Chapter 14 - 180 Degrees
Risa was looking at her nearly-adult, pink-haired grandson with a mixture of puzzlement, amazement and fear.
-Effortless levitation! Psychokinesis!- thought Risa.
He was the epitome of the impossible. Such raw power, neatly packaged into an eye-catching, but unassuming human vessel. After so many generations, the family's esper curse, flashover in childhood, had been broken. To think it occurred in her bloodline, as an offspring of Kuniharu, was a matter of surprise.
Perhaps Kuniharu's incredible luck was rubbing off. He had the pleasure of being born to her, meeting his soul mate Kurumi, and having extraordinary children whom he relied upon to meet the challenges of daily life. Perhaps it was his luck that broke the curse?
Right now, this said grandson was floating in midair, taking deep breaths like a mix of fabled mountain guru and a sprinter, wind whipping about him. He was in deep distress over the presumed loss of devices called "limiters." It seemed like they were items that controlled ESP. Perhaps she could prevail upon him as to the manufacturer of these products. In her studies as a doctor, a scientist, and a mild psychic, she had thought such triumph of science over ESP was insurmountable.
Good. He came down from the air and seemed to have smoothed over whatever troubling realization that disturbed his inner stability. The feeling of deep seated sadness seemed to have been bulldozed over by annoyance. It seemed like a forced protective measure, to maintain emotional balance. Risa had done the same herself in the course of her life as a professional in a field dominated by men, to overcome the terrible tragedies of her personal life. Protection and training of the mind had always been the first priority of their family.
And to think this particular esper was never formally trained, and was still able to maintain such superb control. This impossible result placed significant doubt on traditional wisdom.
Kusuo glared at the detritus of the Cambridge office building fire. One concluding thought in mind.
-I'm going to kill Kuusuke in the next life.-
Kusuo crossed his arms as he stared at the space where his desk was previously, smoldering ire just beneath the surface of his being.
After reviewing the events of the past week, Kusuo was certain that he was being played with.
First, his head had to be killing him on the day of mid-terms.
Then grandpa had to get a stroke.
Then he had to trouble Aiura and now had to owe her a favor.
Then Kuusuke had to die on him.
Then his psychic powers had to refuse to gave him the one thing he absolutely needed.
Then his mother had to freak out because she thought her baby boy almost died.
Then he learned that was likely true, that he should have never lived this long because the expectation was that he should have spontaneously combusted ages ago if not for the coincidental usage of the limiters.
Then Kusuo realized that all the spare limiters that should have lasted him a lifetime were destroyed at the Cambridge office building fire because he was so distraught at the time that he was not as careful with teleportation. This fact just had to be conveniently revealed itself, right after he learned just how critical the limiters were to his own self-preservation.
Which circled back to the fact that there was no one else reliable who can create new limiters, or fix the current ones.
Nothing he had done so far with his psychic powers was going to change that progression because he could not bring back his older brother.
And no, he was not about to test whether the 'spontaneous human combustion' part as described by recently no-so-estranged grandmother was true. That did not seem like something he should attempt verifying.
Considering how perfectly disastrous the past week had been, to the point of a comedic tragedy, Kusuo could only think of two entities who could be responsible, God and Kuusuke.
God was responsible for a lot of bad. The constant bombardment of people's ugliness due to the impossibility of shutting off his telepathy and x-ray vision were a couple of bad things. Having to suffer and try tremendously to appear normal was another one. Not ever getting his way on his quest for a quiet day, which was rare enough as it is, was a constant reminder that prayers do not work.
Kusuo's perennial bad luck had to the result of God being a sadist.
But only Kuusuke could execute such a perfect catastrophe.
All of this had to be Kuusuke's fault.
Kuusuke must be toying with him from beyond the grave. That sadomasochist must have cackled the entire time when he was thinking up the ways to forever needle his younger brother as a parting gift, starting by giving Kusuo the worst week ever. That would fit Kuusuke's superlative of being the worst older brother in the history of the universe.
Because if all of this misfortune was not the result of Kuusuke being a jerk this entire time, Kusuo was going to have a complete mental breakdown.
Kuusuke, he could beat up and win. With Kuusuke, there was still a measure of control over his disastrous life.
And Kuusuke was no longer around for him to exercise control.
'If I'm not laughing, I'd be crying?' Isn't that how the saying goes?
Kusuo slumped in his desk chair, eyes still gazing at the debris from Cambridge, trying to make sense of what had occurred in recent times.
Of the things that the unintentional apportation of things could have been exchanged, it had to be his psychic canceler and the third-generation limiters. Was there even monetary value to limiters? What could even be equal value to the limiters? Was it worth as much as a child's wooden block creations, considering that they were handmade per imagination? Or was it in the trillions of yen? Because the combined intelligence of the scientists and researchers in the world was not smart enough to match Kuusuke's genius? How much was that labor even worth?
