AN: This might be a trigger warning.

Chapter 45 - Disturbance

Kusuo hefted his school bag more as a nervous tick than any real adjustment of the weight. The thoughts of the neighborhood were a familiar background drone, one that he almost missed. He felt incredibly at ease and yet more on edge as he got closer to home.

He had been teleporting between home, the lab, and the Psi Industries office, making sure to wear his germanium ring when he was awake and at home. There were enough activities in the day that he was too exhausted to care about being wary of his surrounding at all times. Home was a santuary and the silence at home was reassuring.

Now, having the germanium ring off, the thoughts of the neighborhood came in a steady trickle.

He kept on listening, blandly noting that nearly all of his neighbors had remained the same. There was the dentophobic policeman who lived in the nearby apartment block. There was the idol-worshipping salaryman who was binging on internet videos of new music video releases. The Ozawa family, the same one whose son was at PK Academy, were not wondering why their son came home with a bruise in the middle of his forehead. Even those who were cheating on their spouse were mostly the same.

There was a comfort in that.

At least physically, in Hidariwakibara, Kusuo could rely on his environment, his neighbors to stay the same. Objectively, it was a quiet, mostly residential, town, where people went to a neighboring town for the group activities like karaoke and shopping.

As Kusuo got within a block of the house, however, he came to realize the one thought that he was missing.

Kusuo wasn't hearing his mother's thoughts.

It wasn't unexpected, since Kurumi had been sleeping more, often taking a nap in the early afternoon. It was not an unusual activity for most people, either, since the people believed that the midday nap significantly contributed to later afternoon productivity.

Kusuo could see into people's dreams, but he wasn't receiving any dream-like thoughts from the house.

Perhaps mom was in deep, non-rapid eye movement sleep? Sleep that deep generally did not have dreams so there would not be anything to listen into.

Still, given the recent events, Kusuo was a little more paranoid.

Kusuo almost ripped the front door off its hinges as he opened the door to go into the house.

"Mom," he called out from the shoe rack area immediately inside the front door.

There was no response.

He listened hard for mom's thoughts.

Nothing but the moaning and griping of his neighborhood. The loudest was his neighbor Mrs. Iridatsu, who was worried about the oncoming of a Yuuta tantrum because the time splot for Mr. Peanut's show had been changed.

Still, nothing of mom's gentle humming thoughts.

Kusuo felt a stirring in the deep pit of his stomach, that same sickened feeling he had when he tried clairvoyance to search for Kuusuke repeatedly and saw nothing. That insidious absence, of not knowing if it was his psychic abilities malfunctioning or something worse had happened. That torturous deep dread creeping on his iron control over his emotions.

Was she out?

Mom had not even left the house since that day the estate attorneys showed up. She seemed to have taken for granted that food appeared in the fridge and expired food were taken out automaatically.

Kusuo checked the shoe rack briefly to see if mom's house slippers were neatly placed in exchange for her favorite loafers. The missing outdoor shoes would indicate that she had gone out.

No. Nothing had been touched on mom's area of the shoe rack. There was even dust. She must still be at home.

"Mama!" he projected his thoughts to a much wider area, hoping that she would peep up. It should have been loud enough to wake her from a deep sleep.

There was no response.

Kusuo quickly kicked off his shoes at the door, not bothering with the polite habit of placing his shoes neatly in its designated cubby. Within a couple of steps, Kusuo was in the living room.

The TV was on, flipped to mom's favorite daytime show, Detective Joker. Fortunately, it was a filler episode about the side characters so Kusuo wasn't greeted by Teruhashi Makoto's face or voice.

The air had that distinct moist denseness from aerosols in the air. From the living room area, Kusuo could hear the faint whistling of the rice cooker and the bubbling of a pot of soup. Looking toward the kitchen area, he could see that a slab of marinated skirt steak was on the cutting board on the countertop. A tray of pickled vegetables was set out on the dining room table already.

It looked like mom was preparing dinner.

But no mom.

Suddenly, he heard a sizzling sound and the bouncing of a pot lid, indicating that something liquid was boiling out of the pot.

