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Kusuo had never really given serious thought as to what mysterious force was constantly putting him and Teruhashi in more and more inexplicable situations together. After all, he was more concerned in outmaneuvering her ploys than wondering what caused them.
But then one day they had been locked inside the classroom. The next had been the closet, and the day after that, there was a random earthquake drill and they ended up huddled under the same desk together.
It was getting preposterous. This wasn’t just the inner workings of heaven anymore, but the devil’s. Did Satan pledge his loyalty to the Kokomins too?
As if the string of forced interactions hadn’t been enough, this week they had both been assigned to cleaning duty too. To the unsuspecting person, this didn’t mean anything. But because he was—for some reason—caught in a bizarre limbo of romantic trappings, Kusuo at once recognized that being on Cleaning Duty Together opened up a pathway to Walking Home Together, and by god, he would end the clichés there.
The school bell rang to signal the end of the day. With exhausted groans, the students lumbered out of the classroom sluggishly, minds on autopilot. It was a hot, summer day, and the packed bodies that filled the hallways in organized chaos made the heat even worse. It was unfathomable to do anything but sit in front of a fan to cool off.
Inside their classroom, Teruhashi was gathering the garbage bag from the trash can, when their teacher immediately swooped in.
“Oh, this isn’t suitable for you to do,” the teacher’s eyes cast upon the first boy in the room—which just happened to land on him. Of course. “Saiki, can you swap with Teruhashi and help take out the trash?”
At once, Kusuo knew where this scenario would lead. He managed to repress his annoyance by slowly huffing through his nose, leaning the broom against a corner and making his way over.
Like clockwork, Teruhashi’s overeager voice chimed, “N—no, I’ll help! It’s my task, after all.”
“You’re so considerate,” the teacher gushed, “Why don’t you take out the recyclables then? It’s not as heavy.”
There it was. In response, Teruhashi merely beamed. And so it begins.
Kusuo found it odd that there weren’t people immediately leaping for the honor of taking out the trash with Teruhashi, and then he realized it was because most of those on cleaning duty this week were their female classmates. This was unusual, but on its own wasn’t quite suspicious yet.
Besides, he needed to strategize. At this moment, the back of the school would be secluded, and a secluded area was dangerous terrain. As they exited their classroom with garbage and recyclables in tow, Kusuo was wholly aware that he was walking side by side with an apex predator that would pounce on him the moment they were alone. But he was a step ahead of her.
The soccer field was near the back of the building, and Hairo was playing today. By the time they dumped the trash, he would simply use his telekinesis to give the ball an extra kick so it would roll towards them. Then, Hairo would need to retrieve it, thereby interrupting whatever plans—
There was a crack of thunder, and then it began to rain.
Good grief. Well, that wasn’t fair.
With a small yelp, Teruhashi ducked under the nearest shelter—a small shed that housed the gardening club’s supplies.
Kusuo wondered if it’d be appropriate to run the other way. He certainly was in no mood to be trapped under a rainstorm with Teruhashi if he could help it. Where had the rain even come from? Ripped right out from a shoujo manga, the scene was crafted well. A little too well.
This was the moment he had thought something was going on, but by then, it was too late.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Teruhashi called, holding the door open to the shed. Kusuo couldn’t help but liken her to an anglerfish—her beckoning hand acting as a lure before her nails dug inside him. “You’ll get sick!”
While he debated whether or not he wanted to march headfirst into his own peril, the garbage bag began to leak down on his pants leg. Giving a long-suffering sigh, Kusuo hefted the bag in his hands and jogged the rest of the way to join her.
Of course, it was the wrong choice.
Teruhashi’s mind was whirring, apparently already analyzing their location. With this angle of the building, we’re completely hidden from the windows on the upper floors of the school, and no one’s going to be out wandering in this weather. The gym is close by, but the volleyball club reserved it today and they were doing their exercises outside, so it’s locked. We have about ten minutes before they come back…
Shit. He hadn’t even thought that far ahead. To be honest, he’d been heavily relying on Hairo. Kusuo began to sweat. What about the soccer club? Surely a little rain wouldn’t stop them from practicing, right?
