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Saiki stared at the large, gruff man sitting across from him.
Saiki knew he was hardly blinking, and that his face had such a flat expression that anyone who saw it would read it is intimidating or unapproachable or angry, as he had heard in the thoughts of many people around him, peers and teachers alike, and had even been told such straight to his face on several occasions—teachers in kindergarten and the early grades had often approached him at recess, which he always spent alone, asking him what had him so upset, offering petty words of comfort, and he always had to tell them that his face just looked like that. His parents had received multiple phone calls to report his ‘abnormal’ behaviour, and they were always so worried about him not making any friends and being lonely, and he always had to explain to them that, no, he was not being bullied, he just preferred the the reprieve from the crowded classroom during school and the other kids who always asked the most annoying, infuriatingly stupid questions just to waste everyone’s time.
Regardless of how unfriendly Saiki knew he looked, Matsuzaki didn’t spare a single word or thought trying to cheer him up from the state of anger and sadness everyone always assumed he was in. The teacher seemed to know that he just had that sort of look—maybe it was because he himself was often accused of being far more unfriendly and angry than he ever was. Maybe he understood a minuscule fraction of Saiki’s existence, as much as any regular person ever could.
Maybe that was why he allowed Matsuzaki to pull him into the empty teacher’s lounge just after school ended, despite the horrible conversation Saiki knew was coming.
Matsuzaki had some papers in front of him, spread out on the table in front of the couch facing opposite the chair Saiki sat in. He didn’t need to look at any of the papers to know they were his own academic records—ones with perfect, average B grades exactly matching the average class percentage and spotless attendance, as well as a few tests—math, languages, science, etc.—all of which he had scored 90th out of all 181 students in the grade.
“I wanted to speak to you about your academic standing, Saiki,” Matsuzaki began, leaning over the table with his elbows resting on his knees.
“I doubt there’s much to discuss. My grades are passing and unexceptional,” he interrupted via telepathy, sitting perfectly straight in the armchair across from the gym teacher.
“Yeah, they are, but I do expect my students to improve as they progress through the year.” Matsuzaki shuffled through his report cards. “Your grades have stayed stagnant since you got to high school and I can only guess that your grades in middle school were average as well—number grades aren’t what I’m worried about though.” His academic performance is so painfully average it’s ridiculous I didn’t notice sooner…
“What’s there to worry about? I’m passing all my classes. I’m not even cutting it close,” Saiki pointed out to no avail.
Matsuzaki shook his head. “What I’m worried about is that your performance in every subject is entirely random and it’s obvious that you aren’t gaining anything worthwhile from this song and dance.”
He’d known where this conversation was going even before they stepped foot in the lounge—hell, for days before Matsuzaki even called on him. If anything this conversation was the useless song and dance he wasn’t getting anything from.
“I know that you could do better, Saiki. I want you to do better.”
Saiki sighed—not verbally, but he certainly felt like it. “You’re a gym teacher. Why do you care about my test scores?”
“We both know it’s not really your test scores I care about, it’s the futures you are closing off from yourself.” Matsuzaki looked directly into Saiki’s eyes and he fought himself to not look away. It was so hard to focus on anything when he was crossing gazes with someone. “By maintaining grades like these you are shutting down your prospects of getting into a good post-secondary school. Even if you don’t want to go to a university, being able to change your mind later is important and squandering that chance by keeping yourself in the middle of the pack may come back to bite you later.”
He took a breath. “I don’t expect you to change the way you participate in Phys. Ed. You know far better than I do why you cannot give that class your all.”
Yes—it wasn’t more than two months prior that Saiki had stopped the meteor which threatened to wipe out all life on Earth. His control over his psychic abilities was shaky at best at the time so all he had managed to do was keep the whole world from knowing about him, causing every camera pointed at the meteor to break once he got to it, but since the meteor was set to crash into PK Academy, he had been close enough for the students to spot him and his recognizable shade of pink hair while he flew up to shatter the flaming rock into dust. As a result, everyone in school knew of his powers.
Saiki nodded. He would kill someone if he gave his all in a gym class.
