"This... It's not a dream."
His words hung in the air, heavy and unreal. Kokomi wasn't following.
"W-What do you mean?" she stammered even as her eyes began to clear.
Saiki's eyes flickered to her, then away.
"...We're in Salzburg, Austria," he said, his voice low. "The outskirts, anyway."
Again, Kokomi wasn't following. "I... I don't understand," she murmured, hugging her knees tighter to her chest. But even as she said that, her mind was beginning to gnaw at certain details she'd earlier brushed off.
The dull ache in her muscles. The vivid texture of the spoon as she'd scooped her pudding, and the silky-sweet taste as it melted on her tongue. The warm air prickling her skin even now.
"T-this isn't a dream?" She found herself simply unable to think past this statement.
What did it mean? For it to not be a dream? For the past hour to not be a dream? For the person in front of her, to not be just a figment of her own imagination?
The shudder in her fingertips. The thrum in her chest as her heart began to pound. It all felt real enough.
"...No, it's not," Saiki confirmed, his expression tightening.
The soft hum of the radiator filled the brief silence as Kokomi mulled over his words.
"I.. I don't understand." She insisted. "W-what do you mean its not a dream?"
Saiki's eyes kept to the floor. The right words weren't quite coming to him.
But for Kokomi. Somewhere in the depths of her mind — some deep, deep recess of herself — she likely already knew what it meant. For it to not be a dream. The logical continuation of that proposition — was that this was real. And if it was real, then the inevitable conclusion from that proposition was that the Saiki she had been talking to for all this time-
The one she had been unabashedly poking fun at. Been so recklessly, brazenly, shamelessly unfiltered with. Was not a figment of her imagination, but... real.
The real Saiki Kusuo.
Her breath caught sharply in her throat. Her chest tightened to the extent of squeezing the air out of her lungs.
For a girl with her keen intuition, it wasn't the sort of line of thought that should have been difficult to follow at all. Yet her mind, usually so quick to connect the dots and read between the lines, now seemed to stutter and stall. Like some primal part of her psyche had slammed on the brakes.
And maybe it was her body trying to exert some modicum of control over herself, but any thoughts in that particular direction seemed to just wash into a sort of impenetrable blurry filter in her head.
All that was left behind was a vague emotional numbness. And a faux clarity of mind. One might call it survival mode.
Her mind latched onto an earlier detail. Salzberg. Austria.
The words felt strange and distant in her mind, conjuring vague images from lessons in history and geography. Austria was located somewhere in the Eastern Alps, if she remembered correctly. She pictured the map of Europe from her textbook, trying to pinpoint its location.
Halfway round the world from Japan, give or take a time zone or two.
...But why would they even be in Europe in the first place?
"T-The date?"
"...Still the 22nd of December. Five PM in Japanese Standard Time." He paused for a moment. "...Nine AM in local time."
...What was that even supposed to mean?
The usual duration for a flight from Tokyo to Frankurt was something like twelve hours. Unless she heard wrong, he was saying it presently five in the evening of the 22nd. It had been two in the afternoon when she'd been at the mall with Chiyo and Aiura...
Before-
"T-The thing with Fujita-san? Was that..."
Saiki's lip drew into a thin line. "That... wasn't a dream either."
...That wasn't a dream either, he says. When earlier, he'd shown up for the express purpose of telling her that the whole incident had been nothing but a dream.
Kokomi wasn't processing. Kokomi wasn't processing it at all. She scanned his face for any clues to make sense of the information he was presenting her but found none.
Was he lying? Was he making it all up? What reason would he have for doing that?
"H-How can that be?" Pausing for a moment, she decided to rephrase that. "W-Why are we in Austria, Saiki?"
Saiki's eyes flickered from her to the floor. Even though he'd steeled his resolve, acting on it was... slightly more challenging.
"I... teleported you here." He decided not to mince words.
"...T-Teleported?"
...What even in tarnation?
With every other word he spoke, he was throwing her further and further from any semblance of... what even was the word at this point? First he says its a dream. And now he says its not.
What was she supposed to make of the idea that Saiki Kusuo had somehow teleported her to Austria and had tried to pass it off as a dream? Why Austria, anyway? Why him? Why her?
Was this some sort of elaborate prank? Was she on camera? Her eyes flickered to the corners of the room, but there was nothing of the sort from what she could see.