The soccer club already left. They have a match tomorrow, so they can’t risk getting sick. Teruhashi’s thoughts supplied, as if she’d heard him ask the question out loud. Kusuo was rather unnerved—and also annoyed.
Was there really nothing he could do to thwart this? It seemed too easy. Too many coincidences piling on top of one another.
No. He still had a last resort. Kusuo looked at the skies, narrowing his eyes just a fraction and willing the storm clouds to go away.
But the clouds stayed. If anything, it only poured harder—and another crack of thunder resurfaced, as if to laugh at his face.
He was certain he was using his powers, unless it was going haywire again. It wouldn’t be the first time. What the hell was going on?
“A bit cooler now, isn’t it?” Teruhashi was saying. The humidity of the sudden rain was making her hair stick to her face, and in an almost self-conscious manner, she brushed back the bangs from her forehead.
He didn’t know why he was suddenly hyper-aware of everything she was doing. The dim lighting in the shed forced his peripheral vision to close in, and the dampness of the rain gave the air a cloy, sticky feeling, like he was trapped in honey. Kusuo tried to compose his breath, but his lungs and his heart were galloping. He was getting dragged under.
Teruhashi slowly turned to him, like she was about to make some deep, poetic comment about the rain, and that was when he knew—that he had to get the fuck out of there. And fast.
Things like this tended to create a snowball effect if he wasn’t careful. He’d get caught in the moment like a fly in a spiderweb, what with the rain in the background and the forced proximity in the shed. This was how it always started in those dramas that his mom liked to watch, and the only way out was to instantly kill the mood.
‘Bathroom.’ Kusuo blurted unintelligibly, before running into the rain with his hands over his head.
.
.
.
Bathroom. That had been his excuse. He was only a bit concerned if Teruhashi got confused about what he had meant—if he was going to run to the bathroom or piss himself under the cover of the rain.
But no doubt she’d know he was purposefully avoiding her, which would only put her off more. Then, she’d set her mind on trying to figure out why he was avoiding her, and the whole thing would never end.
Kusuo scrubbed his face as he stared at the mirror in front of him.
The stall behind him suddenly barged open, and the sound of the door banging against the wall was so loud and unexpected that Kusuo actually flinched.
“You ran to the bathroom?” A boy said, emerging from the stall like it was the front door to a house. “If you’re gonna make it obvious, then what’s the point? You’re so lame.”
Kusuo could do nothing but gawk at the boy’s reflection in the mirror. Where did he come from? He was sure he’d been alone in the bathroom when he came in.
The boy shrugged one shoulder, “I just teleported, of course.”
Of course. Silly of him to assume that wasn’t an option.
It was an effort to close his mouth, forming into a grim line. Fearing the answer, Kusuo nevertheless asked, ‘And who… are you?’
The boy’s expression grew amused as he tilted his head to the side. “Do I really have to answer that? I think you already know.”
Well—that was, well… Kusuo couldn’t even think, which meant he was speechless for a good minute. A small part of him had hoped this was just a stress-induced hallucination. It took a couple of blinks to really study the boy’s appearance, taking in all of the similarities. The color of the eyes. The unimpressed scowl on his face. Kusuo’s gaze traveled back to his own reflection in the mirror, and it couldn’t be denied. This boy was a spitting image of himself, only with blue hair.
Kusuo’s throat bobbed as he swallowed a lump. The cleaning chart. The rain. Everything so far… no wonder he couldn’t turn the weather. He had been fighting with another psychic all this time.
‘So, you’re the one behind all of this?’
“Yup. And you know what? It’d be really cool if you could stop trying to erase my existence,” the boy crossed his arms. “Dad.”
Dad?!
