Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was raining when he met him.

Not the kind of miserable, heavy downpour that sends people running for cover, shoes squelching and umbrellas flipping inside out — but a soft, shimmering rain. The kind that glistens when the sunlight catches it just right, turning the air into a curtain of liquid glass. That day, the sky was caught in one of those indecisive moods — the kind that can’t choose between melancholy and warmth. The sun peeked through patches in the clouds. The wind nudged leaves around playfully. And the rain? It came down in gentle sheets, light as whispers.

Some would call it “the perfect day for a stroll.”

Kusuke’s parents seemed to agree.

They’d left their four-year-old son alone in the park — which, to anyone with even a basic sense of responsibility, would’ve looked like abandonment. A clear-cut case of reckless parenting. But not with Kusuke. Because Kusuke Saiki wasn’t just any child. He wasn’t the kind you needed to hold hands with or follow around in case he tripped over a rock. Kusuke had stopped being "ordinary" long before he could even walk.

His mind operated on a different frequency — high, sharp, and painfully precise. Like a radio picking up signals from a world no one else could hear. While other toddlers were struggling with crayons and picture books, Kusuke was reading technical manuals and calculating probabilities for fun. He wasn't coddled; he was trusted. Relied on. His parents didn’t hover — they handed him shopping lists and budgets and expected him back with the correct change. And he delivered. Every time.

So while the other kids screamed and tumbled across the jungle gym or laughed at fart jokes, Kusuke stood at the far edge of the playground, crouched low to the ground like a little old man, intensely focused on a trail of ants. His hands were planted on his knees, his eyes narrowed, his entire body as still as stone. He looked like he was waiting for them to make a mistake.

The rain tapped lightly on his arms, a constant pattern of cold pinpricks. It slid down his skin in slow, shivering streaks — irritating, unwanted. He didn’t flinch, but he hated it. The kind of ticklish sensation that made your skin crawl. Without looking away from the ants, he rubbed the water off with more force than necessary, as though punishing it for existing.

They were struggling with a leaf — oversized, awkward, way beyond what their small bodies should’ve been able to lift. Kusuke watched with mild disdain. Their coordination was inefficient. Their formation flawed. If they had any understanding of geometry, they might’ve succeeded by now. Still, he observed, because something about their stubbornness intrigued him. Maybe even annoyed him. He couldn’t quite tell.

And then… the rain above him stopped.

Not dramatically — the kind of sudden pause that makes you look around and realize something’s changed. The puddles in front of him still rippled with droplets. The park was still speckled with falling rain. But he was dry now. Suspiciously dry.

He blinked, slow and annoyed, then looked up.

He half-expected to see his parents, maybe having returned early in some fleeting moment of parental instinct. But instead, it was a boy.

Maybe a year older than him. Blue hair, perfectly combed into place — too perfect, like it hadn’t moved once since he left the house. He held a comically large umbrella in both hands, gripping it tightly enough that his knuckles turned pale. The handle was carved with some elaborate logo, something designer-looking and needlessly fancy. Kusuke squinted at it, but the boy’s stubby fingers obscured the full image. Still, it was clear enough: this wasn’t some average park kid. This was a private-school-uniform, monogrammed-lunchbox, probably-has-his-own-credit-card kind of kid.

And yet… there he stood. Alone. No nanny, no butler, no maid shadowing him with tissues and juice boxes.

A thick, glistening line of snot dripped steadily from his nose.

Kusuke stared at it, mildly disgusted, but mostly confused. The appearance didn’t match the presentation. Kids like this weren’t supposed to wander off. Kids like this weren’t supposed to approach people like him.

And yet, here he was — holding an umbrella over Kusuke’s head like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Kusuke blinked again, this time slower, more calculated.

He wasn’t the type to be startled. Or flattered. Or moved. Most kids avoided him. Some were scared of him. Others just thought he was weird. He didn’t talk like them, didn’t laugh like them, didn’t care about whatever nonsense they were obsessed with. Insects interested him more than people. Puzzles more than playdates. Adults found him "impressive." Kids found him "creepy."

So when another boy — a complete stranger, and a snot-nosed one at that — approached him and offered, unprompted, shelter from the rain?

He wasn’t flattered.

He was skeptical.

He’ll go away soon anyway, Kusuke thought flatly. They always did. People only ever approached him when they needed help with something — directions, answers, impossible questions. This kid didn’t look like he needed help. And even if he did, he didn’t look like the type to ask for it. Rich kids would rather eat dirt than admit they needed help from someone smarter than them.

The boy tilted his head.

“Why are you staring at the ground?” he asked, like he couldn’t see it — like the answer wasn’t right there, crawling across the dirt.

The question hung in the air, dumb and heavy.

Kusuke didn’t respond immediately. He looked down again. The ants had done it. Against his calculations, they had lifted the oversized leaf and were now dragging it away like some kind of awkward, flailing trophy.

He sighed — more annoyed than impressed.

Great. Now he’d have to find something else to focus on.

He glanced up at the boy again.

“Looking at ants,” he replied flatly.

The boy, now tired, sat down next to him on the curb of the playground, his oversized umbrella still in his hands.

The boy’s eyes lit up instantly, his whole face brightening as if Kusuke had just handed him a prize.

“You like looking at them too!?” he asked, voice cracking with excitement.

Kusuke blinked, trying to decide if this was worse than the rain.

“…No,” he said after a long pause, each syllable deliberate. “Not like. I was observing them.”

He thought the clarification would be enough to shut the conversation down. It usually was.

The boy tilted his head. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Kusuke exhaled quietly through his nose, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “No. Liking implies emotional engagement. I was collecting data.”

There was a short silence — not awkward on Kusuke’s part, but the kind that usually ended with people walking away. He was already mentally preparing for the sound of retreating footsteps.

Instead, the boy sniffled again. Loudly.

"Cool,” he said, somehow still smiling. “You’re smart.”

Kusuke blinked. Again.

What is with this kid? he thought to himself.

Before he could respond, the boy’s expression shifted — his grin growing almost mischievous. He shoved one hand into his coat pocket and rummaged around as if looking for a snack, then slowly pulled something out with both hands cupped around it like a precious jewel, his umbrella shoved into his armpit.

“I caught this,” he whispered, as if it were a secret. “He’s my pet.”

He opened his hands, and sitting there was a beetle. Big, shiny, and very much alive.

Kusuke stared at it.

It stared back.

He looked at the other boy, whose eyes were twinkling with pride, his smile bright and wide. Kusuke opened his mouth to say something — perhaps to criticize the beetle or him — but he never got the chance. The beetle, deciding it wanted no part in whatever this was, suddenly took flight. It zipped into the air with a loud buzz and vanished into the rain-speckled sky.

The boy gasped.

Then, his face crumpled.

There was a second of silence, and then—

“NOOOO!!”

The boy burst into tears right then and there, shoulders shaking, umbrella wobbling dangerously in his grip.

“I was going to bring him home!” he cried out, his voice cracking with how loud he was being. Kusuke resisted the urge to cover his ears.

Instead, he just… stared.

He considered walking away. Right now. Just standing up and disappearing into the trees like this never happened. But the sound of the boy’s very real, very dramatic sobbing made something inside his chest twist — like guilt, or annoyance, or both. Mostly annoyance.

So, sighing like a man thrice his age, Kusuke stood up, scanned the sky, and followed the beetle.

It hadn’t gone far — just clinging to a low branch a few feet away, wings still twitching.

With the kind of precision and calm that would later make him famous, Kusuke reached out, cupped his hands, and gently caught the beetle. It didn’t fight him.

When he turned around, the boy was still crying, though now just sniffling — little hiccuping breaths of mourning. The umbrella was still in his hands, as if he’d forgotten to drop it.

Kusuke walked back and held out his hands.

The boy blinked through his tears. His eyes widened again.

“You… you caught Kevin,” he whispered.

Kusuke gave a small, reluctant nod.

“That’s a stupid name,” he muttered, placing the beetle carefully back into the boy’s waiting palm — which had been stretched out toward him the moment he started walking back. He kept forgetting about the lack of motor skills most kids his age had.

The boy beamed. “Thank you! You’re like… like a beetle whisperer!”

Kusuke frowned. “That’s not a real term.”

“It should be,” the boy grinned, and for a second, Kusuke didn’t have a response.

The boy extended one hand. The other still clutched Kevin like a trophy.

“I’m Makoto,” he said, smiling even wider with excitement, the umbrella still clutched to his chest. “Makoto Teruhashi.”

Kusuke looked at the hand like it was some strange foreign object. Then, after a long moment, he shook it. Briefly.

“…Kusuke Saiki.”

Makoto smiled so wide it almost made Kusuke uncomfortable.

“You wanna feed Kevin some leafs?”

Kusuke hesitated. Then sighed. “Fine. And it’s leaves, not leafs,” he corrected.

