Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan - Without Thinking

Chapter 19 - Questions

Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay in updates. I've been very busy with my new puppy and at the same time I've noticed a decrease in feedback from the community on the latest chapters. Maybe the story is getting stale, or people aren't happy with the direction anymore, I don't know — either way I've had a big dip in inspiration and will to write and am not quite sure how to proceed with the story, if at all.

Having said that, I finally managed to squeeze this chapter out. I'm not sure about it myself, having rewritten it so many times, and I originally had more scenes planned too. I felt an update was way overdue though, so here it is anyway. I hope you'll still enjoy.

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Clatter—clank—clash—

The sound of the flashlight hitting the tiles was deafening. It wasn't just metal meeting stone — it was darker, slower, like a thunder rolling in menacingly. The way the beam of light leapt across the room was almost surreal.

At last, the flashlight halted its dance of doom, pointing its rays right at Saiki's floating visual like an accusing finger.

No.

This was it. The moment he'd dreaded. The reason he'd kept saying no.

Kaidou's jaw may have hit the floor. For all the chuunibyou's wild claims of supernatural powers, he was shockingly bad at dealing with just a simple display of harmless levitation. He was just gaping, paralyzed and speechless. Teruhashi and himself weren't much different, to be frank. Saiki's mind was racing though, trying to think of a way to get out of this situation. For a split second, he considered putting the blame onto the Dark Reunion somehow. This was Kaidou, after all. It might work. Maybe the Black Beat could be leaking from his bandaged arms, causing surges of—

"Eh? S-Saiki-kun?" Yumehara's voice cut through the silence. "W-what's going on here...?" She appeared from behind Kaidou a moment later, a similar look of disbelief written all over her face.

Too late.

Holding imaginative evil organizations responsible might do the job for Kaidou, but there was no way Yumehara would fall for it as well. Saiki had been so preoccupied with the shock of his friend's unexpected discovery that he was still hovering a foot above the ground. His eyes darted around the room. How could he fix this?

'Do something.' He glanced at Teruhashi from the corner of his eye. Her thoughts were still eerily silent. 'To me,' he added a moment later. Her posture was frozen, stiff, not bold and bright like usual. Where was her amazing recovery when he actually needed it?

'Boost me, quick!' he hissed into her mind. The control panel in front of them had given him an idea, but he needed more control over his powers for it.

She blinked, at last. "What? Oh... uh..." Saiki heard her trying to think of a way to jack him up without actually getting physical.

"Um... I'm not wearing any underwear," she disclosed a moment later.

'...what?' Saiki looked at her in shock. 'Wait, really?' he asked incredulously. That was... unexpected. Interesting.

She tilted her head impatiently towards Kaidou and Yumehara though. Oh, right. Now was not really the time for that.

"Good grief. This feels weird," Saiki said out loud. He didn't need to put on much of an act to appear surprised, even though it was for all the wrong reasons. Half his mind was with saving his own ass and the other half with what was going on underneath her— Geez, not now. He pressed a random button on the control panel with a little too much force, out of sheer frustration with the ridiculous effects she had on him nowadays. He heard a crack. Oops. Of course the machine itself did nothing — it was just a dud, as expected. He let his feet touch the ground again a moment later.