Part One

Chapter One

My name is Saiki Kusuo; seventeen years old and former psychic. You probably know me from my show or manga, but if not, you can catch up with both by looking up the Disastrous Life of Saiki K. on the internet. Until then, I'll just give you a brief summary of my life so far: being born an all-powerful psychic = a terrible life.

You think I'm joking? Go watch my anime (currently available in English and Japanese from Funimation and Netflix), and you'll see just how bad being a psychic can be.

Anyway, that's all in the past because, as I said, I'm a former psychic now. How? My good for nothing brother, who is apparently good for at least one thing, made a device that can seal my powers. Now I'm an ordinary guy, just like everybody else.

Unfortunately, there are people who will probably notice how ordinary I am compared to how unordinary I was because, despite my best efforts, I couldn't stop them from getting close to me back when I wasn't ordinary. So that's where this story begins, with me telling my friends about my past life as a psychic so I can start over with no regrets, and thus begin the Ordinary Life of Saiki Kusuo.

Pure Coincidence

The window breaking was pure coincidence, but it scared the hell out of Kusuo almost more than the bug still loitering on the hallway wall. He stared at the fractured window for what seemed like hours as frantic thoughts raced through his already bug-frazzled mind. He'd sealed his powers, right? They didn't work anymore, right? No foreign voices echoed chaotically through his head, he couldn't see through the walls or the floors or anyone's clothing or skin any longer, and there hadn't been any problems when he met Mom's eyes on his way out the door that morning.

Looking at his hand, Kusuo willed it to turn transparent until he was sure his face was as red from the strain as his hair was pink. Nothing; his hand remained as solid and opaque as any ordinary person's would. So what happened?

Clenching his fist to suppress the nervous tremor that ran up his arm and through his whole body, Kusuo looked around for whatever it was that broke the window, because it absolutely could not have been him.

Right?

The answer lay on the floor behind him where it must have struck the wall and bounced off then rolled across the floor after breaking the window: a baseball.

Kusuo gasped sharply, not realizing he hadn't been breathing until that moment, and doubled over with his hands on his knees as he panted to regain his breath. He hadn't realized how much he feared his powers until that literal heart-stopping moment when he was sure they'd returned. But of course they hadn't. Kusuke had designed the suppressor himself, and the obnoxious blond genius was never wrong.

Still hunched over, Kusuo looked up and wiped a bead of sweat from his chin with the back of his fist. Was this how things were always going to be now? Him jumping at every coincidence thinking his life had devolved back to the nightmare it had been before?

No, no; of course not. He would get used to it eventually, right? Soon, he would be just like every other ordinary person who looked around for an external cause instead of slapping a hand to his thrumming heart to desperately reel in something that no longer existed. After all, Kusuo had seventeen years of conditioning to overcome, and that wouldn't happen overnight. He just needed to practice.

What kind of freak has to practice being ordinary?

"Yare, yare." Kusuo straightened. His heart still pounded behind his ribs, and he pressed a hand flat to his chest before raising it to rake through his hair. So far, being ordinary was a bit more troublesome than he'd expected. That was also part of the reason he'd chosen to tell his friends about his powers even though they were gone and no one remembered his incident with the volcano before spring break.

They'd had glimpses of "Ordinary Saiki" before when he'd wear his germanium ring to avoid spoilers for shows or movies or games he'd been wanting to experience first-hand; even Nendou wasn't dense enough not to notice when he jumped half a foot from an unexpected tap on the shoulder. Fortunately, things weren't as bad as they could have been because Kusuo had spent the week between terms out and about the city trying to acclimate to a world full of what basically equated to giant Nendou Bugs. Not an especially appealing mental image by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one he couldn't help but see as he walked the streets with his hands in his pockets and his uncovered eyes darting frantically from one face to the next.

And that right there was another thing he couldn't quite get used to: faces. He had, of course, seen people's faces before, but the glimpses were always so quick and rarely left an impression unless the person stood out in some way. Like Nendou or Teruhashi, for example. Kusuo knew that Nendou was considered a particularly unattractive person while Teruhashi was elevated to near deific status for her good looks, but the concepts of "ugly" and "beautiful" were largely abstract to someone like Kusuo, whose vision had cycled through surface, clothes, skin, muscle, and bone so quickly that it really made no difference how someone looked on the outside because everyone looked exactly the same on the inside: gross sacks of bone, tissue, and blood.

It was strange finally seeing the world the way everyone else did, to be able to truly understand when a person was attractive or unattractive or somewhere in the middle, to see colors in a way he'd never experienced as the pigment of skin or hair or eyes shifted subtly from one shade to the next so seamlessly it all seemed to be one single, perfect hue. In a lot of ways, Kusuo felt like a blind person being miraculously healed. Even Nendou's admittedly terrifying visage was a huge improvement on the awkward bone structure and bulging eyes Kusuo had previously seen him as the most.