Kusuo felt like he was going to faint. ‘Your mom, it can’t be—’
“Teruhashi Kokomi.” The boy answered.
One simple admission, and yet it felt like an elbow to the gut. Good grief.
Kusuo had to grip the sink for support or else he probably would’ve collapsed on the bathroom floor. He willed himself to calm down and think through how this could possibly make sense.
He tried to pry more information from the boy, but his mind was hard to read—not because of any ability he might’ve had, but simply because kids were just so random and unpredictable that they didn’t really have the need to filter out their thoughts yet, compared to most adults. They just said whatever the hell they wanted out loud.
“The over-narration’s getting a bit tiring, dad.”
Kusuo met the boy’s gaze in the mirror, frowning. Case in point.
‘I think you jumped in the wrong timeline, kid.’ Kusuo concluded finally. He assumed the boy must’ve come from some other timeline in the far-off future and inadvertently ended up here. Most likely, he came from the timeline where he and Teruhashi were already dating.
The boy made a face, “You think I’d bother coming here if things were going great for you and mom right now?”
Kusuo paused, digesting this fact. Logically—he had a point there.
“Of course I have a point!” The boy was throwing his hands up now. “This isn’t my first time here, you know! If I don’t keep jumping back to the past to force you two together—I’ll fade away! Do you know how annoying that is?”
Kusuo licked his lips, trying to come up with a rebuttal, but his brain was still too overwhelmed with the idea that he was getting chewed out by his own kid from the future.
“I just wanna watch my shows!” The boy continued to yell his grievances, and Kusuo felt a pang of sympathy there. Wow, maybe they really were related. “Just go and confess already!”
He took offense to that—in many ways. Kusuo scowled. ‘There’s nothing to confess.’
The boy mirrored his own scowl, which was just weird to see. Their lips pulled down in the exact same angle. Is that what he looked like when he was annoyed? “This is exactly my point. You’re such a pro at self-denial that your decisions are even affecting the future. You’re literally ruining my life!”
Okay, clearly this show of theatrics hadn’t been inherited from him. ‘Technically speaking, your existence isn’t set in stone yet, anyway.’
The boy glared, and Kusuo felt a cold touch prickling his neck. “What are you trying to say?”
Oops, he hit a nerve. Better back-pedal a bit. ‘I just mean there could be other futures where I may have children with other people, or none at all, so we don’t know what can happen yet.’
“Yeah, I’ve already seen all of them.” The boy brushed aside like they were just discussing re-runs of some shows, “This isn’t my first time here, remember? There’s a timeline with Aiura-san, with Yumehara-san, with Mera-san, with Kaidou-san, with Kuboyasu-san, with Hairo-san, with Nendou-san—”
‘Even Nendou?’
“I’ve seen it, trust me. The point is, I know there’s all those other timelines. There are timelines where you’re not with anyone at all, and ones where you don’t have any kids. But because of mom’s crazy luck, I inherited all of your powers, and I won’t stop coming here until this timeline becomes permanent.”
That was totally not at all terrifying. Did that mean… all this time, he had been the one answering Teruhashi’s prayers?
“Mom’s not the one trying to erase my existence.” The boy said pointedly. Of course he had to be a mama’s boy. Typical.
A crowbar suddenly apported in the boy’s hand.
Kusuo eyed him suspiciously. ‘What are you doing?’
“No hard feelings, okay dad? This hurts me more than it hurts you.” The boy smiled deferentially as if to put him at ease, but there was a kind of rebellious glint in his eyes that told Kusuo he didn’t quite mind beating him over the head with a crowbar.
Good grief. Did he and Teruhashi… did they actually create some kind of monster?
“I can hear you, you know.”
He had no plans to get clobbered today. Immediately, Kusuo popped off his left limiter and teleported—but the boy was only a nanosecond behind.
“You can’t run away from me, old man!”
‘I’m sixteen!’
