Damo, for whatever reason, had set things up so the glass door could not be opened or destroyed, coating everything in a slippery, barrier-like substance that made anything you touched droop and melt away. Josuke was adamant that Damo's ultimate goal was him. The man had come here looking for who he had been before he lost his memories, and to kill anyone involved.
Snapping back to that day on the shoreline, Josefumi watched all of Kira's horrific wounds miraculously close up. Yet he still showed absolutely no signs of life.
In an odd twist, the equivalent exchange then began to claim Josefumi. Blood dripped from his mouth and his nose, and then his ear suddenly detached from his head, and the entire right side of his face, along with his left hand, began crumbling into stone.
Understanding that some sort of equivalent exchange was going on with his body, Josefumi thought that it had to be fundamentally different from anything they had expected. Refusing to give up, he continued his desperate attempts to wake Kira.
At that very same time, Yagiyama was walking along the coastline, talking on his phone about the seismic aftershocks from the explosion and the tsunami warning that had come because of it. His eyes scanned the ground until he finally spotted a trail of fresh blood. Letting Damo know, he tracked the trail towards the far side of a lone pine tree, marking the exact location where the pair were hiding.
As Josefumi cradled his friend, he noticed even more damage to the back of Kira's head. Despair washed completely over him as the truth hit. Kira had deliberately used his own body to shield him from the brunt of the blast.
Just as Josefumi turned his eyes towards the second and final fruit remaining on the graft, intending to use it on his friend, he heard someone closing in.
The Phex brothers emerged from the tree line. Once they spotted the fruit, they flicked out their mobile phones and informed Yagiyama of what they were seeing. Moving in for the kill, the younger brother kicked his soccer ball straight at Josefumi. But Josefumi filled the ball with his own bubbles, causing it to float away harmlessly. Seizing the opening, he lashed out and snapped the rock human's leg with a perfectly placed oblique kick.
Unable to contain his rage, Josefumi continued to stomp ruthlessly on his head, putting him out of the fight completely. The elder twin immediately retaliated, trapping Josefumi in a headlock. Using his brain, Josefumi burst a cluster of bubbles right next to a nearby branch, propelling it like a spear directly into the elder brother's head.
With both of the Phex brothers incapacitated, Josefumi let loose. Using Soft and Wet, he unleashed a devastating barrage, pummelling both of the brothers right off the edge of the cliff. Having almost arrived himself, Yagiyama could only watch as both of his allies plunged into the distorted hellscape around him.
With time running out, Josefumi broke the final Locacaca fruit off the branch. He noticed that, for some inexplicable reason, the parts of his body touching Kira were rapidly fusing and exchanging, and wondered whether this bizarre anomaly was being caused by the unique properties of the soil, or by the grafting process itself.
Josefumi selflessly cut the fruit apart, ready to feed it to his friend. He tearfully told the unconscious Kira that he had never once felt dragged into this nightmare. He had just wanted to serve some sort of purpose for Holly. He had thought about it for a while now, and he told him that saving her would have been his image of happiness.
Sending all of the cut fruit into Kira's body, Josefumi then placed his hand on his chest and began the process for a full-body equivalent exchange. Breaking apart now, he admitted that he had died long ago, drowning in the ocean. The one to live on should not be him. It should be the child of the person who had saved him that day, and that was why he would gladly offer him his entire body for equivalent exchange.
Suddenly the earth cracked and shattered directly underneath Kira's body. Looking back, Josefumi could tell that the branch was fine. So all Kira would have to do was grow a new one once he was back.
Back at the Higashikata estate, a younger Norisuke and Tsurugi felt the sudden shock wave of the earthquake and decided it was probably best to head back to the safety of the house.
Back out on the coastline, the violent tremor ripped open a massive fissure directly beneath Josefumi and Kira. Completely spent and bound by the law of the fruit, the two men plummeted together into the dark depths of the crevice, buried side by side beneath the earth.
Nearby, the stray dog that had been wandering the shoreline picked up a scrap of the fruit and wandered past the subterranean spring where Josuke would eventually be discovered.
Inside the Higashikata estate, the entire living room had been covered by the melting handprints of Vitamin C.
Norisuke lay utterly powerless, forced to watch Damo's sadistic plan unfold. In a bizarre display of his power, Damo dropped several live fish directly onto Norisuke's liquefied body, letting them swim right through him while gleefully recording the entire scene on his phone.
Getting back to business, Damo demanded to know the current whereabouts of Josefumi Kujo. He could not fathom Norisuke taking down Yotsuyu by himself, so he was sure that Josefumi had had something to do with it.
When a bleeding Norisuke desperately insisted that he did not even know anyone named Josefumi, Damo flew into a manic rage. He shoved even more fish into Norisuke's body and smashed him in the face.
Then he coldly elaborated on his third goal — the eradication of the entire Higashikata family. Right now, he said, Hato was being kept alive out in the foyer, and he had purposefully set it up that way, all so that he could call her in and kill her in front of her father.