The second peer to arrive was a girl.
She wore her hair in a shoulder-length bob, with a tear mole at the corner of her eye.
"Yaga-sensei."
The girl clearly knew Masamichi Yaga, nodding in a brief greeting.
"Ah, Shoko is here," Masamichi Yaga nodded, turning to introduce her to the others. "Her name is Ieiri Shoko. She is your peer."
Mu Sanlu and Suguru Geto nodded.
"Hello, Ieiri-san. My name is Mu Sanlu. You can just call me 'Lu'." Eager to prevent a repeat of the awkwardness with Geto just now, Mu Sanlu spoke up preemptively.
"Hello, Ieiri-san. I am Suguru Geto. Like Lu, you can just call me 'Geto'."
"Hello, Mu-san, Geto-san," Ieiri Shoko nodded.
"Ieiri-san, if you insist on using a surname, my surname is 'Mu'." Since Ieiri Shoko seemed disinclined to use his given name, Mu Sanlu reminded her.
Hearing this, Ieiri Shoko looked up at him and nodded. "It seems you are the exchange student from China."
"Yes," Mu Sanlu nodded.
"All right, I understand, Mu-san."
Once their exchange concluded, Suguru Geto leaned in close to Mu Sanlu. "So Lu is the exchange student? I'm very interested in sorcerers from China. Care to spar sometime?"
"Sure," Mu Sanlu agreed.
Although he had hunted down and exorcised a few curses over the past few days to test his strength, he still had no real sense of where his abilities truly stood.
Still... there was one matter that needed to be clarified beforehand.
"Geto," Mu Sanlu reached out and tugged at Suguru Geto's sleeve.
"Hm?" Suguru Geto turned to look at him.
"If I happen to cry during our spar, don't worry about it. Just keep going," Mu Sanlu said.
This exact thing had happened when he went to exorcise a curse a few days prior: whenever he used cursed energy, tears would fall from his eyes. It had happened every single time.
"Cry?" Suguru Geto didn't understand.
"Yes," Mu Sanlu nodded.
Sorcerers possessed exceptional hearing; long before Mu Sanlu mentioned that he might cry during a spar with Suguru Geto, Masamichi Yaga and Ieiri Shoko had already turned their heads toward him.
"When did you notice this?" Masamichi Yaga frowned.
"The day I arrived in Japan, I wanted to see if there was any difference between Japanese curses and the ones back in China, so I found a curse and tried it out," Mu Sanlu didn't dare lie given how solemn they looked.
Please! My life was on the line here!
"With cursed energy or a technique? Did you ever experience this before?" Masamichi Yaga turned serious, stepping up right in front of Mu Sanlu.
Suguru Geto watched him with a trace of worry, while Ieiri Shoko also walked closer.
"With both cursed energy and techniques. I never had this happen before," Mu Sanlu blinked honestly.
"Never before? Could this be some kind of curse energy jet lag?" Suguru Geto guessed.
"As if there's any such thing as curse energy jet lag..." Ieiri Shoko facepalmed.
"Shoko, would you mind examining Mu Sanlu?" Masamichi Yaga looked at Ieiri Shoko.
"Yeah," Ieiri Shoko nodded. She gestured toward Mu Sanlu, "Come with me."
"Okay," Mu Sanlu nodded. "I'll be going ahead, Yaga-sensei."
Masamichi Yaga nodded.
"Are you coming too, Geto?" Mu Sanlu turned to look at Suguru Geto.
"I'll wait for the new classmate," Suguru Geto shook his head, pulling his phone out of his pants pocket. "Let's exchange contact info. If anything comes up, or if you need help, just message me."
"Sure," Mu Sanlu nodded and rattled off his number. "The digits are xx."
Mu Sanlu smiled, waved, and turned to catch up with Ieiri Shoko.
Suguru Geto tapped at his phone screen to send a friend request to Mu Sanlu.
Almost the next second, *ding*—
"You are now friends with Mu Sanlu. You can now start chatting."
*ding*—
Before Suguru Geto could even put his phone away, a message popped up in his chat window with Mu Sanlu.
[ *^_^* ]
It was an emoticon.
He didn't look the least bit worried about his condition, still finding the mood to send him emoticons.
Still, seeing that put him slightly more at ease.
Suguru Geto curled his lips into a smile.
It wasn't that he and Mu Sanlu were kindred spirits who had instantly become best friends upon meeting; rather, as peers, Suguru Geto simply didn't want one of his already pitifully few classmates to vanish the moment they met.
"Hey!"
Suguru Geto looked up at the voice.
"Didn't they say there are four first-years?"
The boy approached, wearing a pair of round sunglasses with his white hair falling in soft tufts.
"Why is there only one guy here?"
The boy reached up to push his sunglasses down his nose.
"Am I the second one to arrive?"
Upon seeing those eyes, Suguru Geto's breath caught in his throat.
Even though he had heard before that Satoru Gojo, the Gojo family's child of prophecy, possessed extraordinarily beautiful eyes, actually seeing them in person still left him lost in wonder.
Unless you saw them with your own eyes, you could never truly know how magnificent the eyes of Satoru Gojo, the Gojo family's child of prophecy, actually were.
His eyes were like the extension of the sky.
No, Suguru Geto unconsciously shook his head.
His eyes *were* the sky itself.