Chapter Text

Author's note, 6th march 2021: Hey guys, it's me Robynn. If you are new here, then welcome! I am doing this because I didn't like the edit of this chapter before. It was horrible so I had to rewrite it as best that I could. I am so sorry if you had read this chapter before and didn't like it back then, I swear, I'm trying my best to make it better, bear with me people, and i promise you to give the best that i could

‘Ahh, I don’t wanna go to cram school today’

‘If I’m fast enough, I could meet Saseki-Kun by the gate and hopefully, we could go for a walk’  

‘Man, I’m so hungry’  

‘I need to go home! That show’s gonna start in 30 minutes!’

‘Oof, Teruhashi-san still shines the whole day today’

Saiki lets out a big sigh as he packed up his stuff into his bag. Finally, he got to go home after a long day listening to people’s thoughts and looked through them, only to see their fragile bones and muscles.

He wished to go home and had a good bath and eat his favorite dessert without any disturbance and watched some drama shows in his room. And perhaps, sit in his living room and watched his dad built his Gundam and silently ruin it for the umpteenth time.

“Suo!”, an extremely annoying chipper voice calls out, Saiki quickly packed his bag, hoping that he could avoid listening to this person’s plan after school that of course would involve him. 

Unfortunately, it’s too late since the petite girl walks to his side with her bag on her shoulder and gave him a bright wide smile that promised Saiki nothing other than a slight annoyance.

“There’s a big sale at the bookstore! Kaidou and I are gonna go there to buy some books and maybe the bookstore would finally have the new edition of ‘The Tale of Haunted Stories’!” said the girl excitedly whilst Saiki grimaced at the awful title.

Maekawa Aoi was not a person who Saiki would call a social butterfly as she was very shy to socialize when people tried to talk to her. She would hesitantly try to converse with new people and blushed profusely whenever they talked to her. In worst cases, she’d stuttered and stumbled over her words, and ends up embarrassing herself

But it didn’t mean she’s not an annoying person in any way.

Saiki has befriended this petite girl since the first he moved here when he was six.

And believe it or not, Saiki has tried everything with his power to run away from the girl, but she always managed to force him to play together with her. Still, he reluctantly had to since his mother menaces him each time he intended to reject her politely.

And that’s not just the reason why he had to befriend her, it’s because she happened to have supernatural powers like Saiki was but weaker. Her power was to see a person’s future in 20 years ahead and she could saw it only when someone touches her hand.

But it could be change by a some choices people made in their lives.

She had told Saiki, that their class representative had changed his choices so much, one day he’d probably be a president of the United States.

And Saiki couldn’t think of something more terrifying than that.

But the downside of this power was that after seeing one’s future, she would have a high migraine for 10 minutes and her vision would get blurry for the first few minutes and sometimes she would a high ringing in her ear.

Plus, her power didn’t stop there, she could burn anything with flames fused from her bare hands. Aoi knew that this power was extremely dangerous because her power could be unstable at some points so that’s why mostly she avoided people purposely except Saiki whose peculiar to her.

But Saiki’s first impression on Aoi was that he couldn’t read her mind nor use his telepathic power.

For the first time in Saiki Kusuo’s life, he finally met someone that’s actually flesh and not muscles and skeleton.

“That’s great, I’ll see you later then, goodbye”, said Saiki with a lack of interest as he stands up from his seat and started to make his way to the door.

He hurriedly walked away to home but stopped by Aoi as soon as she grabbed his bag tightly with a scowl on her face.

She scolded, “Don’t be like that Suo!”.

Then, she smacked his shoulder lightly. “You need to spend some time with your friends too, try to create some memorable moments with your friends”, she said

Saiki then turned to Aoi with a deadpanned expression and responded with a cold tone, “You just want to buy some poorly written thriller book and Kaidou just wants to buy some book as a gift for his mother’s birthday, so it doesn’t really create any beautiful, cotton-candy memories like you imagined, Aoi’’. 

Aoi blanked and muttered for a moment after hearing the cold response from her childhood friend but she remained calmed and decided to ignore his words and said, “I’ve made a coffee jelly for us”.

“Okay, let’s go”

Saiki glanced at Aoi after seeing her went through the horror and thriller sections in the bookstore with a bored reaction whilst Kaidou and Nendou argued at the other side of the bookstore.

Without anything else to do, Saiki stood next to his friend and randomly picked up one book. He read the title and disgusted at how anyone could bring up a bad concept and theme as such as this book.

