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“Are you even trying?”
Closing his hands in tight fists, Teruki took a deep breath. For god’s sake, he didn’t ask for this — he would have never asked for this. Why was the idiot even talking to him as if he had?
“Yes,” he grunted, “but you’re not the best kind of teacher.”
Shimazaki smiled, as if he could find pride in giving useless vague instructions and uncreative teasing. His fingers tapped the dinner table rhythmically, in a somewhat annoying and condescending manner — only Shimazaki could turn mindless ticks into needles to poke at Teru’s patience.
“You know, if you don’t try harder, you’re never going to figure out how my power works.”
Teruki itched to remind him who had chosen to put them through this situation, who had made it sound like a great idea.Asshole, but the word died in his throat. Teru adjusted his footing even though he was seated, forcing his knees apart to avoid his usual pose that Shimazaki loved to make fun off. He hadn’t asked to be taught how to properly ESP. His own ESP was good enough, it allowed him to detect other espers and have an idea of their range of power — what Shimazaki did was on an entirely different level. An unnecessary level, by the way, for someone who could perfectly see each person’s singularities to differentiate them.
But the man seemed so... invested in the idea that Teruki could learn how to, what, read people’s emotions and spot insects around the apartment. And for some reason that made Teru interested as well.
“Well, you’re supposed to teach me how your power works, not say some philosophical bullshit like ‘stop seeing with your eyes’ and leave all the practical stuff to me!”
“But that’s the exact part I don’t understand.” Shimazaki shrugged, brows furrowing together. “It’s like you’re asking me how to smell with the nose.”
“It’s your power, come up with something then!”
The man laughed dryly. “How about you teach me how to see with eyes, then?”
“You don’t even— yeah, forget it. Sorry.” Bad joke, stupid thought. They were mostly past that, at least Teru would like to believe and hoped Shimazaki did too. “Tips are still welcome, though.”
“Try with your eyes closed,” he suggested, “might help you concentrate.”
He took one last glance at Shimazaki and his punchable smug smile, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
And the world around him was still very much dark.
“You’re not concentrating, Teru.”
“I am.”
“I can see what you’re doing and that’s not concentrating,” he said, “you’re just angry.”
“But how do you see it?”
“We’ve been through this, not with my eyes.”
“Fuck, I’m going to hit you.”
There was a sequence of loud snaps and Teru realized Shimazaki was cracking his knuckles. “Keep your eyes shut and I’ll let you try.”
He groaned. Tempting — and first, he would have to figure out how to calculate the distance between the spot where he rested his hands and Shimazaki himself. Teruki ran his palms over the wooden surface, forcing his memory to remember the exact size of the tabletop.
Suddenly, something clicked.
“The table!”
“Yeah…?”
Teru rolled his eyes internally. “Can you please pretend to be at least a bit happy that I got to notice an object with ESP?”
“...fucking shit,” Shimazaki whispered. “You did it?!”
The blond smiled, the small victory making his heart race. “Yeah, I mean, kinda, it’s like there’s this void all around and— I don’t know, but it really has nothing to do with vision. Stop seeing with your eyes my ass, you’re the worst teacher I’ve ever had.”
“But can you sense other things?”
“No,” he confessed, “just the table. I mean I can sense you but not any different from how I did before.”
It hit him that what he felt was not Shimazaki, but rather the power itself. He shivered, all of sudden eager to find out more about the one sitting across him.
“Maybe it has something to do with touch,” Teru reflected, “like, I’m touching the table, therefore, I can sense it.”
And maybe if I could—
Shimazaki put a hand over his. “Like this?”
Like a spark and a pocket-sized Big Bang — and it really had nothing to do with vision. For an instant, Teru was overwhelmed with that, whatever it was, that kept expanding and crashing over him and he couldn’t tell if he liked or hated or even if he wanted it. But it reached for him, from both the outside and the inside. He couldn’t see Shimazaki with his eyes closed, but he could understand.