Finally, Kusuo decided that he should not try to understand the reasons behind the sequence of events any longer or he was going to do something he was going to regret later out of frustration, just like how he unintentionally destroyed those limiters due to carelessness.
"What a shitty week," uttered Kusuo to no one in didn't matter if the neighbors had heard him; the neighbors were always saying those words and would likely think that they were echoing their own sentiments.
At this point, he would rather listen to nonstop gossip from Yumehara or grandiose Dark Reunion schemes from Kaido. He would risk the bugs of the farm by going potato digging with Mera and Akechi. Heck, he would entertain weeklong tennis camp with Hairo, or a gang takeover with Kuboyasu. He would go on another cruise with Saiko and have Takahashi to come along. He would even go to porn shop with Toritsuka or a have a double date with Teruhashi and Aiura. Ramen with Nendo at seemed like a wet dream by comparison to right now.
When was the last time he even had a chance to say 'good grief?'
"I don't even care anymore."
Grandmother Risa upon him sympathetically. "I understand that learning all of this is hard. Flashover and its inevitability are difficult concepts to accept."
Kusuo shook his head again. He was so irritated by everything that had happened. How was this the karmic payback for saving the world so many goddamn times? And why were people still not listening to him? Why did people still fill in the spaces with words they thought he had said.
"Did you not hear me?" he snapped. "It's been a shitty week. Everything started going to hell long before you've shown up with even more shitty news."
Risa easily pressed down the automatic response of verbally putting a disrespectful young man in his place. She had seen this type of reaction in patients that she had to tell that their diagnosis would result in a time-clock being placed on their life. Of course, a person would be upset.
"You're still alive," reminded Risa encouragingly. "You've been able to beat the fate of everyone before you. You've lived nearly twice the lifetime of the previous record. It's a God-given miracle."
"So what? It still doesn't change the fact the fate of all esper in the family is flashover." Kusuo closed his eyes and thought back at the brief time when he thought his psychic powers were erased. If he had taken Kuusuke's advice back at the beginning of the school term to 'take it easy,' would all of this have been avoided? If he had waited for his body to devolve back into a normal person, would that had prevented this, somehow?
In exchange for a world devastated by the meteor?
Could Kuusuke had done something about the meteor without Kusuo's psychic powers?
Likely.
Actually, definitely.
No. The part where Kuusuke forced dad into a body armor was not it.
Kuusuke had always been capable. But how would he had delt with it?
The feeling of 'something' was there again.
What was that 'something?'
It felt eerily familiar, like Kusuo's passive suggestion to everyone that a pink-haired guy who wore antennas and green sunglasses was completely normal. That 'something' had always been on the subtle edge where the normal blended into the abnormal.
Suddenly, a conversation Kusuo had with his older brother came to mind, when he had received his first-generation limiter and wondered what the right antenna was. What about that interaction that never caught his parent's attention?
"That includes you, doesn't it?" asked Kusuo of his grandmother, trying to think through the words that were not said. "You will flashover one day, too."
"Yes," confirmed Risa without hesitation. "It's the Saiki family curse. All espers will flashover." Risa took a breath. "Some of us never knew it's a possibility because their psychic manifestations are passive or ineffectual. We only realize it afterward, when we examine the evidence."
"So you're saying that even dad might flashover too." Kusuo thought about the fact that mom's maiden name was also Saiki, the same characters and everything. Considering how rare the family name was in the first place, mom and dad might have been very distantly related. "Maybe even mom."
"It's a possibility," Risa speculated. "Both of them had been far luckier than most, enough to afford costly self-indulgence so maybe an element of ESP is there? But I would not be concerned. The age of flashover is inversely correlated with power. It's why your diviners, spirit mediums, live the normal lifespan. It's always been ones like you who had the significantly shortened lifespan.
"I suspect that I will live another good twenty years, likely more, barring life-threatening injury and illness, that is. No different than a normal person," Risa's lips twisted in sardonic irony, "It's likely to save on cremation cost. Flashover does not leave bodies."
Kusuo thought back to Kuusuke again. To his recollection, the room that he found Kuusuke in was not even on fire, just everything around it. The memories on the ring, of the fate of Miha and Kasei, were the same as what Kusuo had witnessed in the Cambridge office building fire.
-So that's what happened,- realized Kusuo.
Things began to click into place.
Risa looked at Kusuo probingly. Her newly discovered grandson seemed suddenly amazingly calm. She wanted to reach out and touch him, not just the gentle brush to confirm the truth of his impossible existence, but truly see what he was thinking.
