AN: I am so enamored by this fic that I spent all Sunday morning and Saturday typing this, completely ignoring my other fics and work.

Chapter 2 - School Day - Part 1

School had a surprise for Kusuo. It was mid-term exams.

Well, it was not so much a surprise in that Kusuo never felt the expected anxiety in academic testing. His usual reading topics exceeded high school level knowledge years ago so additional study efforts were not needed.

This day was surprising because he never had to take a test under these conditions.

The headache from the morning had worsened. He felt like his head was being slowly roasted inside his skull, gray matter itching to dribble out his ears. Mixed in with all the random nonsensical images that were still passing in front of his eyes, he could not focus on making coherent sense of the thoughts of his classmates with telepathy to proceed with his usual cheating and achieve a middling score. He kept on wanting to keep his head down, trying to prevent his breakfast from coming back up. He had such a hard time focusing that he accidentally broke his pen with his psychokinesis.

So he went for the most expedient method to get out of this situation while not make too many problems for himself. For the first time in his high school career, he took his exams without cheating.

He answered all questions as quickly as possible, no stopping to mull over which answer to make incorrect. He wrote just fast enough not to cause a friction fire. He turned the exam in, then asked to be dismissed from the classroom, which was granted.

Afterward, he went and sat hunched over on the schoolyard bench, away from his exam-stressed classmates.

He rubbed his temples, trying to keep the grey matter in his head. In the back of his mind, he hoped that he did not stand out too much from what he just did. He was the first person in school to finish every exam subject. The next person took about twice the time. Almost everyone needed the entirety of exam time.

Getting out of the exam early did provide the benefit of being able to successfully sneak away from people during lunchtime. He took his boxed lunch and hid in a bathroom stall in an unused wing of the school. His head was still throbbing. The random precognitive images came in a swirl of formulas now. Greek letters, mathematical proofs, physics formulas, interspaced with random anatomical models of the brain and eyes. The combination made him nauseous enough that he ate three bites of rice in his packed lunch and gave up on the rest.

He did spend the rest of his lunch hour checking in on his friends and family, trying to distract himself. Maybe something was going to happen to them and he was getting warnings about it? His precognitive abilities flared up when there was a physical danger to his person so he knew better than to ignore it. Maybe it had grown to include the people he cared about? It seemed to have worked around Kaido and Nendo at one point.

Crossing his eyes, he activated his clairvoyance ability.

Dad got to work on time miraculously and had to lick one less shoe. So that was okay.

Mom was in a neighborhood association meeting, chatting up with her mom friends, and exchanging recipes. Surprisingly, the mom friends also included Kuboyasu's mother.

His school mates were moaning in defeat, sighing in indifference, or crowing in triumph over the mid-term.

The people in the triumph crowd were the usual students like Hairo, Teruhashi, Kaido, Akechi, and Nendo. For the first four, Hairo, Teruhashi, Kaido, and Akechi, Kusuo completely understood why they did well. They all worked hard to maintain their grades, except for Akechi, probably. Akechi was naturally gifted academically so no surprises there. Nendo was in the triumph group because he was such an idiot that he was happy as long as he was not in last place.

There was the indifferent crowd, namely Saiko Metori, Satou Hiroshi, and Suzumiya Hii who likely got average grades no matter how hard they try. Saiko did normal because his education was supplemented heavily in running a business empire. It was actually surprising that he even came to school. Satou was the world's most average young man and by the sheer luck of sitting next to Suzumiya, he got her luck to increase to the point of average.

The ones who were in defeat were the regular crowd of Kuboyasu, Toritsuka, Aiura, Mera, and Yumehara. Kuboyasu likely did just about average in the class and was being hard on himself. Toritsuka and Aiura, his fellow psychic kids had severe personal issues that likely detracted them from studying in the first place. They were also unlikely to depend on their school grades for the next step in life anyways so not exactly a problem for them. Mera's time was preoccupied with her part-time jobs so she never did study, but she likely had tested in the third quartile. Yumehara was somewhat scattered brained and tested average like Kuboyasu, but she wondered how she could get Kaido's attention from this fiasco, if she could get him to tutor her.

Next, he checked in with his grandparents.

Uh oh. Problem. Grandfather just grabbed his chest, doubling over. His grandmother was in the room when it happened.

Good thing that when his older brother's time living with their grandparents that an emergency response system was installed to deal with an event such as this. Well, it was originally for creating an old people zombie robot army, or whatever silly grandiose plans the mad genius had come up with. No matter, the infrastructure worked.

Kusuo kept watching until the ambulance arrived, only a minute later. He might've done something to help the ambulance along. He looked away once he saw that grandpa was attended to. There were only two minutes passed between the onset of the stroke and being attended to. So nothing permanent should occur. He would have to check back periodically.

Kusuo rubbed his eyes. Crossing his eyes for so long had strained the eye muscles.

For a moment there, Kusuo noticed that his head had stopped hurting so much. Did he fix the issue that causing his precognitive flare-up? Was his head hurting because his family was in danger? And since he saw that the ambulance got there swiftly, that the problem went away? Right?

Kusuo gasped suddenly when the headache came back with a vengeance only moments later, in the form of a pulsating migraine right behind his eyes. The images morphed now, showing him images of kid's things, specifically a rattle, a fidget toy, a baby blanket, a green tricycle bicycle, a hockey mask, a snack pack, stacking playing cards, and his green glasses.

Kusuo sighed and pressed his palms to his temples and applied pressure. That relieved the pain somewhat but intensified the nonsensical images. His stomach heaved a bit, but he kept it down. He felt his pulse quicken and a shiver go down his spine. A sense of dread was creeping on the edge of his awareness.

