Part One


Chapter Three

Yare, yare. This wouldn't have happened with telepathy.


The End of the World

Teruhashi was crying. And they weren't the soft, lovely Angel Tears™ he'd seen her employ against his idiot older brother. Those she'd pulled out of her manipulative arsenal for the express purpose of avenging herself on said idiot older brother. No, her tears now were fat, welling things that turned her eyes red and made her nose run.

There was no glitter of the overhead lights off the beaded droplets to accentuate the perfect paleness of her flawless skin, no lightly pouted lower lip meant to emphasize her vulnerability, no soft flush of pink across the apples of her cheeks. Instead, Teruhashi scowled up at him, her whole lower jaw trembling as the muscles in her face pulled her mouth downward in an unwilling frown. Her perfect skin was blotched with angry red that matched the blazing fire in her bloodshot eyes. Strands of blue hair were plastered to her salt-streaked cheeks as she shoved the back of her hand across her snotty nose. For what was likely the first time in her life, Teruhashi Kokomi was full-on ugly crying and not bothering in the least to hide it.

There was something seriously wrong with Kusuo that he'd never found Teruhashi more attractive than she was in this moment looking her absolute worst.

"Teruhashi-san." Kusuo grasped both of her wrists in a careful but insistent grip. She was one of the few friends he had and one of the fewer he genuinely cared about; he wasn't letting her leave without a chance to offer a proper explanation. "I needed you to hate me."

Teruhashi gaped, her mouth hanging open awkwardly as she worked through his words with silent outrage. "Well congratulations then, Saiki-san, because you've certainly succeeded!"

Kusuo tamped down on a flinch at her sudden formality. He'd always been –kun to her before, though she'd never actually asked. He wanted to know what that sudden change meant, was it just a moment of spite the way his parents would snipe at each other in the heat of the moment even though they never meant a word? Or did she actually intend to cut him out of her circle of friends? To go back to being acquaintances or worse? He'd never wanted his telepathy more than he did in this moment, staring into Teruhashi's enraged indigo eyes.

What are you thinking, Teruhashi-san?

"Not now," Kusuo forced out, unused to talking about anything, never mind his personal thoughts and feelings that even he wasn't entirely sure about. "Back then, before, when I still had my powers."

"Your powers of, what was it again?" Her tone turned mocking. "Super strength, hallucination, telepathy?"

"Teruhashi—"

"You knew!" Teruhashi wailed, jerking her arms in an attempt to break away, but super strength or no, Kusuo was still surprisingly strong. Maybe from all the rigorous exercise he put himself through, maybe as a side effect of channeling so much power for his whole life. Whatever the case, it didn't matter. Teruhashi wasn't leaving unless he let her go.

"You knew how I felt this whole time, and you not only didn't say anything, you used it against me!"

Kusuo opened his mouth, unsure of what to say but still knowing he had to say something. Teruhashi cut him off with a glare and another jerk of her wrists.

"Oh, don't even bother trying to deny it! I remember, Kusuo—"

Kusuo's heart lurched. It was the first time she'd ever used his name, his real name, as even when she utilized his given name, it was always using the alternate kanji reading "Kunio." What was this girl trying to do to him? First she implied they were nothing but casual acquaintances and now, by using his given name without honorifics, she'd practically announced they were intimately involved!

Did she even notice?!

"—I remember when I first saw you on the street and how you ignored me—yes, I realize it now, you were ignoring me! You dodged around me, barely bowed enough for even a casual greeting, and then you vanished! You let me think I was hallucinating! You let me think I was falling in love with you!"

Kusuo didn't think his heart could hurt worse if someone reached into his chest and yanked it out. How did ordinary people deal with things like this? How did they handle not knowing the truth? And how would Kusuo handle it for the rest of his life when not knowing was killing him now?

What are you thinking?

"And the worst part is I did! I fell madly, crazily, head-over-heels in love with you! I saw your good points and your bad points, all the things about you I like and hate the most, and I love all of it! I love how you have a sweet tooth and a bad attitude and your quiet regard for others even when you pretend you couldn't care less about any of them! I love your stupid pink hair and your gorgeous magenta eyes and your face that should be so plain but is somehow so handsome! I love your mom and dad who are so much more present and loving and accepting than mine! I even tolerate your stupid brother, if only because he's yours!"

No need to go that far. But that thought was barely a fleeting whisper across his mind because Teruhashi had moved beyond ugly crying and right into hacking, body wracking, heart wrenching sobs. She leaned into his chest and wailed, pounding once, twice, three times because Kusuo had finally let go of her wrists so he could take her by her shoulders. He didn't try to draw her closer, but he didn't push her away either.

"I love everything about you, Kusuo, everything!" She looked up then, meeting him squarely in the eye before she sobbed and struck the final blow. "I love you so much that I hate you!"

He had absolutely no intention of doing it. None. Zilch. Nada, and any other synonym one could feasibly apply. Kusuo finally had the ordinary life he'd craved for so, so long, and he had every intention of living that life as ordinarily as possible. He wanted to attend an ordinary college to get an ordinary degree doing an ordinary job where he'd meet an ordinary woman and have an ordinary marriage that resulted in ordinary kids and an ordinary house with an ordinary mortgage. And absolutely none of those ordinary scenarios could be completed by being anything more than Teruhashi's ordinary friend.

