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How was this even possible? How did Saiki get roped into this again ? Not only did Kusuo get caught up in his brother’s experiments, again , but it was the very same one he’d used on him twice now. Kusuo really needed to keep an eye on his surroundings next time, but did you see that coffee jelly? It was humongous! How could he not have been distracted?! Ugh, he hated that Kusuke knew his biggest weakness…
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on coffee jelly, although it was a very big one- No. Saiki was teleported to another dimension again, another world with different mechanics and problems to it, like the other worlds he’d visited before. It didn’t look like he was in a past dimension, like Anya’s. No, it looked rather similar to his own dimension, like Mob’s world did. Kusuo really hoped he wouldn’t be stumbling into a group of espers again, that always made everything more complicated.
He sighed, walking down the street in the hopes of finding something useful, something to get him back home or maybe a place to stay at while he was stuck here. Instead he walked into a relatively busy street where a lot of high school students were making their way to school. He must be near the local high school, then. Maybe he could blend in with them if he got his hands on a uniform..? No, that would only lead to unnecessary questions as to why he wasn’t attending school. Saiki had no intention of going to class in this foreign world, after all.
“Kotoura? Something wrong?”
Saiki glanced aside, seeing a girl staring at him while a boy was trying to catch her attention. They were obviously part of this student commute, dressed in the same uniform all the other high schoolers around them were wearing. Kusuo guessed her to be around his age, maybe a year younger. There didn’t seem to be anything special about her, except the fact people seemed to walk around her in a big circle, clearly avoiding coming close to her for some reason. Guess bullying exists in every universe…
“Why is that guy staring at us?” the boy asked, frowning at Saiki. Well, he wasn’t the one who started it. That girl started staring first. The girl squeaked at that, quickly turning away. Crap, he caught onto me! Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly subtle. “Come on Kotoura, let’s get out of here.”
“No, wait,” she said, looking back at Saiki, who’d already turned away from them. A lover’s quarrel wasn’t any of his business and he really didn’t want to get pulled into the affairs and rumors of the local high school if he could help it. Staying under the radar was his best option, even though he’d never actually managed to do so. Not with all the random psychics meddling in his business.
“I knew it! You’re like me!”
What? Kusuo frowned as he turned around, making her slap a hand over her mouth. The boy stared wide eyed at the girl before staring at Saiki. Kusuo dug into her mind, trying to decipher what she could’ve possibly meant by that. Anything that drew unnecessary attention to himself was to be eliminated. Oh, good grief, you’ve got to be kidding me… This girl was a mind reader.
“What do you mean?” the guy asked, still super confused, but at the same time he was on edge, ready to defend Kotoura if necessary. Saiki rolled his eyes, simply turning around and walking the other way. Nope. Not happening. He’s not meddling, not this time, not again.
“Hey! Wait up!”
Saiki teleported away before she could reach him, now standing on a rooftop where he could see the row of students make their way to school. That girl was a mind reader, but he should be out of her hearing range if he read her aura correctly. He sighed. Good grief. Must there be a psychic in every other world he visited? Was it a condition in order to travel between them? He had no idea how his brother’s machine worked, but he was dead set on destroying it the moment he returned back to his own dimension.
…
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yeah, he was definitely a mind reader,” Kotoura nodded, watching the shock wash over the club members of the ESP Research Society. Mifune frowned, holding her hand to her chin as she stared at the table. Another psychic! Who would’ve thought?! Even another mind reader! But he didn’t seem interested in meeting Kotoura-san, so does that mean he doesn’t like other psychics? Does that mean he knows more of them?! We definitely have to find out more about this mystery boy! Yep, Kotoura didn’t expect any less from the president…
“And he really just disappeared? Just like that?” Moritani asked, still confused about the whole scenario Kotoura and Manabe described just now.
“Yeah, it was super weird! One moment he was there and then the next-whoosh!” Manabe exclaimed, making the necessary hand gestures and sound effects as he reenacted what happened to them this morning.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Yuriko-san?” Muroto asked, making Kotoura’s eyes widen. No way… Was that even possible? She hadn’t even thought about the possibility that someone could-
“It could be,” Mifune sighed, a grin rising to her face. “We could be dealing with a psychic that has multiple abilities.”
“What? No way!” Moritani yelled. “Is that even possible?!”
“We won’t know unless we investigate,” Mifune smiled, turning to face Kotoura. “Are you in?”
…
Saiki hated this. This world was a lot more secure when it came to crashing in empty buildings and apartments, which meant finding long term shelter would be a pain in the ass. So here he was, being reduced to shoplifting for groceries and sneaking into places he’d only be able to stay a couple of hours at most before police or someone else would show up. It was a hassle and for a moment Kusuo couldn’t help but wonder if things would be easier if he simply sought out that other mind reader he came across at the very start.