He wondered how long this friendship would last.

Chapter Text

The comfortable, predictable shape of Kusuke’s world had, over the years, settled around two fixed points. One was a challenge, a constant, gnawing itch in the back of his mind named Kusuo. The other was a presence, as steady and unremarkable as his own heartbeat, named Makoto.

Their friendship hadn’t so much changed as it had… solidified. Makoto was no longer the snot-nosed kid with the oversized umbrella. At twelve years old, he’d grown into his looks, his blue hair perpetually neat, his clothes always looking like they’d just been unpackaged. The spoiling from his wealthy parents had evolved from a child’s indulgence into a pre-teen’s entitlement. He carried himself with an unshakable, almost amusing confidence, a certainty that things would work out for him because they always had. He assumed Kusuke’s time was his to claim, arriving after school with a casual, “My driver’s waiting, but we have an hour,” as if his schedule were a decree.

Kusuke tolerated it. More than tolerated it. He found a strange, quiet order in Makoto’s predictability. While Kusuo was a problem that defied all known laws, Makoto was a problem he’d solved long ago. He knew every one of Makoto’s tells: the way his nose scrunched when he was confused, the way he’d puff out his chest when trying to look authoritative, the way his voice would get a little too loud when he was lying. It was comfortable. It was easy.

This easy rhythm was disrupted by a new variable: school.

Not the learning part—that was a tedious formality he could sleep through. It was the social part. The other children. They were a cacophony of neediness, insecurity, and brutal, simple hierarchies. Kusuke existed outside of it all, a silent observer behind a book or a schematics notebook. They mostly left him alone, sensing something off-putting and unapproachable in his calm detachment.

Makoto, however, slid into the social structure like a hand into a well-worn glove. He was popular. Not because he was particularly funny or kind, but because he was rich, good-looking, and radiated that unshakeable confidence. People were drawn to it. He moved through the crowded halls with an easy grace, collecting greetings and smiles like currency.

Kusuke watched it all from a distance, mildly bored. Their worlds at school barely touched. Makoto belonged to the realm of group projects and lunchroom chatter; Kusuke belonged to the library and the empty bench behind the gym. It was a silent understanding. Makoto never tried to drag him into the spotlight, and Kusuke never expected him to.

Until the day he did.

It was after final bell. Kusuke was taking his usual shortcut home, a path that wound behind the science wing, away from the crowds. The sound was what caught his attention first: a sharp, nasal voice, then a low, familiar one trying to respond.

“—think you’re so cool because your dad drives a fancy car? Huh? Gonna call your daddy?”

Kusuke rounded the corner. Three older boys, eighth-graders by the look of them, had Makoto backed against the brick wall. One of them had a fist twisted in the front of Makoto’s pristine, probably-expensive uniform shirt. Makoto’s face was pale, but his chin was lifted, his eyes blazing with a defiance that was clearly pissing off his captors.

“I don’t need to call anyone,” Makoto said, his voice tighter than usual. “Let go of me.”

“Or what?” the leader sneered, giving him a sharp shake.

Kusuke stopped. He calculated. The odds of him winning a physical confrontation were low. His intellect was his weapon, not his fists. The logical choice was to walk away. To find a teacher. To let the natural consequences of Makoto’s big mouth play out. It would be a learning experience.

He saw the fear in Makoto’s eyes, poorly hidden behind the bravado. He saw the way his hands were clenched, not into fists, but into nervous balls.

Kusuke sighed. Loudly.

All four boys turned to look at him. He leaned against the wall, pulling a small gadget from his pocket—just something he’d been fiddling with, lights blinking faintly. He twisted a dial, not even glancing their way.

“You’ve got about a minute before a teacher rounds that corner,” he said, calm but sharp. Finally, his eyes lifted, pinning the ringleader. “And when they do, youll be done— especially with that track record. No more second chances.” He let the words hang, voice even and cold. “So—what’s it going to be?”

He said it all like he was reading the weather. There was no threat in his tone. Just cold, hard data.

The older boy’s bravado faltered. He glanced at the gadget in Kusuke’s hand, then at his unnervingly calm face. He couldn’t process this. This wasn’t how victims were supposed to act.

“Whatever. Freak,” he muttered, shoving Makoto away from the wall. “Your rich-boy friend’s a loser anyway.”

They slunk off, throwing dirty looks over their shoulders.

Makoto stumbled forward, straightening his shirt with trembling hands. His face was flushed with a mixture of relief and humiliation. “I had that under control,” he mumbled, avoiding Kusuke’s eyes.

“Clearly,” Kusuke said, pocketing his device that was merely just a knockoff toy his dad brought him. “Your strategy of ‘getting punched’ was very advanced.”

“I wasn’t going to get punched!” Makoto insisted, his voice returning to its normal volume. “I was… de-escalating.”

“You were escalating. There’s a difference.” Kusuke started walking, and Makoto fell into step beside him, still fussing with his collar. “Why were they after you?”

Makoto scowled. “Takahiko said my new sneakers were ‘try-hard.’ So I may have implied his family’s car smelled like old fish.”

Kusuke almost smiled. Almost. “If it makes you feel any better I would've punched you aswell.”

He just rolled his eyes at that.

They walked in silence for a block, the familiar rhythm of their companionship settling back into place. The incident was already fading for Kusuke, filed away as a minor data point on human aggression. For Makoto, it was clearly a bigger deal. He was uncharacteristically quiet.

“Thanks,” he said finally, the word sounding foreign and awkward in his mouth.

“Don’t mention it,” Kusuke replied, a slight smile tinged on his lips.

It was then, as they turned onto their street, that Kusuke saw the car. His father’s car, parked haphazardly in the driveway at a strange angle. The front door to the house was slightly ajar.

A cold feeling, entirely different from the calculated coldness he usually wielded, settled in his stomach. His parents were never home this early.

He didn’t say anything to Makoto. He just walked faster, his schoolbag suddenly feeling heavy. Makoto, sensing the shift, followed without a word.

The house was too quiet. The kind of quiet that feels loud. Kusuke dropped his bag by the door and moved through the downstairs rooms. Empty.

Then, a sound from upstairs. A low, thrumming hum that vibrated in his teeth. It was a sound he’d come to know well in the six years since his brother was born.

He took the stairs two at a time, Makoto trailing behind him, confused. “Kusuke? What is it?”

Kusuke didn’t answer. He pushed open the door to his parents’ bedroom.

The scene inside was one of controlled chaos. His father was on his hands and knees, peering under the bed, his face pale. His mother was standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. She was staring at the ceiling.

Kusuke followed her gaze.

Floating about a foot below the ceiling, spinning slowly in a lazy circle, was six-year-old Kusuo. He was on his stomach, chin propped in his hands, reading a comic book. He was completely serene. Around him, in a loose orbit, floated a cup of juice, a half-eaten apple, and a startled-looking hamster in its plastic ball.

The hamster wheel was spinning frantically, going nowhere.

“He was just reading,” his mother whispered, her voice trembling slightly, “and then he just… went up.”

This was his life. This was what his world had become.

His parents, Kurumi and Kuniharu, were… well, they were parents. Love wasn’t the question. Kusuke knew, in his own way, that they loved them. But their method of parenting was less about guidance and more about… weathering. His mother operated on a wavelength of pure, uncomplicated love and slightly ditziness that somehow, against all odds, often worked. His father was a well-meaning fool, a man who approached life’s problems with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the planning of a goldfish.

They loved Kusuo. They were also terrified of him. They tiptoed around his abilities, trying to fold them into a semblance of normal family life. They’d gasp and clap when he teleported his peas away instead of eating them, as if it were a clever magic trick. They’d whisper frantic questions to Kusuke, the only one who seemed to understand what was happening, treating him less like a son and more like a resident exorcist.

Kusuo, for his part, seemed mostly bored by it all. His powers were as natural to him as breathing, and he used them with the casual disregard of someone flipping a light switch. He didn’t show off. He didn’t cause trouble on purpose. He just… was. A natural disaster in the form of a quiet child who really liked coffee jelly.

Kusuke looked from his floating brother to his distraught parents. He felt the familiar surge of frustration, of rivalry. He should be working on his anti-gravity device. He should be taking notes. This was a prime opportunity for study.

But then he saw the genuine, helpless fear on his mother’s face. He saw the utter confusion on his father’s.

He sighed, the sound heavy in the strange, humming room.

“He’s not coming down if you keep staring,” Kusuke said, his voice slicing through the tension.

His parents looked at him. “We’re… making it worse?” his father asked.

“Yeah,” Kusuke replied flatly. “You give him attention, he’ll keep doing it. Stop reacting. He’ll come down on his own.” He didn’t know if it was true, but it sounded like a plan—and it was better than them running around panicking.

He turned and left the room, needing air. Makoto followed him, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

They ended up in the backyard, sitting on the steps. The afternoon sun was warm. From inside, they could hear his parents trying very badly to act normal.