Ruminating on it for a moment, Kokomi could have probably given herself a million reasons to not believe him. To dismiss it all as some addled nonsense her sleeping mind was conjuring up. Or to suspect it all an elaborate conspiracy.
But she didn't. Somehow, she knew he was telling her the truth. It was just the sort of intuition she got.
"H-How... How did you teleport me here?" She tried, still clutching her legs.
There was also the matter of 'Why' but for some reason, her brain rejected her immediate instinct to go there.
Saiki held her gaze for a moment, seeming to ponder the best way to answer her. There was something paralyzing about the way she was looking at him.
Letting out a soft sigh, he reached for his emptied coffee jelly cup, holding it up so that she could clearly see it. And the next moment it was gone. Seeming to almost phase out as something else phased in. A slightly wider, but shorter cup with different, but familiar color accents. Blinking, Kokomi instinctively looked to the bedside table where she'd left her emptied cup of Strawberry Pudding.
There, instead, was the coffee-jelly cup Saiki previously had in his hand.
"That was [ Apport ]." He said, snapping her attention back to him as he put the cup down on the floor.
"...I can only do it with items of roughly equal value. But I can instantaneously teleport two items across any non-trivial distance.. Teleportation is similar. Except it doesn't need an item to be switched out. It also has a larger cool down time before I can reuse it."
He might have been over-explaining it. He might have been tarrying.
Nevertheless, the next moment, the boy phased out. The very next instant, Kokomi heard a muted squeak of a floor tile from the hallway. Then soft footsteps drawing to the door. Kokomi watched with bated breath as the door opened to reveal Saiki, face expressionless as always.
Ignoring the dumbfounded look on her face, he closed the door behind him, calmly retaking his seat on the chair.
Like he hadn't just completely violated her understanding of reality. Or physics. Of what was possible and what was not.
Kokomi needed a few seconds before she could even begin to start forming a coherent thought.
"That... That wasn't a magic trick."
There was no build up. No sleight of hand. He'd just vanished, before reappearing somewhere else.
"No... It wasn't."
"...How did you do that?"
Saiki pondered that question for a second.
"...If you want the technical details of how a type-I psionic teleportation works... I'm not the right person for it."
Type-I? Psionic? What?
It also begged the question - if he wasn't the right person to ask about it, who was?
"...How... How long have you been able to do that?"
"...Since I was two, I think," came the curt reply.
His answers were straightforward. Yet, she felt no closer to gaining an understanding of what he was talking about.
What on earth did Saiki mean by the fact that he could teleport? She couldn't even begin to try to wrap her head around it.
What could it even mean? The fact that a guy she thought she knew could magically teleport-
She paused. Well, maybe not 'magically.' He made it sound more sci-fi than magic.
Anyhow, if she understood it correctly, the claim was that... he had teleported the two of them all the way from Japan to Austria?
She mulled over it for a moment. Then shook her head.
No amount of thinking about it on her own was going to make it make sense, "Why.. Why did you teleport me here, Saiki-kun?" she tried, shifting a little to rest her chin on her knees.
Saiki hesitated.
"...So that I could make you think you were dreaming."
Everything prior had simply been an account of the events that had transpired. This one was a straightforward confession of intent.
He had to wonder how she would take it.
From her position, Kokomi felt her stomach drop at his words. He was basically saying that he'd been trying to trick her.
Trick her into what?
Again, her thoughts were moving to the past hour. The manner in which she'd bared herself naked, thinking it a dream. Before any reactive emotions could even begin to formulate, she felt her thoughts blur.
It was like her very synapses were rebelling, refusing to let her mind go there.
Numbly, Kokomi brought a hand to her face, and pinched. And then a little harder still. Pinched till it made her eyes water. Done, her hand fell numbly to her side.
It took a while before Kokomi could bring herself to ask her next question.
"...Why" Her voice wavered, but somehow, she still had her composure. "W-Why did you want me to think that I was dreaming?" Her emotions felt unnaturally subdued.
"You caught me when I intervened against Fujita Kenzo... I needed to address it."
Address it...?
"W-What do you mean.. intervene?"
She felt herself involuntarily shudder when his eyes flickered over to her. Even though she was used to seeing that detached look on his face, something about the way he looked right now just felt... wrong, somehow.
"Aiura let me know," telepathically, "that it looked like you were being taken away by some Yakuza-looking folks. I followed you guys, and decided to step in when I saw an opportunity."