“What is it that you want to do?” Matsuzaki asked, finally getting around to the question that he had been thinking about for days. “What future do you want for yourself?”
Good grief. That was a bit of a tricky subject. What Saiki really wanted was to be normal—to go about his life without feeling like he was an outsider in every group—like a freak of nature or a landmine posed to explode the second pressure was lifted.
But with the experience of losing his powers and subsequently gaining them back he had truly realized that his dream was impossible. Saiki Kusuo was always going to be different from anyone else. While he accepted that his powers were a large part of who he was—and don't get him wrong, Saiki didn’t really want to be a different person than who he was—it was painful to have the truth of his disconnect from humanity really illustrated for him.
“I don’t really care what I end up doing. Economics. Accounting. Maybe a paralegal. Something boring would be best. I’d rather enjoy the free time I have.”
Matsuzaki frowned, leaning back into the couch. That’s exactly what I didn’t want to hear from him, he thought. Saiki lacks any sort of the passion I strive to spark in my students.
While Saiki understood that inner thoughts were uncontrollable and did his best not to judge people based on any thoughts they had until they acted on them, it was still hard to separate the two. It was hard not to be at least a little offended at Matsuzaki’s conclusion that he had ‘no passion’.
Sure, nothing really got him excited, unless he counted eating coffee jelly or reading a great book that miraculously hadn’t been spoiled for him yet, but those things couldn’t really be careers.
Alright, maybe Saiki didn’t really have any particular passions. What was so bad about that? Does everyone really need one great thing to get excited about? Could he not just be happy with his occasional little things?
“There must be something you enjoy doing,” the teacher insisted.
Saiki shook his head. There just wasn’t. It wasn’t really possible for him to be invested in something. His powers always got in the way somehow and ruined everything he enjoyed.
“Anything I did would be easy and boring. There’s no point in trying to find my ‘spark’. You won’t.”
Matsuzaki’s expression shifted into one of pity and Saiki couldn’t stand it.
He stood from the armchair and picked up his bag, shrugging the straps over his shoulder. “Thank you for your effort…” Saiki turned around and stiffly walked out the door, bowing shallowly before he shut it behind him with more force than he meant.
His prompt exit was diminished by still being able to hear Matsuzaki’s thoughts.
I can’t imagine not having something to care about… he must have something. I can’t let a struggling student go at it alone. Alright! I’ll help him find his passion!
Struggling? Saiki? That was ridiculous. He didn’t struggle with anything. He’d have to do what he could to thwart Matsuzaki’s attempts to annoy him.
The teacher was earnest and well meaning. Saiki had always liked him more than any of the other teachers because of how he stood up for everyone. Saiki had considered him an ally of sorts, but this was too much. He was now getting to be more of a problem than a help.
Saiki set down his bag in the corner of his room after teleporting there.
This was going to be really annoying.
…
Good grief. His classmates were conspiring against him. Saiki just knew it—and not in a conspiracy way, no, he could literally hear them thinking about it.
After a while of only picking up memory scraps and stray thoughts on the subject, Saiki finally caught the whole story from Kaidou’s lengthy ponderings during a Japanese class. He was unwillingly pulled into a flashback as Kaido recalled the third-year classroom after school had ended one day. The room was filled with the familiar faces of Saiki’s annoyances, leaning on or sitting at desks around the room while Matsuzaki stood beside the podium at the front.
“What is it, Matsuzaki-sensei? Are we in trouble, or something?” Kaidou asked, trying and failing to mask his own nervousness. Kaidou was always a little on edge around teachers—he was always worried that they would get mad at him for something random and call his mom about his academic performance (a ridiculous thought, in Saiki’s opinion, especially since his grades were some of the best in the school.)
The Phys. Ed. teacher shook his head and Kaidou sighed with relief. “It’s about Saiki, actually,” Matsuzaki began. “I’ve been somewhat concerned about his general lack of enthusiasm lately.”
Great. Saiki rolled his eyes. Why was Matsuzaki bringing all of them into this? Couldn’t he keep his needless concerns to himself?
Nendou had laughed at that good-naturedly. “My pal’s always like that.” He rested his legs on top of the desk in front of him, earning a glare from Kaidou who was still nervous about Matsuzaki’s scrutiny.
