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Saiki never wanted friends in the first place, and he certainly didn't want the same idiots who clung to him in high school to cling to him forever, but as much as he liked to complain, he didn't actually mind. Sure they were idiots, but they were his idiots, and he loved them, not that he would ever tell them that.
They had a standing arrangement to eat at the ramen shop Nendo worked at (in the kitchen of course), once a week on Sundays. Hairo didn't teach on those days, Kuboyasu usually handed the motorcycle shop he ran over to his employees for a few hours to make it, and Yumehara, now a personal trainer, didn't have any clients on Sundays. Aiura and Kaido worked whenever it was convenient for them, the former at the house of psychics, and the latter as a novelist, so they almost always made it.
Toritsuka still worked at the temple on Sundays, a surprisingly good monk, once his hormones leveled out, though still a player, but he would sneak away to join them as often as he could manage. Saiko was always busy running his corporation, but whenever he deigned to join the commoners for lunch, he always picked up the bill for all of them, pretending he didn't realize the ¥10,000 tab wasn't just his own meal. Mera also rarely joined them, for the opposite reason, but on the rare occasions she found the time between her eight jobs, one of the others would cover her cost, silently encouraging her to hang out with them again, if only for the free meal.
Teruhashi traveled quite a bit for her work, but whenever she happened to be in town on a Sunday, she'd try her best to make it, along with Rifuta. To all their surprise, Kokomi had become the manager of an idol group, despite everyone saying she was prettier than any of the idols. She and Rifuta were still together, since Rifuta was a member of the group, although the relationship they'd had since high school had to be kept secret in order to not void Rifuta's contract. Akechi usually found the time in the beginning, but after a few years, his private detective agency rapidly gained renown and he couldn't make it as often, though he still came sometimes.
Saiki, for his part, had become a manga editor (nothing like his dad. Despite having the same career, Kusuo was actually successful), and always managed to make it to their Sunday lunch, though sometimes he had to leave early to meet with an author who'd postponed their check in.
Which members of the group managed to make it from week to week varied, sometimes they would bring guests, coworkers, lovers, once Teruhashi and Rifuta came in with their whole idol group, which caused quite the scene. Any time something big happened in their lives, they announced it at one of these lunches.
When Rifuta retired from idol work and became an actor full time with Teruhashi as her agent, they found out over ramen. When Toritsuka got engaged, and when Yumehara did as well, they found out over ramen. When Yumehara (though she took her husband's name, Fujisaki when they married) got pregnant with each of her kids, they found out over ramen.
When Kaido and Kuboyasu were finally ready to reveal their relationship to their friends, they did it over ramen. And when Hairo worked up the courage to tell Nendo about his feelings... actually, he asked Nendo to meet him outside to avoid embarrassing them both in front of their friends, but it was still during one of their Sunday lunches, and when they came back holding hands with Hairo practically boiling over with happiness everyone else was still eating ramen.
Saiki revealed his powers to them over ramen as well, though not by choice.
"Man, it's so not fair!" Chiyo complained, lamenting her wrinkles. Her older daughter was with her this time, twelve year old Himiko drawing on a napkin. Himiko came with her mom to lunch a lot, since she was a smart kid who rarely needed to study on weekends and loved people-watching her mom's weird friends. "I'm only thirty-six! Why do I have forehead wrinkles already?" she teasingly prodded her daughter and the side, and the girl giggled. "This is your fault you know. Causing me so much grief. I had flawless skin before you were born."
"At least you still have rock-hard abs," Himiko pointed out.
"That I do," Chiyo patted her defined abs over her floral blouse proudly. "Not even two little brats could ruin this much work." Himiko giggled some more. "Still though, Kokomi and Miko don't have any wrinkles. And Saiki, you look like you haven't aged at all in the last decade."
"Don't get so hung up on looks, Chiyo," Hairo told her. "Wrinkles or not, you're still very beautiful."
"Thank you, Kineshi darling, but seeing as you're pathologically nice, and also gay, your opinion on my looks isn't worth much."
"Come on, being gay and nice doesn't make me blind!" Hairo defended laughingly.
