Chapter Text
The playground was unremarkable.
Swings that squeaked, a slide with chipped paint, sand that had seen better days. Kusuo walked past it every Tuesday on his way back from the convenience store, coffee jelly in hand, thoughts carefully tuned to the frequency of leave me alone.
It usually worked.
Today, something snagged his attention. Not a voice, he'd learned to filter those out years ago. A signature. Psychic energy, strong and distinct, like a radio station bleeding through static.
'A psychic child? Really?'
He should have kept walking. He had food waiting at home. His mother would ask where he'd been. The usual Tuesday evening stretched ahead of him, predictable and safe.
He stopped anyway.
The child sat alone on a bench, too still for a kid his age. Five, maybe six. Small frame, black hair, posture that suggested he was waiting for something unpleasant. Other children ran past him, their thoughts a cacophony of tag you're it and I want the swing and mommy said five more minutes. The boy didn't look at them.
Kusuo watched from the sidewalk, coffee jelly forgotten in his hand.
The kid was... calm. Disturbingly so. While another child wailed about a scraped knee and a third shrieked with laughter, this one sat with his hands folded in his lap, observing everything with the expression of someone enduring a mildly annoying wait in line at the grocery store.
'Good grief. That's just...'
The thought died.
Because the kid had just telekinetically adjusted his shoe without looking down, a casual flicker of power that suggested he'd done it a thousand times before. No one else noticed. The mothers chatting by the gate didn't see. The teenagers on their phones didn't care.
But Kusuo saw.
'Someone taught him that. Or he figured it out himself.'
The possibility sat uneasily in his chest. A psychic child, untrained, unguided. Kusuo knew what that looked like. He'd been that child once, before the limiters and the careful control and the endless, exhausting management of his own existence.
The boy turned his head.
Purple eyes.
Kusuo's grip tightened on the coffee jelly container. The child's gaze was direct, unflinching. Assessing. There was something behind those eyes, not fear, not curiosity. Recognition, maybe. Or challenge.
'He knows what I am.'
The thought should have been alarming. Instead, it was... irritating. Kusuo didn't need complications. He especially didn't need a psychic child staring at him like he was a puzzle to be solved.
He turned to leave.
"You're like me."
The voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. The way Kusuo himself might have said it's raining or that coffee jelly is mine.
Kusuo stopped.
The boy stood up from the bench and was walking toward him with measured steps. No running, no childish enthusiasm. Just a steady approach, those purple eyes never leaving Kusuo's face.
'Go away, kid. I'm not your mentor. I'm not your-'
"Your hair is pink," the boy said, stopping a few feet away. "That's cool."
"Yours is dark," Kusuo replied, keeping his voice level. "That's normal. Congratulations."
The boy tilted his head, considering. "You can do things. Like I can."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do."
The certainty in that small voice was unsettling. Kusuo studied him properly now, really looked. The kid was slight, maybe on the shorter side for his age. His clothes were clean but worn, jeans with a patch on one knee, a blue jacket that had seen better days. The purple eyes were unnerving, but that wasn't what made Kusuo's chest tighten.
It was the expression. The careful blankness that wasn't really blank at all, just... controlled. Compressed. Like holding a hand over a pot about to boil over.
'I know that look. I invented that look.'
"What makes you think I can do things," Kusuo asked, knowing it was a mistake to engage but unable to stop himself.
"Your energy," the boy said simply. "It's really loud. Louder than mine."
'He can sense psychic signatures.'
"How long have you been able to do that?"
He shrugged, a small movement that seemed too tired for a child. "Always, I think. Mommy says I was born this way."
The casual mention of his mother made something twist in Kusuo's stomach. He pushed the feeling down.
"What else can you do?" The question came out before he could stop it.
The boy's eyes brightened slightly, the first real expression Kusuo had seen on his face. "I can move things without touching them. And I can hear what people are thinking, but I don't like that part. It's too loud." He paused. "Sometimes I can see through walls, but that makes my head hurt."
'Telekinesis. Telepathy. X-ray vision. All powers that I have.'
"Does your mother know? About all of it?"
"Yeah. She tries to help but she doesn't really understand." Kuma's voice dropped. "She can't do any of it."
"And your father?"
The question hung in the air. Kusuo wasn't sure why he'd asked it. Self-preservation should have kept his mouth shut.
The kid's expression shifted, something dark and complicated passing through those purple eyes. "I don't have one."
"Everyone has a father."
"I've never met him," he said flatly. "Mommy says he doesn't know about me."
'Doesn't know. Present tense.'
Kusuo's hands were gripping the coffee jelly container so tightly the plastic was starting to crack.
"That must be difficult," Kusuo said, and his voice sounded hollow.
"I guess." The boy looked down at his shoes. "Mommy says he's... special. Like me. That's why I can do things." He glanced back up. "Is that true? Does it work like that?"
'He's asking me if psychic abilities are hereditary... I don't know, kid. My parents are normal, but I'm a freak.'
"Yes," Kusuo said quietly. "It works like that."
"So somewhere I have a dad who can do what I do." It wasn't a question. He stated it like he was working through a math problem. "And he doesn't know I exist."
"That's what your mother told you?"
"Yeah." He kicked at the ground. "She doesn't like to talk about him. It makes her sad."
'Stop. Stop asking questions. Leave now.'
"Do you want to know," Kusuo asked instead. "About him?"
The kid was quiet for a long moment, his small face serious. "Sometimes. But then I think maybe he didn't want me. Maybe that's why he's not here."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"That's not-" Kusuo stopped. He didn't know. He didn't know anything about this child's father. Except...