“So… that happens often?” Makoto asked after a long silence. His voice was careful.

“Often enough,” Kusuke replied, staring at a line of ants marching across the pavement. Some things never changed.

“And he just… floats?”

“Among other things.”

Makoto was quiet for a moment, processing. Kusuke prepared for the questions, the disbelief, the fear, the eventual retreat. This was usually where people started backing away.

“Wow,” Makoto said finally. There was no fear in his voice. Just a dawning, profound awe. “Your brother is so cool.”

Kusuke turned to look at him. Makoto’s face was lit up with the same excitement he’d had when he’d first shown him that beetle years ago. There was no sense of threat, no unease. Just pure, unadulterated admiration.

“Cool?” Kusuke repeated, the word feeling absurd.

“Yeah!” Makoto said, his voice gaining energy. “I mean, he can fly! And make stuff fly! That’s the coolest power ever! Way better than being good at math.”

Kusuke just stared at him. He looked from Makoto’s genuinely impressed face back toward the house, where his impossible brother was probably still spinning near the ceiling. The two fixed points of his world seemed to tilt, their meanings shifting.

One was a rival, a problem to be solved, a source of endless frustration and drive.

The other was a friend, who saw that same rival not as a threat, but as the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

The simplicity of it was, for once, not annoying. It was… grounding.

“He’s a nuisance,” Kusuke said, but the edge was gone from his voice.

“You’re just jealous,” Makoto said with a grin, nudging him with his elbow.

Kusuke didn’t answer. He just went back to watching the ants.

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.
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Life in the Saiki household bent itself around Kusuo in ways that no one ever truly acknowledged out loud. It wasn’t a choice, not really, just a slow rearranging of reality in the hope of avoiding disaster. Glass cups and vases migrated to shelves far above a toddler’s reach. Doors had their locks removed after the day Kusuo decided he wanted the toy on the other side and simply blinked the entire door into the front yard. Dinner was served with the quiet expectation that some portion would vanish and later turn up behind the couch. The house carried a constant, nervous energy: everyone smiling a little too quickly, laughing a little too loud, pretending that nothing was strange while reality itself rearranged in the background.

Their parents loved Kusuo—of course they did—but Kusuke could feel the fear that seeped through the walls. They were reactive parents now, not guiding but cleaning up. When a lamp exploded suddenly, there was no scolding, just a soft, “Oh, must’ve been too breezy in here.” Kusuke had to live inside that pantomime too, watching as his baby brother was treated as something between fragile and untouchable.

Kusuo was six years younger, still small and pink-haired, barely able to string sentences together when his powers had already swallowed the house whole. For Kusuke, it was intolerable. He was supposed to be the genius, the one who understood. But here was this little boy, a toddler who chewed his sleeves and hummed when he was overwhelmed, and the whole world bent around him. It wasn’t earned. It wasn’t logical. It was an insult to everything Kusuke believed about order and effort.

He told himself it was rivalry, that he would solve Kusuo like a math problem, break down his powers into manageable equations and find the answer that proved Kusuke was still the smarter one. But beneath the tight knot of frustration was something far uglier: awe. Secret, humiliating awe. His brother bent laws that weren’t meant to bend, and Kusuke couldn’t look away.

So his workshop became a fortress. Popsicle-stick dams and beetle harnesses that Makoto would drag him into building were shoved aside. The walls grew crowded with diagrams and blueprints—fields that could block energy, helmets to mute telepathy, dampeners to cut the powers down to size. He told himself it was about control. Really, it was war. A one-sided war against the little boy who sometimes sat in the hall muttering to himself, lining up his toy blocks in rigid patterns only to knock them down with a flick of thought.

The only constant was Makoto. He never saw Kusuo as a threat or a rival. He simply adjusted, as if the Saiki family had gained a new, peculiar planet in orbit and Makoto was perfectly willing to be pulled along. He showed up with snacks for three instead of two. He invited Kusuo into their games, patient as he explained checkers rules to a preschooler who inevitably cheated with telekinesis and still called it fair. Makoto only laughed, “Whoa, Kusuo, you’re amazing!” He praised much to Kusuke's dismay.

Makoto’s presence forced Kusuke into some shape of normalcy. He couldn’t hide in his bunker all day when Makoto was dragging him outside, or insisting on building pillow forts that Kusuo inevitably floated into the ceiling. When Kusuo had nightmares that turned the living room into a miniature rainforest, Makoto didn’t panic. He just grabbed a broom, helped sweep the soil out of the carpet, and asked, “Do you think the plants will survive?” It grounded Kusuke, irritated him, and saved him all at once.

Years passed that way. Kusuo grew into a quiet, withdrawn child, eight years old but weighted down as if he were ancient. He sat reading books that turned their own pages, or staring at the wall with a glazed expression that made Kusuke itch. The air around him was never still; there was always a pressure, like a storm waiting to break. Kusuke told himself he was close to an answer. He was fourteen when he finished his most ambitious project: a pair of black glasses constructed solely to create a null-field, a bubble where Kusuo’s powers couldn’t exist.

They were a logical solution, an elegant dampener to make the constant, oppressive hum of his brother’s power bearable for everyone. For Kusuo.

But Kusuo had rejected them. He’d called them “annoying.” He’d said they “muffled everything wrong.”

It was this rejection that festered in Kusuke now as he stood in the doorway of Kusuo’s room. His brother was on the floor, intently building a tower of blocks with his mind, each piece snapping into place with a precise telekinetic click. The air vibrated with the effortless expenditure of world-altering energy.

“You’re not even trying them,” Kusuke stated, his voice cold and flat. He held up the glasses. “You haven’t worn them once since I gave them to you.”

Kusuo didn’t look up. His small brow was furrowed in concentration. “They’re itchy. And the world gets… fuzzy. I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. It’s necessary. Or would you prefer to keep accidentally teleporting the roof away when you have a bad dream?” Kusuke’s patience, always thin where Kusuo was concerned, was shredding rapidly.

“I can control it,” Kusuo mumbled, a blatant lie. The tower of blocks wobbled precariously.

“Control it?” Kusuke let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “You have no concept of control. You’re a child playing with a nuclear reactor. You have no idea what it’s like for the rest of us, living in the fallout zone of your… your lack of discipline!”

Finally, Kusuo looked up. His large, lilac eyes were wide, not with anger, but with a startling vulnerability. The blocks clattered to the floor, forgotten. “You think I don’t know?” His voice was small. “It’s too loud. All the time. Everyone’s thoughts are like… like bees. In my head. All the time. It’s too much.”

There it was. The admission Kusuke had been waiting for, the very reason for his invention. And all he felt was a surge of vindictive triumph. “Oh, it’s *too much* for you?” he sneered, taking a step into the room. “How tragic. You’re overwhelmed by the very power that makes you a god. Boo hoo. My solution is right here.” He shook the glasses. “But you’re too stubborn and too spoiled to even try!”

He was towering over him now, and he saw it—a flicker of fear in Kusuo’s eyes. The fear he’d accused him of so long ago. It should have satisfied him. It only made him angrier.

Kusuo shrank back. “I said I don’t like them!”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU LIKE!” Kusuke’s composure shattered. He lashed out, his hand snapping forward not to hit, but to snatch, to force. He grabbed for the glasses to shove them onto his brother’s face himself.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Terrified of his brother’s rage, Kusuo’s own power flared in defense. A wall of pure telekinetic force slammed into Kusuke, lifting him off his feet and hurling him backward. He crashed into the wall with a sickening thud, the air forced from his lungs, pinned like a butterfly in a display case. He struggled, gasping, but he was utterly immobilized.

For a long second, they were frozen there: Kuusuke pinned against the wall, his face a mask of stunned, incandescent rage, and Kusuo standing before him, his own fear giving way to a horrified realization of what he’d just done.

The door flew open. “Boys! What in the world is all this—?” Their mother, Kurumi, stood in the doorway, her hands flying to her cheeks as she took in the scene.

“Kusuo! Let him down this instant!” she cried, her voice trembling.

The telekinetic grip vanished. Kusuke dropped to the floor, landing hard on his knees. He didn’t look at his mother. His glare was solely for Kusuo, a promise of vengeance contained in a single, searing look.

“Both of you!” Kurumi said, her voice firm now. “To your rooms! Now!”

Without a word, Kusuke pushed past her, his shoulder brushing the doorframe. He heard the slam of his brother’s bedroom door down the hall a moment later, a sound like a gunshot.

Alone in his room, Kusuke’s breath came in ragged gasps. He stormed into his en-suite bathroom, turning the faucet on cold and splashing the water onto his face, again and again, trying to shock the white-hot fury out of his system.

He gripped the edges of the sink, head hanging down, water dripping from his hair and nose onto the porcelain. He took a shaky breath and finally looked up into the mirror.