"You puttin' the moves on my man Mrs. Fujisaki?" Nendo asked, sliding into their usual booth next to his boyfriend, now that he was on his break.
"Ugh, he wishes," Chiyo made a face, but couldn't hold it before bursting out laughing, along with most of the others at the table.
"She is right about Saiki though," Kaido pointed out as the laughter died down, leaning into Kuboyasu's side with a soft sigh. "I mean, I've always looked young for my age, but Saiki looks exactly the same as he did ten years ago."
"Do I really?" Saiki asked.
"Yeah, man," Kuboyasu agreed. "And actually, now that you mention it, I think you probably looked the same before then too, but ever since you changed your glasses style it feels like you look different."
"You still wear those same ridiculous-looking hairpins from high school though," Chiyo said, leaning across the table to poke at the pink orb on his right limiter. "You guys remember the beginning of third year?"
"You mean when Saiki lost the hairpins and started wearing contacts, and just ended up looking even more bland?" Kuboyasu said. "Don't people usually change their look to stand out more?"
"Says the guy who got fake glasses and a nerdy haircut to fit in when he switched schools," Kaido said. Since high school, Kuboyasu had stopped wearing the fake glasses and let his hair grow out a little more, only down to his shoulders.
"Shut up, I was a special case," he defended. "Part of the reason I changed my look was to avoid the cops, standing out don't exactly help you in that regard."
"I thought Saiki looked pretty nice like that, even if he was plain," Chiyo said. "And Kokomi fell in love with you all over again."
"She did?"
"Oh come on, you had to have noticed she had the biggest crush on you back then," Chiyo said. "You know, before she realized that it was just her obsession to be liked by everyone and she actually preferred girls," she added with a shrug.
"Of course I knew, but I didn't realize switching to contacts made that much difference to her," Saiki admitted. At the time, he hadn't had any telepathy, so he didn't know how his change in appearance had affected her.
"Um, this is news to me!" Kuboyasu said, with Kaido looking equally surprised beside him. You're telling me literal goddess Kokomi Teruhashi liked this dweeb?" He jerked his thumb toward Saiki, aghast.
"No, she didn't actually like me, she just thought she did because I didn't like her," Saiki corrected. "She's always had this obsession with being perfect and beloved by everyone, and I just didn't care that much."
"Hey, what were you going to tell us all back then?" Nendo asked.
"Huh? What do you mean?" Kuboyasu asked.
"He's probably taking nonsense again," Kaido scoffed. "You know Nendo's an idiot."
"No, I remember that!" Hairo said after a moment of trying to recall what Nendo was talking about. "Saiki gathered us all in the classroom saying he wanted to tell us something, and then he ghosted us."
"That's right!" Kaido finally remembered. "And then a few days after that, he started wearing glasses and those dumb hairpins again. Yeah, what were you going to tell us? Do you even remember?"
"I do but... do you guys really think my hairpins are that dumb?" Saiki, who had never cared about his appearance, touched his right limiter self-consciously. He hadn't gotten a say in what they looked like, nor could he choose not to wear them, so he had tried not to think about how they would look to others.
"Who cares about your hairpins!" Chiyo demanded. "Now I'm dying to know what was so important back then you gathered all of us up during our lunch break!"
"Oh, that... well..." he had been thinking about telling his friends for a while now, and the perfect opportunity was presenting itself, but he still didn't feel ready to reveal himself to them like that, even though he trusted them and cared about them. They deserved to know. "It's kind of a long story, why I chose to tell you, and then why I chose not to, but... the short version is... I'm a psychic."
"You are?" Kaido shot forward, eyes gleaming. "Like Miko? Can you see auras?"
"No, I can't, but I have clairvoyance similar to hers."
"Then can you see spirits, like Toritsuka?" Chiyo asked.
"Only really strong ones," he answered, "like Toritsuka's guardian spirit, and only when they want me to."
"So... can you read minds?" Kuboyasu asked, and there it was, the question that had always caused Saiki to chicken out when he thought of revealing his powers to his friends.
