Afraid He'll Spit on Me

In the middle of the field, Satoru Gojo finally caught an opening. Suguru Geto had shifted his center of gravity slightly while blocking his combination attack.

That tiny shift would have been invisible to an ordinary person, but before the Six Eyes, even a millimeter was enough. Gojo swept out a long leg, his white sneaker tracing an arc through the air and forcing Geto to retreat half a step.

In the gap created by that half step, Gojo had already surged forward, closing right in.

The next instant, his palm stopped an inch from Geto's throat.

At the same time, Geto's fist stopped beneath Gojo's ribs. Their movements had been almost simultaneous.

The instant Gojo closed in, Geto's right fist had already settled precisely three centimeters below his ribs. If Gojo pushed his palm another centimeter forward, Geto's fist would strike at the same time.

They both stopped. Both were breathing a little faster, but their eyes were bright.

There was no winner, and no loser.

Gojo looked down at the fist in front of his ribs, then at Geto's calm face.

It wasn't the calm of indifference, but the calm of someone who knew exactly what would happen if that punch actually landed.

He grinned, withdrew his hand, and stepped back, his voice carrying the excitement of discovering a whole new world. "You're pretty strong, Weird Bangs."

Geto: "..."

When he first heard the nickname "Weird Bangs," he hadn't wanted to respond.

His bangs were a personal preference. He'd been into bands and stuff in middle school. They were cool, okay?

Teenagers always had their own distinctive tastes.

He was used to people taking a second look, but this was the first time someone had so bluntly turned them into a nickname.

But Gojo said it so naturally. There was no malice, and it barely even counted as teasing. It felt more like an affectionate marker that automatically brought someone into his little circle.

Meanwhile, Yan Si was laughing far too happily on the sidelines, clapping along. "Great name, great name."

Shoko wore an expression that said, "I think it fits, too." Though she said nothing, her silence was a resounding statement in itself.

Geto suddenly realized that this nickname probably wasn't going away anytime soon.

"You're very strong too, Gojo." Still polite, he withdrew his fist and gave a slight bow.

It was a textbook, perfectly appropriate response.

Gojo waved a hand. Not a polite, dismissive wave, but the kind meant to sweep that formal address right out of the air.

His white hair was slightly damp with sweat, clinging to his temples, but that did nothing to diminish his smile. "Just call me Satoru. Gojo sounds so boring."

Geto paused. He looked at Gojo, who was pushing his sunglasses back onto his nose with breezy nonchalance.

Then he glanced toward the edge of the field.

Yan Si gave him a thumbs-up, and Shoko nodded, her expression seeming to say, "Just accept your fate."

He looked back and smiled. Not a polite, restrained smile, but a natural curve of his lips.

This guy was loud, rowdy, broke all the rules, and talked nonsense nonstop, but perhaps he really was someone he could be friends with.

"Satoru."

"Geto."

Gojo said it without the slightest hesitation, loudly enough for the entire training field to hear. To him, it was only natural.

He walked over and slapped Geto on the shoulder, neither too hard nor too softly, with just enough force to make Geto's shoulder dip a centimeter.

Geto froze briefly, then smiled. It was more relaxed than any of his earlier smiles, with one less layer of polite distance and a little more sincerity. "Yeah."

Yan Si started applauding on the sidelines.

The applause was crisp and rapid, and accompanied by the ongoing crunch of crackers, it sounded anything but serious.

He ate the last shelled sunflower seed, casually handed the trash bag and all the seed shells inside it to Shoko beside him, then spread his arms and shouted joyfully, "Congratulations to our two bachelors on finding their match!"

"Happy wedding!"

"May you live happily together for a hundred years!"

"May you soon have a bouncing ba-"

Before he could finish his blessings, Geto sprinted over and clamped a hand firmly over his mouth.

The smile on Geto's face instantly vanished into a blank expression. "Yan Si!"

"Hahahahahaha!" Gojo didn't mind at all. He was having a wonderful time laughing.

His laughter echoed across the training field, startling several crows off the distant treetops.

Holding that pile of trash, Shoko took the opportunity to stuff it back into Yan Si's arms.

Her lips curved upward, thoroughly satisfied.

"Scumbag! Who stuffs trash into a girl's arms?"

She condemned him cheerfully.

Masamichi Yaga glanced down at the clipboard in his hands.

He wrote a few words beside Gojo's name, then a few beside Geto's. His pencil paused on the paper for an instant before he looked up, his voice cutting through the laughter at the edge of the field. "Next pair, Yan Si and Shoko Ieiri."

Geto let Yan Si off and removed his hand.

Yan Si smiled and casually tossed the bag of trash in his arms to Geto.

Geto: ?!

At the sound of Yaga's voice, Shoko's smile instantly disappeared.

The curve of her lips, which had risen less than two seconds ago, dropped immediately, clean and decisive.

She looked at Yaga as though checking whether her teacher was joking. Once she confirmed he wasn't, she spoke calmly, though beneath that calm lay a thin layer of steely refusal. "Sir, I'd like to forfeit."

Yaga raised his eyes. "Reason."

He rarely accepted requests from students to forfeit. Everyone had mandatory requirements to meet in the basic assessment, and they couldn't dodge them.

But Shoko's tone wasn't evasive. It was a refusal.

There was a fundamental difference between the two. He decided to hear her out first.

"I don't want to fight someone with no sense of hygiene. I'm afraid he'll spit on me."

That was what Shoko said.

As she spoke, her gaze had already left Yaga and settled on Yan Si's face.

Yan Si pointed at himself, his expression going from radiant to innocent in just three-tenths of a second. "Hey, that's so mean."

His voice carried the aggrieved tone of someone falsely accused, but the corners of his mouth were lifted.

Shoko looked at him, her gaze as steady as a mirror. "Can you honestly say you wouldn't?"

Yan Si thought about it. First he thought, then he thought seriously.

He propped his chin on his fingers, looked upward, and pressed his lips together, striking a pose of deep contemplation. Two seconds later, he answered honestly, "Nope."

Geto stood at the edge of the field with the bag of trash, his breathing not yet fully settled, when he heard this exchange.

He wiped the sweat from his face with a towel and silently grumbled to himself.

What the hell is this about spitting? If you hadn't mentioned it, Yan Si wouldn't have done it. Now that you have, he might actually do it.

Yan Si himself had no limits.

Yaga glanced at Yan Si, then at Shoko.

He paid no attention to the remark about spitting.

Instead, he gave the matter serious thought.

He had detailed files on both of them.

Shoko Ieiri had a decent foundation in hand-to-hand combat and above-average reaction speed, but her future role had never been that of a frontline fighter.

She was a doctor, a source of support, someone meant to save people-not someone to be dragged into a brutal slugfest by an "all offense, no defense" lunatic like Yan Si.

And he had reviewed Yan Si's combat report more than once.

The report covered a mission Geto and Yan Si had gone on together, and Geto had written it.

Close combat, boning knife, all offense and no defense, self-healing through Reverse Cursed Technique.

Every description pointed to the same conclusion: fight this person, and you either won quickly or got dragged into a prolonged battle, then worn down to death by his own blood.

Having Shoko fight him really wouldn't accomplish much.

"We'll switch to a basic reaction test." Yaga made his decision, tapping his pencil lightly against the clipboard twice. "Ieiri goes first."

Shoko nodded, her expression shifting from "I refuse" to "Fine, there's no escaping it anyway."

She tossed the stick from her fourth lollipop into the trash can beside the training field and walked to the center.

Her hem swayed gently in the breeze. She stopped in the middle of the testing area, planted her feet on the marked center point, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.