And he saw them. Tracing paths through the water droplets on his pale skin were tears. Silent, traitorous tears he hadn’t even felt coming.

A fresh, hotter wave of anger—at himself—flooded him. *Crying?* He was crying? Over that ungrateful, overpowered brat? Over a stupid fight? He was Kuusuke Saiki, a genius who surpassed all of humanity. He didn’t *cry*.

He snarled at his reflection, swiping violently at his eyes with the back of his hand, erasing the evidence. The weakness disgusted him. But beneath the self-loathing, his brother’s small, scared voice echoed. *It’s too much. All the time.*

He saw the fear in Kusuo’s eyes again. Not the fear of a rival, but of a child being yelled at by his big brother. He had laughed in his face. He, a fourteen-year-old genius, had mocked an eight-year-old for being overwhelmed.

The guilt was a physical nausea. He had become the very thing he despised: just another uncontrollable, emotional variable in his brother’s chaotic world.

The next morning, heavy with shame and a new, grim purpose, Kuusuke went to Makoto’s house. He found him in his pristine bedroom, organizing a new collection of model cars.

“He told me it was too loud,” Kusuke said without preamble, slumping into Makoto’s desk chair. “That everyone’s thoughts are like bees in his head. All the time. And I… I laughed at him.”

Makoto put down a tiny silver sports car. “Yeah,” he said, simple and direct. “Sounds awful. You were a jerk.”

“I know that!” Kusuke snapped, but there was no heat in it. “I just… I thought I was building these to protect us from him. To control his power. I didn’t…” He trailed off, the realization cold and clear. “I didn’t stop to think I should be building them to protect him.”

"So build those instead.”

That afternoon, Kuusuke returned to his workshop with a completely new perspective. He swept the old, forceful blueprints for helmets and null-fields into the trash. He sat down with a new, focused calm. He wasn’t making a cage. He was making a shelter.

He worked through the night. He wasn’t building a dam to block a river; he was designing a gentle levy to guide it, to keep it from flooding its banks. He shaped something small, almost delicate. Two perfect, pink spereical phsychically reactive antennas. Not to erase Kusuo’s powers, but to give him a dial to turn them down. To make it quiet.

He found Kusuo in his room the next day, reading a manga. The book was floating in the air, pages turning by themselves. The air still thrummed with his power.

Kusuo looked up warily as Kusuke entered, his small body tensing for another fight.

Kusuke didn’t speak. He just walked forward, knelt down so he was at his eye level, and held out the new limiters. “These are different,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “They won’t muffle things. They’ll just… turn the volume down. You can control it.”

Kusuo looked from the antennas to his brother’s face, searching for the mockery from days before. Finding none, he gave a tiny, hesitant nod.

Kusuke gently fixed the limiters into his pink hair. They clicked into place, seamless.

The effect was immediate. The heavy hum of power that constantly surrounded Kusuo vanished. The air in the room became still and normal and quiet.

Kusuo blinked. He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. A profound sense of relief seemed to wash over his small frame. His shoulders, which were always slightly hunched as if carrying a great weight, relaxed. He looked down at the book in his lap, then back up at Kusuke.

A tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “...Thanks,” he said although his lips didn't move. He immediately picked up his book again, snuggling deeper into his chair, a picture of serene, focused contentment. He looked, for the first time, like what he was: a peaceful little boy reading a comic.

Kusuke left without another word. He hadn’t won. He had finally understood.

Chapter Text

The quiet in the house after Kusuo got his limiters wasn’t the usual kind of quiet. It wasn’t the tense hush before a storm. This was heavier, final. Kusuo had basically stopped talking. It happened slowly.

First, he stopped answering out loud. You’d ask what he wanted for dinner, and after a pause the word coffee jelly would slide into your head, clean and noiseless. It was efficient, polite even—but deeply unsettling. He’d abandoned his voice, his tongue, the whole messy business of speaking. The limiters had given him control, turned telepathy from a curse into a choice. And Kusuo’s choice was distance.

Kuusuke saw it for what it was. The limiters weren’t a gift; they were better armor. The gratitude he’d half-hoped for never came. Instead, Kusuo used them to wall himself off more completely than ever. He could sit in the room without really being there. For Kuusuke, it felt like a rejection sharp enough to draw blood. He’d offered a solution, something he’d actually thought about for once, and Kusuo had turned it into the ultimate silent treatment. That rejection sat in Kuusuke like ice, and eventually it curdled into anger—cold, precise, the perfect mirror of Kusuo’s withdrawal.

That anger that had been festering inside him didn’t stay anger for long—it morphed into something else: competition. Kuusuke couldn’t stand watching Kusuo float through life getting everything without trying. Teachers liked him, people gravitated toward him, he excelled at things without lifting a finger—and that was without even using his powers. It was infuriating. Even Kuusuke himself had played into it more times than he wanted to admit, making things easier for Kusuo, giving him advantages, only to watch him brush it all aside like it meant nothing. Somewhere in his mind, Kuusuke decided that if Kusuo was going to act untouchable, then he’d make it his mission to prove he wasn’t.

So Kuusuke challenged him, over and over. He dragged Kusuo into chess matches, only to watch the board collapse in his favor within minutes. He pushed him into test scores, burning hours over textbooks while Kusuo glanced at the page once and walked away with a perfect mark. He poured himself into inventions—gadgets that should’ve impressed, should’ve proved him superior—but even then, Kusuo would poke a hole in them with one absent comment or, worse, show no reaction at all. Every arena Kuusuke tried to claim—logic, intelligence, effort—his little brother trampled over without breaking stride. And still, Kuusuke couldn’t stop. Losing to Kusuo became its own cycle, a maddening ritual he couldn’t quit.

And Kusuo? His answer was always the same: retreat. If Kuusuke walked into a room, Kusuo would be gone in minutes, slipping out the window or suddenly “remembering” something to do. He never looked Kuusuke in the eye anymore; his gaze just slid past, empty, like Kuusuke was furniture. Odd, though. Sometimes, when Kuusuke’s tone went sharp with their parents, Kusuo’s shoulders would stiffen almost imperceptibly. Once or twice, when Kuusuke moved too fast, he thought he saw the faintest twitch, like Kusuo was bracing for something.

Kuusuke dismissed it. Kusuo, afraid? The idea was ridiculous. His brother didn’t scare—he was too cold, too distant, too smug for that. No, whatever was hiding behind those little tics couldn’t possibly be fear. Kuusuke didn’t buy it. Wouldn’t.

Both of them lived trapped in their own extremes. Kuusuke was a storm of obsessions, forgetting to eat or sleep when an invention took hold. He couldn’t understand why people melted down over little things, yet a missing screwdriver could send him into a fury. He treated people like broken machines that just needed the right fix. Kusuo needed everything to be controlled: his coffee jelly in the same bowl, his books lined up just so. Any break in routine, any emotional outburst, and he shut down. Together, they were a locked door and a broken key—useless to each other.

The only thing that kept Kuusuke tethered was Makoto. But even that started to change. It was around this time that Kuusuke began noticing Makoto’s little sister. Kokomi Teruhashi had been born around the same time as Kusuo. He remembered her first birthday—a blur of frills, cake, and a drooling baby. He’d left as soon as he could. Now she was impossible to ignore. She didn’t just grow up cute; she grew up blinding. Blue hair that caught the light, wide eyes, and a smile that made the room tilt toward her. People adored her instantly. Everyone did. Makoto noticed too. He transformed from laid-back show-off into guard dog.

Every boy who looked her way was an enemy. Every smile she gave was another reason for him to build a wall around her. He started talking more about acting, about following his father’s footsteps. Being adored fit him, almost too well.

Watching Makoto grow sharp and serious pushed Kuusuke the other way. He doubled down on sarcasm, cynicism, treating everything as a private joke. It was defense, a way to counter Makoto’s new intensity. They became warped mirrors of each other. Makoto, the proud would-be leading man, already practicing his poses. Kuusuke, the razor-tongued genius who mocked the very idea of drama. Their friendship shifted into sparring matches—Makoto bragging about his dad’s movies or Kokomi’s perfection, Kuusuke cutting him down with surgical sarcasm. But beneath it all, the bond held. Makoto was the only one who could handle Kuusuke without turning into a rival, and Kuusuke was the only one who saw past Makoto’s shine. They were still best friends—just sharper, messier, more complicated than before.

Lately, their sparring had been getting… strange. The rhythm was the same—Makoto bragging, Kuusuke tearing him down—but the content had shifted. The insults were softer, the boasting less about Makoto’s brilliance and more about their supposed shared future.

“When I’m a superstar, you’ll be designing my gadgets,” Makoto said once, sprawling across his desk chair like he was already posing for a poster. “Action movies, sci-fi blockbusters—you’ll make the props, I’ll make them look good. Perfect system.”

