Could you explain why that output is cursed?

I get the same output using the following (I switched to the portable memcpy solution.)

  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <float.h>
  #include <math.h>

  int main() {
    int a = 0x361dc5df; // 2.351e-6f
    int b = 0x361e3e22; // 2.358e-6f;
    float fa, fb;
    memcpy(&fa, &a, 4);
    memcpy(&fb, &b, 4);
    printf("value-equals? %d\n", fa == fb);
    printf("fabs-equals? %d\n", fabs(fa-fb)<FLT_EPSILON);
  }

Since FLT_EPSILON is 1.19209290E-07F , I would expect a lot of small, close numbers to give the same output, even without touching subnormal values.