"...It was all real then?" The fact she'd gotten hauled off? The bizarre exchange she'd found herself caught in at the remote manor? The car falling off the road on the way back? The fact that she'd had a gun held to her face? And that she'd seen Saiki right before she'd passed out...
"...All of it." Saiki said, seemingly nonchalant.
Kokomi ruminated on it for a moment. And of the various possible conclusions she could draw, one that inevitably refused to escape her was...
That Saiki Kusuo had been trying to deceive her.
She searched for the appropriate emotional response, but came up empty. There was a numbness in her chest where her heart should be.
"What... What did you do... exactly?"
Her eyes unfocused, she spoke into her knees, voice muffled by the fabric of her skirt.
...Where should Saiki even begin?
"...I used [ Teleportation ] to quickly head over to where Aiura had said she'd last seen you. I used [ Psychometry ] to figure out the make of the car. I followed after using [ Clairvoyance ]. I used [ Invisibility ] to keep from being spotted in the air."
He paused, as if realizing he'd failed to elaborate something. "In the air, because I was using [ Flight ] to pursue. I used [ Psychokinesis ] to get the car to stop, and take it off the road. I used infrasonic [ Brain Lullaby ] to get the men to fall asleep ...You too."
He spoke as if he was listing items off a grocery list.
"I was able to use [ Memory Supplementation ] on Fujita's men. I had to augment it with [ Mind Control ] in Fujita's case. I contemplated using that on you, but I figured it would be less messy to just make you believe it was just all a dream."
He'd also happened to make abundant use of [ Telepathy ] but he didn't like the idea of bringing that up just yet. That one... That was a whole different can of worms.
His words washed over her in a surreal haze.
Psycho..metry...? Clairvoyance? Flight? Brain lullaby...? M-Mind Control?
"That.. that drowsy feeling I was getting while in the car... That was..."
"[ Brain Lullaby ]"
He held her gaze, looking as even keel as ever. Kokomi's expression hadn't caught up to her utter bewilderment.
...The car suddenly stopping. And falling off the road. Psychokineses - was that what he'd attributed it to? Like, moving objects with the mind...?
What was clairvoyance supposed to be? Having some kind of sixth sense?
"D-Does... does anyone else know about these... powers?"
Saiki pursed his lip. "...Toritsuka. Aiura. Akechi. Only those three from school."
Toritsuka? Toritsuka Reita? The spirit medium guy?
Aiura-san...? And Akechi Touma...?
The rest of the guys didn't know? Why only those three?
A part of her wanted to fixate on the fact that Aiura Mikoto happened to be on the list. Another decided it would rather not touch it at the moment. She was overwhelmed as it was.
"Why... Why are you telling me all of this now?"
Saiki's gaze flickered away for a second. Why was he telling her all this?
Kokomi found herself examining the boy's features as the silence dragged on. Watching the veil of nonchalance slowly come apart.
He exhaled softly through his nose as he brought his eyes to bear.
"...Because there wasn't an easy way to keep deceiving you."
The way it was worded. It didn't sit right with her.
It didn't sit right with her at all.
God forbid Saiki Kusuo say something even remotely cheesy like, 'You deserve the truth.' He'd intended to keep deceiving her if there had been an easy way to do that?
"You... want to keep your powers a secret?"
"Its less of a pain that way, yes."
"Are there... other people? With abilities like yours?"
"...A couple. Toritsuka can speak with the deceased and can act as a vessel for their spirits. Aiura's precognitive abilities make up her fortune telling suite. Aside from that, I understand that she can also perceive people's auras. I would be... wary, though, of using those two as points of reference for my circumstances."
"And why's that..?"
He thought for a second on how to best put it. "It's a... sizable difference in scale. Those two might be psychics but... they're still normal humans at the end of day."
"And... you're not?" The question almost made him chuckle. "Without exaggeration... no." It would be easier to compare the sun to the moon.
She mulled over his words.
"You refer to these... abilities as psychic powers?"
Well, it wasn't certainly magic or chakra or anything like that.
"That's what my parents had called it. And I don't think there's really a better way to describe it."
Another thought occurred to the girl.
"Kurumi-san, and Kuniharu-san... They aren't..?"
"Psychics? Not as far as I can tell."
The light peering in from the window continued to crawl across the room as the sun moved up the sky.