Something was wrong and he could not figure it out.

The day cannot end faster.


The afternoon had one more set of exams. One that Kusuo finished in record time. The teacher looked surprised that he turned in his paper so early but made no comment and dismissed him.

This time, instead of sitting on the bench, he laid down, looking at clouds, trying to distract himself from the parade of some esoteric text floating in his mind's eyes. Being horizontal felt far better than being vertical. If he had to sit up for one more minute taking that exam, he might just spew stomach acid on his test papers.

Exam days were good though, since it meant no physical education period and he doubted that he could withstand the fine motor control he needed to do the activities without catching people's attention. It did mean a mandatory self-study period that Kusuo had to be in the classroom to demonstrate attendance. Kusuo tried to run away once the teacher marked him as present. He needed to be on the school roof, another bathroom stall, the janitor's closet even, to get some time to sort himself out. But, as expected, his friends caught him before he could slip away.

"Hey. Aibou!" called Nendo. "How did you do on the test?"

"Yeah, Saiki-kun. How did you do on the midterm exams?" asked Kaido.

Hairo was stretching and doing situps, to the steady cheer of his admirers. Hairo was very much well-liked and for good reasons. Hairo was a model citizen who went out of his way to help people. Sometimes, Kusuo thought psychic powers should have been bestowed on Hairo. At least Hairo would do something responsible with it. "Yeah, Saiki-kun. How did you finish so fast? Did you even answer all the questions?"

"You okay, Saiki-kun?" asked Kuboyasu, echoing the same words as Kusuo's mother from earlier. Kuboyasu was used to reading the intricate body language due to his years as a punk. "You are looking a little pale there. And where did you go during lunch, man?"

Really, you just noticed? thought Kusuo, still rubbing his temples, trying to think of something else other than the pulsating pain behind his eyes and his general malaise. Maybe he could prevail upon Toritsuka, Aiura or Akechi to find some hammers and start beating his head with them. On a second thought, maybe only Akechi. He did not trust the other two to aim well enough to miss his limiters.

"Yeah, Saiki-kun. You don't look so hot," mentioned Yumehara, pipping in. "Are you ill?"

Geez. What gave it away? The wincing? The laying down on the bench? It's not like I haven't been doing this all day. Kusuo thought to himself.

"They're right Kusuo-kun," now it was Akechi. Of the group, he was the one of few people who freely used his given name due to their association during elementary school. "You were holding your head all morning. You rubbed your temples at least two times a minute, with at least one swirl, one on each side. I observed that you did the same thing during the afternoon exam. Do you have a brain disease? Maybe you got brain cancer? I don' think so because you're Kusuo-kun. I think you've aced the mid-terms, but I'm not sure because I think you didn't answer some of the questions. By the way, you seemed even green at some point. Did you get food poisoning? What did you have this morning? I'm guessing something with coffee in it?"

"Akechi!" yelled Kaido, bewildered by the staccato delivery. "You've got to stop talking."

"I'm alright," said Kusuo, cutting through the cacophony of his friend's concerns. Like earlier in the morning, he gave an encouraging faint smile to his friends, despite the continuous pulsating pain behind his eyes that was making his eye twitch involuntarily. That seemed to do the trick since everyone's thought immediately turned to the next thing.

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to go get some ramen to celebrate the end of midterms!" said Nendo.

"Yeah. A bowl of tasty, hot, salty ramen would definitely help you out, Saiki-kun," suggested Kuboyasu to the pink-haired young man.

"That's right, Saiki-kun," said Kaido. "You'll feel better with some food in your stomach."

Before Kusuo could politely reject, Nendo already responded for him. "Of course Aibu is coming. You're coming too, Kaido?"

Kaido nodded. "Of course. I'm coming."

"That sounds like a great idea," Yumehara interjected. Since Kaido was going, she was going to go too. She turned and called to the group boys that had congregated around the school beauty. An echo of 'offu' coming off of them. "Kokomi-chan! Wanna come get ramen with us?"

Teruhashi smiled prettily as her name was called, a trail of imaginary flowers, and the sweet scent of roses seemed to encircle her. "Of course. Chiyo-chan! Ramen sounds great." She turned to her crowd of suitors. "What does everyone say?"

"Hey, I'll come too!" said Hairo, overhearing the conversation. "Who else is coming?"

The whole damn school, who else? Kusuo thought.

Sure enough, almost everyone in class responded to Hairo's invitation. Saiko declared that it was Free Ramen Day and generously offered to buy everyone's ramen. Their already unmanageable group of ten-ish close friends had ballooned to twenty-five, and maybe to a hundred due to Teruhashi's most public endorsement of ramen. The rumor spread that ramen was the ambrosia of the gods and that every student should have a mandatory serving to keep up. That was about a fifth of PK Academy's student population.

If Kusuo's head wasn't hurting so much, he would've said, "Good grief."

No time for that now. He was swept into the crowd of exam-exhausted students who all now have a brand new purpose of searching for overly salty and savory noodles. The army of students marched out of PK Academy, and innocent bystanders like Kusuo had to come along in order not to stand out.

The situation actually worked in Kusuo's favor. They were seniors and some of the students took leading, or soaking up the admiration of the underclassman seriously, which meant that they ended up forgetting that he was even there. His classmates led the charge to a ramen shop large enough to take the rush of 100 or so students.

In the crowd, Kusuo slowed his steps, falling further and further behind. After a couple of blocks he was able to slither his way from the middle of the crowd, to the edge, and eventually ducked away.