Chapter Text
"An engineer, Kokomi, really? That feels out of character for you."
Honestly, she almost believed that herself. People like Kuusuke and Akechi existed, so why go into a field where she'd always be inferior? She wasn't even the most engineering-minded person. Naturally, she excelled at math; but calculations seemed to just swim through her peers' minds unabated—a never-ending stream of equations, operations, and models. Regardless, she'd thought through all of her options; and it just seemed to make the most sense; math and science choked those with deific beauty in its iron grip no less easily.
This and similar thoughts mulled through the back of her mind as she sat in the Terman Engineering library at Stanford University, her half of the table barely visible under the esoteric books and supplementary materials where Greek and English lettering reached parity. The bookcases on the wall and in the floor space in the part of the library she took residence in were packed even tighter than her table, and the areas that weren't inundated with books were instead occupied by otherwise unremarkable tables. Despite the pomp and circumstance surrounding the university, the décor in the library served as a reminder that Stanford was first and foremost a learning institution.
Toward the end of high school, she had dropped part of her "perfect" visage and performed according to her actual academic ability, which had barely squeaked her into Stanford. She knew it was going to be difficult, but couldn't have been prepared for just how difficult. Nights with under 5 hours of sleep were quite common even with her peerless organization and work ethic; during crunch time for projects those nights often became sleepless. If she never saw another eigenvector, it would be too soon.
"Is katsudon good for tonight? Do you have time for dinner?" she heard in her head, Saiki-kun's tone somewhere between annoyed and expectant.
She heard a groan, likely due to his indignance at what he called her "overactive imagination".
Yes, she said with a giggle. I should be done soon. He said dinner, but in Japan that was around lunch time the next day—she said "almost done" when she had around 2 more hours' worth of work. In high school, she would have thrown a fit if she ate past 21:00, but that ritual was yet another casualty of her packed schedule. A problem for tomorrow morning's workout, she supposed.
Luckily, the people around her just barely kept her from losing her mind. Saiki-kun had been very supportive of her idea, though she could see his moue due to her lack of availability peeking through the cracks—she would neither confirm nor deny her agency. All students struggled here, even those at the top where Akechi Touma was firmly perched. She had been happy to see a friendly face abroad, but had no idea their bond over mutual suffering would be so tight.
"Teruhashi-san, have you reviewed my analytical solution?" Akechi asked her in Japanese. He dared not lift his face from his books and wrote furiously, as if every idea that popped into his head was going to run away from him. At some point, he had achieved a welcome reduction to his rambling, reasoning that the more time he spent talking the less time he had to devote to his studies. While she certainly didn't mind his verbal restraint, he had just as much rambling to do in Greek letters and Arabic numerals. She counted her lucky stars that she was good friends with the current number 1 student; it was hard not to think that she'd be back in Japan without him.
Their current assignment was to break down a wave function in order to model the propagation of seismic waves through earth's crust. The idea was that they would plug Akechi's jumble of hieroglyphs into a program she wrote and pass some data through it to see if it fit a pattern that was both possible and the correct answer, two criteria that were aligned less often than she'd care to admit.
She bundled her hair in her fist, glanced over at the paper he had given her earlier, and handed it back to him with her previously added notes. "Yes, Akechi-san, your analytical solution looks correct," she replied in Japanese. Most of the other students were as affable as they were brilliant, but she still couldn't help but feel like an outsider at times. She shook the thoughts from her head before she got carried away.
___
2 years ago
"An engineer, Kokomi, really? That feels out of character for you," Chiyo said as she sat cross-legged next to Kokomi's bed. Chiyo's expression was knit with worry as she pulled her shins in tightly.
Kokomi had slipped her career preference sheet unnoticed, but could no longer keep it under wraps when it got out that she was going overseas to an elite university. The news spread like wildfire; the reactions were encompassed by congratulations and adulations, and (mostly) lamentations. For Teruhashi Kokomi, privacy was a privilege, not a right.
"I know it seems sudden, but please… I need your support more than anything else right now," Kokomi said, barely keeping a stiff upper lip. She clenched her skirt and tightened her shoulders. "I've been getting a lot of looks at school. People look hurt, like I'm abandoning them."
Like I'm not allowed to live my life. No matter how much her aura receded, people always remembered that she was Teruhashi Kokomi: a perfect pretty girl. No less. No more.