Kokomi slowly let go of her legs, letting them fall to the floor. She seated herself upright in a posture more befitting her usual self. Her eyes lingered on the floor for a moment.
Saiki Kusuo was a... psychic? The word evoked images of TV frauds and fake espers that performed elaborate tricks for a gullible audience. She'd never given that word more than a passing thought before.
She tried to recall what other powers he had mentioned.
"Clairvoyance is...?"
"I can see things that are not directly in my line of sight."
She considered that proposition for a second.
"How... How many fingers am I holding behind my back?"
She was a bit puzzled when she saw Saiki cross his eyes.
"Two. Now three. Five. Two again."
Uncrossing them, he fixed his eyes back on her. It made Kokomi squirm a little, but she held his gaze as she brought her hand to her lap.
She thought back to the other powers he had mentioned...
"You can fly...? And turn invisible?" She received a muted nod.
She fell silent for a second, and Saiki watched the gears slowly turning in her head. Reflecting on details of her past experiences in proximity to Saiki Kusuo.
A few instances popped to mind. The time she had caught Kusuo dangling off the school window for no good reason. The time he'd showed up drenched all of a sudden before the flight to Okinawa. The chaos during the flight itself and the sudden resolution. She distinctly remembered Kusuo's seat being empty - she'd glanced over, hoping to catch his expression during the commotion. There was also the time a snake had crawled into their class and some kind of loud flash had gone off, almost like some sort of indoor lightning.
That one was particularly conspicuous...
A thought occurred to her.
"K-Kaidou-kun... he-"
"That guy is not a psychic."
"Oh..."
She wasn't sure why, but the fact was somehow weirdly reassuring.
That tangent resolved, another very specific memory was surfacing to the forefront of her mind. One far more incriminating than any before.
Saiki Kusuo popping in front of her. Out of nowhere in the middle of a dark forest. Before punching a bear straight into the stratosphere.
Her brow furrowed as she tugged at that particular memory. 'That-'
"That time in Okinawa...," she started. "D-During our school trip," she clarified, before pausing briefly to examine his face for any tells. "I.. I had a strange dream."
She pursed her lip. "Was that..."
"No..." Saiki preempted, "..that wasn't a dream either."
"O-Oh." She delivered the words with a perfunctory ease, even as her thoughts blurred and swirled like mist, her eyes glossing over.
She should be aghast. She should be mortified. Her cheeks ought to be growing redder than a tomato at the memory of her demanding an Offu to his face. Yet it evaded her at the moment. Drowned out in a murky soup of emotions.
'...I'm not nearly as much of a nice person as you're making me out to be.'
"I'm sorry... but I can't return your feelings."
What... did it all mean? That Saiki Kusuo was a psychic?
Not.. Not in the sense of what it meant for the world at large. What it implied for the paranormal or the supernatural or for religion or any of that tedious stuff.
What did it mean for her?
The fact that the boy she had come to become such a huge part of her life, and wormed his way into her heart, was shouldering a secret beyond her wildest dreams.
Why did he have such powers? Why Saiki Kusuo of all people? What did having all these powers make him?
What was all that talk of, m-memory supplementation, was it? And m-mind control?
What did he normally even do with all his powers? Moonlight as a superhero? Conspire for world domination? What even...
Why was he keeping it a secret? For the same cliché reason that superheroes did? That people would try to take advantage of them? Drag their friends and family into it?
Her thoughts blurred and melted into an indistinct hum.
And Saiki watched the gears turn in her head.
He was surprised with how calm and collected she'd been taking it. Although he had to wonder how long that would last.
On Kokomi's part - it was the weight of miles of open water pressing down on her heart, at the bottom of some oceanic abyss of her soul, that was keeping her emotions somehow in check.
All that was left behind was a vague emotional numbness. And a cruel clarity of mind.
"There's something you're not telling me..."
Saiki pursed his lips.
Her intuition was sharp as ever, not even dulled by the ocean bearing down on her chest. It had always been off the mark in the past. Distorted by her own expectations. Her own confirmation bias - for a lack of a more precise term.
But just the merest glimpse of the reality underneath seemed to bring everything into focus. The gears of her mind continued to spin. Tearing through her own past delusions. Reprocessing every single memory she had of him.
And what she found on the other side. Was something nagging at her. Incessantly.
...Saiki's powers were undeniably extraordinary. Absurd, quite frankly.