That’s how it always went in these situations, wasn’t it? He’d struggle on his own for a bit, meet someone like him who’d help him get situated, and then his brother would show up to take him back home. The longer he refused to fall into that pattern, the longer he’d suffer. With a sigh, he accepted his defeat, teleporting to the place where he’d last seen that girl. Kotoura, if he remembered correctly. It had already been a couple of days since he last saw her or this place. He wasn’t going to hang out on her way to school if he was avoiding her, after all.
Kusuo also didn’t want to seem like a stalker, but that was kinda hard when he was literally following a high school girl home. What? She was with that guy again and Saiki didn’t want to complicate things by involving more parties than necessary. He’d just talk to the girl, explain his situation, and hopefully he’d be allowed to crash on her couch until his brother would figure out which dimension he got stuck in this time around. It was a simple plan and Saiki was sure he’d figure out a way to sway her parents if they weren’t aware of her abilities, like he’d done when he first came into contact with Anya’s family.
And so he waited until she got home and that boy left, walking up to her front door as he wondered whether she actually lived with her family or not. These condos weren’t fit for families, after all. The whole building consisted of two to one person apartments, guessing from the size and the style of it all. He could also only sense one person inside, so that was also a dead giveaway. And if that was the case, it would be one obstacle less on his path, not something Kusuo would complain about.
It shouldn’t have surprised him to hear Kotoura’s thoughts switch from mentally reviewing what homework she had to do today to oh my god, that guy is standing right at my door, what do I do?! Saiki knew he was standing within her mind reading range, but he was still taken aback by the speed at which she caught him. Her powers didn’t seem all that strong at first, could he have misjudged her?
Kotoura, on the other hand, was freaking out. The one guy they’d been looking for for days now had suddenly shown up at her apartment door! Who wouldn’t freak out?! I’m not here to hurt you, so stop panicking. The fact he could read her thoughts send chills down her spine. Did other people always feel so uncomfortable around her..? It’s really no wonder everybody hated her… That boy from earlier didn’t seem to hate you, though.
“Stop reading my thoughts!” Kotoura exclaimed, glaring at the door. “What are you even doing here? Why did you come here?”
To talk to you, why else would I be here? Now are you going to let me in or are we going to have to talk through walls for the rest of the evening? Saiki really didn’t want to stand out here like a creep for the next hour. Someone might call the police on him. Kotoura wasn’t sure what to do. How could she know she could trust this person? She’d only ever met him one time and he ran away from her! And now he just showed up at her house? It was just too weird! You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. And if you don’t, then read my mind.
Right! She could just read his mind and find out why he was here! Why hadn’t she thought of that before?! When looking into his head, the only things she could see were warbled plans and scenarios of how the rest of this conversation would turn out, with good and bad consequences. His thoughts also showed him destroying some machine in a lot of different ways and strangling a blonde haired boy. His brother, she discovered. The one who sent him here. Wait, what?!
The door swung open not a second later.
“You’re from another dimension?!”
“ Scream it even louder, why don’t you? ” Saiki groaned, really not wanting to attract even more attention to him than he already had.
“S-sorry!” she yelped, her face turning red from embarrassment as she quickly looked around before motioning for him to come inside. About time… The studio wasn’t anything special or big, like Kusuo had speculated. She must really live here alone then. There’s nothing wrong with living alone! He never said that. No, living alone was the dream, but Saiki doubted his parents would survive without him being there to clean up their messes… His parents..? He lives with his parents and they don’t…
Saiki clenched his fists as Kotoura’s memories washed over him. It was over in a flash, but he was able to comprehend most of it. So that’s how it is… Kusuo couldn’t help but sympathize with her, really. His parents had always been way too accepting of his powers, it’s something he’d been accustomed to over the years, something he’d been taking for granted.
Even after meeting Anya, he still didn’t really think about it. He’d never met Anya’s biological parents, after all, and her adoptive ones were trying their best to care for her in their own way. Mob’s parents never made a fuss about the whole psychic thing either, accepting it as a part of their son together with the good and the bad. Then again, he wasn’t a mindreader… But yeah, Saiki had come to believe in the concept of unconditional love between a parent and their child. He never expected someone to dump their child because of their abilities. To call them sick, cursed, to blame their own misery on them.
Saiki noticed the tears in her eyes before the first one rolled down her cheek. She must’ve been reading his thoughts…
“Y-your parents… They sound like nice people,” she forced out.
“ They’re idiots ,” Saiki pointed out, partly because it was true and partly to make her feel a little better. “ None of this is your fault, Kotoura. You can’t be blamed for being born with these powers .”
She burst into tears after that, flinging herself onto Saiki as she sobbed and cried. He allowed it. Kotoura needed to hear those words more than anything and Saiki was willing to be her shoulder to cry on. At least for now, as annoying as this may be. He didn’t expect to sit there for so long, thoughts swirling between them, trauma and terrors unwillingly shared with one another, as well as comforting words. Kotoura found herself drifting off before long, waking up in bed the next morning. Wait, what?