"I can, but there's a certain metal that can block that power," Saiki said quickly, "germanium. I wear a ring made of it almost all the time now, since it's annoying to have other people's thoughts in your head constantly." He held up his hand to show the ring, the same one from all those years ago. He was sure they'd seen it before, but now they would know what it was for.
"So you knew I was a delinquent the whole time, then?" Kuboyasu realized. "But you never told anyone."
"It wasn't my business." Saiki shrugged. "Though I did keep an eye on you for the first few days to make sure you were really serious about reforming and wouldn't cause trouble."
"Can you move things with your mind?" Kaido asked excitedly, eyes still shining. Of course they were, since he'd just discovered his best friend had powers like the protagonists in all those fantasies and light novels he wrote. "Can you teleport?"
"Yes to both," Saiki answered, and used psychokinesis on a napkin as a demonstration. "Pretty much the only powers I have that are actually more useful than annoying."
"Were you the quote-unquote 'PK Academy god' those first years made that shrine to in that abandoned classroom during third year?" Hairo asked.
"You knew about that?" Saiki almost blushed with embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, what?" Himiko asked, though she'd kept silent during the whole revelation. "Mom, your school had a god?"
"More like a cult," Chiyo joked. "It was like, seven or eight first years who made this absolutely hideous shrine to—well Saiki, I guess, but they didn't know. They thought there was a god, or a ghost haunting the school, or something like that, but they would put offerings of sweets on the shrine, and they swore up and down, that their 'god'–" she put several finger-quotes around the word– "Would grant wishes and help them past tests and stuff."
"Some of those kids got really good test scores though," Hairo said. "They said the 'god' of PK Academy would beam the answers into their heads when they were stuck. Nobody actually believed it though, most of the school thought it was a prank."
"Did you really do that, buddy?" Nendo asked.
"Are you even surprised?" Kuboyasu scoffed. "Saiki'll do just about anything if you bribe him with sweets."
"Akechi told one of them that they should try leaving coffee jelly at the shrine, and that was the end for me," Saiki admitted. At this point he'd long since stopped being embarrassed by his sweet tooth. "One kid left a dozen coffee jellies for me and I helped him get a ninety-five on his Japanese history test."
"Wow," Kaido said. "I mean we all knew you were smarter than your test scores, but who knew you were holding back that much?"
"My buddy always hated standing out," Nendo said.
"You knew that, and you still stuck to me all through high school, even though you stand out more than anyone," Saiki observed, aghast.
"Hey, are your psychic powers the reason your appearance hasn't changed, do you think?" Himiko asked, and all eyes turned to her in surprise for a moment, before locking onto Saiki, who was still staring at the clever twelve-year-old in shock. "I mean, it would make sense, wouldn't it? Am I... wrong?"
"You're not," came the familiar voice of someone none of them had noticed come in. Akechi slipped into the booth next to Saiki. "But do you mean to tell me you hadn't realized you weren't aging, Kusuo?" he asked. "I had assumed you simply didn't want to face the inevitable consequences of your immortality. Seeing as you're so attached to your friends, I guessed the idea that you would outlive all of us would have been quite the source of stress for you. Also, I take it you've finally decided to reveal your powers to the others. Good for you. It's been a long time coming."
"You mean you already knew?" Kuboyasu asked.
"We went to the same elementary school for a time," Akechi explained. "He had less practice with his powers, and didn't have his limiters yet so his control wasn't as good, and he accidentally used his powers on some bullies, and I saw. He erased the bullies' memories, and he tried to erase my memory too, but I deduced the truth anyway."
"What limiters?" Kaido asked, after taking a moment to register and process all that Akechi had said.
"He means my hairpins," Saiki explained. "My older brother designed them to limit my psychic powers, since without them I'm too dangerous to be around people."
"Kinda like you, huh, Shun," Kuboyasu teased, and Kaido turned bright red.
"Sh-shut up!" he stammered indignantly.
"Forget that, do you really think I'm not aging, Akechi?" Saiki asked, concerned.
