodged the snap and calmly handed over the bucket of fried chicken. He dropped the grim news on him, informing the limbless man that Damo and the rest of their syndicate had been entirely wiped out, before asking the creature for a desperate favour.
Meanwhile, back in the city, Josuke was intercepted on the street by a young courier boy who had specifically asked for him. Taking the envelope off the kid, he saw that it was explicitly addressed to Higashikata Josuke-sama. Seeing the boy go to walk off, confused, Josuke asked him who it was from. Innocently, the kid explained that a strange man around the corner had handed it to him and given him a nice cash reward just to deliver it.
As Josuke turned the envelope over, wondering who could possibly be reaching out to him, an odd detail stood out. A strange, bizarre tooth stain, dried onto the corner of the paper.
Instantly sensing a trap, Josuke dropped the letter onto the pavement. His mind raced as he tried to figure out whether or not the letter was dangerous. He looked around, trying to see who had given it to him, when the courier boy stopped, turned completely around, and began walking slowly back towards him.
Slipping away from the present day, there was once a young man and his girlfriend lying peacefully on the grass. The man softly told her about a dream, one of a blue lagoon, where the two of them, completely stranded together on an island, had to survive off the land. Suddenly he looked up and panicked. His girlfriend had mindlessly wandered dangerously close to a high voltage electrical box.
Racing forward, he threw his body into her path to save her from certain death. But in his desperate attempt to stop her grabbing at it, he accidentally made contact with the generator himself. While taking the full body shock, the man could only watch as his girlfriend left him to die. The electrocution fried away all four of his limbs, leaving his body partially deformed.
Back in the present, that very same man claimed that he was perfectly happy now, living a quiet life by the pond at the Mutsukabe shrine. He said it was sad to hear that all of the others had passed on, but that he really had no interest in serving any sort of purpose in society any more. Apologising in case he had offended him in any way, Jobin refused to back down.
He pulled out a photograph, showing the creature the faces of Kira and Josefumi, and explained what had happened. The two of them had used a radical new form of equivalent exchange with a modified Locacaca fruit, fusing together to create a brand new man named Josuke Higashikata. Jobin pleaded with the creature for his help in ensuring that their grand plan succeeded.
Taking this in, the deformed man, whose name was revealed to be Dolomite, slowly revealed the terrifying presence of a stand.
Meanwhile, back out on the streets, Josuke barked at the boy to halt, demanding to know exactly who had handed him the letter. But the boy was completely unresponsive. He continued to trudge forward blindly, until he slammed directly into a metal bus stop sign.