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about. It’s important for all of you to begin preparing for the future and have an idea of where you're headed. While I understand it takes some people a while to know what they want to do with their life, Saiki doesn’t seem to want anything.”
Everyone fell into silence for a moment.
Teruhashi hummed, contemplative. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to share his plans? He can be pretty private.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, looking away in thought.
It was somewhat annoying that Kaido’s recollection of events didn’t include Saiki’s telepathic abilities, as it was just as hard to gather what others were thinking as when he was wearing his ring.
“Well, we all did that assignment about future plans, right?” Kuboyasu chimed in. “I remember his answers being all really boring majors at middling colleges. It was pretty disappointing but I honestly wasn’t all that surprised about his choices."
Okay, thanks, Kuboyasu. What a nice comment.
Matsuzaki grunted something unintelligible under his breath that Kaidou hadn’t been able to catch. “I don’t think Saiki’s passion lies in economics, despite what he answered in that assignment. I want to help him find his interest. Something he enjoys. It’s my duty as an educator to send all of my students into the world as confident and passionate adults.”
In the background Hairo shouted something about passion and education etc… something he was getting far too excited about—meanwhile Kaidou turned to thinking about the dilemma.
“What does Saiki enjoy doing?” Matsuzaki asked.
“He loves coffee jelly!” Mera answered confidently. “He comes to Cafe Mami a few times a week just to eat one. Maybe he’d want to run his own cafe?”
Yeah, absolutely not. Something about waking up at the crack of dawn to bake pastries he wouldn’t even get to eat himself sounded wildly unappealing to him.
“He likes reading manga! I know his dad brings him copies from the publishers he works for every week before their issues are officially released. There’s this one about a robot guy he likes,” Teruhashi said. “His-his mom told me that…” she added, blushing and playing more furiously with her hair, before Saiki could wonder how she knew those details.
“Maybe he’d want to be a mangaka!” Kaidou shouted, suddenly much more delighted to be a part of the conversation, thinking about his own dreams of getting his stories made into manga with Kuboyasu.
Hard pass. Saiki couldn’t draw to save his life—not without terrifying photorealism anyway. He internally shivered at the memory of the egg-headed Teruhashi monstrosity he’d created in art class the year before.
Everyone fell into silence once more, failing to come up with a third potential career path for him.
Kaidou noticed Nendou blinking strangely in the corner of his eye and turned to him. Nendou had a scrunched expression on his face like he was trying very hard to squeeze a thought out of his pea-sized brain. “Maybe his psychic powers make it hard to have any passions or interests and had instilled a deep level of apathy into him before he could discover who he was as a person, instead having to worry about everyone else’s problems…” Everyone turned and stared at Nendou, but he just shrugged, folding his arms behind his head. “Eh, prob’ly not.”
“Did Nendou just say something smart…?”
Saiki scoffed, shaking himself out of Kaidou’s flashback. That was ridiculous. As a general rule, everything Nendou said was wrong.
Sure, ever since he was a toddler and his telepathic range had grown large enough to extend beyond his house and into the world around him he had been forced to hear the unfiltered, uncontrolled thoughts of all sorts of people, including those who wished to cause pain and suffering, and he had been made to adjust by desensitizing and had felt significantly less excitement about life ever since… sure, when the people around him plagued his brain with depression, self-depracation, and grief, which affected his own mental state, which caused him to shut down and disconnect with his own emotions… that wasn’t apathy. That was just the best way to deal with the world from his perspective. Saiki had interests, it was just that spending most of his life working for some asshole boss who would kill him for the company’s bottom line wasn’t one of them—that wasn’t a lack of passion, that was sensible.
Why didn’t everyone else get it?
…
A few days later, after being forced to listen to half his class think up ways to get him interested in his own future, Saiki just barely allowed himself to be cornered by Matsuzaki a second time.
Saiki delayed his departure from his desk during the passing period while everyone else hurried off to the next class or to talk with their friends under the false pretense of gathering up his things.
Matsuzaki dropped a bunch of fliers for school clubs and activities on Saiki’s desk with a stern expression on his face. Saiki finally looked up after being bent over to zip up his bag, staring over the gym teacher’s shoulder instead of meeting his fiery eyes.
