Chapter 19 - Inheritance Part 1

Kusuo scowled at the edifice of a lab.

He had been standing there for probably an hour, just looking at it, taking the time to examine the details. He saw the painstaking utilities, the modern, minimalist design, and stark, clinical, cleanliness of its interior, the slow crawl of cleaning robots, endless neatly looped cables. There had to be thousands of tiny spare parts in the uncountable drawers in front of a computer server farm and hundreds of monitors.

Kuusuke's lab and home was a constant reminder of what Kusuo had lost and the carcasses of what his jerk of an older brother had left behind.

Which was a lot of crap.

A lot of crap that, in all of Kuusuke's infinite wisdom, did not leave to their parents, but left it to his underaged younger brother.

Kusuo understood why. Their father might be able to manage it, probably badly since their father wasn't known for long focused attention on 'crap' like this. His mother, as loving as she was, had probably not seen a bank statement for a couple of decades since she got married. Grandpa Kumagoro and Grandma Kumi were a definite no. It was unknown if Kuusuke knew about Grandmother Risa.

So everything got left to Kusuo. As for the underaged part, that would resolve itself in less than two months, when Kusuo turns eighteen in August. He would have full rights then. Even though his parents could technically make decisions for Kusuo on the newly inherited crap for the next few weeks, Kusuo was confident that neither of his parents would do such a thing.

Like Kusuo, the 'a lot of crap' was the last thing on his parent's minds.

Kusuo thought back to the day that the attorneys showed up.

There were four of them. The first three were from a law firm, somewhere in the United Kingdom. It was two men and a woman. One of them was even knighted by the Queen, a Sir Arthur Reeves. The fourth was a Japanese attorney who arranged for the translations and the activities within the country. They were all business, professional, and expedient.

They came, in a limo, early in the morning, probably before six, before anyone in the house got up. It had been soon after the night that Kusuo told his parents of Kuusuke's passing. It must have been only a couple of days, or less.

The attorneys were impeccably dressed in the expected tie, tailored business suite, pencil skirts, sort of overly formal clothing expected on body-guards or heads of state in the movies. They greeted the Saiki family courteously with expected words like "I'm sorry to say," "I'm sorry for your loss," "our deepest condolences," and "may we come in?"

They produced a death certificate, translated, stamped, and crimped legitimate by authorities in both the United Kingdom and Japan. 'Unintentional bodily harm' was listed as the cause of death. It was explained to the family that the investigative authorities figured Kuusuke entered the building via keycard access reading. That building burned down and he was the only person who was uncounted for. Taking into the evidence of how all Kuusuke's digital activities had ceased, a physical search of his usual haunts turned up nothing. The courts had considered the circumstances to be overwhelming evidence and issued the death certificate. The attorneys requested official copies in triplicate and reflective of all known pseudo names.

Kurumi ran upstairs when she saw the paper, bawling. It had finally hit her that big baby was truly gone.

Kuniharu stared at the paper, shocked. Like his wife, he did not fully comprehend Kuusuke's passing until then. When Kusuo told them, the idea that Kuusuke was gone did not seem real at the time. It took complete strangers in expensive suites to convince them to take Kusuo's words seriously.

Kusuo stood with his back against the wall, watching as the three attorneys sat on one side of the couch while dad sat on the other. The fourth, the translator, sat in a separate chair, explaining the issues to mostly Kuniharu. Kusuo crossed his arms and glowered like an immovable gargoyle sentry. Since these were unfamiliar people, he took off the germanium ring to hear their inner thoughts.

No subterfuge. They were consummate professionals with the allowable selfishness of a handsome fee for executing some legal documents. Still, Kusuo watched them for a bit before replacing the germanium ring back on his finger again. It was hard to focus on watching and listening to these people while his mother's desperate wail echoed in the vaults of his mind.

The attorneys were unruffled by the display of the Saiki family. They've handled many estate cases. Emotional highs were common and sometimes disingenuous. The scene they've witnessed caught no more attention than the stock ticker.

Then the attorneys produced the Kuusuke's will and the near hundred of signature pages.

Sir Arthur Reeves spoke with utmost politeness to Kuniharu, solicitously referring to Kuniharu as "Saiki-san." It would only make sense that such an intelligent young man like Kuusuke, with significant assets, would leave everything to his next of kin, which in this case, would be his parents, more specifically, the father. It seemed appropriate too, since Kuniharu was almost forty, with enough life experience to handle all the nitty-gritty details of his son's extensive possessions. It was not a typical practice for a man in Kuusuke's circumstances to leave things to an even younger sibling. Ownership issues tend to crop up on matter of age and step siblings, if any.

It wasn't until it was time to sign the signature pages, when the attorneys requested identification cards, that they figured out that everything got left to "Saiki Kusuo."