Kuusuke didn’t even glance up from his notebook. “Yes, because wasting my intellect on fake laser guns is exactly how I plan to spend my career.”

“You say that now,” Makoto said, wagging a pen at him, “but you’ll cave. You always cave.”

Another time, he was flipping through a magazine, half-distracted, when he muttered, “Our penthouse is gonna need at least three floors. One for me, one for you, one for… uh, storage or whatever.”

Kuusuke frowned. “Our what?”

Makoto grinned, unbothered. “You’ll thank me when you see the view.”

Normally, Kuusuke would’ve dismissed this kind of talk as Makoto’s usual delusions of grandeur. But this wasn’t quite the same. Makoto wasn’t just puffing himself up—he was including Kuusuke, weaving him into the script. The shift was subtle, but it was there. Suspiciously there.

It all came to a head one evening in Makoto’s massive bedroom, where they were allegedly “studying.” Makoto was doodling hearts and swords in his notebook, Kuusuke was knee-deep in a circuit board, and the silence stretched until Makoto finally broke it.

“You know,” he said casually, “next year’s gonna suck. College without you around.”

Kuusuke didn’t look up. “What, worried you’ll actually have to use your brain?”

Makoto scowled, but his lips curved up almost immediately. “Shut up. I’m serious. I’m used to you being here. Correcting me. Telling me when I sound like an idiot.”

Kuusuke’s soldering iron hovered above the board. “Someone has to,” he muttered, but the comment jammed itself into his thoughts like a splinter. Too soft. Too… earnest.

A few days later, Makoto brought up a script his dad was considering. He kicked a rock along the sidewalk as they walked home, his voice unusually subdued.
“It’s this romance. Super cheesy. The guy’s best friends with this girl, but the whole time he’s in love with her. And he doesn’t say anything, because he’s scared of screwing it all up.”

Kuusuke groaned. “Predictable garbage. Just confess. What’s the worst that happens?”

Makoto stopped, turning to him with that intense actor’s stare he usually saved for mirrors. “You really think that? You’d just… say it?”

“Obviously,” Kuusuke snapped, annoyed at being put on the spot. “Wasting time is for idiots. Either do it or move on.”

Makoto opened his mouth like he had more to say, then shut it again. He looked away, a smile tugging faintly at his lips. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.”

Kuusuke told himself it was nothing, but his brain refused to file it away. It replayed, over and over, like a faulty program. The movie scenario. The “penthouse” jokes. The strange softness. Data was piling up, and the pattern was becoming impossible to ignore.

The final, undeniable piece came at the park. A couple of girls from school swarmed Makoto, giggling and batting their eyelashes. He slipped into his public persona with ease, all charm and hair flips. Kuusuke stood back, arms crossed, scowling at how transparent it all was.

But when the girls left, disappointed, Makoto didn’t look smug. He looked… relieved.

“They wanted my number,” he said flatly.

Kuusuke rolled his eyes. “Shocking. And you didn’t hand it over? That’s literally your brand.”

Makoto’s smile wavered. “I told them I was busy.”

“Busy doing what? Stroking your own ego?”

Makoto’s eyes flicked up, sharp and serious in a way Kuusuke rarely saw. “Busy being here. With you.”

The words detonated. For once, Kuusuke’s brain failed him. All the data points slammed together into a single conclusion that he didn’t want but couldn’t deny: Makoto’s future plans, his weird movie hypotheticals, the way he brushed off fangirls—it wasn’t friendship. It was something far messier.

Love.

The realization wrecked him. That night, Kuusuke lay awake, running diagnostics on himself until the early hours. Every little reaction he’d brushed off before now slotted neatly into a humiliating equation. The irritation when Makoto flirted with others—jealousy. The quiet that settled over him when Makoto was around—comfort. The way his brain seemed to run smoother in Makoto’s presence—dependence.

It was undeniable, and that made it unbearable. Kuusuke Saiki, supposed genius, reduced to the same messy, irrational chaos as everyone else. He hated it. He hated himself for it.

So the next day, he went cold.

When Makoto asked if he wanted to walk home, Kuusuke said he was busy. When Makoto sprawled across his desk during lunch, Kuusuke shifted his notes closer to the edge until Makoto had no choice but to move. Even when they were side by side, Kuusuke kept his eyes on his work, answering questions with clipped, mechanical replies.

It was the only defense he had: distance. If he didn’t look at Makoto, maybe he could pretend he hadn’t noticed the pattern. Maybe the feeling would wither away before it did permanent damage.

But it didn’t feel like control. It felt like losing.

Every time he brushed Makoto off, there was a flash of something in Makoto’s face—confusion, hurt, irritation quickly smoothed over with a smile. And every time, Kuusuke’s chest tightened. He told himself it didn’t matter, that this was necessary, but the truth gnawed at him. Makoto wasn’t stupid. Overdramatic, yes. Narcissistic, sure. But not stupid. He would notice.

And he did.

“Hey,” Makoto said finally, one afternoon when Kuusuke had answered three of his questions in a row with nothing but a flat “hm.” His voice had lost its easy lilt; it was tentative in a way Kuusuke had never heard. “Are you… mad at me or something?”

The question landed harder than it should have. Kuusuke forced himself to look up, but whatever mask he tried to put on must have slipped, because Makoto froze. His eyes widened, then softened, and suddenly Kuusuke realized—with a sick drop in his stomach—that his panic was plain on his face.

Makoto’s lips curved into a shaky smile of relief. “So you figured it out. Took you long enough."

Kuusuke’s throat tightened. “You’re an idiot.”

Makoto grinned, and for once it wasn’t his actor’s grin—it was real. “Yeah. But I’m your idiot.”

Something inside Kuusuke buckled. Against every instinct, every calculation, he let it happen. “Yeah,” he admitted, voice low. “I guess you are.”

The silence between them was fragile, terrifying, and strangely perfect. Which, of course, was exactly why Kuusuke had to ruin it.

He reached into his bag and pulled out the thick envelope. Tossed it across. Harvard’s crest glared back at them.

“They moved up the start date,” he said flatly. “I leave in a few weeks.”

Makoto’s smile crumbled. His fingers clenched around the letter, crushing the edges. The silence that followed was heavier than anything Kuusuke had ever engineered. It wasn’t the silence of peace or possibility. It was the silence of something breaking before it had a chance to begin.

Chapter Text

The first thing Kuusuke Saiki noticed about Harvard was how old it smelled. Not the dignified, historical scent of hallowed halls, but the musty, overcooked odor of too many generations of anxious academics sweating over the same worn oak, reciting the same hollow quotes about enlightenment while secretly borrowing from each other's work. It was the scent of institutional fatigue, and it clung to everything, from the Gothic lecture halls to the cramped dormitories. He’d expected prestige. What he got was damp air and a building that looked like it should be condemned, yet was treated with the reverence of a holy relic.

Still, it was Harvard, which meant everyone treated the place like a shrine. Kuusuke fit right in by acting as though he owned it.

He arrived on campus looking like he’d just won a brutal, all-night hacking competition and had come to collect his prize from the dean. His clothes were expensive—a cashmere sweater, tailored trousers—but worn with a deliberate carelessness, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his collar slightly askew. It was the look of someone too preoccupied with grand designs to bother with mundane details, yet every disheveled element felt calculated, a performance of effortless genius. His luggage was minimal—a single, well-worn leather duffel and a sleek, hard-shell case for his electronics. He unpacked with a kind of chaotic efficiency, creating organized piles that looked like a mess to anyone else but were, to him, a perfect system. Within the hour, his standard-issue dorm room was a landscape of open books, scattered schematics, and humming computer parts, a controlled explosion of intellect disguised with a single bed. The only personal touch was a small, framed photograph tucked facedown in a drawer—a concession to sentimentality he refused to display.

The other students on his floor were friendly in that awkward, overeager way Americans had. They introduced themselves with loud, projecting voices and firmer-than-necessary handshakes, their faces open and expectant. Kuusuke returned every greeting with a kind of surgical politeness, perfect posture, and a smile so technically flawless it made them visibly nervous. It never reached his eyes, which remained the cool, assessing red of a predator scanning its environment.

“Uh… you’re from Japan, right?” one of them—a lanky boy named Brian with a nervous tic—had asked, shifting from foot to foot on Kuusuke's first day. “That’s cool, man. I love anime.”

Kuusuke blinked at him once, slowly, as if processing a very simple piece of information. “I’m sure you do,” he replied, his tone flat and devoid of the encouragement Brian was clearly seeking.

Brian laughed, a little too high and a little too hard, and never made direct eye contact with Kuusuke again.

Within a week, everyone on his floor knew of him. Within two, they’d coined a nickname, whispered in hushed tones in the common room: the polite psychopath. He’d overheard it once, and his lips had twitched in something approximating approval. It was accurate. It was efficient.

