Chapter Text
Saiki Kusuo is a completely average teenage boy. No seriously.
Quite frankly, he's not sure where the idea comes from that he's something special. Aside from his looks, he's pretty typical underneath. He has plain black hair from his mother, light brown eyes from his father, but his odd choice in accessories (a few pink hair clips and white-rimmed, half-moon glasses) is what draws people in originally. But soon enough they grew bored of him, finding him to be rather lacking in terms of the eccentricity they hoped for. He's typical Saiki Kusuo.
He scores average in class, no matter the subject. Its always smack dab in the middle, the only time he scores higher than 90 being when there are less than 180 students in his year. He studies for an average amount of time, or at least as much as he can squeeze in around whatever his family cooks up for game nights. He typically only works out once or twice a week, unless of course he's dragged into doing more than he wants to or should on an average day.
Kusuo likes average things for a boy his age, too; playing video games and watching television. He likes reading, as well, but it's more so manga than anything substantial like 100,000-word novel written in the 40s' about classicism. He finds those boring, like any other average joe. Typical hobbies, typical Saiki Kusuo.
In fact, the only thing strange about him, he'd wager, is his brother, Kusuke; a certified genius who went to a prestigious college in Britain at the mere age of 14.
Or maybe the fact that Kusuo is introverted.
Being introverted on its own, Kusuo thinks, isn't so strange. But when you're in a class full of extroverts it becomes troubling.
When Kusuo said people tended to leave him alone, that was before he entered Class 2-2 of PK Academy. Kusuo was pretty quickly singled out for being the quiet boy in class who did his work and didn't bother anyone. It's not that he avoided social interaction, per se, he just needed more time to himself than everyone else in his class. A fact that was unfortunately glossed over by many of his peers.
Nendo Riki was a prime example. He was loud, crude, and overly touchy. He was always hanging around the poor introvert and inviting him to eat ramen after school. Even when he tried to decline he was dragged with anyway. Really, Nendo wasn't too bad as a person, just very stupid above anything else, but he also didn't understand many or even most social cues. Like the ones that said Kusuo would much rather eat coffee jelly at home watching mystery dramas than go to a large ramen shop and eat with a suffocating amount of people. Words didn't make it through his head, only actions did and Kusuo isn't really the most expressive person.
Another example was Kaido Shun. He was overly dramatic compared to Nendo's overly simple. Saiki wouldn't think of him negatively either, seeing as he was a lot more reserved and matched Kusuo's energy when they were studying or at a cafe... If not for the fact that when they were flanked by other people, people with louder personalities and more energy than Kusuo could ever handle having himself, Kaido went apeshit. Suddenly abound with energy and creativity, bursting at the seams with flair and wild ideas about evil spirits and demons, Kaido could just as annoying as Nendo sometimes. In his own special way, of course, more based around impressing people than anything else.
The main reason Kusuo doesn't see much of a quiet Kaido was because of his boyfriend, Kuboyasu Aren. One of the many class extroverts, he transferred in halfway through the year. It wasn't hard to deduce his... strange past, among other things, because he made it unintentionally obvious, even if everyone else seemed oblivious to it. He was more talkative than people took him on the surface, always going on about his interests and inviting others to partake in his hobbies left, right, and center. Kaido got swept up in this with ease, the want (and borderline need) to be cool transforming into a close bond with Kuboyasu... a close bond that became romantic rather quickly. Even when they weren't together, Kuboyasu was still a nuisance intent on dragging Kusuo around for strange reasons.
Speaking of transfers, there was Toritsuka Reita. He had ended up transferring before Kuboyasu, but even before he had introduced himself at school he was dragging Kusuo into disasters. He had somehow become convinced that Saiki was into the occult, like him, stalking him for a few days before revealing himself. By breaking into the Saiki household. He was lucky to not have the cops called on him, but Kusuo was still kind of (read: very) put off by him. He was perverted, always attempting to use "magic" to get girls to fall for him and failing. Despite his many fails he continues to insist Kusuo join him, and despite many continuous protests that he wasn't spiritual he is dragged along anyway. The only good thing about Toritsuka was that stubbornness, but it was also his fatal flaw.
Dragging people along was something a lot of Kusuo's "friends" (could you really call them that?) tended to do but no one more so than Hairo Kineshi. He was one of the people who surprisingly left Kusuo alone outside of school most of the time, seeing as he was always busy with club activities and class preparation. But in school was another story entirely. Kusuo was average in sports and exercise-related activities, as he was with everything else, but Hairo seemed to make it a priority that he join him in as many high-intensity workouts as possible throughout the day. No matter where Kusuo hid he always managed to find him to drag him into carrying random objects and running races to class. It would almost be inspiring how persistent he was if Kusuo had the energy to keep up with him, which he really didn't.
The final, and somehow even more persistent example than even Hairo that Saiki was forced to interact with daily, would be the one and only Teruhashi Kokomi. She was annoying in her own way, as she never dragged Kusuo anywhere to do anything, and she wasn't the most excitable or talkative person to exist, but she badgered him constantly. It might not seem like badgering on the outside, but what better word was there for her constantly appearing and attempting to impress him. She seemed to try and go about it effortlessly, but her effortlessness was wasted on just how much she muttered to herself about the fact that he wouldn't say "oh wow" in her presence. He was the only one who she attempted to impress too, her aesthetic beauty garnering her popular opinion of most of or even entirety of the school.
The six of them were annoying in their own ways and at vastly different levels. Despite Nendo being the only one to lack an understanding of social cues, the others seemed to think that if Kusuo was allowed even one day to himself that he'd be lonely and miserable. Clueless, excitable, loud, stubborn, persistent, and irritating; the six banes of Saiki Kusuo's existence and the six extroverts known for making his life more exciting than it ever should be.
Really, Saiki Kusuo is a completely average teenage boy (for the most part). The only thing strange about him is his friends.