Since he was at home, and the blinds were closed, Kusuo offhandedly used psychokinesis to remove the pot from the heating element on the stove to a cool surface and turned the knob to the off position. As a precaution, he made his way toward the kitchen, to see if any other food items had been left on the stove and were about to burn.

As he approached the kitchen, he saw a pair of legs lying horizontal, on the ground, with feet in slippers, peeking out from the edge of a kitchen island cabinets.

Kusuo moved so fast that he probably teleported.

His mother, Kurumi was laying on her side, in a pool of blood.

Red streamed out of her left wrist in mini spurts, already staining an entire side of her body. A bloody chef's knife was on the ground. There were tear tracks on her face. She was still breathing, barely. X-ray vision revealed that her heart was fluttering weakly, turning purple from lack of blood and oxygen. Her eyes were glazed, pupils dilated completely. Her complexion was gray and her expression was blank as the light in her half-lidded eyes was almost gone.

Kusuo did not have time to freeze as instinct took over. He knelt, summoned Restoration, and forced the ability into her with a touch.

Within a flash, the cut on her wrist closed up as if nothing happened. Color returned to her cheeks. Her shirt, apron, and skirt though, were still stained red.

Kurumi still laid on the floor, not stirring for a minute.

Kusuo swallowed hard. Did Restoration not work? He got there in time, didn't he? He could not bring back the dead, but that did not mean that he won't try for his loved ones. He wasn't hallucinating, right? His mind wasn't playing tricks on him.

"Mom?" he called tentatively.

She didn't move.

Kusuo refused to look at her long enough to activate his x-ray vision again. What if her heart was not beating? What if her lungs were not expanding. What if her brain was still that blanched gray. He still had not heard her thoughts.

What if he was too late?

No.

He couldn't think that way.

But he was too late for his older brother.

It was too soon.

Kurumi stirred now. She still had that somewhat unfocused look about her.

"Kusuo?" she whispered as she rolled onto her back, half propped up on an elbow.

There was something about that whisper that made Kusuo's skin crawl.

Mom had always fondly called him by that embarrassingly childish nickname 'Ku-chan.' It was a nickname that both annoyed and reassured. Kusuo was far too old to have the childishly girly honorific 'chan' attached to his name. Still, it was a privilege afforded to his mother, as it reinforced their unquestioned affection for each other.

In Kusuo's recollection, mom had only ever called him by his given name when she was unhappy with him for doing something stupid like being impolite to a neighbor.

There was no reason for her to be upset with him. Kusuo felt that he was trying harder than he had ever before. His efforts must mean something to her, right?

But staring at this woman before him, there was an uneasiness now. The air, her very posture made the hair on the back of Kusuo's neck stand up. It was as if she was a stranger, not the mother had known all his life.

Kusuo wasn't sure why, but he kept a hand behind him as he readied the Nanana object.

"Why did you use Restoration?" Kurumi asked, still in that whisper. She seemed confused. Her thoughts finally started to trickle out of her head.

Kurumi's thoughts were a jumbled mess of disparate memories, from mostly when her children were much younger, when Kuusuke chittered nonstop like the summer cicadas.

Was this caused by how close to death she was? The residue of the proverbial life flashing before her eyes? And how she had been mourning the loss of a son?

"Because you were hurt," said Kusuo.

Kurumi's eyes were still glazed over. Her thoughts were full of nonsensical conversations. "You know you should never use Restoration on your older brother."

"What are you talking about?" Kusuo asked.

"I keep on thinking about the day you told us that he died," said Kurumi, holding her head as if she was remembering something painful. "I keep on wondering why you use Restoration on him." Her thoughts were focused on something that occurred when Kusuo was still little. Voices of Kusuo and Kuusuke, in their child's voices, bounced around violently in her head, so much so that they sounded like one person. "You know that you were never supposed to use that on him!"

A deluge of memories poured out of Kurumi now, words upon words, jumbled into an alphabet soup with only a few recognizable phrases in between.

-Mama. Stop. It hurts.-

-Kusuo doesn't know.-

-This never happened.-

-Everything is alright.-

Kusuo was reminded of the hospital visit, when he walked past the psych ward. Despairing thoughts accelerated by insanity, teetering on the edge of explosion before a sudden drop enforced by injection administered by a resigned nurse, knowing that there was no cure for these patients.