“Well you’re pushing forty in my timeline, so you’re practically halfway to being dead!”
Kusuo didn’t know why he took such offense to that, but he did. Pre-teens were so insufferable.
They chased each other for only five minutes, but each minute stretched into what felt like hours—playing tag across different countries, from the middle of the Sahara Desert to the peak of Mount Everest to an abandoned ship drifting across the Atlantic Ocean. The boy was always one step behind him, closer to him than his own shadow, and if Kusuo wasn’t so annoyed, he would’ve been deeply impressed.
Finally, they had collapsed at an impasse on a small island that dotted the Pacific Ocean. Both of them laid strewn across the white sands, catching their breaths on the sea-salt air. The crowbar, for now, had disappeared, a tenuous sign of peace.
Kusuo wiped his brow—he had actually broken a sweat. ‘You don’t wear any limiters?’
“Not if I train.”
Kusuo’s gaze lit up with interest. ‘Who trains you?’
“You, obviously.” The boy rolled his eyes, picking at a seashell. Then he added as an afterthought, “Uncle wanted to train me too, actually. But you said over your dead body.”
‘Good call.’ Kusuo didn’t even want to imagine what kind of monster the boy could become under Kusuke’s tutelage. ‘You’re pretty strong.’
The boy smiled for the first time, practically glowing, and—yup, he saw it more clearly now, there was Teruhashi’s genes kicking in. “Then maybe you can ease off a bit in the future? You’re pretty strict on the training.”
That almost cracked a smile out of Kusuo too, but he managed to keep it in line.
Slowly, this was all starting to sink in now. If he hadn’t believed before that this boy was his son, the wild chase through the different continents forced him to physically confront the realization. The boy was clearly talented and possessed great control over his abilities with the way he naturally wielded them, almost as easy as breathing. Kusuo would have been jealous, if not for the fact that it was his future self that was instilling that training.
‘If this is so important, why doesn’t your dad do… all this?’ Kusuo asked. He felt a bit better talking about his future self in the third person. If he thought about it too hard, it was too much to internalize.
“Oh, you don’t want my dad here,” the boy said too nonchalantly, “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
‘Is he… am I scary?’ Kusuo never imagined he’d have an existential crisis about his parenting style as a teenager.
“Worse,” the boy said, his tone dropping low and hushed. “You’re old.”
Kusuo rolled his eyes. He gave a cough, shoulders shifting as he leaned back against his hands.
‘How’s, uh… your mom?’
The boy scratched his cheek, copying how he leaned back as well. “Hmm. She worries a lot. She tries to hide it though, even when we read her mind.” Kusuo thought he would’ve just said she’s fine or she’s nice, but he gave an uncharacteristically deep answer. It was a surprising glimpse of tenderness—or as much tenderness as a twelve-year old kid could offer. “Oh, but she makes coffee jellies every Sunday!”
Well, at least there were still coffee jellies in his future. His first true love.
“And she’s pregnant. I’m gonna have a sister soon.”
Okay, too much information. Kusuo felt light-headed again.
‘Enough. Don’t tell me anymore.’ Kusuo took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure how this whole confession would affect the boy’s future timeline, it would probably destroy it at this point. But he supposed that as long as his memories were erased, then it wouldn’t matter, anyhow. ‘I’m ready to lose my memories now, before my head explodes.’
The boy gave a lopsided smile. “Finally, I can go home!” The crowbar apported in his hands again, and Kusuo was only a little bit worried when the boy stood over him and readied his stance like he was a batter about to swing. “Thanks old man,” he had the audacity to wink. “I’ll be gentle.”
He had not been gentle.
But Kusuo couldn’t be sure.
.
.
.
In the distant future, Kusuo’s brows raised as he witnessed his son teleport into the living room.
“Welcome back, Kunio!” Kokomi called. “You were gone longer than I expected. Was the store far?”
