Lu You did not turn to look at him.
Although he did not know why Itadori could return to the past, allowing the past and future to intertwine was clearly a mistake.
If he could avoid communicating, he should.
No matter what the other man asked, he must not answer!
Otherwise, the causality of time was not something they could bear yet, just as the grandfather paradox suggested.
His finger remained on the control knob, the steel ball poised in the launch chute, but his attention was no longer on the game at all.
Beside him, the hooded man in the white trench coat was playing pachinko with an extremely practiced touch.
His movements flowed as though he had practiced them countless times.
Even so, there was something indescribable about him that felt utterly out of place with his surroundings.
Lu You had once possessed that kind of pachinko skill himself. It had been a green trait he obtained in his first Template.
The little steel ball shot out of the launch chute, bounced between the pins, and finally dropped into an ordinary channel.
No prize.
The man withdrew his hand, took the remaining steel balls, and turned around.
He never once looked at Lu You.
Only as he passed Lu You did his steps pause for an instant.
"...Three hundred years from now, Illusory Realm Qianyuan."
His voice was quiet, almost drowned out by the arcade's noise, but Lu You heard it perfectly clearly.
That voice, that tone, and that habit of letting his inflection rise at the end-it was indeed Yuji Itadori.
But not the Yuji Itadori who was currently hard at work in the New World.
This voice was steadier, more weathered.
Like a keen blade that had undergone countless temperings before finally returning to its sheath.