Chapter Text
There are several reasons I eat lunch alone.
The first is obvious: I prefer it.
The second is that most people are exhausting, not through any particular fault of their own, but simply by existing loudly in a space I’m forced to share.
The third, and the one nobody ever seems to consider, is that when you possess telepathy, eating lunch in a crowded cafeteria isn’t a break. It’s closer to being trapped in a room with several hundred radios that are all broadcasting on different frequencies at full volume, with no dial to turn any of them down.
[I’m hungry.]
[I wonder if that girl likes me.]
[Why is Nendou eating that? Is that even food?]
[I should’ve studied for the test. I’m going to fail. My mother is going to kill me. Actually kill me.]
[Oh wow, Teruhashi-san is so pretty today. Well, she’s pretty every day. But especially today. Is it the hair? I think it’s the hair.]
[Maybe I should talk to her.]
[This is so embarrassing…]
[Somebody stole my pudding!!]
None of it is useful. I don’t need to know what everyone is thinking in every waking moment of my life. Unfortunately, that has never once stopped everyone around me from thinking, whether I want it or not, whether it’s relevant or not, whether it concerns pudding theft, existential dread, or Teruhashi’s hair.
So I sit in my usual seat—the one at the end of the row, angled just enough to look like I’m not avoiding anyone even though I am avoiding everyone, a distinction that matters more than you may think—and I eat, and I wait for the noise to become tolerable.
It doesn’t.
It never does. But waiting is free, so I keep doing it anyway. It’s cheaper and more logical than most of my other options, most of which involve moving to outer-space where perhaps I won’t hear the thoughts of anyone.
Then someone sits down across from me.
I look up and am greeted by the sight of Kokomi Teruhashi.
This is unusual.
Not because Teruhashi herself is unusual—she’s arguably the most predictable person in this school, in the sense that a hurricane is predictable if you already know it’s a hurricane and have accounted for its trajectory in advance. Wherever she goes, chaos rearranges itself to admire her existence. Boys develop sudden, urgent reasons to walk past. Girls recalibrate their posture. And it’s all because of how predictable the perfect pretty girl is. I’ve never had a reason to interfere with it, mostly because interfering would require caring about it, which I don’t.
She smiles at me. The smile is standard-issue. Calibrated. Symmetrical. I’ve seen it deployed at approximately four hundred other people this week alone, give or take, depending on how accurately you’re counting the huge crowds that follow her on her daily walk.
“Hi, Saiki.”
I stare at her, chewing, saying nothing, which is generally sufficient to end most conversations before they properly sat. It’s a strategy with a near-perfect success rate. Everyone except Nendou eventually gets the message.
[Okay. Don’t be weird. Just act normal.]
She’s already thinking about how she looks. That tracks. That is in fact, the single most consistent thought Kokomi Teruhashi has ever produced in the entire span of time I’ve had the misfortune of knowing her, going back to the first week of school.
[Did I smile too much? No, that’s probably fine. Maybe I should say something else?]
Also consistent. Also expected.
[He probably doesn’t want to talk. That’s okay. I can just eat lunch.]
That one’s new.
I wait for the rest of it. Knowing her, she should start complaining about how I don’t acknowledge her even though she is the perfect pretty girl and how she will get me to say “oh wow.”
[Everyone always expects me to be perfect.]
She looks down at her lunch.
[Not Saiki though. I can just eat with him and not worry about what he thinks.]
I glance at her. She doesn’t notice, preoccupied with her food. Which is strange, she usually notices when someone looks at her. It is the entire point of her persona.
I go back to my food.
Maybe she’s tired. That would explain it. People do strange things when they’re tired. And it makes sense for her with how much she has to juggle to keep her persona up, it is entirely ridiculous and impressive at the same time. I don’t examine it further, because doing so would require caring, and I have a strict, long-standing personal policy against that, one I’ve maintained successfully for the better part of my life.
“Can I sit here?” she asks, already seated and eating.
“You already are.” I reply.
She laughs as if she hadn’t noticed, “oh, right.”
I eat another spoonful. Nothing particularly unusual is happening. People sit near other people all the time. This is, allegedly, a normal human behaviour I have never cared enough to practice.
[He really is funny sometimes.]
I stop chewing.
I didn’t say anything funny. I said three words with no possible humorous interpretation. That’s a second anomaly. I check her thoughts again out of curiosity, but not because I care, because I, as established, do not care about this. I just want to understand this strange behaviour.
[His face is so expressionless.]
Correct.
[It’s kind of impressive, actually. I wonder how he does that.]
Practice. Also, indifference, which does most of the actual work.
[Maybe he’s more relaxed around me now?]
No.
[I’m glad.]