Kunio made a beeline to his mom and squeezed her in a tight hug. “Oh thank god, last time I tried to come back here, Toritsuka was my dad.”
‘Precocious, isn’t he?’ Kusuo swooped in, quickly interfering.
“… Didn’t you say he was buying soy sauce?”
‘He was.’ Kusuo eyed his son, and right on cue, the boy apported a bottle of soy sauce behind his back and proceeded to show it to his mom like it was evidence in a court trial. Kusuo almost wanted to high-five his son for the timing.
“There’s something weird going on here,” Kokomi commented, giving the two of them a suspicious once-over.
Even in the future, her penchant for telepathy was still a bit unsettling.
‘It’s nothing bad. Just um, psychic stuff, you know.’
They couldn’t exactly tell Kokomi the truth about what her son had been up to. If she found out that her firstborn was actually traveling back to the past to play matchmaker and, worse, knew all of her teenage fantasies—well, she might actually have a conniption.
His wife gave a pout. Kusuo knew it would be better to let her sulk for a bit. She didn’t like feeling left out from their thoughts, especially when they could both read hers. Well, he couldn’t blame her. Who would?
‘I’ll fill you in later, okay?’ Kusuo offered, placing a reassuring hand on the small of her back. ‘It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry so much, it’s not good for the baby.’
At the corner of his eye, he saw Kunio trying to make a slippery exit, and he caught the boy by the back of his cuff before he could escape.
Dragging the boy to his bedroom, Kusuo propped himself against the desk while his son sat criss-cross on the bed.
“Not a big deal?” Kunio gave a snort. “Your children’s lives are at stake, dad. Or do you even still deserve to be called that?”
‘Let’s tone down the dramatics. I didn’t mean it like that, alright?’ Kusuo sighed. ‘Besides, you shouldn’t say things like that in front of your mom. She smiles and tries to take it all in stride, but you should know by now how much she frets over you.’
Kunio flopped back onto his bed with a groan. “Yeah, yeah. I know. It just comes out sometimes.”
Kusuo didn’t think he’d be the nagging parent. But he couldn’t help it. Having a psychic son wasn’t for the faint of heart. He didn’t know how his parents dealt with it. The first time Kunio had learned how to teleport and vanished from his crib, he and Kokomi had been a mess. Now he knew it was indeed possible to feel sick with worry.
His son was a talented psychic—too talented for his own good, in fact, and Kusuo had a fear that one bad influence could turn him into some kind of supervillain. The boy certainly had the knack for it, which was just a bit worrying.
To be honest, he thought Kokomi would be the stricter one, being such a perfectionist and all—and she was still, in a sense. She was the kind of mom who was active in all the parent-teacher conferences and had ready-to-go bags with extra clothes, cash, and copies of all of their formal government identifications in case of some disaster, not completely comprehending that she had two people living with her who would prevent any of that from happening.
Meanwhile, he really leaned into his crotchety side. He complained about the prices of eggs and milk and how young people nowadays no longer returned the grocery store cart back to its proper place. There was just no sense of decorum anymore.
‘What happened in the other timeline?’ Kusuo asked. He wouldn’t deny that he was a bit morbidly curious.
Kunio shuddered. “It was horrible. I wanted to vaporize Toritsuka when he kissed mom on the cheek.”
An amused smile cracked Kusuo’s lips, but still he tried to be stern. He was a parent now. ‘Kunio.’
“I said I wanted to, not that I was actually going to.” The boy defended.
‘Where was I?’
Kunio gave a shrug. “I heard you were a monk.”
Huh. He didn’t mind that, actually. ‘And how’d you fix it this time?’
“I put you two on cleaning duty together.”
‘Oh… that day,’ Kusuo reminisced. That day had been a turning point. Though he paused when he saw a sheepish smile forming on his son’s face, reading the memory that floated at the forefront of the boy’s mind.
‘You whacked me with a crowbar?’
“You said I could!” The boy argued.