“Who is dumb enough to name their book ‘Unwanted Child’? That sounds like an awful 2-stars abortion documentary”, he commented as he placed the book where it belongs, at the same time, ignored Aoi’s stare at him and just continued to nitpick another awful book.

When Saiki about to speak and commented on the next book, suddenly another person popped out somewhere and called out from a distance.

“Look guys, it’s blue hair, Maekawa!”.

Maekawa turned to the voice with an annoyed scowl on her face.

“My hair is dual-tone, you asshole! It is a fucking blue-black, thank you very much!” she snapped then realized the voice was from someone she familiars at. Then she crossed her arms and let out a smug look. She said, “Well, would you look at this. It’s the bratty shit”.

Saiki was displeased with the situation and intended to ignore and wished to leave the conversation or soon-to-be-scuffle. When Aoi’s acting smug and responded with harsh language to the kid, Saiki had a second thought, thinking that this could be interesting for today, so he just stood there and wanted to listen more especially when he realized that his shy friend, unexpectedly, confident to call a 5-year-old boy a ‘bratty shit’. 

Saiki gave a full-body-scan-looks to this small boy to figure who the kid was. The boy looked like an average elementary school boy with an awful green curl. He had some freckles on the bridge of his nose, a big pouty lip, reminded him of an annoying person he’d met before.

“Why are you here, Takahashi?”.

Upon hearing the name, Saiki snapped his finger mentally when he guessed right about the boy’s identity. This little brat that Aoi talked to is no one else than Takahashi’s little brother.

“Lost from your mom again?”, Aoi taunted the little boy.

The boy then said, “Look at what I have!”, out of blue, he lifted his right arm and showed a black hardcover book. The book seemed terrible with a horrible drawing on the front. Saiki had to clench his fist and bit his tongue from commenting with full honest about the title.

Aoi gasped with her eyes twinkled by excitement and swiftly kneeled right in front of the boy as her hands hovered over the book, exaggerating as if a worshipper to God.

“Is this-?! The latest edition of The Tale of Haunted Stories?!!!” She gushed, “Where did you get it, Takahashi Junior?”.

Her question was very loud till it echoed in the bookstore and people that passing by took a glance at her like a freak on the streets. She couldn’t care less about her surroundings as she emerged herself to the pure luck of meeting this precious book.

Takahashi junior looks smudged as he wiped his nose with his thumb, ignored the snot that sticks on the finger. Saiki grimaced in disgust as Aoi stuck her gaze on the book in front of her.

“Daddy bought it for me!” the boy responded with arrogance. “This book is super expensive until this edition only releases 10 items in this country!”. The kid continued to brag as Aoi wailed in misery. Unlike Saiki, he hardly digested the fact that this awful book with a horrible title and front cover could be very expensive and hard to get.

“Oh, hey guys, what are you doing here?”, Nendou asked as he walked towards them. He held an ice cream (for some reason, in the bookstore nonetheless) in his hand. Upon his arrival at them, he tried to read the situation, Nendou then asked about the coloring book on the kid’s hand and grinned at Aoi’s worshiping act.

He snatched it off the kid’s hand. The boy was surprised and started to jump as high as he could when Nendou lifted his right arm that held the book to tease the arrogant kid. The kid angered. “Hey, you ugly bully! Gimme back my book you ugly!”, he yelled as he jumped.

Apparently, Nendou ignored the boy. He lowered his right arm and simply flipped through the pages with his melting ice cream in his left hand. The ice cream slowly dripped from the cone. Aoi and the boy quickly trying to reach their hands to save the book from the ice cream. Unfortunately, their act of savior was wasted as the ice cream melted on the pages and front cover.

“Huh? It’s not a coloring book?”, Nendou asked in confusion and he switched the ice cream to his other hand which made many massive stains of melting ice cream on other pages.

Saiki was amused and pleased with what happened to the book when Nendou continued to ruin it. Aoi and the kid couldn’t do anything else as they were shocked by what Nendou did. They imagined Nendou was like a predator and the book was a prey in the wild. They snapped back to the reality that they couldn’t confront on, they then again imagined possible ways to not get caught for killing a friend. Nendou could be dead since he was not a tiny bit important than the book for Aoi and the arrogant kid.

“Oi, Nendou. What are you doing?”, Kaidou’s loud voice called out from behind. Nendou dropped the book by surprise and the ice cream fell off on the book.

