Nuisance No. 1 || PLATONIC Reader x Saiki Kusuo

Cut to the Chase

After Mera returns and practically starts worshipping my kindness for buying her the mousse, I turn back to The Sulker.

"What did you want to discuss?" I question. He stays silent, looking at his coffee jelly and fiddling with his spoon. "Jesus, I'm not mad at you. And I'm paying for your stuff, so if you're mad at me, consider it my apology." He still hesitates, and I nudge his foot under the table.
'We're both psychics.' He looks up at me, placing the spoon back down on the napkin.
"No shit?"
'But our abilities are so... different.'
"Not really. We both have telepathy and telekinesis, right?" I say as I search his eyes for a reason behind the quietness in his voice.
'But you can't use clairvoyance, and if I can't teach it to you, that means you won't be able to teach me how you can turn off your own telepathy and how you can force telepaths out of your mind — or strengthen your mental barrier.'

Now I'm just confused. He can't turn off his telepathy? Also, there's no 'mental barrier'. He can still read my thoughts, can't he? And no matter what, he can still speak into my head. Damn, I guess we really do have things to discuss. I just assumed he wanted to ask if I was a psychic too — but we already kind of cleared that up earlier.

"Okay, before we start this, can you speak out loud? Because this just sounds like I'm talking to myself."
He frowns a little. "I don't want people to hear about this."
I frown back at him and stand up, looking behind us and around the empty cafe. Mera is in the kitchen eating her mousse, I guess.
"You don't want to be heard? Bitch, who is hearing us?" I sit back down with my arms on the table again.
"If you're that paranoid we can whisper, but I do not like you speaking into my mind unless it's completely necessary, sorry." I "try" to relax a little — and kind of switch up my tone so I don't upset him again, but it's still firm.

He sighs, and picks up his spoon, taking a bite of his jelly and seeming to perk up at the taste. "It's alright. I appreciate you have boundaries, but I honestly don't speak to anybody else out loud."
"Nobody else notices?" I mimic his actions, eating some of my own jelly before furrowing my brow. "Hey, this is actually good."
A ghost of a smile flicks across his face, before he quietly agrees with me. "Yeah, it is."

I pause before I continue speaking. "You must get pretty sick of not being able to shut out everyone's voices, huh?" I don't look up at him, feeling a little bad for his situation.

The few times I've used telepathy, I can't tune everyone out. I can't filter between people or pick certain minds to single out. They all come in together, like everyone filtering out of train doors at the last stop. Like everyone crossing the road at once in Tokyo, the second the green man flashes. An influx of multiple people's thoughts; some people even have two or more voices chattering at the same time. If I want to listen in to someone's thoughts in particular, it's like having to search through an unsolved puzzle box — full of all the unused pieces — for a corner piece. Once I recognise the voice, (or the two edges on the puzzle piece) I can tune into it and focus on it even with the rest of the unsolved puzzle around it. But even then, it gets overwhelming after a while if I don't switch it off at some point.

I can't imagine that overwhelming feeling every day, all the time.

I look up at Saiki and I genuinely feel kind of worried. Just imagining it, I know I would go insane if I suddenly couldn't turn it off. So I guess when I gave up on trying to figure clairvoyance out, it must've had a deeper effect on him than he let on. Because he's right. If I can't learn powers I don't have from him, he might never learn how to gain peace from me.

"It does get irritating, yes." He takes another bite. I nod.

I don't know what to say, so I say nothing at all.