And then, of course, there was Teruhashi. Kusuo had prepared himself as best he could to come face to face with God's chosen angel. He'd memorized the faces of women and girls who seemed to attract attention and made a note of the things they had in common—facial symmetry, well-proportioned bodies, smooth skin, big eyes—and put those observations together with the glimpses he'd gotten of Teruhashi's face overlaid with his memories of her bone structure and musculature. Even if just in his mind, puzzled together from gleaned fragments, Kusuo had to admit that Teruhashi was a formidable foe. If he wasn't careful, she might really get that "offu" she'd been working so hard for these last six years.

Even with all his preparation, he still almost said it when she bounced into their new classroom with that impossible smile and shiny aura of perfection. She sat next to him with a gleam in her eye that said she was thanking God for her usual good luck, and he'd stared resolutely forward so he wouldn't stare at her with a stupid gawking face. Because as pretty as Kusuo knew Teruhashi would be, he still wasn't prepared. In this situation, his seventeen years of conditioning were the only thing that kept the "offu" inside his head rather than escaping from his lips.

Miraculously, Teruhashi didn't seem to notice. In fact, she didn't seem at all surprised by his deliberate show of apathy, but then, why should she? As far as Teruhashi knew, nothing had changed, and after six years of repeated behavior, the only really strange thing would be if Kusuo finally gave in and conceded defeat, which would never, ever happen. No matter how beautiful Teruhashi turned out to be.

A shout through the broken window pulled Kusuo from his thoughts, and he looked through the jagged, second-floor opening to see Takamiya Tashiro, the baseball team's star runner and new team captain, racing up. He skidded to a stop with a cliché cloud of dust trailing behind him and bowed at the most cliché angle possible while rubbing a hand on the back of his head in a cliché show of contrition.

"Man, Saiki, that was way close!" Takamiya projected well from the ground. "Are you okay man? I'm really sorry about that. We got a new kid in the club who's a power-house hitter, but we weren't expecting it to go so far, otherwise we wouldn't have been practicing in the courtyard while the field is being refurbished."

What a cliché setup. Still, Kusuo offered a nod and a dismissive wave. It wasn't like anything had happened to him outside of a bit of a scare. Takamiya sighed, obviously relived, and bowed again.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt, man, that would have tanked! But, hey, um, could you throw the ball back?" He lifted his ungloved hand in a half-prayer motion right down the center of his nose, closing his right eye to conclude the cliché pleading pose. "I promise we won't pitch to Kamiya again unless we're behind a fence."

Kusuo shrugged and glanced around again, locating the ball and snatching it up with his left hand. He pitched it with all his strength, uncertain whether he could make it half-way across the yard if he held back even a little. Takamiya's eyes went wide, and he barely got his glove up in time to catch Kusuo's fastball before it smacked him square in the face. Kusuo stared, Takamiya stared, they both looked down at the ball.

"Holy crap, Saiki! That must have been 120 km at least! You should totally join the—!"

"Not interested." Kusuo strode away, ignoring Takamiya's coaxing cries through the broken window. He perked up at what sounded like "coffee jelly" but reminded himself that being in the baseball club would be a huge pain, even without his powers. Besides, he could get way more coffee jelly and other sweets by spending his free time at Café Mami than he ever would by allowing himself to be seduced into the baseball club.

Then again, Kusuo knew himself well enough to realize he would have jumped out the window in an eye blink (of course, it being the second floor he couldn't without his powers) for a chance at coffee jelly if he didn't already have some place to be. Some place he was really late to thanks to Takamiya and the baseball club's new fourth batter.

Flexing his fingers and tamping down the creeping suspicion that his fastball was just a little too fast for an ordinary person, Kusuo made his way down the hall to second year classroom 3. He wasn't entirely sure why he had asked everyone to meet him there, most of his friends were in his class again this year so they could just as easily have hung back instead of walking all the way to the second year hall, but this was where everything had started, it was only right that everything ended there as well.

Standing in front of the closed door, Kusuo took a deep breath and ran through his memorized speech once more in his mind. This was it, the moment of truth. And while he didn't really think they would abandon him, he couldn't stop himself from acknowledging that there was a very good possibility that they wouldn't believe him either. After all, it was one thing to show someone your current psychic powers and another thing entirely to try and prove you used to have psychic powers. At least Aiura, Toritsuka, and Akechi were there to vouch for him.

Wow, there's something I never thought I'd be grateful for. Reaching out, Kusuo forced his hand not to shake and slid the door open. The intrigued chatter stopped as his collective friends and acquaintances (read: Toritsuka, Saiko, and Akechi) turned to him with exclamations of surprise and welcome. Though why any of them should be surprised, Kusuo couldn't imagine. He was the one who had called them there; of course he was going to show up.

"What took ya so long, buddy?" Nendou called above the rest of the noise. Kusuo looked over and suppressed a flinch when his eyes had to pass Teruhashi on the way. She really was dazzling, wasn't she? How annoying.

"The baseball club broke the window as I walked by."

"Whaaaaat!" Teruhashi was in Kusuo's personal space before he could blink, twisting him this way and that as she searched for what Kusuo assumed was an injury. "Are you okay? Did it hit you? Are you bleeding? Did you get cut? Oh, Saiki-kun, please say you're all right!"

