A full year had passed since the Star Plasma Vessel Incident. The afternoon sun had baked the rooftop hot, and Shoko Ieiri held half a cigarette between her fingers, hefting an eraser and a pencil in her other hand.
Qingxiao leaned in the shade of the opposite wall, spinning Xiqu between his fingers. Suguru Geto stood by the railing with his arms folded, gazing at the distant wooded hills without saying much.
"Here they come." Shoko sounded indifferent, as though she were doing something utterly ordinary.
Satoru Gojo pushed up his small, round, black-framed glasses, his voice carrying its usual nonchalance. "Yeah, go ahead."
The instant he finished speaking, Shoko flicked her wrist, sending both objects flying at his face.
The eraser whistled faintly through the air and struck Satoru Gojo's forehead with a smack, bouncing off into his palm.
The sharp pencil, however, stopped without warning just a few centimeters from the tip of his nose.
As though it had plunged into an invisible mass of gel, it hung motionless in midair.
Shoko raised an eyebrow, shaking a little ash from the cigarette between her fingers. "Huh? What was that just now? The eraser clearly hit you."
Qingxiao stopped spinning Xiqu in his hand and offered an explanation. "Limitless automatically screens for dangerous targets, huh? Upgraded to automatic now?"
The fingers hanging at Suguru Geto's side curled ever so slightly. He said nothing, only giving a small nod.
Satoru Gojo laughed, reached up to take the suspended pencil, and twirled it between his fingers.
"Half right. It used to be manual, but now I've switched to automatic." He lightly tapped the pencil's point.
"It doesn't judge things just by the strength of their cursed energy. Mass, speed, shape... it considers every factor together to assess the danger.
"Harmless things