Chiyo flinched. "I'm sorry, Kokomi. I just want to make sure that's what you really want, y'know, as a friend."
"Nah, she'll be fine," Mikoto said, waving the comment away as she let herself into the room. "Crack on, Teryukoko. You deserve it." She plopped herself down next to Kokomi and leaned back on her hands.
Chiyo pursed her lips in a tight line and nodded her head slowly.
"C'mon, Chiyopipi, you know she can do it! You're just going to miss her a lot, aren't you?" Mikoto said, flashing Chiyo a teasing grin. Chiyo looked like she wanted to curl up and die; she retreated her burning face into her shoulders.
Mikoto clapped and laughed before reaching over and pulling on Chiyo's cheek. "You are just the cutest thing ever, Chiyopipi!" she said, laughing against Chiyo's protests.
After Mikoto finally let her go, Chiyo ducked her head again and fidgeted her fingers in her lap. "I guess I'm just not all that confident in myself, y'know? My grades aren't stellar, and I don't want to feel left behind. I guess I just can't really wrap my head around it. I'm really happy for you, Kokomi," Chiyo said, offering a shaky smile.
"Thank you, it really means a lot," Kokomi said gratefully, mirroring Chiyo's fidgeting as a small smile graced her features. "I can barely wrap my head around it, myself."
"Girl, you don't need to. Life is complicated enough as it is," Mikoto cut in.
"Which one of us are you talking to?" Chiyo pointed to herself, Kokomi, and back to herself with a baffled expression.
Mikoto only responded with a low chuckle. "So, it was Kusuo, wasn't it?" she said, fluttering her eyebrows at Kokomi dangerously.
Kokomi choked. "No! I'm my own woman, I can make my own decisions!" she shrilly sputtered, flailing her hands around to accentuate her unconvincingness.
"Relax, I didn't mean only him," Mikoto said with a laugh. "You've just changed a lot and I'm honestly kinda jealous."
"Thanks, I just wanted to try something new," Kokomi said sheepishly, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers. "So, Mikoto, what are your plans after graduation?"
Mikoto shrugged. "I don't think I'm gonna go to college."
"Whaaaaat?!" the other girls shrieked.
"Yeah it turns out that creep Toritsuka and I make great business partners. He's as shallow as they come; so with spirit channeling, he's a perfect influencer. With my divination, I make a great manager for him; and you can't really learn how to manage the ups and downs of luck in school; so I'm kinda on my own there," Mikoto said, absentmindedly inspecting her nails.
The confusion that they felt was beyond description. "You just called him a creep, why do you plan on working with him? Did you read that you'd be set for life?" the others said in unison.
"Nope," she said in English, adding a lip pop. "It's just something that my DNA happens to have the market cornered for. He's not as bad as you think, just needs some discipline to keep him in line." She turned away from her nails to make a whip crack motion while the associated sound popped into their heads to complete the experience, earning a hearty laugh from the others.
"So, Chiyo, what will you do after graduation?" Kokomi asked.
"Well, I'm going to school for literature and Shun will be joining me at my university!" Chiyo said with a toothy grin. Forget the offus, this smile needed to be protected forever.
Suddenly, Chiyo's expression turned sorrowful. "I wish it was under better circumstances, though. When his mom figured out that he didn't get into his top choice and that he hid his literature major, she apparently didn't speak to him for days. I've never seen someone so crushed. He was more than capable of getting in, I think he just got nervous during his entrance exams," Chiyo said wistfully, bundling her knees behind her arms and looking off to the side.
Kokomi placed her hand on Chiyo's shoulder for support and gently kneaded it.
"Aw, poor Kaidounami," Mikoto said and followed Kokomi's lead.
"I think he's doing better now. I hope he appreciated my support even though he's still kinda afraid of girls. Aren's the real hero, though. It's really cute when Shun yells at Aren for using 'cheese' in video games. I totally didn't pretend to know what that meant to sound cool." Chiyo laughed lightly, settling into a contented smile at the memory.
"What about you? What made you want to get into writing?" Kokomi asked.