Kusuo was frozen solid, his magenta eyes wide and his mind blank as he bit down on his tongue hard enough that he was surprised it wasn't bleeding.

"Saiki-kun?" Teruhashi looked up, her hands grasping his arms through the suddenly too thin material of his uniform jacket. Their eyes caught and both stopped breathing. Teruhashi went red in a wave that started at her feet before ultimately engulfing her to the top of her head with a little puff of steam as her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open in a shocked 'oh.'

"Kyaa!" Teruhashi wheeled back, waving her hands frantically. "I'm sorry, but you know I didn't mean anything by that, I just wanted to make sure you're okay because we're friends, and I care about all of my friends so of course I would care about you—I mean I would care about what happens to you!"

Offu. Kusuo bit his tongue harder.

"Calm down, Teruhashi-san." Hairo dropped a hand on her shoulder and smiled, coaxing her out from hiding behind her hands. She peeked through her fingers, still red-faced with the smallest tears clinging to the corners of her eyes in obvious mortification. "I'm sure Saiki is fine, right Saiki?"

Teruhashi curled her fingers over her cheeks and looked Kusuo's way as concern warred with embarrassment on her face. Even without his telepathy, Teruhashi was very easy to read when flustered. It didn't take a psychic or even a genius to realize how worried she'd been and what that could mean. Already, Kuboyasu, Kaidoh, and Yumehara were shooting Kusuo varying degrees of knowing looks.

Ignoring them as best he could, Kusuo met Teruhashi's eye and nodded once. Her face blossomed as she smiled, her relief seeming to materialize as flowers and sparkles floating through the air behind her even as her blush softened but didn't disappear.

"I'm so glad!"

Offu.

"Offu!" Every man in the room echoed Kusuo's thought then got down to business as if the response was second nature. Which, at this point, it really was.

"So what'd you call us out for, Saiki?" Kuboyasu asked, his face taking on the gruff lines and shadows of his former yankee personality as he held up his hand in the gang-sign for cash. "You in some sort of trouble? Need us to clean things up for you?"

"Naturally, Saiki pulled us all together because we're the only ones who know of the true threat that is Dark Reunion and their intentions to purge this world. He has news to share that shall shake the very foundations of the earth, and it is only I, the Jet-Black Wings, who am powerful enough to right this monumental wrong!"

Not completely wrong, but still way off.

More guesses flew his way, all wrong, until Kusuo found it difficult to even attempt to get a word in edgewise. He knew from experience that things would continue to spiral out of control for a good five to ten minutes longer as each person grew so invested in their own idea of what he'd come to say that, eventually, they would start squaring off. As expected, Nendou and Kaidoh ended up in each other's faces, both mocking and intimidating (or at least trying to in Kaidoh's case) each other into dropping their own 'ludicrous theory' and instead recognize theirs as the right answer. It really didn't matter who "their" was at any given moment; everyone's ideas were stupid.

"Ano, mina-san." Yumehara raised her hand with a less blinding smile than Teruhashi's that still managed to be cute enough in its own way to evoke at least one imaginary flower. At the very least, it was enough to stop Kaidoh in his tracks. "Maybe we should let Saiki-kun tell us the actual reason we're here instead of speculating? That would resolve everything much faster."

Ah, Yumehara-san. Ever the voice of reason in situations not directly related to herself. Kusuo really did feel badly about scratching her love confession from history. He'd have to find a way to make it up to her.

Kusuo nodded his thanks to her for resolving the situation before it got any further out of hand.

"Uwaaaahhhh!" Toritsuka threw a hand over his eyes while the other flailed madly in Kusuo's direction. "Saiki! What the hell, man? Why aren't you wearing your glasses?"

Kusuo eyed the medium skeptically. You only just noticed now? We're in the same class, dumbass. Even more, you knew what I had planned.

"Hey man, not cool." Hairo's hand dropped onto Toritsuka's shoulder this time, his reddish-brown eyes smoldering with an inner fire. "There's nothing wrong with a guy deciding to wear contacts."

Why are you getting all fired up about something that doesn't even matter?

Aiura looked around the room, surprised. Out of everyone here, she was the only one who had ended up in a different class, so he couldn't entirely fault her for not noticing his new glasses-free look until now. Still, it was kind of surprising when she seemed to notice every other little thing about him at the most inconvenient times.

"Ne, Kusuo," Aiura said, her voice and visage unusually somber, which caused Teruhashi to freeze with Kusuo's name half-way on her lips from sheer shock. Kusuo did not shudder at the sound of Teruhashi almost saying his name, he was just a little cold from no longer having his pyrokinesis. "What happened to your powers?"

"Eh?" Kuboyasu said, his brow furrowed almost ominously. "Powers?"

"Yare, yare." Kusuo shot Aiura a mild glare, but he couldn't be too upset. She'd put this meeting back on track, even if she'd gotten to the heart of it a bit more quickly than he'd planned. Sighing, Kusuo closed his eyes for a moment to center himself before snapping them open and meeting the eyes of everyone in the room one at a time.

"Mina-san." Kusuo bowed. "Gomen nasai."