“I want you to look through these and pick one to participate in. If you don’t, I’ll be calling your household to arrange for a conference.”
He obviously knew how best to coerce a highschooler into action. Threatening to get parents involved? That situation would be torture. Saiki sighed, slumping in his chair. Good grief. “Why do you care so much?” He regretted asking the second he did, since he already knew what the answer would be. Sure enough—
“It’s my duty as an educator to send all of my students into the world as confident and passionate adults.”
Where had he heard that line before? Matsuzaki sure took his job seriously, and he prided himself on helping his students. However, in Saiki’s opinion he needed to come up with more inspiring one-liners—did he always have that one locked and loaded?
Saiki glanced down briefly at the pamphlets. Book club, baking club, a variety of sports teams—like that would end well—tabletop gaming… spelling bee? Did high schools do those? Also wasn’t that like… an English-speaking country thing?
“Fine.” He grabbed all the pamphlets and tucked them into the bottom of his bag. That was a problem for later-Saiki. “See you in gym, Sensei.”
…
Saiki glared at the pamphlets sitting on his desk, willing himself not to explode them with his mind.
He’d knocked out all of his homework in five minutes and now he had to choose one of the extracurricular activities at PK Academy or suffer a call home. If Matsuzaki called his parents he’d never hear the end of their worrying.
Saiki figured he’d just choose whatever looked the easiest and get it over with.
That instantly eliminated every pamphlet with the mention of the word club—clubs were reoccurring activities and he’d rather do anything else. He allowed himself to sort those from the pile and explode them. It didn’t hurt to release some of his frustrations sometimes.
Saiki couldn’t do sports. Phys. Ed. was dangerous enough. He didn’t need to spend his afternoons killing his classmates by hitting them with projectiles that broke the sound barrier.
Anything that involved a stage was off-limits as well as he had enough students staring at him since the meteor. He would never willingly subject himself to that flavour of public humiliation. That eliminated the theatre and the spelling bee (again, what?).
Arts… couldn’t do that. Robotics… he’d rather die than share something in common with Kuusuke. Tabletop games… that required being around too many people, no thanks. Seriously, how many extracurriculars did this school have? It only had like 300 students, didn’t it? Where were they getting the budget for these things?
Short story competition… that sounded like a hassle, plus something that involved a public reading.
Saiki shuffled through a few more pamphlets before he came back to the creative writing competition.
At second glance, there was no public reading, it was judged by the student committee who read the stories themselves, not like in a slam poetry reading… there was a small monetary prize.
Honestly it didn’t sound too bad.
Maybe he could submit under a pen name, just in case he did too well. That still satisfied what Matsuzaki wanted, didn’t it?
…
The next day after school, Saiki sat down in his usual seat in Cafe Mami and ordered his usual coffee and coffee jelly. Then, he did something he never had before.
He pulled out a notebook.
It wasn’t anything fancy, just a simple spiral bound book with lined paper that he usually used for note-taking (not that he ever needed the notes, what with his perfect memory, he just didn’t want to stick out) and a black ball-point pen.
He scribbled on the corner of the empty page to make sure the pen still worked and once he got the ink flowing, he lifted it and set it back down on the first line of the page, ready to start writing.
Hmm…
Saiki hesitated.
That was something he didn’t usually do. He always knew exactly what to do and exactly how to do it, so any pauses he had were to keep up an appearance of normalcy or to sigh in annoyance.
But now, he simply wasn’t sure what to write.
It was a creative writing assignment so it should be fictional and not too long. What did teachers say to do in elementary school before every writing assignment? Brainstorming?
Saiki pulled his hand back from the paper and idly scratched an itch on his arm.
What would be best to write about? Maybe something he would want to read? That sounded logical enough. What sort of literature did he enjoy? Mystery novels; though that would be hard to pull off in a short story. Saiki often found himself the most sucked into works that explored darker themes and complex interpersonal relationships—such as SiCy’s rift between human and cyborg.