On the surface, they seemed to warrant nothing more than slack-jawed awe. And perhaps a measure of disorientation. It was a comic book come to life, a fever dream made flesh and blood.
But as she pieced together the subtle tells in his behavior, another picture emerged. With an undercurrent of unease rippling underneath.
It wasn't merely some superhero cliché. No, there was... something more... personal down there.
Something... Something he had more of a complicated relationship with?
She sensed he was grappling with it. Even now. In the quiet moments between words. In the space between breaths. Like an invisible weight on his shoulders.
And it was a conviction she wouldn't be able to explain, even to herself.
Saiki's monotone expression was a mask that gave little away to the casual observer. But, then again, she hadn't just spent the past several years meticulously observing him for nothing. Every quirk of his eyebrow, every subtle shift in his stance — she'd cataloged them all, into her very own personal Saiki Kusuo lexicon.
And the tension that she found threading through his words and reactions, permeating the set of his jaw and the tightness around his eyes and the careful measure of words, seemed to bloom in her mind..
Into a picture.
Of remorse...?
Saiki watched the gears turning in her head, a sickly feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. A sense of foreboding.
And for the umpteenth time, he had to wonder.
Had it really been for the best? To come clean?
"There's something you're not telling me..." She had said. "...There is." He said simply.
He watched her eyes glint with inquiry. Her lips parting in a soft intake of air. Then pursing into a delicate expression. Saiki couldn't quite hold her gaze.
How... does one confess to being a mind reader?
Like one might confess to being a peeping tom? Or to reading people's diaries behind their back?
"... That man you know as Fujita...," he started, "the place he'd taken you was some thirty kilometers from the city... I caught up about a third of the way. I think I scanned through some hundred forty cars before I found the right one."
A necessary preface? Or was he just tarrying?
"I wasn't fully decided on what would be the best time to intervene, so I started by dealing with the men he'd left behind near the mall... and next the people at the mansion when you guys left."
Again. Not quite there yet. Saiki hesitated for a moment.
"My... telepathy is the reason I was able to track you down so quickly. It also allowed me to identify everyone in Fujita's network who knew about you."
Despite all the build-up, he said it with little ceremony. And it hung in the air. Like some sort of invisible specter.
"Your... telepathy?"
At first, she didn't register it. Her mind meandered. Telepathy?
...What did it mean that he had telepathy? That he could guess a number in your head? That he could tell what you ate for dinner yesterday? That he could communicate messages to you through his mind?
...That he could read minds?
That he's been able to read minds all along...?
That Saiki Kusuo... Had been able to read the mind of Teruhashi Kokomi? For the duration of the time he had known her...?
She stared, the kaleidoscope of her thoughts sharpening. Fragments of information aligning into a new picture.
...Why was it
...that no amount of effort on her part had ever seemed to get past Saiki Kusuo's apathetic exterior?
Her polite, playful, cheerful persona that made your average boy completely weak in the knees. Why was it wasted on him?
Despite all of her carefully manufactured reasons for running into him. For getting close to him. For spending time with him.
Why did it always feel like the boy was looking straight through her?
...Why did he always seem to know the best times to not be at home, whenever she decided to come over? Or know exactly when to be hard to find at school?
Why did her best laid plans always fall apart when Saiki Kusuo entered the equation? Like some sort of inexplicable streak of bad luck?
...Why was it that Saiki had bolted out of the classroom the moment exams were over yesterday? And when she'd given chase. Why had it almost felt like he was... avoiding her?
Her heart heaved, a submersible straining twelve vertical miles below the shimmering blue of her eyes. Realization crawled through her like a centipede, its thousand little legs brushing her insides.
It left her nauseated. Pale, yet red. Her mind was possessed by a ludicrous idea that she could not shake.
A truly ludicrous idea.
Of a similar vein to walking into school... to realize you've been in your underwear this whole time. But somehow worse, by an order of magnitude.
A burning, searing redness crept onto her face. Emotions grappled for dominance on her features, begetting a physiological sensation that resembled oxygen deprivation.
She abruptly stood up.
'-life's on easy mode when you're this gorgeous-'
'-Look at them, practically tripping over themselves. Like excited puppies or something. But, what else would you expect when you're sharing a class with the cutest girl in the world?'
Her pulse increased, slowly but surely. Her throat grew parched.