"You've said that telepathy against telepathy creates blind spots," said Kusuo.
The older woman nodded. "Yes. It's the reason why I'm not having a pure telepathic conversation with you right now. You are a very powerful telepath and can broadcast continuously. But I cannot, and so much can be lost in between. Where are you going with this?"
Kusuo thought back to when he received his first limiter again, the unspoken truths in the interaction from back in fifth grade suddenly became so clear.
In light of Kusuo's pervasive telepathy, even if its incredible range was giving him memory problems that year, it should have been impossible for Kuusuke to attach the booby-trap antenna. Kusuo would have known and stopped its installation.
As for telepathy blind spots, it would explain why Kuusuke had been a nonstop chatterbox for as long as Kusuo could remember, often narrating Kusuo's thoughts for others to hear. It was not because Kuusuke loved to hear the sound of his own voice; it had been because he did not want to misinterpret Kusuo's thoughts. Kuusuke had been doing this for as long as Kusuo could remember that it seemed natural.
The ridiculousness of Kuusuke's invention, the telepathy canceler, suddenly seemed far more practical. The telepathy canceler was never meant to prevent Kusuo from hearing his older brother's thoughts. It had always been the opposite. It was meant to prevent intruding thoughts, similar to the germanium ring, but with the added benefit of preventing the broadcasting of thoughts. More specifically, it prevented the usage of telepathy, from which derivatived higher psychic skillsets like hypnosis and mind control.
Which led to the next realization.
"You've said that there's a pervasive mind control here," Kusuo reasoned to Risa, "Something subtle, something that permeates everything."
"Yes. I was surprised to know that you haven't noticed it this entire time." she gazed upon him, probingly "What are you driving at?"
Kusuo suddenly thought about the strangeness of his near only-child existence, about how little his parents thought about Kuusuke. Sure, as children Kuusuke had made a point to be outside the house until bodily needs like eating and sleeping beckoned him home. There were other mysterious absences too. But the rest of the family never once worried, the family always felt 100 percent confident that Kuusuke was doing well. Heck, even during the years that Kuusuke was studying in the United Kingdom, no one seemed to remember Kuusuke until the Kusuo's limiter broke.
When they visited the grandpa Kumagorou and grandpa Kumi, they did not even ask about how Kuusuke was doing. It was like something was preventing them from thinking about the eldest son, traditionally one of the most important people in a patrilineal society.
Kusuo did recall Kuusuke on the tundere grandpa Kumagoro drama-filled drive to the train station. Kusuo had been trying to recall why such an important fact as psychic powers was deliberately kept from their maternal grandparents. It had been because someone said that their maternal grandparents would have a heart attack if they found out that Kusuo was such a 'monster.' That someone had been Kuusuke.
Kuusuke had convinced their parents to keep the fact a secret.
No. Not convinced.
More like their parents obeyed. The excuse was added as a plausible justifcation.
Their parents obeyed their nine-year-old eldest son, whom they barely thought of. They did not even reprimand Kuusuke for calling Kusuo a 'monster.' Kusuo went along with the reasoning, never once questioned it until now.
"That mind control had always been there, before I was born," said Kusuo. "It's why I never noticed it in the first place."
So many inexplicable interactions and reactions suddenly made so much more sense. Kuusuke had gotten away with saying and doing a lot of despicable things, boldly, without remorse. It was so strong that even Kusuo had been affected. So strong that Kusuo, a person who hated to be indebted to people, never felt any debt owed to Kuusuke for creating the had held onto the belief that he, himself, was able to build the limiter.
"It's the reason why mom and dad were never surprised at what I did," realized Kusuo. "It's because Ani didn't want them to be. It's still working, even now."
Risa frowned deeply. "I don't understand. Who are you referring to?"
Kusuo was not certain how to react to this at all.
How truly terrifying, seeing that Risa had begun to forget too, while Kusuo was finally able to fight it.
"I'm starting to see it now because it's finally fading, very faintly," Kusuo cradled his shaking head, not thinking about Risa's question. "And flashover is the reason I cannot change his fate. It's the reason I cannot bring him back. It's why it's so permanent, no matter what I did."
Risa frowned even more. So many mixed emotions. So much deep sadness, anguish, confusion, and most of all, irritation. She would had touched him, except she noted that Kusuo's hair was still lightly waving from moving the air in the room by psychokinesis. Kusuo was itching to use his ESP to destory something.
"Good grief."
So much of it was still Kuusuke's fault.
That conniving asshole.
-I'm going to so kill him in the next life.-
Kusuo sat back up on the chair. He took a deep breath, calming his thoughts, stopping the wind in the room. "I think I am ready to tell mom and dad, now."