Chiyo chuckled nervously and scratched the back of her neck. "Well… I had a website I ran back in junior high where I hosted an entire novel with myself as the protagonist. Not just a self-insert, literally 'Yumehara Chiyo'." The other two girls' eyebrows quirked and Chiyo made a stop motion. "The site's gone now, so no snooping." Chiyo made a finger gun at both of them with a glint in her eye. "I still write from time to time, though it's all cliché romance. Apparently romance (especially smut) sells, so my goal is to become fluent in English so I can reach a wider audience. I've even got the perfect Boys' Love story unfolding in our friend group," Chiyo said mischievously and fluttered her eyebrows suggestively, eliciting pair of snickers.
"You better snatch him up before Aren gets him, Chiyopipi," Mikoto said, reaching over to punch Chiyo's shoulder.
Chiyo sighed and rolled her eyes. "Working on it."
___
Present Day
On his own path to self-determination… Saiki Kusuo went to university at his parents' insistence, the threats of a baby brother being the last straw. Times like these reminded him that his parents were still Japanese despite their otherwise carefree attitude. He couldn't complain too much since he still had no idea what he was going to do with his life, so this opportunity might be a breath of fresh air for him. His fruitless attempts to eliminate his powers grappled with his dream of normality, ultimately shredding apart both ideals and leaving them in tattered ribbons. The best he could do right now is to accept normality as far as a psychic could. Psychometry, rapid thinking, and telepathy—any one of these trivializes any hope integrating into society; yet he possessed all of them. For all those mental faculties, it was a cruel irony that he could not think of a way to negate them.
It was all he could do to keep living; he'd go to a middling college to get a middling degree and have less than a middling chance of figuring out what to do. He didn't hate that Kaidou and Yumehara had joined him, though. Their relationship was something like reverse extortion: they gave their liveliness to him unconditionally while he gave his protection to them without their consent. Terrible analogies aside, he simply went to class every day exactly as he would have in high school, got average grades, and left at the buzzer to get home and do something else.
Speaking of the buzzer, his last class of the day had just let out; so he might as well make dinner for Teruhashi-san. He filed out of the class with the other students and made his way toward the nearest secluded area to teleport to his home kitchen. November in Japan brought the multi-color autumn leaves which danced in the breeze on their journey down from the branches of the campus's many trees. He didn't really care much for things like that, but being with Teruhashi-san made him more aware of them. She'd drag him outside just to point out minutia like that, her eyes sparkling as she looked on the world with a wonder that he wished he had. The leaves scratched and crunched under his feet as he dragged them along with him to his ever-reliable nondescript alleyway and disappeared into his kitchen.
Teruhashi-san had specifically requested that he make dinner despite the fact that he could teleport Mom's cooking over and reheat it as needed. He understood the intention behind the request, but it still baffled him that she'd rather have his food when Mom's was a strict upgrade to his. Teruhashi-san was considerate like that: she knew his situation and gave him something to do that didn't require him to interact with people. Well, whatever. Her prerogative.
His mom was out, so he headed over to start preparations without fanfare. Teruhashi-san's schedule was packed to say the least, so a little comfort food wouldn't hurt her. Katsudon fit that bill pretty well: a simple, rich, and filling meal with a breaded pork cutlet and fried egg over rice served with vegetables on the side.
He aspirated his nose and shook his head, an amused grin forming at the corners of his lips. Last year, she would complain about how hard it was to keep her strict diet, exercise, sleep, skincare, and whatever other routines women cared about; but that stopped abruptly after she got her first test scores. Her petulant whining in response to his "unhealthy" cooking was amusing until she eventually resigned herself to the fact that he could read her mind for her order. So fussy.
He crossed his eyes and took a glance at her studying efforts. Judging by the amount of books on the table, her expression, and the urgency of her thoughts, she probably had around 2 hours left.
Is katsudon good for tonight? Do you have time for dinner? he asked.
"Somebody's anxious~"
He merely offered a grumble back. That's just your overactive imagination.
"Yes," she said with a giggle, "I should be done soon."
Great, he could get all of the ingredients prepped, do a load of laundry, and watch a movie before she was done. If he was on the later schedule, he definitely wouldn't have put up with this.
The two hours passed exactly as expected; his phone buzzed when he was plating the food exactly as expected.
"Ready now :3" the message read as he glanced over at the illuminated screen. After much consternation, Teruhashi-san had bludgeoned him into getting a phone because god forbid she wait a few minutes for him to check on her with clairvoyance. That one time he locked her out of her apartment for hours was an anomaly. Teruhashi-san's high maintenance personality aside, he needed to leave now if they were going to eat dinner together.