Saiki K PeePee

Ch. 10: Scheme

The rest of the day passed by rather uneventfully. Teruhashi's thought patterns were normal but with a levity he had not observed before. She determined it was best to leave the topic alone for the rest of the day, as she couldn't afford another slip up of her persona and she wanted time for both of them to process it.

Nendou couldn't stop talking about how yummy the lunch was during class and got reprimanded by the teacher. Saiko was gloating because everybody understood the good food, apparently still sore about the lack of appreciation for his billion yen paintings. Kaidou had grown bored and started doodling while muttering something about how retribution was upon them as if he had forgotten he almost died a few days ago. Kuboyasu was outwardly diligent as always, but inside he was cursing himself for enjoying Saiko's food as much as he did. Luckily for Mera, the Saiko family knew only excess so for the first time in a long time she had actually been full and had enough to take home to her siblings. Yumehara thought about how nice it was to sit close to Kaidou and listen to him interact with Kuboyasu. They had exchanged a few words thanks to Kaidou being around friends, so she was very happy about that. Hairo spoke calmly and had gone back to his cheerful demeanor as he had spent a special moment with his friends and classmates.

Akechi had returned to his regularly scheduled programming of thinking a mile a minute. Saiki gleaned that Akechi had figured out that he left with Teruhashi unfortunately but he seemed not to care and moved onto other topics. Aiura wondered where all her popularity went. It seemed she did not figure out that she had switched places with Teruhashi. Toritsuka complained about the "sausage fest" that had prevented him from getting to Teruhashi. Thankfully Aiura had not seen Toritsuka, otherwise she might have figured out what was going on.

Another side effect of the food was that everyone save Teruhashi and himself were very sleepy and thus did not do much to prevent his escape. As the last period ended he packed everything and left, hoping to avoid any more trouble.

"See you soon, Saiki-kun."

He could hear a warm smile in her voice.

Sure.
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Teruhashi lay on her bed staring at her ceiling, attempting fruitlessly to unstrap herself from the unending emotional rollercoaster that is interacting with Kusuo Saiki. It was funny to think that she had more interaction with him in the last few days than she had in the rest of the years she had known him. How many times had she schemed to perfectly insert herself into his Christmas plans? 2? 3? Of course he seemed uninterested, but he still let her stick around. Nothing they had done together could have prepared her for what was going on now, much less how completely her carefully crafted persona would shatter. At least it was only in front of someone who had been reading her mind since the day they met.

She had finally shown her true colors, but had she overdone it? It was only fair, she attempted to convince herself. She had been pulled back like a slingshot. It was only natural that she would fly farther past what she even thought herself capable of. However, that might have been a bit too real. She likened it to someone dumping all of their emotional baggage on a first date. She buried her face into her hands, plunging her vision into the darkness swaddling her self doubt. She suddenly felt a shooting pain in her stomach.

Oh, right. I didn't have lunch at school today.

Luckily, she had some natto that had just finished fermenting, so she went to extract it from the fridge and into her mouth. She still had some rice left over from yesterday's breakfast, so she heated that up with a wet paper towel over the top to help reintroduce some moisture, combined everything in a bowl, and topped it with some soy sauce and mustard. She mindlessly chewed on it, but was interrupted by her brother before she could do any meaningful thinking.