His mother's thoughts were like that now. Thoughts that seemed to appear out of nowhere, without direction, or any relevance.

Was mom going crazy?

Her grief had been prolonged, but not unexpected. Love was an imperfect word to describe her connection with her children and having that severed as akin to death. Kusuo did not doubt that she would mourn just as intensely for anyone in her family.

The torrents of thoughts from Kurumi seemed to have sped up, now nearly in Kuusuke's voice.

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

"It's not a big deal."

"Forget about it."

"It's alright, Mama. Relax."

The nonsensical phrases continued, and enough repetitions were said that Kusuo was quick to pick up a pattern.

There was a phrase, a keyword, that was being repeated. The phrase was so commonplace, so normal, trying desperately to draw out a trained response like the command word of hypnosis.

Suddenly, Kusuo recalled something that Grandmother Risa had said.

"There is a very strong pervasive mind control at work here. It's barely's a whisper, almost undetectable, but permeates everything."

Did Kuusuke's mind control just break?

Kusuo sucked in an unknown breath that he was holding in.

"Why did you burn him?" Kurumi asked. Her gazed focused on him now, the look on her face was something he never saw before.

Disappointment.

She had tears on her face now, drowning in a flood of memories of a time period when her children were much younger. "Did you hate him so much that you had to turn him into nothing?"

Kurumi clutched her head now. "I could never understand it. He was the only person that your powers could not reach. You could never petrify him. X-ray vision never worked. He had to talk about what he thought you've said because your telepathy was spotty with him. The only thing that ever worked consistently was how Restoration hurts him."

"I don't get it. You were so attached to him that you wouldn't sleep in your own room. But ever since he put those hairpins in your head, something changed. Your recollection of events was different. Your attitude completely changed. Ku-kun explained that it's natural that your memory got fuzzy because you just turned 11 and you were in agony for a year and almost died. How were you even supposed to understand what that meant? Let alone react to it. But then you've said that you tried Restoration on him." Mom was bawling by now. "Why did you kill him?"

Kusuo's jaw dropped a little as he listened to Kurumi describe a time period where his recollection was close to nothing.

What was he doing when he was 11? That was the year that he received his first-generation limiters. What about before that? Was he THAT attached to Kuusuke? No That could not be.

All his memories were full of Kuusuke reckless challenges, one where Kuusuke always lost.

Right?

Why were Kurumi's memory of that same time period different?

Was Kurumi seeing through the rose-tinted glasses of a mother, one that saw nothing but the perfect and good of her children?

Damn the memory gaps!

Kurumi's thoughts shifted now, flipping around as if she had multiple personalities.

"I'm a bad woman," Kurumi said in that confessional voice of brewing self-hatred, spiked with nonsensical madness. "I birthed monsters! I should've left that first monster in the woods of Ikkoku Yama! That freak who scares people!"

Kurumi cackled now. "That monster forced me to love him. Forced me to have you so he wouldn't be so lonely."

The emotions seemed to be at an unbearable height, one where Kurumi's purple eyes darted left and right like a couple of tadpoles fleeing from the trampling predator. Her eyes quickly rested on the chef knife that had fallen on the ground.

"Haha! I have to stop myself," said Kurumi with a mad smile, picking up the knife from the ground. She took a step toward him like a prowling carnivore. "But first, I have to fix mistake number two."

The threat had shifted enough that Kusuo immediately spun around her via teleportation and whacked her hard on the back of the neck with the Nanana object.

The knife clattered on the ground and Kurumi dropped like a wet rope. Immediately unconscious.

Kusuo only stared, his mind still not catching up to everything Kurumi had just said. The flight or fight adrenaline was strong, shutting off all reasoning.

A few moments later, Kurumi sat up. "Ouch," she muttered.

Kusuo swallowed again. It was then that he noticed that his heart was in his throat. That he had broken out in cold sweat.

Every nerve in his being told him to just leave, that the environment was too dangerous. Still, the irrational bond of mother and child held him in place, demand that he be there for this woman who had just degraded him and threatened to stab him.