Kuusuke thrived on rhythm, on the imposition of order upon the chaotic sprawl of human existence. He liked to wake up before dawn, when the world was still soft and silent, and shower in water cold enough to make mortals weep, a bracing shock that silenced the last vestiges of sleep. He would then spend three uninterrupted hours in the blue glow of his monitors, the only sound the faint whirring of his computers. This time was sacred—a sanctuary for thinking, for building, for quietly judging the entirety of humanity from a safe distance.

His professors adored him and hated him in equal, passionate measure. He never raised his voice, never interrupted, never looked anything less than perfectly composed. But his questions, when he deigned to ask them, were like traps laid in a polite conversation, sprung with a quiet smile. They weren't designed to elicit answers; they were designed to demonstrate the questioner's superiority.

When a portly, self-important professor of advanced physics spent twenty minutes laboriously explaining a concept Kuusuke had mastered years prior, Kuusuke waited for the man to take a breath. Then, he tilted his head, a gesture of feigned curiosity, and asked, “Forgive the interruption, Professor, but have you considered the alternative approach of simply not being wrong? It would save us all a considerable amount of time.”

It was phrased with such serene calmness that it took the poor man a full five seconds, his mouth still slightly agape, to realize he had been publicly and utterly eviscerated. The classroom fell into a stunned silence, broken only by a single, strangled snort of laughter from the back row.

By midsemester, his name was a specter that haunted the entire science department. Some admired him with a near-religious fervor, some despised him with a burning passion, but everyone wanted him on their project teams. He had the unnerving talent of making the impossibly hard look effortless, of untangling knots of data that left others baffled. What no one saw was the cost of that illusion: the sleepless nights that stacked up like unread books, the anxiety so tightly coiled in his gut he could feel it buzzing in his bones, a constant hum of impending failure.

The truth was simple and, to him, utterly unacceptable: Harvard was hard. Not intellectually—the coursework was, for the most part, insultingly elementary. But there was so much of it, an unending avalanche of tedious essays, repetitive lab reports, and mind-numbingly collaborative projects that required far more social stamina and tolerance for incompetence than he possessed. It was a marathon of mediocrity.

He didn't show the strain. He’d built his entire identity on the principle of never showing it. Kuusuke Saiki does not flinch. Kuusuke Saiki does not falter.

When he was alone, though, in the blue-lit silence of his room, the façade cracked like thin ice. His mind, a machine with no off-switch, never stopped moving, and when the external world went quiet, it turned on itself—rehashing old failures, replaying childhood arguments on a loop, and, always, inevitably, circling back to the same inescapable, gravitational fact: Kusuo existed.

Kusuo. His younger brother.
The eternal benchmark. The unsolvable equation.
The wall he’d spent his whole life slamming himself against, hoping to find a crack, only to bruise his own bones.

They hadn’t spoken a proper, civil word in months. The last conversation they’d had before Kuusuke left Japan had been a masterpiece of passive-aggressive warfare, ending not with a bang, but with a telepathic sigh and a smug, two-word sendoff from Kusuo projected directly into his cortex: Don’t fail.

It had haunted him across the ocean, a ghost in the machine of his mind.

He’d pretended to shrug it off at the airport, tossing his hair with a theatrical flair and replying with the sort of brittle, fake confidence that could fool anyone but the brother who could see straight through him. “Failure is a myth constructed by the mediocre to comfort themselves,” he’d declared. “Like your apparent need for social skills.”

Kusuo, already tuning out the world with a pair of green glasses and a jello cup, hadn’t even bothered to form a coherent thought in response. Just a flat, unimpressed stare, and then… nothing. A silence so absolute it was louder than any insult.

And that silence echoed now, long after the fact, whenever Kuusuke found himself staring at an impossible stack of assignments at 3 AM, or trapped in another “group project” where his teammates seemed physically incapable of grasping basic concepts. Every time his brain screamed this is too much, this is a waste of my potential, another quieter, more insidious voice followed, laced with his brother's psychic resonance: Kusuo wouldn’t complain. Kusuo wouldn’t even find this challenging.

It was the worst possible motivation, a poison masquerading as fuel, but it worked. It always worked.

Everything he did—every meticulously researched paper, every elegant invention sketched on the back of a napkin, every sleepless night spent chasing a solution—every single effort traced its origins back to that single, endless competition. Kusuo had been his first and only true opponent in everything that had ever mattered. The only problem, the fundamental flaw, was that Kusuo didn't play the same game. He didn't even acknowledge the game board.

Kusuo didn’t compete; he just existed. Effortless, unbothered, unflappable, his psychic powers making a mockery of hard work and struggle. He was a natural phenomenon, a hurricane, while Kuusuke was the one desperately trying to build a machine to measure the wind.

And that was what truly drove Kuusuke mad. The sheer, unfair injustice of it.

To the outside world, however, Kuusuke Saiki looked utterly untouchable, a paragon of unnerving composure.

He had friends. Too many, actually. Somehow, his strange, potent mix of razor-wire arrogance and what could be mistaken for brutal sincerity made him magnetic. People gravitated toward him like moths to a very polite, very dangerous flame. They were drawn to the thrill, the danger of being close to someone so sharp, so certain.

There was Amara, a fiercely intelligent economics major from Lagos who kept trying to psychoanalyze him over cups of bitter, overpriced coffee, convinced his genius was a trauma response. There was Luis, a brilliant but messy robotics engineer from Barcelona who viewed Kuusuke as a glorious, terrifying hybrid of genius and lunatic, and followed him around like an eager disciple. There was Evelyn, a sharp-tongued sociology doctoral candidate from Boston who had sworn, after one particularly fascinating debate, that she would base her entire thesis on "the phenomenon of academic sadomasochism as embodied by one Saiki Kuusuke."

He had told her, with that infuriatingly polite smile, that the characterization was flattering but missed the point. "Masochism implies the derivation of pleasure from suffering," he'd clarified. "I simply enjoy difficulty. There is a distinct and important difference."

She’d smiled back, a knowing glint in her eye. "That's what all masochists say, Kuusuke."

He’d held her gaze, his smile not wavering. "Then you must be one, too, for continuing to engage in this conversation despite its evident futility."

She’d laughed, a real, unforced laugh. Everyone laughed around him. They always did, even when he wasn't joking. Especially when he wasn't.

His relationship with Makoto was the one part of his life that wasn't public property, wasn't a performance to be judged. It was a private, encrypted channel in the noisy static of his existence.

They’d been together for only a few months, yet they were supprisingly quick to adjust to this new level of their "friendship"— guess thats the price one would have to pay if they wanted to date their childhood best friend and for Kuusuke it was on sale.

Makoto was still in Japan, building his acting career with a single-minded focus that almost mirrored Kuusuke's own, dazzling crowds and cameras in equal measure. To the world, he was Mugami Toru, the nation's golden boy. To Kuusuke, he was still the idiot who texted him at 3 a.m. Cambridge time with poorly lit selfies captioned thinking of you and also this lighting makes my jawline look amazing, right? tell me I'm pretty.

Kuusuke would roll his eyes, type a withering reply about the inherent narcissism of performers and the suboptimal quality of the camera's sensor, and then he would save the picture to a heavily encrypted, partitioned section of his hard drive anyway. A collection of illicit data points that proved this beautiful, ridiculous person was his.

Their video calls were a familiar, comforting dance of insults and hidden affection, a verbal sparring match where the goal wasn't to win, but to connect. Makoto had an uncanny ability to make Kuusuke's meticulously constructed walls crumble without even seeming to try. He’d tease, he’d flatter, he’d provoke—and Kuusuke, who prided himself on a composure as solid as diamond, would find himself smiling at his phone like a fool, a genuine, uncalculated expression that felt foreign on his face.

The distance between them was a physical ache, a constant, low-grade frustration. Time zones turned simple communication into a complex logistical puzzle. He’d often fall asleep at his desk, his phone buzzing insistently beside his cheek, and wake up hours later to a string of messages that made the grey, damp Cambridge morning somehow bearable.

Sometimes, when the loneliness got too loud, when the silence of his room began to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a tomb, he’d open their chat thread and just scroll. Not to read the words, but to observe the timestamps. The pattern of them—a message sent from Makoto during his lunch break in Tokyo appearing as a pre-dawn notification in Cambridge, a late-night call from Kuusuke greeted by a sleepy, smiling Makoto just waking up. It was a tangible, digital proof of connection, a thread of consciousness stretching across an ocean, defying the tyranny of geography.

He never said the words I miss you. He didn't have to. Makoto always knew. 

The first real crack in his flawless surface appeared halfway through the semester, when the mountain of boring schoolwork crashed right into his own, far more interesting, personal projects.

He’d started designing a new type of computer interface—a wildly ambitious side project that no sane undergraduate should have been attempting. It wasn't for a class. It wasn't for praise. It was for him. A private challenge. And, if he was honest with himself in the quietest hours of the night, it was for Kusuo.

