Tick tock tick tock...

Saiki, Kuboyasu, and Shun sat quietly. Such is the custom for situations like this.

Nendou had been sent in before them, considering his role in the whole affair. He was still in there, as the muffled shouts of an older man made their way through the walls.

SY Academy was well-funded, and thus the space outside the principal's office had more than the bare minimum required to keep people awake. There were magazines, a vending machine, a mini-fridge for the apparently absent secretary, a clean bathroom, the obligatory plants in the corner, it was cozy. Sure, these accommodations were there, but it didn't seem like the situation to let themselves use those accommodations.

It was 11:13 according to the clock, so they were sitting for maybe an hour.

"I-I don't wanna be suspended... My mom's gonna kill me..." Kaidou said in a hushed whisper.

"Relax, you didn't do anything... It's my fault for trying to stop them. I'll face the consequences," Aren said nobly.

Don't make yourself a martyr.

"I don't think you're in that much trouble, if you were, they would've sent you in with Nendou, or alone maybe."

"That makes sense."

After that sentence was completed, Nendou walked out of the room with a blank expression. Through the door, an older voice called out "Kuboyasu Aren, please come in."

So he WAS called in alone after all.

"Oh, and bring the other two as well."

Why did he get called out and why are we just "the other two"?

The three boys stood up and entered the office one after another.

The office was rather big, a fancy polished desk with two looming bookshelves behind it to the left and right. There was a closed laptop on the desk and at the seat of the desk was a balding old man. The name plate said "Principal Fujiwara Mitsuyo" in golden letters. A few pictures and diplomas and doctorates here and there, and a clock above the door.

"Sit down, boys."

The boys sat down.

The principal locked eyes with them.

"I'm not going to rip your heads off or anything. So I'll just say this, you three are now scheduled to clean up the gymnasium for the rest of the week. That's all."

The principal then threw a signed slip in front of the boys, started to open his laptop, and click around with his mouse.

"Excuse me, sir," Aren spoke up as Kaidou grabbed the slip.

"Didn't I dismiss you?"

Standing up, Aren said "These two didn't do anything, I was the one who walked up to Kaneda (apparently that was the boulder-man's name) and challenged him. I can clean up the gym by myself."

"That's exactly why they're going to clean up the gym as well. They didn't stop their friend. Sure, you tried, but you ended up challenging the guy and having him break my tables," Principal Fujiwara said impassively.

Saiki was not able to hear Aren's thoughts at the moment, but he could tell that Aren was about to make a scene. Fortunately, so did Kaidou.

"Hey, Aren, it's cool. It's a pretty light punishment considering what happened, let's just take it peacefully," Kaidou appealed.

Aren let out a quick "Tch" and a begrudging "Fine."

Saiki and Kaidou stood up and left the office with Aren.

Closing the door behind them, Principal Fujiwara was left on his computer. Looking up one last time, he noticed that some metallic objects, old transistors, had aggregated near the door. He stood up from his desk, walked over, and started picking them up one-by-one.

Ryosuke, Shinji, Eijirou went down from the roof after lunch, about half an hour prior.

"Ooh, look there," Ryosuke noted, pointing at the now closed-off lunchroom with an aggregation of juvenile homo sapiens at the door.

Eijirou went over to the door with the yellow safety tape on it and asked aloud "What happened here?"

A student from the crowd called out "Two transfers and Kaneda got into a fight, they destroyed the cafeteria."

Given that all the transfers save for one was in his own class, Shinji concluded that at least one of the transfers who decided to fight Kaneda was from his class.

"If they decided to fight Kaneda, no wonder a terrorist wants to take them out. They probably tried to beat him up or something," Ryosuke said thoughtfully.

"Before you say that's cool, don't," Eijirou quickly added in.

The bell signaling five minutes left in the lunch period started to ring. Accordingly, the crowd began to disperse.

"Well, guys, gotta go then. Got literature in five minutes, huzzah," Shinji said while running backwards. Turning around he made his way to his class. Eijirou and Ryosuke did likewise.

Shinji while running to the classroom bumped into a slightly older guy with a sort of headband, a lab coat, blonde hair, and dark green eyes. "Sorry about that," Shinji said as he kept on running.

"No problem at all, bye now," the older guy said.

The older guy started to smile, as he thought "So exciting, the fluctuations should begin as the probability amplitude's modulus hits about 0.433... The field becomes more agitated as little brother's powers diminish... Hm, harmful effects of his loss of telepathy? Probably so. I'll just keep watch..."

Kusuke walked down the school hall as the bell signaling the beginning of the post-lunch period rang.

Kusuo, Kaidou, and Aren walked into class during the middle of English.

"You're..." Looking down to check his watch, "24 minutes late."

"We were at the principal's office, show him the slip, Kaidou."

Kaidou handed the teacher the slip that he got earlier.

"Okay, got it."

The three sat down in their vacant seats, as the teacher continued the lesson, going about the grammatical functions of nouns and classifying them.

Saiki felt two eyes bore into the back of his neck. Remembering that Teruhashi sat behind him, he assumed that she had been concerned for his absence.

Then again, his x-ray vision was turned off, it was for a while. So if he were to look at someone that is apparently objectively beautiful, he would not instantly see sinew and bones rather than smooth skin and silky hair.

"Not the time to think about that."

Saiki noted that multiple people turned to look at him as the teacher's back was turned. As far as they were concerned, he wrecked the lunchroom. Even without telepathy to quantify how much people loathe or like him, he can tell that at the moment, it's below average.

"Prime objective, keep a low profile, utterly failed. It'll sort itself out over time, I suppose."

Saiki sighed and listened to the teacher, or tried to.

"So in English, we have a subject-verb-object word order, or syntax, from the Greek syntasso. Syntasso means to instruct or order, this was used in a militaristic sense at first. As a class, I'd like you with the person in front of you to translate these English sentences into Japanese. For these examples, we have multiple clauses as well, so please note which clauses are independent, and which are dependent."

"God really does love her, does He?"

Saiki let out another quiet sigh, as this was what he needed the least. On cue, most guys in the room gave death threats in their heads that typically, Saiki would be able to hear.

Turning around to look at her, he finally noted her physical features. Objectively, she was indeed beautiful. "Offu."

That didn't count.

"Saiki, looks like that we're translating sentence five, let's try our best~"

"Offu-"

"Good grief," Saiki thought.

Saiki decided to speak to her telepathically now "Okay. So the sentence is-"

"Saiki?"

"Yeah?"

"Saiki? Why aren't you saying anything?"

Quickly deducing the situation, Saiki determined that unlike before, when he wasn't able to receive thoughts but transmit them, he could now do neither.

There was a single option left to act.

Not having spoken once in seventeen years, Saiki finally said his first words.

"Sorry, Teruhashi. I was thinking about the sentence."

"Ah, no worries."

The two then started to work on translation.