Saiki jotted down these thoughts as he came up with them, noting themes and ideas that would be interesting to explore. Before he knew it he got sucked into his work, forgetting entirely that he was only doing this to satisfy Matsuzaki’s teacher/hero complex.
Saiki was pulled out of his notebook when Mera set down his drink and dessert in front of him, glass clattering quietly against the table—he almost jumped, he’d hardly noticed her approach.
“Whatcha working so hard on there, Saiki?” Mera asked cheerfully.
Saiki blinked. He went to project his thoughts into her mind to explain but he suddenly felt… embarrassed? It was like he was about to share something private, even though it was just a glorified school assignment.
He slid his notebook closer to the wall. “Just… homework.” Saiki picked up his coffee mug, hiding his face in it while he used pyrokinesis to cool himself off.
“Huh, you didn’t usually do any work here, so I was curious.”
“I… had some more to do than usual.”
“Alright then! Let me know if you need anything else!” She walked off to clean empty tables, not noticing anything too weird about Saiki’s behaviour, thankfully. Her internal thoughts were just about how good the food smelled and how much her paycheck would be that week if she picked up an extra shift.
What was that about? Saiki was never embarrassed about stuff like that. He supposed maybe Matsuzaki’s investigations had just disrupted his usual schedule enough to throw him off.
Whatever. Now he had his coffee jelly he could enjoy it and get back to work.
…
A week later, Saiki pulled Matsuzaki aside during gym. He had been sitting out after letting himself get hit in dodgeball. His teammates made a fuss about ‘the esper being the first to get out’ but he just ignored them and went to speak with the teacher.
“What is it, Saiki?” He asked while internally grumbling about him not trying his hardest and then immediately backtracking when he remembered that Saiki’s best performance would result in casualties.
Saiki apported the flier about the contest into his hand (high school club pamphlets were worth practically nothing, as it turned out), avoiding looking anywhere near Matsuzaki. “I did what you wanted.”
Matsuzaki took the flier from him and scanned it. “Creative writing contest?” I wouldn’t have guessed Saiki was the creative type. “You wrote something?”
Saiki nodded, ignoring his comment. “You’ll still accept it as meeting your terms if I submit under a pen name, right?”
Matsuzaki’s brows furrowed before he purposefully smoothed them out. Why would he want to do that?
Saiki cut him off before he could actually say anything. “Because I don’t want the attention. Now will you accept this or not?”
The teacher studied Saiki for a moment. I guess it makes sense. Saiki seems to do everything he does to avoid attention. I’d bet he hates all the recent notice he’s gotten after the meteor. It’d be the least I could do to let him go under the radar for this.
Saiki’s eye twitched at his train of thought but as usual he did his best to put it aside. Matsuzaki couldn’t stop himself from thinking, he was not doing it on purpose.
“Alright. I’ll make you a deal. You bump your grades from average to at least enough to get into a good school and submit your writing and I won’t call home. Sound good?”
“Not going to let me be 90th?”
“Nope.”
“As long as you don’t care about my Phys. Ed. grade going up…”
“Nothing I can do about that one, I think.”
“Good grief…” Saiki grabbed the pamphlet again and resigned himself to getting an 85% on his upcoming math test. It would be annoying if people started talking about his rising grades but so long as he was still under the top 20 or so students he should be alright.
Saiki apported the pamphlet back into his bag and went to sit by the fence on the outskirts of the dodgeball game, sighing when Hairo tried to rope him back into it, screaming about giving it his all.
…
Saiki’s short story won second place in the competition. He was satisfied with that outcome. It felt good to be told that something he spent some actual time and effort on was good quality.
It had been a pretty simple story, submitted under the alias Suzuki Kuriko (he figured it was a generic enough family name that no one would try hunting someone with that name down), about one person free floating through space. It was mostly focused on descriptive prose and internal conflict, and Saiki had actually been in space enough times to accurately describe the feeling.
Saiki told Matsuzaki that his work did well, though he didn’t specify which was his, and the teacher smiled and clapped him on the shoulder proudly. Saiki ducked away from it, activating his pyrokinesis to cool his flushing cheeks.
However, a problem arose.