Surprisingly, there was no video of a last will and testament, or anything personal written to the family. The whole thing was very transactional and business-like. The attorneys were here, then they were gone, dumping 'a lot of crap' on a pink-haired young man.

So Kusuo was now the owner of, and responsible for, 'a lot of crap,' without any instructions.

Which lead Kusuo to stare at the lab again.

He had half a mind to set it on fire.

He didn't want any of it. Just looking at it made his blood boil and eyes sting at the same time. It reminded him too much of how he owed his life to that annoying, secretive, lying asshole.

But as recent experience had taught Kusuo, fires are bad. Fires destroyed the things that he needed. Fires killed love ones. And if Kusuo didn't do something about fixing his limiter problem, fire was going to get him too.

Kusuo might not ever want to use pyrokinesis ever again. In fact, he might do as much as he can to never use psychic powers again.

Psychic powers, as useful as it was, was a curse to fuck him over, just like how it already fucked over his older brother. Come to think of it, psychic powers fucked over a lot of people in the family already.

The cussing was intentional.

Kusuo's patience had been running thin these days.

And judging from his own reaction to it all, he could see why he wasn't told any of this until now. He doubted that he would be so controlled in his reactions say, even a year ago.

In the end, Kusuo walked over to the front door, deciding to go through the motions of looking at this property, this building, that was now his, like a normal person.

The front door was solid steel, and had a retina scanner for entry. Much to Kusuo's disgust, the unique shape of his retina was the access key.

Kusuo wasn't stupid. This simple act of going through the front door already raised a whole host of questions.

How in the world did Kuusuke obtain an image of Kusuo's eye without Kusuo turning the photographer, likely Kuusuke, into stone? Kusuo was certain that he would remember someone taking a closeup image of his eyes.

If the photo was taken remotely, then the image must have to go through Kusuo's green-tinted glasses. Was Kuusuke able to reverse process the photo?

And what if the power goes out or the retina scanner breaks?

What if Kusuo wanted to grant access to other people. How would he even do that? How could they even come here? Last time, he had teleported Toritsuka out of the area. Toritsuka did not even remember how he managed to get to the lab in the first place.

How did Kuusuke even get groceries regularly? Helicopter? The nearest town was at least 50 kilometers from here. Did he just land the helicopter at the grocery store parking lot? And if he did, where the hell is the helicopter?

Kusuo shook his head, as if trying to banish the thought train of too many question marks. It didn't work.

And to think that the lab was only one thing in the long list of 'a lot of crap'." Kusuo did read the will in the span of time that the attorney spread it out in front of him. Every page turn resulted in shock, amazement, and deeper and deeper disgust. For far too many times in the recent days, he felt like vomiting.

It was going to take him months to untangle the details. What the hell had Kuusuke been up to? How in the world did that crazy older brother of his ended up owning so much crap in such a short time? Did the time loops even affect Kuusuke the same as everyone else?

Kusuo did not have the time to reflect and complain about it too much. Putting affairs into order was better than facing the mess that has become his home life.

Mom seemed to be taking Kuusuke's passing the hardest. She completely stopped making her meals and going to her neighborhood meetings. She cried and cried and cried. Whenever Kusuo or dad tried to soothe her, she only cried even harder. When the tears dried up, she dry heaved and choked instead. When she wasn't crying, she watched mind-numbing day-time TV, her gaze clearly showing that she was not even mentally computing what she was watching, tears rolling down her cheeks at intervals. She wouldn't even eat unless someone sat her down at the dinning room table and placed food in front of her, and even then, barely.

Dad was clearly using his job to distract himself from the fact that his eldest son was no longer around. He became the model worker overnight, getting up early to slip away and getting back late. He stopped talking about shoe licking or asked Kusuo for teleportation favors. Since interaction with mom had gone to hell, dad made many more excuses to be away from the house.

His parents had started sleeping in separate beds again. Kusuo was not about to attempt shared telepathy to get them to demonstrate outward love to each other and make up. Telepathy had told him that this time, his parent's dislike of each other was real and the reasons surrounded the time before Kusuo was born, when it was just Kuniharu, Kurumi, and Kuusuke.

There was still something around the time period that Kuusuke was taken away that really bothered the couple. Whatever it was, his parents were sincerely blaming each other over it. This was one of those instances that Kusuo deliberately wore the germanium ring and made himself scarce. He honestly would rather not know.

And they still haven't told Grandpa Kumagoro and Grandma Kumi.

Grandmother Risa, having only recently reconciled with the family, seemed to take it all rather philosophically. She said that if she was needed, she would help. She left the unhelpful words of, "Grieving is a process."