Kurumi rubbed her head. She looked around like she had just woken up from a satisfying afternoon nap. Her thoughts were back to her usual patterns, of world peace, love for her family, and looking forward to the future.

Huh?

How could that be?

Then she looked to Kusuo.

"Ku-chan, you okay?" asked Kurumi. "You're flushed." She reached over lightly brushed his forehead, as if checking his temperature.

Her action was too fluid, too commonplace, too quick for Kusuo to even flinch.

Kurumi retracted her hand, looking concerned. "You do feel a little warm. Should I call Ku-kun and have him check you out?"

Kusuo looked at his mother with wide eyes.

What did she just say?

Too befuddled to speak, he found himself shaking his head.

But mom's thoughts were clearer, more singularly focused than they had been in recent time. -I'll text Ku-kun after dinner about this.-

Kusuo could only think of the warning in the psychometric memory of the earliest journal entries he read.

-Mother has emotional extremes. It'd be a good practice to tell her, 'everything is alright.'-

"Oh, that's all this red liquid on the ground?" she observed. Already, her thoughts were peeking into disturbing territory. There were inexplicable twitches on her face, like she was slowly realizing that something was off, but not quite sure what it was.

"Sorry mom," Kusuo said quickly. He forced a faint guilty look on his face. His mind raced, trying to figure what to say next, to buy himself some time. "I've um...was trying to cook, since I'm going off to college and I thought that um...I should try to learn how. I made a mess when I was cutting the beef for teriyaki with cherry sauce. I'm sorry. I'll clean it up."

Kurumi only frowned slightly at that. "Ku-chan? Why are you speaking?"

"I'm just practicing," said Kusuo, still staring at the smear of blood on the kitchen floor, his heart was still in his throat. He suddenly realized the critical hint that was hidden within the journals and the last time he had heard Kuusuke's voice was the customized voicemail recording. It was a mundane, normal, everyday phrase that Kuusuke had repeated to their mother so much that most people had tuned it out.

Kusuo looked at Kurumi now, he put a little hypnosis and his eyes glowed faintly white, and with his memory of Kuusuke's voice sounded like, he said, "Everything is alright."

Kurumi's eyes momentarily glazed over again.

"Well, you should've told me, Ku-chan," said Kurumi next, without missing a beat. She was bright and cheerful, like she used to be. "I will teach you how to place the cutting board and the appropriate amount of sauce without the juice getting everywhere on the floor." She looked about herself, seemingly not registering the rich red and deep brown staining on her apron and clothes. "Well, let get this cleaned up, shall we?"

Kurumi seemed to be strangely back to her former self, before her inconsolable grief and earlier madness. She tip-toed around the pool of blood and grabbed a mop from the cleaning closet. There was a light skip to her movements.

Kusuo followed suit. He tossed the steak meat in the trash before grabbing a towel. Gingerly, he began to clean off the blood spatter that had hit the countertop and the cabinet doors. He forced his mind to think of funny TV shows, anything and everything that can keep his mind and outward expression calm. He tried to make sure that his back wasn't facing her at all times. Too flustered by what just happened, he did not offer the use of his psychokinesis.

The lack of psychic ability display did not seem to bother Kurumi at all.

"Phew. You really made a mess Ku-chan," said Kurumi, once she was finally able to get the mop water to run clear. "Do you mind if I clean myself up first? I'll be quick and I'll run the bathwater for you."

Kusuo nodded, not trusting himself to speak. His suddenly noticed how nauseaous he felt and the possibility of puking up the one bite of ramen he had earlier seemed entirely possible.

The faucet in the bathroom was turned on. Mom was humming a quiet song.

He listened to mom's thoughts for a moment. With her earlier psychosis and given the fact that he's used the mind wipe and hyponsis in short order, he was not completely certain of the effects.

"I think I'll get take out instead," thought mom. "Oh. And I need to call Ku-kun and let him know about Kusuo's 18th birthday celebration! And stop listening, Ku-chan. It's supposed to be a surprise!"

Kusuo stood in the kitchen wide-eyed as he listened to mom's scheme.

He had wiped Kuusuke's passing from her memory!