‘Revealing yourself to me was dangerous. Even if I allowed you to erase my memory.’
“I can’t help it, I was getting nervous! All the other stuff I did wasn’t working. I locked you in a classroom—then the closet, and I even triggered an earthquake drill just to get you both under the same desk!”
‘I admit it’s frustrating,’ Kusuo said. He knew how stubborn he was back when he was a teenager—especially when he was hellbent on moping around and bemoaning his lack of a normal life. It took the fear of God, or rather, the constant interference of his vengeful son, to finally wear down his teenage self’s obstinance. ‘You did a good job.’
Kunio puffed up his chest and turned up his nose, smirking. “Of course. I have a little sister now. I can’t make her worry.”
Kusuo reached forward to ruffle his son’s hair, a smile on his lips. ‘Then you can’t slack off anymore. Training starts early tomorrow, since you’re a big brother now, right?’
He was answered with a groan. "No fair! You said you'd take it easy on me!"
Kusuo smirked, 'I don't remember saying that.'
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Back in the past, Kusuo rubbed the back of his head as he stared dazedly in the bathroom mirror. He wasn’t sure where the headache stemmed from. Was he that stressed out?
He made his way back to the classroom to get his stuff and teleport home, when his teacher confronted him.
“I hope you didn’t get caught in the rain.” His teacher noted, before pausing. “Wasn’t Teruhashi with you?”
Kusuo stared blankly at him.
“Did you leave her behind?” He sounded almost hysterical.
When he put it that way, it sounded pretty bad.
‘No, I was…’ What was he gonna do? ‘I was—just grabbing an umbrella.’ Kusuo thought quickly, grasping at anything that might sound feasible.
The teacher relaxed and then clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. For a second, I thought you actually ditched Teruhashi.”
Still a bit disoriented at this twist of events, Kusuo grabbed two spare umbrellas from the school office and found himself walking back to the same path he had just escaped from.
Straight ahead, he could see the small garden shed. Inside, Teruhashi almost looked just as pathetic as he felt, and a pang of guilt twisted his stomach. Was this really that big of a deal to her?
She perked up instantly at the sight of him, which for some reason made him feel worse. ‘I knew he wouldn’t actually just leave! You can’t ditch the prettiest girl in the entire school after all. It’s silly that I was even worried for a second.’
Maybe she was right. It hadn’t been the smartest idea to run away like that. In all fairness, he panicked.
As he approached closer, Teruhashi merely gave a beatific smile, skillfully hiding a small grimace. ‘I guess he really just needed the toilet. I hope he made it in time.’
Well, that wasn’t embarrassing at all.
Kusuo tried his best to school his expression into blank stoicism instead of the crawling mortification he felt inside and offered her the spare umbrella.
‘Our teacher told me to give this to you.’ He emphasized teacher pretty well here, lest she think it was his idea to chivalrously run off into the rain just to grab an umbrella for her—which, yes, is exactly what she was already thinking.
“How kind of you, Saiki-kun!” Teruhashi tried to stifle her glee, her fantasies going haywire now. She took the umbrella, but when she tried to unfold it, one of the wires holding it together snapped.
Of course it did.
Kusuo stared dully at the broken wire like its very existence was an offense to nature. Teruhashi gave a sheepish grin.
“It… it looks like we may have to walk together.”
There it was—the single line that culminated into all this trouble. All of this, just to walk home together. To her credit, it sounded pretty natural.
‘I rehearsed that fifteen times this morning!’
Nevermind.
Kusuo sighed internally, but said nothing. For some reason, he felt like he had just run a marathon, and to be honest, he was too lazy to try and work around whatever scheme this was. He wouldn’t combust into flames if he let her have her small victory. Japan wouldn’t fracture into two if they walked home together. The earth wouldn’t tilt off its axis, it would go on spinning and spinning, so he held up the umbrella a little higher and simply waited until she fell in step beside him.
What was the worst that could happen?