He wanted to build something his brother couldn't simply ignore. Something that existed entirely outside Kusuo's psychic reach, in the realm of pure, human-made cleverness. A lock for which there was no psychic key.

He threw himself into the work with a ferocity that scared even him. He skipped meals, living on nutrient bars and an alarming amount of caffeine. He slept in short, fitful bursts at his desk, his fingers twitching as if still typing. His roommates learned to recognize the look—the wide-eyed, hyper-focused stare, the low muttering to the code on his screen, the way he became polite but completely, utterly unreachable.

“Hey, man,” Luis said one morning, leaning cautiously in the doorway. “You, uh, you haven’t left this room in, like, three days. You know there's a whole world out there, right? With sunlight and food that isn’t a brick.”

Kuusuke didn't even look up from the glowing lines reflected in his glasses. “I left to use the bathroom. The rest is just a distraction.”

Luis sighed, running a hand through his messy hair. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Then be specific next time,” Kuusuke replied, his voice flat. 

“You’re gonna burn out, you know,” Luis said, his tone a mix of concern and frustration. “You can’t run on fumes and spite forever.”

“I’m not a car,” Kuusuke said, his eyes still locked on the screen. “I don't burn out. I just… recalibrate. Your concern is duly noted.”

It was the kind of line that would have sounded utterly ridiculous coming from anyone else. But Kuusuke delivered it with such calm conviction that Luis was left standing there, unable to tell if it was sheer arrogance or a form of profound self-deception.

Probably, he decided, it was both.

When the crash finally came, it was quiet, internal, and total. There was no dramatic scene—just a small, stupid mistake born of pure exhaustion that spiraled into disaster.

He’d fallen asleep on his keyboard, his forehead pressing a jumble of random keys into the command line. He woke up two hours later to a corrupted core file, the project's heart scrambled into digital nonsense. He hadn't backed it up. In his obsessive focus on the next problem, he had forgotten the most basic rule. Two weeks of relentless, sixteen-hour-day work, gone. Vanished.

For a long, suspended moment, he just stared at the error message blinking on the blank, blue screen. The cursor pulsed like a heartbeat — steady, taunting, alive in the way his body no longer felt. The hum of the computer fans filled the lab, a low, suffocating drone that dug into his skull until it was indistinguishable from his own pulse.

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The air was heavy, metallic, charged with static from too many sleepless nights and too many machines running past safe limits. The graphs, the formulas, the data — gone. All gone. Hundreds of hours, vanished with one corrupted file.

His fingers twitched once against the keyboard. Then again. Then, without warning, the motion spread — a jitter through his hands, his shoulders, his jaw. He pressed a key. Nothing happened. Another. Still nothing.

And then it came — a sound that shouldn’t have existed in the sterile quiet of the lab.
A laugh.
Short, sharp, and splintered.
It clawed out of him like glass under pressure, half-choked, half-delighted, echoing off the walls until even the machines seemed to hesitate.

He leaned back in his chair, laughter cutting into silence, then starting again — low this time, deliberate, like he was testing its tone. His reflection on the screen smiled back at him, warped by the blue glow, the grin stretching just a little too wide.

“Oh,” he whispered to no one, voice hoarse and steady. “So that’s how it is.”

He began to type again. Random keys. Equations that didn’t exist. Symbols that had no meaning but looked convincing enough to keep him busy. His knuckles were pale, skin drawn tight over tendons.

When he stopped, the monitor was filled with a mess of incomprehensible text — numbers, letters, fragments of logic — like the digital handwriting of someone who’d forgotten what language was. He stared at it with something close to awe.

“This,” he murmured, “is progress.”

The hum of the fans rose again, matching the pulse in his temples. Somewhere deep in the system, another alert flickered — warning of overheating, data loss, impending shutdown.

Kuusuke didn’t look away. His eyes gleamed with something sharp and terrifyingly calm.

For the first time in weeks, he felt alive.

 He closed the error window, took a slow, deliberate breath, and began again. He rebuilt the entire thing from scratch that day. He didn't eat, didn't speak to a single soul, didn't leave his chair. The people who passed by his open door saw the dark circles under his eyes, the faint twitch in his left hand, and assumed he was just deep in another one of his "genius modes."

They didn't know he was in the throes of a furious, silent rage at himself. They didn't realize he was punishing himself for the unforgivable sin of a moment's weakness.

Makoto noticed first, of course. Their calls had become shorter, more fragmented, the silences stretching longer. Kuusuke kept making clipped excuses about "deadlines" and "things that need my attention." One night, after Kuusuke had tried to end a call after barely two minutes, Makoto finally snapped.

“You’re lying,” he said flatly, his pixelated face sharp with concern. “You sound like you’re falling apart over there.”

“I don’t fall apart,” Kuusuke replied, his voice calm and even, a stark contrast to the hollowed-out look in his eyes. “That’s a messy, imprecise term. I’m just… rearranging. The pieces are all still there.”

“That’s not normal, Kuusuke,” Makoto insisted, his voice softening with worry. “That’s not how people talk about themselves.”

“I never claimed to be normal,” Kuusuke retorted, a flicker of irritation breaking through.

Makoto pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling a long, frustrated sigh. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re gonna—”

“Don’t,” Kuusuke interrupted, his voice dropping, becoming soft but sharp. “Don’t finish that sentence. If you say ‘burn out,’ I will hang up.”

Makoto’s frustration broke into a humorless, static-filled laugh. “You are un-fucking-believable.”

“Thank you,” Kuusuke said, defaulting to sarcasm as a shield.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Sounded like one.”

There was a pause then, heavy and intimate, filled only with the faint digital hiss of the connection. Then, quieter, his voice stripped of all its bravado, Makoto said, “You know, for someone who claims to be all about efficiency, you’re being incredibly inefficient about this. You could just say you miss me. It’s a lot shorter.”

Kuusuke’s lips twitched, a genuine, almost-smile threatening to break through. “I could,” he conceded. “But where’s the fun in that? Where’s the challenge?”

Makoto rolled his eyes so dramatically Kuusuke was surprised they didn't get stuck, but he was smiling, a small, tired, affectionate thing. “You’re an idiot. A magnificent, brilliant, utterly stupid idiot.”

“Your idiot,” Kuusuke said, the words leaving his lips before his brain could stop them.

By the end of the semester, he had cemented a reputation as both a once-in-a-generation prodigy and a walking cautionary tale. His professors praised his work in glowing terms but whispered in faculty lounges about his "concerning intensity." His peers spoke of him in mythic terms, a genius and an alien in the same breath.

He maintained a deceptively full social calendar—study groups he dominated, late-night debates he ended with a single, piercing observation, parties he never quite enjoyed but always attended because being seen was part of the performance. People consistently mistook his weaponized politeness for charm, his emotional detachment for a deep and mysterious reserve.

No one realized how much of it was a deliberate misdirection, a magician's trick to draw the eye away from the frantic workings behind the curtain.

Beneath the perfect posture and the calibrated smiles was a restless, churning energy he couldn't name or quiet. Every success, every award, every gasp of admiration felt hollow, like a beautifully wrapped box with nothing inside. Because no matter how high he climbed, he could still hear Kusuo's voice in his head—that calm, flat, psychic tone, saying Don’t fail.

It wasn't a warning from a concerned brother. It was a dare from his eternal rival. A challenge thrown down across continents.

And Kuusuke Saiki had never been able to turn down a dare.

He found a strange comfort in self-inflicted difficulty. It was his native language. If there was an easy route, he would avoid it. If a problem could be solved in one step, he’d find a way to break it into five, just for the pleasure of solving the smaller puzzles. Struggle was the whetstone on which he sharpened his mind.

His friends joked that he had a death wish. They weren't entirely wrong. He just didn't see the problem with it.

The late nights grew longer. The caffeine intake became more potent. The polite smiles he offered the world grew thinner, more brittle.

And through it all, he remained terrifyingly, impeccably polite. Professors found they couldn't even scold him properly—it was impossible to yell at a student who would thank you sincerely for your "valuable, if emotionally charged, feedback."

He became a living paradox: the genius everyone admired from a distance, the force of nature everyone wanted on their team, but whom no one truly understood.

Even Makoto, with his all-access pass to Kuusuke's mind, could only guess at the true depth of the chasm. He saw the symptoms—the exhaustion, the obsession—but the root cause was a black box even Kuusuke was afraid to open.

Sometimes, in the liminal space between their late-night calls, Kuusuke would stare at the half-finished prototype glowing on his desk, its intricate circuitry a miniature city of light, and his mind would conjure Kusuo's face—that flat, utterly unreadable expression—and he would imagine the moment of presentation. To hold up this complex, human-made thing and say, See? See what I can do without you?

He didn't even know what that victory would look like anymore. A nod? A grunt? He had no idea. He just knew, with the certainty of a fundamental law, that it had to happen.

