[At Shoko Ieiri's surprised reminder, the hand you had been about to raise to your lips with the cigarette paused slightly in midair.]
[You did not look for a mirror to check. Your bodily perception, honed to its utmost through death, had already calmly accepted this physical fact.]
[After continuously overtaxing your brain's processing power and repeatedly stripping away memories steeped in despair and the causality of death from deep within your soul, the localized loss of pigment in your hair follicles caused by that sudden increase in stress was, in your rational medical assessment, nothing more than a perfectly normal physiological compensatory response.]
[You put the glowing cigarette back between your lips and took a deep drag.]
[In truth, if your supercomputer-like brain rigorously profiled the situation and extrapolated from it.]
[You would know perfectly well that if the person standing before you in this nicotine-scented smoking corner were not Shoko Ieiri, a noncombatant, but either of those two, Satoru Gojo or Suguru Geto.]
[Then the words you wanted to say next would most likely never, ever leave your mouth.]
[Because those two, arrogant in their strength to their very bones, would never simply stand quietly beside you and listen as Shoko did after hearing these weary words that sounded like an admission of weakness.]
[They might immediately, self-centeredly and recklessly, try to force their way into your plans, thinking of using every ounce of their so-called "Special Grade" power to help shoulder your burden.]
[But you knew better than anyone that, against a deadlock of causality spanning dimensions, the power they took such pride in on this physical plane would be utterly useless.]
[Their involvement would only disrupt your absolutely rational game, and might even become a new variable.]
[That did not mean Shoko Ieiri would never feel