Except he was starting to have a very sick feeling about who it might be.
"Sometimes I try to imagine what he's like," he continued, and there was something vulnerable in his voice now, the careful control slipping. "If he can hear everyone's thoughts all the time. If it makes him tired like it makes me tired."
Five years old. Psychic. Purple eyes. That expression. That voice. The way he holds himself.
'No. It's not-there's no way- Oh god.'
"Where's your mother," Kusuo asked abruptly, and his voice came out sharper than intended.
The kid flinched slightly. The vulnerable expression vanished, replaced by that careful blankness again.
"I shouldn't have said that," the boy said quietly. "Mommy says I talk too much sometimes, about things I shouldn't."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"You look upset."
'Of course I look upset. You're describing me. You're describing yourself. You're-'
"I'm fine," Kusuo lied. "Your mother. Where is she?"
"Getting food." He pointed vaguely toward a small convenience store down the street. "She said to wait here."
"And she lets you wait alone?"
Something defensive flashed in his eyes. "I can take care of myself. I'm not a baby."
"You're five."
"So? I can protect myself better than most adults." To demonstrate, a nearby twig lifted off the ground and hovered between them. "See?"
'He's showing off. Like I used to do before I learned to hide it.'
"Put it down," Kusuo said quietly.
The twig dropped.
"Sorry," he muttered. "I forgot. Mommy says I shouldn't do that where people can see."
"Your mother is right."
"Are you going to tell on me?"
The question was so earnest, so worried, that Kusuo felt something crack in his chest.
"No," he said. "I'm not going to tell on you."
His little shoulders relaxed marginally. "Thanks, mister."
They stood in awkward silence. Around them, the playground continued its chaos, children screaming, mothers chatting, the squeak of swings. But in their small bubble, everything felt suspended.
"What's your name," Kusuo finally asked. He's been talking to this kid the whole time, he might as well know it.
"It's Kuma, what's yours?"
'Leave. Now. Before-'
"Kusuo," he said.
Kuma's eyes went very wide. His mouth opened slightly. For a moment, he looked like he'd been struck.
"Kusuo," he repeated, barely a whisper.
'He knows that name. He's heard it before. Someone told him-'
"That's..." Kuma swallowed hard. "That's a nice name."
But his hands were shaking now, and his psychic signature had spiked; a burst of uncontrolled energy that spoke of shock and confusion and something that felt horribly like hope.
"I have to go," Kusuo said abruptly.
"Wait!" Kuma took a step forward, and there was desperate urgency in his voice now. "Can I- will you..."
He stopped, seeming to struggle with something. His small fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.
"Can I see you again?" The question came out in a rush. "I don't... I've never met anyone else who can do what I can do. And you seem nice, even if you're kind of scary, and I just-"
"I don't think that's a good idea," Kusuo said, and he hated how his voice sounded. Strained. Almost panicked.
Kuma's face fell. The hope that had been building in his expression crumbled, replaced by something that looked far too much like resignation. Like he'd expected this. Like people disappointing him was just a fact of life.
"Okay," he said quietly. "I understand."
'You don't. You can't possibly understand.'
"Kuma!"
The voice came from somewhere across the playground; a woman's voice, calling for the child. Something about the timing made his stomach drop.
'Time to leave.'
He took a step back.
"Wait," Kuma said, and there was something in his voice, urgency, maybe desperation, that made Kusuo pause despite every instinct screaming at him to go.
The boy was staring at him with those purple eyes, and Kusuo realized with creeping unease that he'd been deliberately not looking at them too closely. Not examining their exact shade. Not comparing them to the color he saw every time he looked in a mirror.
Something flickered across Kuma's face. Disappointment. Maybe hurt. But it was gone in an instant, replaced by that careful blankness.
"Nevermind," Kuma said quietly.
Kusuo turned and walked away quickly, coffee jelly clutched in hands that had started to shake.
He didn't look back.
He should have looked back.
But Kusuo's primary instinct had always been self-preservation, and every atom in his body was screaming danger in a way that had nothing to do with physical threats and everything to do with the shape of a child's jaw, the tone of a distant voice, the implications of purple eyes.
'It's a coincidence. Psychic children exist. Purple-eyed children exist. It doesn't mean-'
He made it three blocks before he stopped walking. His hands were definitely shaking now. The coffee jelly practically crushed now.
'I should go back. I should find out who he is, who his mother is, why- No. No, I should go home. This isn't my problem. It can't be my problem.'
He stood there on the sidewalk, people flowing around him like water around a stone, and for the first time in years, Kusuo had absolutely no idea what to do.
The smart thing would be to go home. Forget about it. Forget about purple eyes and careful voices and the sick feeling in his stomach.
The smart thing.
Kusuo started walking again. Toward home. Away from the playground.
That night, Kusuo lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and did something he rarely allowed himself to do anymore.
He used clairvoyance.
Not on the boy, he couldn't bring himself to look at the boy, but the playground. The area around it. Searching for... what? Evidence of nothing? Proof that his paranoia was unfounded?
He found a woman and a child walking down a street three kilometers from his house. The woman's face was in shadow, but her hand was wrapped around a small one. The boy looked up at her, said something Kusuo couldn't hear.
Kusuo watched for five seconds.
Then he stopped. Closed his eyes.
'It's fine. Everything is fine.'
He didn't sleep that night.
And when Tuesday came around again the following week, Kusuo took a different route home from the convenience store.
He told himself it was because the weather was nice.
He didn't examine why his hands clenched every time he thought about purple eyes.
'Good grief.'