“ Good morning. ”
She quickly jumped up, coming face to face with none other than the boy she let into her house yesterday. The psychic their club had been looking for. Now that she mentioned it, she really hadn’t paid much attention to his abilities at all… Was he really capable of doing more than mind reading?
“ I made breakfast ,” Saiki continued, ignoring her stream of thought. “ You’ll need to hurry, though. Your classes start at 8:30, right? ”
8:30..? How did he..? Kotoura’s eyes widened as her eyes landed on the clock. It was almost 8 already! Oh no! No, no, no, no, no! She was going to be so late! She quickly rushed over to her dresser, pulling out her uniform before turning around and glaring at Saiki. I won’t look, geez. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Kotoura was still quick to get dressed, stuffing her face with whatever the other boy had prepared before rushing over towards the door. Bag , Saiki reminded her, making her swirl around again. Right!
The door slammed shut at 8:09.
Saiki sighed and rolled his eyes. Well, things went better than expected, all things considered. He doubted she’d kick him out after that emotional display last night and he really didn’t care whether or not she told her psychic club about him. No, his focus should be finding a way out of here. Getting a ride back from Kusuke couldn’t possibly be the only way to travel between worlds, right?
…
“So it’s you!”
Saiki had heard them approaching before they barged in here, but that still didn’t prepare him for the chaos that was the ESP Research Society. Kotoura tried her best to keep them under control, she really did, it’s just a shame that none of them seemed to listen to her. Mifune, or whatever this blue haired girl was called, was up in his personal space the moment they burst in the door, poking and prodding and asking him a million questions.
“What was it? Saiki, right? You’re the psychic boy Kotoura has told us about? The one with multiple abilities?”
Saiki chopped her down with one strike to the back of the neck, making her drop to the ground. People gasped and Kotoura glared at him. Oh good grief. Now he’s done it…
“Oh my god! Is she okay?!”
She’ll be fine.
“What did you do that for?!”
She was annoying.
“You can’t just attack her for annoying you, you know?! Where are your manners?!”
The others watched in shock and wonder at the seemingly one-sided conversation as Kotoura went off at the boy, hitting him while she lectured him, not that he seemed bothered by it at all. Kotoura was too mad to care, but Saiki noticed how that guy was looking at the two of them. Ah, so it’s like that, huh? Guess anyone would be jealous when your crush finds someone more compatible to be with. Not that Saiki was interested in that kind of stuff. Ew, no, gross.
Those thoughts make Kotoura stop dead in her tracks, quickly glancing back at Manabe before looking back at Saiki. Her face flushed a bright red before she started hitting him again.
“It’s not like that!”
Yeah, sure, like Kusuo is going to believe that. He can read your thoughts, you know? It’s not that hard to figure out.
“Stop it! Shut up!” she whined. Saiki found this slightly amusing, frustrating the smaller girl even more.
“Okay, it’s official, you’ve lost me,” Moritani sighed. “Not all of us can read minds, you know? What the hell is going on?”
“Yeah, don’t leave us out of it!” Manabe complained. Saiki simply rolled his eyes, taking Kotoura’s arms as she was about to hit him and forcing them down to her sides. After that he looked down upon the unconscious girl at his feet, using his telekinesis to float her over to the bed. It’s so they’d have more room to move around, not because he cared whether she was comfortable or not. Kusuo didn’t feel guilty about knocking her out, no, he’d knock out everyone in this room if they started to be a pain in the ass.
That thought earned him another hit from Kotoura.
Okay, maybe he wouldn’t knock out everyone in this room. But only because it would be annoying to him, no other reason. Denial isn’t only a river in Egypt, it seems. Oh shut up you little-
“So are you going to introduce yourself or what?” Moritani asked, pulling them out of their mental conversation.
“ My name is Saiki Kusuo, ” Saiki said. “ I assume that you’re already aware that I’m a psychic. My powers aren’t limited to mind reading, though. ”
“So we were right! You really do have multiple abilities!” Manabe gasped. Oh man, that’s so cool! I wonder what he can do..? Maybe he has X-ray vision or something and he can look under girl’s clothes! Man, I’m so jealous! It didn’t take long for Kotoura to redirect her anger to Manabe after that, getting flustered when Saiki mentally confirmed he could see people naked if he wanted to. It wasn’t something he was interested in, though, and most of the time he would see their muscles or skeleton. His vision was too powerful to stop at the skin layer, after all.
After a while, they settled down and talked. Well, ‘ talked ’ is a strong word. They basically interrogated Saiki about his powers and intentions. Once he made it very clear he isn’t romantically interested in Kotoura, or anyone for that matter, and never will be, some of the tension left the room. Now they were just geeking out over his powers while the president of their little club laid sound asleep on Kotoura’s bed.