Because until it did, he wouldn't stop. He couldn't.

Makoto managed to visit once that semester, a surprise trip squeezed between a drama filming and a magazine shoot. He’d walked into the lab and stopped dead at the sight of Kuusuke surrounded by a constellation of glowing monitors, a soldering iron in one hand, a tangled mess of wires in the other, a faint halo of static making his hair stand on end.

“Jesus, Kuusuke,” he’d said, his voice a mix of amusement and concern. “You look like you’re in the middle of summoning a demon. Or becoming one.”

Kuusuke looked up, his red eyes refocusing. “Technically, I’m attempting an exorcism,” he replied, utterly serious. “The demon is a persistent bug. It's proving… stubborn.”

Makoto leaned against the steel lab table, a smirk playing on his lips. “You say the creepiest things like you’re commenting on the weather.”

“It’s a statement of fact,” Kuusuke corrected. “The creepiness is your own interpretation.”

“Right. Totally normal,” Makoto drawled, his eyes sweeping over the chaotic mess. “Totally normal to work yourself into near-seizures because you have a pathological older-brother complex.”

“It’s a younger-brother complex,” Kuusuke corrected automatically.

Makoto blinked. “I stand corrected. That’s somehow even worse.”

Kuusuke didn't rise to the bait. He just watched the lines of code scroll by and said, so quietly it was almost swallowed by the hum of the machines, “If you were destined to live forever in someone’s shadow, a shadow they didn't even know they were casting, would you simply lie down and accept it?”

Makoto tilted his head, the smirk fading. “You mean Kusuo?”

Kuusuke’s silence was an answer.

Makoto sighed, pulling up a stool. “You know what I think? You keep calling it a rivalry. You use words like 'competition' because it sounds noble. But it’s not, is it? Not really.”

“Go on,” Kuusuke said, his voice flat.

“You’re not fighting him,” Makoto said, his gaze steady. “You’re chasing him. It’s not a duel; it’s a pursuit. And he’s not even running.”

A flicker of something—annoyance, recognition—crossed Kuusuke’s face before it was schooled back into neutrality.

“You spend every waking hour trying to become someone who doesn’t need his approval,” Makoto continued softly, “and somehow, in doing all that, you make everything about him anyway. Your entire life is a monument to Kusuo.”

Kuusuke finally turned, his red eyes locking with Makoto’s. The intensity in them was unnerving. “You think I want to be Kusuo.”

“I think you want to beat him at his own game, on a field he doesn't even know he's playing on,” Makoto said, holding his gaze. “And I think, deep down, you hate that you love him too much to ever admit that the game itself is impossible.”

He finally turned fully toward Makoto, his expression unreadable. “You mistake obsession for affection. They are distinct.”

Makoto met his gaze without flinching. “And you mistake affection for weakness. They aren't.”

The silence that fell between them was profound.

Makoto leaned back slightly, his tone softening. “You know what I see when I look at you, Kuusuke? I see someone who’s been trying his whole life to earn something he already had.”

Kuusuke frowned. “Which is?”

“The right to just be enough. As you are.”

The words landed not as a blow, but as a key turning in a long-locked door deep inside him. He didn't flinch, but he didn't move either.

Makoto reached over and closed Kuusuke’s laptop with a soft, final click. “You know,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “you can take one night off, genius. The universe will not implode.”

“Impossible.” 

“I’ll drag you out of this lab myself if I have to.” 

“You'd fail.”

“Maybe,” Makoto conceded. “But the attempt would at least make you look up from that screen for five minutes. It might even be good for you.”

Kuusuke exhaled—a slow, deliberate release of breath—and finally said, “You are the only person on this planet I tolerate speaking to me in that manner.”

“Yeah,” Makoto murmured, placing a soft kiss to the center of his temple. “I know. And that’s exactly why you’ll miss me like a limb when I’m gone.”

“An unlikely physiological scenario,” Kuusuke retorted.

“Liar,” Makoto said softly, the word hanging in the air between them, not as an accusation, but as a quiet, accepted truth.

Graduation arrived on a perfect, almost artificially pleasant day. Sunlight mild and golden, breeze gentle and polite. It was, Kuusuke thought, disgustingly idyllic.

He adjusted his black mortarboard cap, the tassel an annoying, frivolous accessory. The heavy doctoral robe was unflattering and hot, but tradition demanded it.

He had long since stopped caring about the ceremony itself; this was purely for show. Then, scanning the sea of faces, his gaze snagged and stopped.

There they were. A familiar, impossible island in the human ocean.

His mother, beaming, waving a handkerchief. His father, recording on a tablet he clearly didn't know how to operate. Makoto stood beside them, wearing ridiculously large sunglasses, a wide, unreserved grin on his face.

And, of course, Kusuo.

Pink hair a stark beacon of indifference, his expression a masterpiece of deadpan boredom. He looked profoundly, utterly out of place.

Kuusuke felt an unexpected lurch in his chest. He’d done it. He’d actually forced his brother to cross oceans to be a silent witness to his victory. As he walked across the stage, he made sure to hold Kusuo's gaze, pouring every ounce of his smug, hard-won superiority into his own expression. Look at me. Look what I’ve done.

Later, on the sun-drenched lawn, his mother launched herself at him.
“My brilliant, brilliant boy!” she cried. “You did it! You really did it!”

He allowed the hug, his arms wrapping around his mother. “Of course i did,” he smiled sincerely for a split second that turned into his signature polite oen, "why excepted me to fail instead?"

She hit his arm lightly, laughing through her tears. “Oh, stop it! I dont want your sarcasam on a day like this!”

His father wrapped a heavy arm around both of them. “You’re supposed to smile, Kuusuke! A real one!”

“I am smiling,” he replied, his face settling into that unnervingly perfect, technically-correct-but-emotionally-void smile.

Makoto appeared, holding two cups of coffee. “I had to bribe the barista to spell your name right,” he announced.

“A feat which continues to baffle me,” Kuusuke murmured, accepting the cup and leaning in to plant a light kiss on Makoto’s cheek. “There. Positive reinforcement.”

Their parents immediately began cooing about how "adorable" they were together—and from the corner of his eye, Kuusuke saw Kusuo physically recoil, a distinct, audible gagging noise escaping him.

Kuusuke took a slow sip of his coffee. “How charming.”

“More like nauseating,” Kusuo muttered telepathically, his gaze fixed on the middle distance.

Makoto raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter, Kusuo? Still homophobic in this day and age?”

Kusuo didn't even look at him. “Just allergic to… whatever that public display is.”

Kuusuke allowed a quiet, genuine chuckle to escape. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s terminal.”

Later, when the crowd began to thin, the brothers found themselves standing a few feet apart under an ancient oak tree.

Kusuo scuffed his sneaker against the grass. “So. You really did it, huh,” he said, a flat statement.

“Of course I did,” Kuusuke replied. “You expected something else?”

“For a guy who just got a doctorate, you have a real knack for confusing arrogance with humility.”

“Irrelevant.”

Kusuo looked at him then, and for a fleeting second, his usual frown seemed to soften. “You work too much,” he said, the words simple, spoken aloud.

The blunt, unexpectedly concerned observation threw Kuusuke. He recovered quickly. “Well I did'nt get my docterate for nothing, Kusuo.”

“From where I’m standing, it looks like the same thing.”

A pause settled over them, filled by the wind in the leaves.

Kusuo mumbeled something he didn't catch. Or maybe something he didn't want to. Kuusuke coughed. “What was that?” he asked, his voice sharper than he intended. Kusuo hesitated, a flicker of vulnerability crossing his features before the apathy returned. He shook his head, looking away. “Nothing.”

Kuusuke studied him—the defensive hunch of his shoulders, the averted gaze. He wanted to press, to decode the silence. But something made him hold his tongue. Instead, he simply shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Kusuo’s mouth twitched. “Still the same smug idiot you always were.”

“And yet,” Kuusuke said, taking a final sip of his coffee, “you showed up. You’re here.”

Kusuo didn’t reply. He simply turned and stared out at the vast, green lawn as if it were the most alien landscape he had ever seen.

A moment later, Makoto called out for family photographs. Their mother was already trying to arrange everyone by height.

Kusuo let out a long, suffering sigh. “You coming?” he asked, not looking at Kuusuke.

“In a moment,” Kuusuke said.

He watched his brother walk away—a study in quiet, reluctant tension, but walking nonetheless. Still there.

For someone supposedly impossible to understand, Kusuo had just come perilously close to saying something genuine. And, for the first time, Kuusuke wasn't sure if he had missed the meaning or had chosen not to hear it.

The moment was gone. He filed it away, another unsolved equation.

His mother called his name again, her voice bright and uncomplicated.

Kuusuke smiled—that perfect, unnerving, polished smile—and followed them back toward the group, his hands sliding into his pockets, his eyes already distant, looking through the present and into the next challenge.