…
I look at her. She’s still eating, unhurried. Nendou is two tables away attempting to convince Kaidou that a piece of fried chicken has supernatural properties and Kaidou is, against all logic, entertaining the theory. Hairo is simultaneously having three separate conversations at a volume better suited to an outdoor stadium than an indoor cafeteria. And every male within a fifteen-meter radius is glancing over, repeatedly, in short controlled bursts, but not approaching, largely because of me. My presence functions as a kind of passive deterrent field for some reason, though it comes with its fair share of not-so-pleasant thoughts directed at me in the process.
[Why is HE the one sitting with her?]
[Of all people. Him. He doesn’t even look interested. He doesn’t deserve to be blessed with her presence!]
[Does he even know how lucky he is right now.]
[What a waste.]
[Someone should do something.]
Nobody does anything. They never do. Too afraid of ruining their reputation with Teruhashi, because she chose to sit with me. So the thoughts arrive, circle, and dissipate without consequence, which is how I prefer my hostility, because it does not require drawing attention to myself.
Teruhashi takes a bite of her sandwich and makes a face—small, immediate, gone almost as fast as it appeared. She schooled it back into neutral faster than should be humanly possible, it’s impressive.
[Too much mustard.]
She eats it anyway without complaint. Which is unsurprising for her, she has a freakish ability to push through just to keep up her perfect persona.
I’m staring. I notice that I’m staring roughly the same moment she does.
“What?” she asks, glancing up.
“Nothing,” I say.
“You were looking at me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You definitely were,” she says, a smile curving on her lips.
“I was looking past you.”
“There’s a wall behind me.”
“Exactly,” I say.
She blinks, then laughs. “You’re weird,” she says, not unkindly.
[I’m sure he was staring at me. How could he not? I’m the perfect pretty girl after all!]
There it is. I was starting to get worried for her.
I don’t respond, looking back down at my food. This is becoming irritating. Not her, specifically. The situation. There is no obvious motive here, and I’ve checked, more than once. It’s a long-standing survival reflex. She isn’t planning anything. Isn’t angling to use me for something later. Isn’t trying to make someone jealous by sitting with the one person on campus who’s demonstrably immune to her usual effect.
And yet.
[This is nice.]
Nice. Sitting here. With me. That’s a strange conclusion for anyone to reach, let alone her, especially considering the self-congratulatory detour her thoughts just took about being “the perfect pretty girl.” The two don’t line up. Performing and being pleased while sitting with an unresponsive Kusuo Saiki aren’t in the same category.
[It’s quiet.]
The cafeteria is not quiet.
[Well, quieter than usual.]
Also false, provably so given that there are numerous people talking about her in our vicinity.
[And Saiki doesn’t ask me questions.]
I glance up. Apparently that’s a point in her book.
[He doesn’t make me keep talking.]
She says nothing out loud. Just smiles faintly at her lunch. The kind of smile that isn’t for anyone, which might be the closest thing to unguarded I’ve seen from her. It doesn’t match her vanity at all. None of it makes sense. She just seems to be several things at once, none of them cancelling the others out.
[It’s nice.]
I don’t know what to do with that information, so I do what I generally do with information I don’t know what to do with. I set it aside, unfiled, and continue eating.
We finish lunch. Neither of us says much else for the remaining several minutes. This, more than anything, might be the strangest part of the whole exchange. Most people can’t tolerate silence, they fill it reflexively with whatever’s nearest to hand, relevant or not. Teruhashi, by every account I’ve gathered, is not typically an exception to that rule.
Except, apparently, today.
She finishes her drink, folds her sandwich wrapper into a small, precise square, and stands.
“Thanks for letting me sit here,” she says.
I just nod. She’s smiling—the standard one, dialed to its usual public setting, aimed at me now.
[Maybe tomorrow will be nice too.]
I look away first.
She leaves, throwing a last glance back over her shoulder on her way out of the cafeteria that I don’t watch closely enough to properly categorise, and rejoins the general current of the cafeteria, which parts for her the way it always does, without her having to ask.
I sit there for a few seconds longer. The bell hasn’t rung yet. I have four minutes left before I need to be anywhere. I spend approximately three of them not thinking about the last few minutes, with limited success.
Kaidou appears at my elbow on the way out of the cafeteria, the fried-chicken debate apparently resolved, or at least abandoned.
“Was that Teruhashi-san sitting with you?” he asks with surprised awe.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He looks at me like this is the most interesting thing that’s happened all week, which to be fair, given the importance of Teruhashi’s presence, it might be.
This means nothing. People change seats sometimes.
Tomorrow she might sit somewhere else. That would be fine. Preferable, even. Less noise. Less unaccounted variables. Less…whatever this was.
I do not throw out the mental file the way I usually would.
I tell myself I’ll get around to it.