"I've known for years," Akechi answered certainly. "You haven't aged a day since you turned twenty five. Using your transformation ability, I'm sure it would be a simple matter for you to appear to be whatever age you'd like, but you aren't actually growing older. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if you were functionally immortal. You can't be injured. You can't get sick. You won't die of old age. And there's no way you'll die of natural causes. I don't even think starvation or dehydration could take you out, even if you didn't have the ability to teleport to a source of food or water."
Up until that point, old age was the only way Saiki could imagine himself dying, after having lived a long and satisfying life beside his friends.
Kusuo looked back on that time fondly.
It was over now.
Hairo had lived to be nearly a hundred, but after Nendo died, he followed just two months after. He was the last of them, so when he was gone, Saiki was alone.
"It's gonna be boring without all those idiots around," Saiki said as he watched Hairo and Nendo's son, grandson, and their two grandnephews carry his casket to the neatly dug hole in the ground.
"What are you gonna do now, uncle Saiki?" asked Himiko, now an elderly woman not much longer for this world herself. "Is this the thing that finally sends you off the deep end? Maybe you could give world domination a try?"
"I was really surprised you didn't cause an apocalypse when your brother passed," remarked Himiko's younger sister, Chiyo's other daughter, Mejire.
"I almost did," Saiki admitted. That had been a rough time for Saiki. He'd been in a bad spot when his mother died, but after a few years to accept it, he'd been alright. But Kaido, Toritsuka, Mera, and finally Kusuke all died over the course of three months, and without enough time to process his grief, Saiki very nearly did bring about the end of the world. It was Toritsuka that stopped him.
Having been a spirit medium in life, Toritsuka's own spirit, after he died, was powerful enough that Saiki's weak ability to see spirits was able to pick up on him, though like all ghosts, Toritsuka didn't have any memories of his life. He still responded when Saiki called out to him. Remembering that their ghosts were still around on Earth, and would become guardian spirits for others brought Saiki relief and calmed him enough to abort his plan to make every volcano on earth erupt simultaneously and envelop the Earth in noxious gas.
"Did I know this guy too?" asked Toritsuka's spirit beside him. Even in his late sixties, when he died of a heart attack, he'd only had a few gray hairs streaking through the purple, and smile lines, and crows feet by his eyes.
"He was one of our friends," Saiki said to just him. Then, to the girls—though, in their seventies, the two of them could hardly be called girls anymore, he still thought of them that way—he said. "I don't know about world domination, but it could be fun to play god for a while, at least until I get bored with it. Apparently I have all the time in the world, so I might as well give it a try."
"You gonna change reality again, like how you did when you made wacky hair colors normal?" Mejire suggested, and he shrugged.
"Sure, why not," Saiki agreed. "If you could change any one thing about humanity, what would you do?" he asked the girls, looking for ideas.
"Hmm... I don't know... I think it would be cool if everyone could fly," Mejire said.
"Oh, you know when I was younger," Himiko tacked on, "I always wished I could have a superpower, like you. Even if it was just one, and even if it was useless. At fifteen I would have traded my left arm for the ability to turn into a blade of grass and back at will. I would have been happy with anything."
"Ooh, I like that," Mejire agreed. "You should give people superpowers, Uncle Saiki, all sorts of superpowers, strong ones, weak ones, silly ones, scary ones. That would definitely make humanity more interesting. Then maybe the world could keep you entertained for a while longer."
"That's not a bad idea," Saiki nodded, smiling, despite the setting, as the priest started to say his blessing over the open grave. "What should I start with?"
"Glow-in-the-dark baby," Himiko said immediately, and Saiki and her sister both chuckled softly. "I can't tell you how many times I wished I could find a baby in the dark. All my kids and grandkids liked to climb out of their cribs in the middle of the night. I swear the number of times I tripped over baby Hideki going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and my husband woke up to that kid's screaming, oh dear."
"Alright, glow-in-the-dark baby it is," Saiki agreed, still smiling, despite the ache in his heart. The last of his friends was dead, and soon, their children that he'd grown to love would follow, and then their children's children and so on. He tried so very hard not to think about it, about Himiko being the next underground, about when baby Hideki, her now fifty-year-old son, would be buried.
The first quirk appeared in Qing Qing City, China, when an infant was born that radiated light. After that, the world got a lot more interesting.