not an island

Shun's life continues on like it always has. It's disappointing, really.

The most notable difference is that his mom is now super strict about wanting to know where Shun is at all times. He has to call her before and after going to cram school each day and whenever he will get home even a little bit later than expected he has to call and tell her why. If Shun's social life in his highschool wasn't just as non-existent as it had been in middleschool, then she'd probably make him submit detailed profiles of any prospective friends for her approval.

It's stifling and also extremely unfair. Sora doesn't get this treatment even though she's two years younger than him. Does his mom think he's going to get into another freak plane accident if he spends even five minutes unaccounted for?

None of this is to say that Shun isn't grateful that he got to come back to his family, to his life. He is, very much so. It's just...

It's just that when he realized it was the esper who'd saved him, for a moment he'd thought that maybe this was when everything would change for him. That like in one of his countless fantasies, the esper would explain that he'd saved him because Shun was secretly someone cool and powerful and important that he wanted to team up with.

Of course, this hope came to nothing. Shun will never be anything more than just another ordinary person, no matter what fantasies he invents or lies he tells. What would the esper even want with someone like him?

*

Kusuo starts the day after taking Kaidou home like any other day. He wakes up early enough to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Today, unlike other days, he swigs from a can of coffee while enjoying the view instead of his usual coconut water.

The taste is very nostalgic.

Maybe later he'll regret using it up so soon but he bought it as a drink, not as a keepsake. Though he supposes he can keep the can if he really wants one of those.

Just think of it as an early 16th birthday present to himself. He deserves one of those by now, the last time he'd done something special for his birthday was when he turned eleven. He'd been too busy on his twelfth birthday and hadn't felt like celebrating anyway. The ones since then he'd just missed entirely. There just isn't much to do on the island and the weather is the same year-round, which makes it easy to lose track of the date even with a sense of time as finally honed as his.

After his breakfast he goes fishing. It's probably his least favorite part of his routine but unfortunately a necessary one since it turns out that godlike psychic powers do not protect against the ill effects of nutritional deficiencies.

On the bright side he's managed to craft a technique over the years to skip the most unpleasant parts of the process.

First he walks around on the ocean floor looking for fish. This is what he'd been doing when he found Kaidou. Telepathy makes finding fish pretty easy since it lets him track fish down from their bright, simple thoughts. He could probably make it even easier if he lured the fish to him with telepathic suggestions, but leading them to their death like that feels almost cruel.

After finding a decently edible looking fish, Kusuo takes off his glasses to turn them to stone with his medusa vision. If said fish is part of a school he pulls them aside before doing this so he doesn't end up with way more petrified fish than he needs. He can keep any excess catch fresh with restoration but he worries about the effect he'd have on the already struggling fish populations if he regularly took out whole schools at a time.

When he has a satisfactory amount of petrified fish he takes them back to the island where he breaks off all their heads before the petrification wears off. This means that when they do turn back they do so in pieces, killing them near instantly so Kusuo doesn't have to listen to their panicked dying thoughts.

Today, once he's done fishing Kusuo decides to spend his afternoon reading. After escaping Kusuke he'd gone to a different shopping establishment and bought not only the coffee he'd had this morning, but also a couple of cheap novels. To be honest they look kind of trashy, but after three years, the prospect of new reading material seems absolutely thrilling no matter the quality. The contents of those shonen magazines he'd brought from home are engraved in his memory, the same handful of chapters from stories he'd never see the end of read over and over.

Kusuo finds himself struggling to pay attention to his new book. His mind keeps wandering back to Kaidou. Telepathy is a distracting pain, but it was nice in a way to have thoughts to listen to besides his own. Kaidou had only been here for a few days but now that Kusuo is alone again, the quiet of his island hideaway seems stifling. Kaidou hadn't been particularly special in any way. He was just some sheltered, lonely kid who spent too much time discussing the paranormal on shady forums. This shouldn't bother him so much. His life here is good. Peaceful. A bit dull perhaps but that just means he should get a hobby or something. Maybe he should practice using his powers more, he could always use more control of those.

These stupid vestigial urges that Kaidou's presence reawakened will go dormant again in time. He'll just have to distract himself until they do.

*

Life goes on as it always has. Shun moves from his first year of highschool to his second, and as it progresses his mom reminds him with increasing frequency how he'll have to "get serious" about his studies in his third so he can do well on his university entrance exams. These are quite ominous given how much of his time his apparently not yet serious studies already take up. Will he be able to do anything fun at all next year?

This year he spends his spring break reading and trying to ignore the feeling of his future closing in around him like the walls of a trash compactor.

Towards the end of the week he stops by the library to return his books, as well as check out a few more, and catches a glimpse of pink out of the corner of his eyes. The girl who is the esper sitting at a table in the corner with several books lying open in front of her.

No sooner does Shun recognize her than she looks up from her reading and straight at him. She places a finger to her lips and glares at him.

"What are you doing here?" Shun asks, walking over to the table where she sits.

In a sense I guess you could say I'm trying to do some last minute studying. she says, clearly tired.

Isn't a bit late for that? Finals were last week, Shun thinks before remembering that the esper obviously doesn't go to school. What does the esper even need to study for?

Why should I tell you? You can't keep a secret, she says.

Shun feels a twinge of guilt at how he'd told his family about the esper almost immediately, even if they hadn't believed him.

I knew I shouldn't have let you remember. But since I did, I guess I can let you make it up to me.

"What, how?" Shun asks, baffled.

She presses her books, an assortment of dense geological texts, into Shun's hands and says, The library is closing soon. Check these out for me and I'll come get them tomorrow on the off chance I still need them.

"And if you don't?" Shun asks.

You'll probably never see me again. she says as she walks away, Don't be so sad. You don't even know me.

This doesn't do much to make Shun less sad.