Chapter Text
The sound of cicadas shrilled throughout the air, sunlight blaring at the figure rushing past the trees. It's official now, summer is finally here.
The aforementioned figure is Hioki Asahi, a second-year student at Kazamino High School, and if one were to ask him how his life is going, the response they would most likely receive would be a nonsensical shrug. Safe to say that despite all that happened to him in his first year, his luck has finally run out this time.
Finding out that Tsujitani was in another grade was lowkey a bummer for Hioki, who walked into his classroom for his first-ever lecture. He had considered whether he should chat with his classmates before the abrupt realisation that he knew no one there. Not like his reclusive personality helped him in this case either. He considered this a good thing, as this may help him focus better on his not bad but a little better than average academics, settling himself in, expecting a peaceful albeit lonely school year.
But like how the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. When everything Hioki considered in the World as true, the Universal Law, Absolute Reality, Indisputable Principle, whatever it's called, came crumbling down. A month and a half into his solitary year of schooling, he wakes up…with the ability to read minds. Well, not clearly the ability to read minds, but rather whenever he touched people, his subconscious could pick up on whatever the other person was thinking.
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Hioki realised it until he bumped into an elderly lady while trying to get into a konbini, sleep-deprived from Tsujitani’s antics about playing another round of tennis. Tsujintani had only seemed consolable when Hioki told him he’d come back the next day at two in the afternoon. Tsujintani was a good friend to him; he was the type of person who would never leave a guy like Hioki alone, no matter the circumstances. As he faced her to apologise, he could hear her inside his head, 'These youngsters these days are so absentminded'. Dumbfounded for a second, he looked up and this time he actually saw the lady speak in a concerned tone, “Are you alright, son?” What. Hioki quickly apologised and ran as fast as he could, without stopping, until he was sure he wasn't hallucinating and that he actually heard the woman in his head.
This inadvertently and inevitably had to happen a few times for this to click into his head that,
1. He could now read people's minds
2. He has no idea how to stop
The only way to stop the accidental mind-reading mishaps was by him trying not to touch anyone, and there was no way Hioki could achieve that without looking like a creep.
So, Hioki did what he did best, kept it to himself in the hopes that this would pass; he personally didn't know how he would ever be able to confess this without seeming like he had lost his mind. He hoped nothing big would come for him now as he tried to get used to this strange headspace he found himself in.