Everyone except Saiki and Kaidou watched the ice cream fell slow onto the floor with a small thud. After witnessing their dead ‘god’ laying on the floor, Aoi and the kid’s soul has ascended to heaven with the guidance of white doves.

“Oh no, my ice cream”, Nendou groaned as he looked over back to the book and his ice cream.

“What are you-, Maekawa-san!”, Kaidou shocked and flustered to see Aoi’s place face. “Are you okay, Maekawa-san?! Do I need to call some help- eh! Kid! What’s wrong with you!!”.

“Are you guys okay? It’s just a book, right? Have you all gone mad and stupid?”, Nendou asked dumbly to them, not understanding what’s happening right now.

Saiki sighed. He silently turned around and made his way out from the disastrous scene to Aoi’s house. He hoped that he could grab his favorite homemade coffee jelly from Mr. Maekawa.

“I’m home…” Aoi greeted in a dead tone after she arrived at her house. She trudged to the living room to find her dad. “I’m back-”

She gasped when she saw Saiki sat on their couch with empty cups on the table in front. Saiki appeared happy and joyful as he could, take a bite off the homemade coffee jelly and smirked at her.

Aoi was really pissed at what happened to Nendou’s sloppy behavior at the bookstore and her sacred book and now Saiki too.

“You asshole,” she cussed and walk speedily towards him. She put her hands at her top waist and gave him a terrifying look. Well, Saiki wasn’t frightened by her angry gesture.

“How could you leave me alone and dare to come here and eat my food! And at my house?!”, she yelled till no breaths out of her lungs.

She continued to scold as she could see Saiki didn’t flinch or acted out of guilt at all.

“I had to pay for the cleaning of what Nendou had done because he doesn’t have enough money and Kaidou, as his best friend or should I say the worst friend I meet, doesn’t have much money left on him too! And that shitty arrogant brat! He made me pay him or else he tells his dad about me! And his dad looks scary as fuck!”

Saiki finished his dessert and puts the empty cup on the sink while ignored Aoi followed him to the sink and continued to yell out loud at him. As Saiki couldn’t care less about Aoi’s miserable day so he just started to recall any homework that he hasn’t finished yet. Maybe if he teleported now, he could finish them on time so he could catch the new series of investigation drama that was released on TV that summer break. He began to show his interest after watched the first episode. Actually, he bored himself to watch the TV but somehow, he stumbled on these dramas and got carried away by the plot twists.

“You selfish bastard! Are you listening to me?!” Aoi cussed over and over to Saiki until she felt exhausted. Then a loud gasp was heard from the gap between the stairs and the living room door. Saiki smirked and turned around to see Mr. Maekawa with his blue-black hair wet after shower and droplets of tears dripped from his aqua-blued eyes.

“Aoi!” he yelled with a disappointed tone. “What have I teach to my beautiful daughter that makes her say disrespectful words to people especially your own best friend, Aoi?!”, he wept sorrowfully with his hands covered his face.

Aoi seems flustered when she saw her dad’s weeping face and quickly hugged his dad. “No, dad! It’s not your fault! Don’t cry! I’m so sorry!”, she tried to console him but her dad couldn’t stop cried and it became louder as he was very disappointed in his daughter’s unbeknown behavior.

Aoi kept hugged her dad and took a glance at Saiki. She gave him an angry glare.

She went rage and ran towards the table. She took the final cup of coffee jelly at the table in front of Saiki. He began to be frightened of what she wanted to do. He gave her a cautious look when he raised his hand against his chest to calm her down before she started to throw the cup at him.

“Now, now Aoi” he calls out in a careful tone. “Let’s not be hasty here, the problem is only between us, there’s no need to involve the food into this”.

She responded with a devilish smirk and said, “Fuck you’’. She clenched the cup tightly and the heat from her palm melted the cup to the core

Without saying many words, Saiki then put his hands into a pinch motion. He let her feel pain in her cheeks instantly. She stops the melting to tend the pain. “Ouch! Stop it you asshole!”, she screamed in bearable pain.

Saiki continued to increase the pain in her cheeks. Both were very competitive towards each other. Aoi too continued to melt the cup and cussed out loud.

“Is this a bad sign, God? Are you punishing her for what she had said? Then, forgive her. Lord!”, Mr. Maekawa prayed. He wept again, witnessed his daughter’s awful behavior towards her friend.

“Let go of me you jerk!”

“No!”

“Saiki Kusuo!”

"No!"