'-Celebs? Idols? Influencers? Sure, they're cute. It's only natural for flowers in a flower shop to be pretty. Me? I'm the wildflower that puts them to shame-'
H-He... couldn't mean...
Saiki's face was blank. But as she met his eyes, there was this look...
One of sincere apology.
"N-No way.."
She inadvertently took a step back. Then another.
The boy in front of her. The one who she'd spent years trying to win over. To understand. The one she'd come to adore so much.
The one she'd fallen in love with.
Suddenly looked like a stranger.
His eyes... had they always looked this empty?
...D-Don't-
All this time. All these years. He'd been-
With that same nonchalant look. That same unwavering expression. He'd been-
'-What's his deal?! Every other guy's falling over themselves for me, but he's just... whatever. No way my charm isn't working on a total geek like him!-'
'-How could an ordinary guy like him ever think he was in my league?-'
'O-O-Oba-san? Me? D-Did he just— Did that brat seriously call me... Th-that's like number four on my 'words that should never be said to me' list!'
'-Come on, Saiki! I know you're dying to say it! Offu for me!-'
...D-Don't-
'..Geez... What am I going to do with this shy little boy?'
Kokomi ran.
The hallway flowed past her. Its opulent, polished floor, its towering windows, its tall tapestries and wall-mounted faux torches. All rendered a blur.
The hem of her skirt billowed behind her. As did her hair.
She could barely make out the echo of her footsteps over the sound of her own rapid breathing.
'...DON'T LOOK!'
Screamed something inside of her.
Outside, the hallway forked and bent like a labyrinth, before finally opening into a grand two-flight staircase. The fabric of her skirt rustled against tense legs. Her arms swung by her side, a hand occasionally reaching out to brush the balustrade for balance.
Her breath came in uneven gasps as she descended, visible in the cool air encroaching the castle's interior. With each step, her bare feet tapped a muffled, staccato rhythm against the marble, amplified by the vast stairwell.
Her thoughts were simultaneously a flurry and choking upon themselves. Her usual sure-footed grace found itself replaced with a reckless desperation.
Saiki's blank expressionless face gnawed at her. Taunted her.
And she slipped. With a misstep, and then a gasp, her body pitched forward, and she found herself grappling for the balustrade, her fingers reaching for the cold metal too late.
Her other leg failed to correct her balance, instead folding beneath her as she fell. A dilated moment of weightlessness segued into a sickening lurch of the stomach, as she felt her knees almost graze the stair, something catching her.
On her skin, the sensation was as if the air around her had been suddenly replaced by water, or perhaps something even more viscous, as she felt herself half-tumble, half-float down the second flight.
And after what felt like a billion milliseconds, she found herself lying at the foot of the stairs, dazed. There was a flicker of surprise. A flicker of understanding. Swallowed by a deafening apathy to it all.
Teruhashi Kokomi imploded into a million pieces.
Her hands clutched her arms. Her thoughts an incoherent mess. Part of her mind scrambled to regain control, while another choked every piece of thought that dared bud.
Thoughts, wordless, flit amidst tacit fragments of emotions.
The enigma that was Saiki Kusuo. Curtains drawn apart, she saw-
A dream turn into a nightmare.
And all the answers she'd been looking for-
Why was it Saiki alone that was immune to her charms? Why was it Saiki alone that she had never been able to figure out? Or win over?
The curtains drawn apart... She saw herself.
...Even with her mind unable to grasp a single coherent train of thought, there was a realization that was blossoming out of the chaos in her heart. A final piece of a puzzle fitting into place.
Grotesquely unbearable. Was an not a description that would often describe the experience of inhabiting the most beautiful object on the planet.
Kokomi bawled.
A thin trail of crimson trailed from where Kusuo's right canine sank into the edge of his lower lip, an unreadable expression on his face. The boy had not moved an inch from his seat. Eyes vacantly drawn to the place where she'd previously sat, his muscles were taut as steel, his fists clenched.
Had this been what Saiki had wanted? Had this really been for the best?
To come clean? To this end?
What had he been even expecting?
A drop of blood trickled to the floor, as Saiki found himself alone with his thoughts.
He could stop typhoons but was apparently completely incapable of facing a single crying girl.
And so he stayed. Still. For what could have been minutes. Could have been hours. Alone with his own thoughts. And maybe, hers.
Until in time, she cried herself to sleep.