I am actually kind of curious as to how close Yui is to putting the pieces together considering how many hints she's gotten. Maybe she's just making herself avoid thinking about it too hard using her magical-girl-anime-protagonist powers?
I suspect that sheer busyness has also helped her avoid connecting the dots. It's been a pretty eventful week for her, and most of her skills at putting together related information have gone to more urgent endeavors.
Naw, when Yui extends trust, she extends it as far as her judgement of the person's intent allows.
Yui offers Maiko unreserved trust for a suspicious older woman with dodgy information sources, if Maiko said Yui shouldn't learn a thing she'd just plain stop asking.
Between things Maiko has said and what she sees with her magic sense, Yui at this point basically knows that Witches are
people, like Kyoufu and Muhou are, and that Grief Seeds are their souls, but she doesn't have any particular clues that Witches are (formerly)
human. I think she also already understood--though meeting Kyoufu and Muhou will drive it home regardless--that Witches are literally made of suffering and do, in fact experience every moment of that.
The whole issue is uncomfortable enough to think about that Yui isn't likely to dwell on the subject unless something prompts her to do so, and is very unlikely to make the leap to "Witches used to be magical girls" without something drastic happening or someone explicitly raising the possibility.
Still, when basically everyone else knows, it is surely just a matter of time? I hope Maiko-and-pals are working on a plan to break it gently, and get to the reveal before someone else does.
I wouldn't say that basically everyone knows. I'd be mildly surprised if a majority of recurring characters did, in fact.
Among the veterans, Kiyomi and Chou don't know about Witches. Himari... might? I'm not 100% sure either way on her. Haruka knows if Himari does. Rio and Fuuka definitely know, and Fuuka still has the Grief Seed of their group's fourth member. Yumi knows, as you'd expect. Maiko told Minami and (I think) Asami, but IIRC none of the other local newbies know aside from Shinobu, who basically ordered Kyubey to tell her what things he actively attempts to hide from potential meguca.
Those who know are probably well-accustomed to the fine art of not thinking about uncomfortable truths; other than mean/traumatized jerkfaces such as Naoko, most probably don't want to share the knowledge at all unless it's obviously necessary, and long practice noping the heck out of lines of thought involving the fact probably makes them good actresses in that particular regard. And they just don't bring up or acknowledge anything tangential to it ever because nope nope nope.
Yeah, pretty much this. Even girls like Naoko don't
like talking about it, because they don't want to be reminded that it applies to them as well.
It's not a complete plan, because rehatched witches are somehow berserk, I don't recall quite how, but it solves the logistics of finding a witch instead of witching out for superpowers.
Rehatched Witches are the opposite of berserk, actually. They're more aware of their environment because they've just woken after having their internal world smashed, and that makes them more dangerous because they're more likely to fight intelligently, especially if they're fighting the same meguca they just lost to. They're also stronger, on account of being freshly-restocked on corruption.
How does Kyuddles feel about that array anyways? Might they take action if we stop giving them our expended seeds?
The moment of becoming a Witch is bunnycat's big payoff. I'm not even convinced they do anything with the filled seeds given to them other than put them in stasis for a while before dropping them back into circulation in strategic locations to motivate contracts (like in Episode 3).
In any case, Kyubey's main objection to Maiko's grief seed collection would be the collateral damage if something caused the stasis field to fail while the array was supersaturated and hundreds of Witches simultaneously respawned in the middle of the city, and it can mitigate that issue by advising Maiko on how to add failsafes. (Advice she would cautiously accept, because she knows what the Incubator's motives are and that they can be trusted to logically pursue their goals at all times.)