Kusuo himself was doing marginally better. In general, the things he used to take pleasure in, the manga, the sweets, the cooking shows, and crappy games, had lost their automatic appeal. School seemed like a useless exercise. Eating was a chore. The realization that there was a very real time clock on his life if he ever broke his limiter was a damn awful fact to dwell on. Which was the primary reason that he was here, at Kuusuke's lab.

Kuusuke must have left some sort of evidence, some sort of plans, some sort of documentation about the limiters. There had to be spare limiters or limiter spare parts squirreled away in a drawer or a hidden compartment. There was no way that Kuuske, the master of elaborate games with too many detailed rules, old-people zombie army schemer, author of the 2,000-page owner's manual for a robotic cat, would not leave some sort of physical evidence about the construction of limiters.

The search exercise through Kuusuke's lab was a demonstration of how much God hated the creature named Saiki Kusuo and reaffirmation of the conclusion that Kuusuke existed to harass Kusuo.

Not a single thing.

Not a single scrap of paper.

Not a single piece of related spare parts.

Not even a shred of psychometry evidence of Kuusuke even building a limiter on a workbench.

Kusuo sunk into his older brother's swivel chair in what looked to be the control center of the lab, teeth clenched. He felt as irritated as the day of the scavenger hunt over ten months ago, particularly the stupid test to finding the right card in that room full of thousands of cards. Kuusuke had imprinted repulsive images of fat, naked, smelly men licking, farting, rubbing the cards against armpits, in places between the legs, knowing how such images would be so easily detected by psychometry.

It was just so like Kuusuke to toy with Kusuo's life. What an awful older brother.

"Kuusuke, you goddam asshole," said Kusuo out loud into the air. "Couldn't you have at least left me a clue?"

Kusuo took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel his psychic powers feeding off his worsening mood, dissipating in the air, creating cumulonimbus clouds in the surrounding areas, and generating mid-air lightning strikes.

"Why the f %! did you have to go and die on me?!"

Kusuo would have started hyperventilating, break down, yell out even more cuss words, even cry. But he reminded himself that he was surrounded by computers, which might hold information to how Kuusuke put together the limiters. It wouldn't help him if he accidentally caused a lightning storm in the area and fry the memory drives and whatever was kept in them.

Stupid psychic powers. Why did it always help everyone else except for him? It saved the planet several times, but brought him nothing but personal grief.

-Self-pity is terrible form,- came the unbidden thought in Kuusuke's voice, but in that lilting tone of childhood, before puberty deepened the voice.

And that was another source of contention in the more recent days. Kusuo's theory that his older brother had a form of telepathy and practiced its derivative skills like mind control were correct, judging by the effects on himself.

At odd, random moments, bits and pieces of the past would bubble up, often with little or no context. It could be a phrase here, an image there, scattered out in the expanse of Kusuo's recollections without consideration of when the actual memory occurred.

At the same time, Kusuo had begun to note the gaps in his memory, gaps that had always been there, just never caught his attention before. They were often centered around stressful time periods. Like that time when he destroyed the classroom in second grade because Asuma, now Akechi, was being picked on and Takashi wanted Kusuo to join in the bullying. Kusuo had always attributed that memory gap to being so angry that his own mind closed off the details as a self-protective measure. Or that temporal abilities had impacted some of his memories. Until now, he never thought of the possibility that someone else messed with his memory.

Some memories gaps, though, were grossly flagrant. For example, for the life of him, he could not recall what he did to force a school transfer to PK Academy right between first and second year of high school. Whatever it was, the family had to move to a new house and start over with brand new furniture. Try as he might, he could not recall the details. All he could recall was that Kuusuke said, "You screwed up at your last school."

Kusuo was not about to ask his parents about the details either since: A) they're grief-stricken and B) Kusuo was not sure that knowing was such a good idea.

So far, almost all new information in the past couple of weeks had been bad. Kuusuke died. The burning. The flashover. First place ranking for midterms. The 'a lot of crap.' He almost thought that it would have been better if his parents did not know Kuusuke was gone, at least not until he figured out how to fix the limiter problem. Even now, Kusuo felt guilty that he was busy trying to preserve his own life rather than caring for his parents who gave him life.

Whoever came up with stupid platitudes like 'Ignorance is bliss' should have been beaten.

Kusuo slapped himself on the cheeks. No time to dwell on things he cannot change. He was not even going to attempt trying to change the past with time slip. Judging by how he failed to improve the outcome in the many times he had attempted it, he was certain that it was going to be wasted effort.

Now came the second part of searching Kuusuke's Lab. The part that would take far longer than the physical search of the lab.

Kusuo's hand hovered on the power button to the main computer terminal networked to the servers that hummed quietly.

It was time to search the intangible digital information.