“It’s not fair that Mifune has to miss out on this, she was the most curious about your powers,” Kotoura pointed out. Well, if she hadn’t been so annoying about it, maybe Saiki wouldn’t have had to knock her out, how about that? That answer clearly didn’t sit well with the girl, since he earned another hit to the chest. He’d been hit a lot today, but it’s not like he actually feels it if she does, so he doesn’t mind. Not yet, anyway.
What’s that supposed to mean you jerk?!
…
Saiki wasn’t sure how he got roped into this, wasn’t sure why this was even needed. But Kotoura had asked him to teach her how to differentiate thought from word and now they were sitting at the small table in her studio doing just that. Seriously, even Anya had known the difference. It wasn’t that hard to know, was it?
“Shut up! It’s not that easy for me, okay?!” Kotoura pouted. Ah, she reacted to his thoughts out loud again. Saiki glanced down at the table, putting another line down in the failure box they’d drawn on a piece of paper. Kotoura groaned, tugging at her hair as she stared down at the table in utter frustration. Kusuo never needed to learn any of this, so he wasn’t sure how to teach her. This little experiment was the first thing they came up with, so it’s what they’ll do until they find a better method.
“What if I’m never gonna get the hang of this? I’ll be an outcast forever!” she whined.
“ Don’t be dramatic, I’m sure you’ll be able to differentiate eventually, ” Saiki sighed, making her frown. “ What? ”
“You’re not talking right now, are you?” she asked, squinting at his lips. “Your mouth didn’t move… You’re just projecting your thoughts straight into my mind!”
“ Congratulations, you’ve figured it out, ” Kusuo grumbled, not really getting what the big deal was about.
“You’ve been doing that since the beginning!”
Yeah, so what?
“Then how am I supposed to tell if you’re talking or not?!”
Oh. Oh. She did have a point there… But what else was he supposed to do? This was how he talked. He can’t talk..? Is he actually mute? No, not really. It’s not a medical condition or something. It’s just…something Saiki is uncomfortable with. He never really got the point of talking to people when he could do what he could do, and so he never actually learned how to properly communicate with others using verbal sounds. He’d probably mispronounce a lot of words if he’d suddenly started talking out loud.
“That’s great!” Kotoura gasped. Saiki failed to see what was so great about it, though. “I can learn how to tell talking and thoughts apart and you can learn how to talk! It’s a win-win!”
Oi, he knows how to talk, thank you very much. He just doesn’t do it often. Well, never, basically.
“Come on! We can help each other, it’ll be fun,” she promised. Somehow he doubted that… Yet he let himself be convinced by her. He had nothing better to do until his brother came to pick him up anyway. That or until he figured out a way home by himself, which wasn’t likely to happen. And so he spent the afternoon chatting with Kotoura, talking both verbally and mentally about all kinds of stuff. She’d gotten herself a failure box too, for every time he mispronounced something. It was embarrassing how many stripes ended up there.
“I hate you,” Saiki grumbled, still not used to the feeling of actually talking. The weird vibrations in his throat irritated him more than anything, but he wasn’t going to get one-upped by this girl who couldn’t even tell the difference between what was spoken and what wasn’t. It reminded him of Toritsuka in a way and that was not someone he wanted to compare anyone to.
“No you don’t,” Kotoura chuckled, way too amused to care about what he was thinking. “If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
He hated that she had a point.
…
A month. It took Kusuke a month to finally show up. It didn’t take nearly that long to finally wreck that awful machine of his. Saiki didn’t care whether that meant he’d never see any of the people he recently met ever again. He didn’t! He didn’t hesitate because of that! There was a fire hazard! That’s what it was! That’s why he teleported it to the desert to destroy it! Saiki wasn’t thinking of Kotoura, or Mob, or Anya, or any of the other people he met in these various dimensions. There weren’t any tears! No way!
No, Kusuo simply took the machine away from his brother and destroyed it once and for all. And what if he happened to find the powersource of dimensional travel while doing so? What if he took that weirdly glowing blue crystal that was hiding away in the circuits and took it for himself? He just had to prevent his brother from recovering it, that’s all. It was probably something rare, so keeping it would keep his brother from building another one of those contraptions. There was nothing more to it!
So what if he tried using his abilities on the crystal to see whether it would react to it? What if he accidentally absorbed its power? It’s not like he knew that was going to happen! He wasn’t even sure how this was supposed to work… Could he just…you know, teleport across dimensions now? It sounded too surreal to be true, to be honest. But then again, a lot of his abilities were weird and shouldn’t exist, so maybe this wasn’t so strange after all?
It didn’t matter anyway. It’s not like he ever wanted to see any of those people ever again.