Saiki didn’t want to be done with it like he’d predicted he would. He found himself actually enjoying writing the story and when it was over he had ideas for more. He wanted to write more. Why was this a problem? Because it meant what Matsuzaki had done… worked on him. He’d actually managed to ignite something. That was ridiculous, though. Saiki was always in complete control of every situation and no one else ever came out on top unless he allowed them to. In this case, Saiki hadn’t even meant it to happen.
The next Monday after school, Saiki could be found grumbling while writing in Cafe Mami.
…
By the end of term one of his third year, Saiki’s grades had gone up to A’s. He wasn’t top of his class or anything, but he was doing markedly better academically—except in gym, which he spent most of just standing in the corner or figuring out how to get out first. Matsuzaki couldn’t complain though.
Saiki could often be found after school writing furiously in Cafe Mami while drinking coffee. He’d become quite the prolific wordsmith—having already finished a number of short stories in record time, and brewing ideas for full length novels in the background.
His annoyances lived up to their title, as always, by thinking about how he seemed to have a little more life and emotion in everything he did as of late.
The only people who weren’t as happy about the development in Saiki’s life were his fellow Saikis—his parents.
He’d been consistently coming home later and later for the past couple of months and they worried themselves sick over what he could be doing that was keeping him.
“Maybe he’s just hanging out with his friends?” Kuniharu suggested. They were in their bedroom, him sitting on the edge of the bed while she paced the room—Kusuo wasn’t home yet and it was getting awfully close to the time they usually had supper, which had become a pattern for him.
“What if he’s going to parties and getting into dangerous places and hanging out with the wrong kids!” Kurumi cried, worrying herself to death.
“I don’t think anywhere Kusuo goes counts as dangerous to him…”
“I mean…” Kurumi continued, still pacing. “We’ve always let him have his freedom… maybe too much, since he can’t really get hurt, but maybe that’s bad for his brain! Everyone says mental health is important these days! Maybe he’s going somewhere that’s hurting his brain’s health!”
The click of a doorknob turning interrupted their conversation. Kusuo stood in the door, still in his school uniform with his bag over his shoulder.
“Sorry. Didn’t notice the time. I’m home.”
Kurumi rushed over, pulling him into her arms. “Oh, Kuu-chan, don’t scare me like that!” She pulled away from him, her hands still holding his arms but at a distance while she looked him over. “What have you been doing out so late every day, young man?!” Her voice turned stern.
Kusuo looked away. He didn’t know if he wanted to show them his writing but he had to tell them what he was doing. It’s not like he wanted to hide it, it's just that… his writing was hard to share, especially with his parents.
“I actually… want to tell you something…”
His dad stood up and walked to his mom’s side.
She released her hold on his arms, tilting her head. “What is it?”
He took a deep breath.
“I’ve been… writing.” He stared down at the floor, hesitant to see their reactions. This was new territory for him—he’d cared so much about something that he worried over how people he loved reacted to it. “I want to be an author one day. I think.”
They stood in silence for a while. Well—their thoughts loudly buzzed in Kusuo’s head.
He’s writing? I was expecting something bad. Like stories and stuff? What does he write? When did this start? I want to read it! I bet it’s so good! Aww, our baby is gonna be an author!
And so on…
Kusuo stared down at his feet so long that he began to see through to the floor underneath while he struggled to keep the temperature of his face even.
“Can we read it?” was the first thing they asked aloud.
“I’m not ready yet…” He still didn’t look up.
His mom pulled him into another hug. “Ah! My baby is gonna be a writer! I’m so proud! Tell us next time you stay out so late, okay? You had us worried sick for nothing.”
“Alright.”
“Let’s go eat now, I made myself hungry with all that pacing.”
…
A few months later, Matsuzaki showed up to PK Academy at the same time he did every day—5 AM sharp.
He unlocked the door and made his way into the teachers lounge to drop off his bag, as always, and there that morning was a package. It was wrapped in brown paper and written on the top was a simple note.
‘Thanks for pushing me.’
Matsuzaki unwrapped the paper and inside was a book—not one bound by a production company, but by hand like an original manuscript.
The name on the paper cover was different, but Matsuzaki knew exactly who it was from.
He would read it right away.