Eventually, she would grow out of her love for him when they went to different universities and she found someone who could live up to her impossible standards of a handsome face with a stand-out job, a big house, and an annual income of four-million yen. She'd live her life as a celebrity wife in the lap of luxury and forget all about the plain, ordinary boy she thought she'd loved so much back in high school, and that would be that.

The hell it will!

His hands tightening on Teruhashi's shoulders, he did the only thing that made sense: he drew her close, leaned down, and kissed her.

Forget stars, universes exploded behind Kusuo's closed eyes as he relished the soft press of Teruhashi's mouth against his. He had the distant sensation of salt on his lips and the even more distant hope that it was tears he tasted and not snot from her runny nose, but the overall sensation of being pressed against her, chest to chest and mouth to mouth, as she clung to his uniform jacket with a startling level of strength and kissed him back with a near terrifying fervor drowned out absolutely everything else. Kusuo had never been drunk before, but he imagined it was a lot like the sensation of kissing Teruhashi Kokomi.

"I'm sorry," he gasped between progressively heady kisses. "I couldn't—" return your feelings.

"You shouldn't—" have lied to me.

I "—didn't."

"You knew—" and said nothing. That's a lie "—of omission."

It was the most bizarre form of telepathy Kusuo had ever experienced if only because he knew it wasn't telepathy. They were filling in each other's blanks even as they clung desperately to one another, their mouths pushing and pulling in a previously unknown rhythm that was somehow the most natural thing in the world.

Somehow, Teruhashi ended up fully in his arms with her legs wrapped firmly around his waist, fumbling the buttons on his jacket with shaking hands even as she kissed and kissed and kissed him back. He palmed her perfectly shaped bottom beneath her skirt and tumbled forward to where he knew a desk would be, because even without his psychic powers, he still had an eidetic memory. The layout was slightly different from when he, Teruhashi, and the others had been members of Class 2-3, but his quick glimpses between watching his friends had been plenty.

This is wrong, Kusuo thought as he set Teruhashi on the desk so he could grab her face with both hands and delve in deeper. This was very, very wrong. It was too fast, too soon, too…too…everything!

Do I even like Teruhashi?

It seemed a stupid question to ask when he had her half-pinned to a desk with his jacket off while practically eating her face. But then Teruhashi's tongue swept across the seam of his lips, and Kusuo groaned, opening his mouth to let her in. God had certainly been kind when assigning gifts to Teruhashi.

Part of him was beginning to wonder just how far the two of them would let this go, nagging that they hadn't had a chance to even talk yet, never mind decide they were ready for something so permanent. And what would they do if Teruhashi got pregnant? It's not like Kusuo went around with rubbers in his pocket on the off-chance he found someone to bang.

Do I look like Toritsuka?

Maybe she was on birth control? He should probably ask before she finished getting his belt off—

"Oi, Kusuo? Kusuo?"

The world snapped back into focus around him and the first thing Kusuo saw was his brother's wide, inquisitive eye. Shock rocketed through him, and Kusuo teleported on instinct so his back was plastered to the wall, putting as much distance between the two brothers as possible without Kusuo actually leaving his room.

The hell was that?!

"Kusuo? You look like you've seen a ghost." A manic gleam sparked in Kusuke's eye. "Did you see something in the future? Another disaster? You should probably put off getting rid of your powers then, just for a little while. Don't want to risk the end of the world, after all."

The end of the world? Kusuke didn't know the half of it. Kusuo's heart was still pounding in his chest, this time joined by an equally frantic pounding in his head. Was that precognition? No, of course not, right? There's no way he and Teruhashi would…out of literally nowhere…A shudder ran up Kusuo's spine as he remembered the taste of her lips, the skim of her fingers along his bare waist as she tugged his shirt from his pants, the rake of her tongue across his teeth…

It all felt so real, but at the same time, he didn't remember ever having such a long, detailed vision before. But he had a headache, a bad one at that, so did that mean it started out as a vision and shifted somewhere in the middle? Where was the shift? Why was there a shift?

Never once in his seventeen years of life had Saiki Kusuo ever felt what others described as their "baser urges." He wasn't interested in a pretty face because he knew what went on beneath the skin, both literally and figuratively. He had no interest in sex or kissing as both seemed extremely grotesque (why would he want any part of himself inside any part of someone else? Yare, yare.) and there was nothing appealing about cuddling or petting because he had no desire to be around people, let alone touching them. On top of all of that, he got a bad enough emotional hangover just by unintentionally eavesdropping on other people's romantic entanglements, why increase the drama by putting himself center ring?

He'd once imagined the possibility of finding someone with whom he could share a purely intellectual relationship, but even that seemed like too much of a headache to bother with. Any type of relationship, no matter how benign, eventually devolved into chaotic explosions of emotion, selfishness, invasiveness, etc. Just look at the relationships Kusuo already had—however unwillingly he'd allowed them to develop.

"Kusuo?" Surprise of all surprises, Kusuke almost sounded concerned. "Did you change your mind?"

A moment's pause, then Kusuo nodded. [Yes.]

He teleported back into his chair and plucked the disgustingly shaped device (which Kusuo was 100% certain was not necessary for it to function properly) and slid it into his head without any further hesitation.

"But not about this."