Okay, so maybe Touma's fresh start could have gone better, but he doesn't think it went that badly either. As far as his social standing is concerned this is, at worst, a lateral move and he thinks that he managed to present himself accurately as well. That's better than if he had made them all think that he was something he was not and had to commit to keeping up that facade.
Touma's never seen the point of contorting himself into a shape capable of winning the approval of people who'd hate the real him. He'd never had to pretend to be someone he wasn't for Kusuo, who could see everything he was no matter what he did and had decided to befriend him anyway.
Still, it does sting a bit that he did not manage to leave a good enough first impression to have anyone to eat lunch with. It would have been nice if he really could make new friends like dream-Kusuo had said he would.
This thought has hardly passed through his mind when a scrawny teen with a shock of pale blue hair approaches him.
"Greetings, I am the Jet Black Wings, though in this life and body I am known by the name of Kaidou Shun." the boy says striking a strange pose, "last night I had a vision revealing how our fates are destined to intertwine."
"A vision? That is quite unusual. Would you care to elaborate on that statement?" Touma asks, not because he finds this claim believable in the slightest, everything about the boy in front of him screams liar, but he's curious to see where the boy's going with this.
"I saw you in my dream last night." He says, his cool facade splintering to reveal a glimpse of the excitement underneath, "A split-tailed cat with a wounded foot took me to see you and told me that we should be friends."
"Oh my, that certainly sounds interesting!" Touma says clapping his hands together in excitement, "Do you often have visions of that type?"
Even if Kaidou is lying it should be fun to see how he answers that question.
"Yeah," he says his voice squeaking a bit before he gets it back under his control, "All the time."
"I wouldn't suppose that you could by any chance provide some illustrative examples of such visions you've had in past?"
"Of course I can." the boy squawks.
Touma stares at him for a moment in silence. "Will you be providing these illustrative examples you mentioned?"
"There's just so many that it's hard to pick." Kaidou mumbles.
Touma giggles. It's fun to see what kind of excuses Kaidou comes up with.
"Don't laugh," Kaidou says, "You really were in my dream last night."
"Are you certain that it was me?" Touma asks, "Memories of dreams can be quite unreliable as they are exceptionally vulnerable to alteration after waking."
"Well, given how this conversation is going maybe it wasn't you I saw. The guy in my dream was called Asumi, anyway."
Touma leans towards Kaidou with interest, "That was my father's family name, which is something that I don't believe I had the opportunity to mention during my introduction. The fact that you know that does seem to suggest that your dream was in fact supernatural in some manner. Of course it is still possible that you obtained this information beforehand and are currently performing a 'hot reading' of some sort, but our brief acquaintanceship does not paint you as the type of person who would think to utilize such tactics and I have enough experience with supernatural phenomena that I do not doubt that such things as visions can occur."
"Wait, you have experience with the supernatural?" Kaidou asks, this information recapturing his attention that had been beginning to drift.
"That's correct. I'm afraid that the specifics of the matter are a secret that I've promised to keep but I've seen enough to say that things exist in this world that our current understanding of science is insufficient to explain."
"Yeah I totally agree." Kaidou says nodding to himself, "I electrocuted a snake with my mind one time. It was crazy."
"Intriguing." Touma says, tilting his head to one side thoughtfully, "I would be interested in seeing a demonstration of this skill if you care to give it."
"I'm still trying to figure out how to do it on command," Kaidou says, adding hastily "I did do it, though. It was in front of all my classmates and everything. You can ask them if you don't believe me."
"I admit that I am inclined to remain skeptical in the absence of corroborating evidence, but I think that your classmates' accounts will serve that purpose quite nicely."
"Well, if you expect me to believe you without any details or any evidence." Kaidou huffs, "That's hardly fair."
"I don't really care about whether or not you believe me. While I would certainly prefer you to consider me an honest person, my own confidence in the verity of my experience is sufficient for me."
"Huh, anyone ever tell you that you're a strange person."
"Yes, quite frequently. In fact, I believe that that, along with my unfortunately poor bladder control, contributed to making me the target of bullying in elementary school."
"Gosh, um, sorry to hear that." Kaidou says, clearly feeling awkward about having stumbled carelessly into the perceived sore spot.
"It's fine." Touma reassures, "When I was in second grade the three kids most involved in the bullying all simultaneously lost their minds and had to be taken out of school. Everyone left me alone after that."
"Well, it's been nice talking to you but I need to start getting ready for my next class now."
"Are you certain? You haven't finished your lunch yet." Touma asks because he knows from experience that people don't like for you to point out when they are lying.
"It's fine. I'll finish it later" Kaidou says, wrapping up his half-eaten bento with great haste.
Touma finishes his lunch alone. Oh dear, he seems to have scared Kaidou off. Perhaps he should keep the unfortunate fate of his bullies to himself if he wants his social life to be different here.
*
Saiki Kuusuke takes off his mask and goes to the basement fridge to get the blood required for tonight's ritual.
As annoying as it may be to add caring for his new "guest" to his already lengthy list of duties it'll be more than worth it to be able to outsource the blood production to them. His research will probably be much easier if he doesn't have to push through the iron deficit that he's been operating under since he last had to increase the amount of blood required for the sealing ritual.
It's up to four vials twice weekly now.