It was warm — Shimazaki’s hand, and what twirled around them, and Teru gripped the man’s wrist, seeking but not sure. A meek breeze ran up his arms and suddenly he felt self-conscious, as if he had just been caught rummaging through someone else’s drawers, and his shoulders hunched slightly. Teruki squeezed Shimazaki’s fingers and, breathing deeply, he tried to think of something to say.
“Yeah,” he sighed, “like this.”
He clung to the sensation, to the feeling of the void consuming his surroundings until the undefined edge where Shimazaki began to exist. Existence, he wondered, how could it feel so tangible when he couldn’t even put it into words?
“It’s like,” he choked out, “like there’s only you in the entire universe.”
Another burst, a smaller one, but still considerably overpowering. The exact point where Teru’s palm touched Shimazaki’s skin was burning comfortingly like a fireplace, doing wonders to distract him from the nothing around him. As quickly as it came, it subsided. It stagnated, velvety and enveloping and insistent on keeping Teru around.
“You mean I’m all you can see with the ESP?”
Teruki frowned. “Yeah, but not exactly.”
“Tell me, then.”
“It’s— actually, it is you, but I see you with my eyes open and it’s not the same thing, obviously.” He cringed inwardly at the terrible explanation. “I know it’s you, but it has nothing to do with what I see, get it?”
Shimazaki moved — not moved moved but his image-feeling-sound-whatever did something that resembled movement. Like a flickering candle or a droplet of water hitting a puddle. “So nothing to do with vision.”
Was that how Shimazaki read people, through these tiny snaps? How could he endure the overwhelming amount of information coming from all sides constantly? Teru could barely take only one person… His hands still felt like microexplosions, all his senses trying to grasp the man across him, and the way Shimazaki curled around him was—
“Red,” he announced, “this whole thing looks very red.”
“But you just said—”
“I’m not really seeing red, man, but like, if I was going to call it by a thing I can visually perceive, it’d be red.”
“Is it a good color?”
Teru snorted. “A good— you’re asking me if it’s a good color?”
“It’s what I just said,” he scoffed. “Do you like it?”
Another wavering movement, different from the previous one. Less cold, more inviting. Teru shivered.
“Yeah.” He had the impulse to force himself to leave this strangely red place, but the idea was immediately cast aside when he noticed it was, in fact, good. “It’s not really my favorite color, but it’s beautiful.”
Shimazaki was oddly quiet for a moment and that almost prompted Teru to open his eyes, but then he felt a weak squeeze around his fingers. “Is it— where do you see red?”
“It’s the color of fire, I guess. Also ketchup, and strawberries, some flowers, bad grades, blood. You own a lot of red shirts… or just one that you wear all the time which would be gross.” He heard the man’s loud sigh and let out a dry chuckle. “And people say it’s a very intense color, y’ know, so it usually represents intense emotions, like rage or—”
Teruki let go of the man’s hands. Opened his eyes. Breath in, breath out, breath in.
Shimazaki’s eyelids were open, revealing the hollow sockets — two small abysses staring back at him with all their darkness and what he could now call intensity. Teru brought his arms to his chest, trying to fight the sudden cold that came with the lack of an aura tugging him closer. Swallowing dry, he tried to not think. Not think about how deep into his abyss could Shimazaki see, how much his aura disobeyed him and curled around that man.
However, he couldn’t help but wonder. How many times had Shimazaki glanced at him? How many times had he understood Teru the same way Teru had just understood him? He felt like a book with a worn-out spine, opened so many times that his pages were falling apart.
But most of all, he felt unbeliavably, disturbingly, utterly blind.
“Teru…?”
“I’m alright.” He shook his head, shoving his thoughts away. “It was just kinda weird.”
Shimazaki let his head fall to the side. “It surely messed with you a little.”
Teruki choked on his answer — …a little?! — and instead pushed his chair back, flinching at the screech of the legs scratching against the floor.
“Are you running away?”
“From what?”
The man smirked. “The red.”
He stood up in a jump, ready to excuse himself to go out buy some food, but Shimazaki followed suit.
“Speak for yourself,” said Teru, “I’m not the one who can vanish in less than a second.”
And he ran for the door hoping Shimazaki would do the same.