He carries them to what he likes to think of as Kusuo's portion of the room.
Once there he makes sure each of the ceremonial candles are lit and pours the contents of each vial into one of the four circles of carefully carved sigils surrounding his brother.
It sizzles slightly, like oil poured into a hot pan, as it flows to fill the ornate troughs.
This done he takes a long loving look at his brother's incorruptible shell.
The expression on its face is so serene that it's easy to pretend that he's just peacefully sleeping so long as you ignore the ward wrapped railway spikes protruding from his hands, feet and neck.
Kuusuke dutifully collects the dark, viscous liquid that leaks from his brother's wounds.
It's then he notices with a jolt of fear that the wards wrapping the spike in Kusuo's left hand have burned away.
He gets a strip of paper and fills a fountain pen from another vial of blood to scribble out the sigils necessary to make a replacement. He considers tying it around the now bare spike right away to reset the seal but decides that it will be better to save the promise of that to use as leverage for when he discusses this matter with his darling little brother later.
This is the third time he's burnt off a ward this year and its only May. It would be one thing if they just burned off from the wear of normal use, but he knows this isn't the case. If it were then the wards would gradually accumulate damage spread across all five of them. Instead, it's always the ones on his hands (usually the left one, his brother's dominant hand in life) and they go from undamaged to ruined without warning.
Because of this it's clear as day that the wards keep burning off because his darling little brother can't mind his own business.
With this done he makes his way upstairs to do the not insignificant amount of homework for the degree in aerospace engineering he's in the process of earning.
It's more tedious than difficult really, he needs the degree more for the clout it will provide than because of any lack of knowledge on his own part.
When he's done with that, he works a bit on his independent research. The problem with space travel is that even the speed of light is infuriatingly slow when traversing spaces as vast as those between the stars and even the fastest technologies currently available are far, far slower than that.
Trying to invent faster than light travel with humanity's current technological base is like trying to help a bunch of cavemen who have just developed this cool fire thing and begun experimenting with these newfangled wheels invent the automobile.
Still, he has to do it. He promised Kusuo that he'd send humanity to the stars after all, and they'll need the speed to be able to thrive among them in the time they have left.
Eventually, when he's decided that he can put it off no longer, he takes off the amulet that he always wears and his whole body shivers.
Maybe it's psychosomatic but whenever he removes it, he swears he can feel his brother's metaphysical presence washing over him like water free from a dam, working its way into every little crack and crevice in himself, flowing like rainwater through the karst of his conscious mind to pool in the caverns below. He knows that it will take many lifetimes for that gentle pressure to wear away anything important, but he still hates how vulnerable it feels to know that his every thought is on display for his brother to pick through.
He takes a dose of sleep medicine and goes to bed.
As expected, he dreams of a festival.
There is no distinction there between the sky and the ground. The festival sprawls across both leaving nowhere to escape to.
It's about four in the afternoon in the waking world, so nobody else is there.
His brother is nowhere to be seen.
He calls out, "Kusuo, I need to speak to you."
Nobody comes.
Anger flares in Kuusuke's chest.
He yells into his brother's stupid fake night lit by stupid paper lantern stars, "I've given up so much for you, bled myself to the point of near anemia and you repay me by fucking up your seals and hiding when I come to ask you what you did to break them this time?"
"You can suck up the consequences of your own actions a little longer. I'm fixing your left-hand seal after we have this conversation, and only then."
Kuusuke turns to see his brother standing behind him. Dark viscous liquid oozes from the dime sized hole in his left hand. Other than that, he looks the same as he did the night that Kuusuke first shut him out of that body that lies unrotting in his basement.
Kuusuke's only found his brother's static appearance more disconcerting the more he himself is changed by the unrelenting march of time.
"I want to know what you did and why you did it so I can make sure that this doesn't happen again," he replies.
"What a funny coincidence, I seem to recall you saying the same thing last time this happened. And the time before that, too."
"If you really didn't want to break them then you'd stop mucking about with the physical realm in your ill-guided attempts to help people. Tell me who you did it for this time?"
"What, the piss boy? I didn't think your influence extended that far yet."
Kusuo shakes his head and says,
That's a relief. Kuusuke doesn't have to redo his calculations to see just how much closer his deadline for inventing FTL travel is than he thought, then.
"It's awfully bold of you to intervene at all given how that went the last time you saw him." Kuusuke says, doing his best to feign sympathy. "Why didn't you just leave well enough alone?"
The long dormant serpent of Kuusuke's jealousy awakens from its hibernation to writhe in his guts.
"How." Kuusuke growls, "I thought you made everyone forget. You even tried to make me forget, though I loved you far too dearly for it to work. How does pissboy remember?"
"You should have made him forget anyway. What if the nosy brat comes looking for you?"
"Certainly not. I've hidden you away quite well." Kuusuke says, a smug smile dancing across his lips, "Still, if you know what's good for your friend you won't tempt him to come looking. We both agreed that your current arrangement was for the best remember?"
Kusuo nods.
"So you'll be nice and cooperative with helping me keep you sealed, right?"
Kusuo nods again.
"That's good. You can send me back now."
"I promise, and if I don't, then you can do whatever you like to me." Kuusuke says, adding internally, You need me too much to do anything too debilitating, anyway. You and I both know that.
