Today is Karma's first day of college, and in this chapter, he gets his first sighting of the espers

~

Then it was summer break. Kyouka smiled a lot around Kenji, leading Karma to think there was something going on there. Elise, of course, knower of all things, confirmed this, and said she was trying to get them together by the time the two of them graduated.

Then summer break was over. It was fun, but truly uneventful. Nothing happened, and Karma was so bored that he forgot about Nikolai and what was waiting for him at Aspiration University, which was a world of weird he wasn't sure he trusted.

When he walked onto the campus on the very first day of college, he left his mom with hugs and goodbyes, only managing to laugh once she reminded him that it wasn't like they were dying. She was just letting go of her baby for the last time, because next time she hugged him, she would be embracing her young man, the son she watched grow, and was now letting go to soar to new heights.

"I love you mom," he said as she held him close.

"You go show AU who they're dealing with," she said, kissing his forehead the way she always has.

'AU...' his thoughts murmured. 'That means something...'

Then his eyes snapped open.

'Shit, shit, shit,' his thoughts raced. 'I'm going to meet the espers soon. I can't avoid all of them, not for long. If I run into a single one, I can't escape this mess. Oh, why am I not a normal person? And what the hell am I so afraid of anyway? Wasn't Tanizaki Naomi headed for Aspiration too? Yeah... Yeah! So I'll know at least one person, if nobody else. So far as I know, she's nothing but normal. And it'd be nice if I could befriend her, since I know a little about her. I won't be talking to a complete stranger and--'

"Why, is that young Karma?!" someone remarked with the kind of tone you can tell was spoken by a playful smile.

Karma shut down, simply listening and absorbing all the information he could.

"This is the Karma you wouldn't shut up about a couple months ago except in front of Dostoevsky, Gogol?" a brunette asked. "Well, he's got nice hair, if nothing else."

"Hm," Nikolai hummed. "Suppose its true, he really does."

"Wait. You've never seen him?" a shorter one in classier clothes asked suspiciously. "What weird shit did you pull to talk to him then? Please tell me you didn't text him. The way you text... Gods, anyone would think a psychopath was after them, or some underground crime-ring or some shit like that."

"You'd know plenty about underground crime-rings, wouldn't you, Nakahara?" a black-haired one with a relaxed walk said, his arm over a plum-haired male's shoulder, both their other arms currently dedicated to the supporting and petting of a sleeping raccoon.

"That's not funny, Ranpo-san," an albino said, walking up and falling into stride next to a black-haired young man with white tips on the ends of the two strands that fell next to his face.

"You would too, after all you told me of that interesting encounter with your Beast counterpart."

"I'm still not over that, y'know. Imagine meeting yourself and the first thing they do is disappear and reappear standing this close to you-" he said, holding his hands about three inches apart from each other. "-with a fucking knife pointed at the side of your neck. It scared the living shit out of me. I'd be just fine with no interdimensional stuff for a while."

"Your literal existence is interdimensional stuff, dumbass."

"Oh, shut up."

"I don't take orders from you, Jinko," he said coolly, poking a bit of fun at his esper self's name for the younger boy.

"Orders from Dazai-san were no problem, though," he scowled, rubbing at the scar where Beast Atsushi's knife had pressed in just a bit.

"Not funny," the brunette said. "We already understand that it wasn't exactly my fault. It's the way the PM works, and none of us who were kids and teenagers there, got away unscathed. I was suicidal, abused, and inhuman, Chibi-kun was abandoned and inhuman, Akutagawa-kun was an abuser and the abused, everybody hated Yumeno, Yosano ended up drinking off most of her problems, Kyouka-chan was the abused and the lost, and none of us had any choice about it. That can't be blamed on any one person. That's just the way the cookie crumbles."

"That," someone said in a Russian accent. "is a strangely lighthearted saying to put at the end of such a speech, Dazai."

"Although..." the man called Dazai said with an unfeeling smile. "You don't actually care, do you Dostoevsky?"

The same cruel expression made its way to the other young man's face.

"No, of course I don't."

"Karma, honey?" his mother says, shaking his shoulders gently, then not so gently.

"Um-- uh, ah... Yes, mom?" he asked dazedly

"You spaced out, kiddo. You've been doing that a lot lately, I'm getting a bit worried. Call me up if you ever need anything, okay?"

"Okay mom, love you."

"Love you too, my baby. I'm going to work now. Congratulations on your first day of adulting," she joked, waving with a warm smile and slightly teary eyes as she walked to the car, before pulling out and driving away.

Karma took all his clothes upstairs first, before coming back down for his shoes, ice-skating posters, sheets, blankets, and pillows and things.

Then he went back down for the last seven boxes, all labelled "𝔹𝕆𝕆𝕂𝕊". They were the biggest ones, since everything else either was—or could be folded to be—small. These just had books, lots of them. Lovely books, scary books, mystery books, textbooks, animal books, manga, comics, biographies, autobiographies, how-to books, cookbooks, philosophy books, books in foreign languages he was schooling himself in, just books. These were all the ones he hadn't quite had time to read over the summer, and the rest--two bookshelves full-- were left at home.

He walked into the room one last time, putting the last box of books on the bed before grabbing a mop from the small room full of cleaning supplies he found next to the empty pantry.

He completely soaked the mop, walked back to his room and began to clean the wooden floor. He got bored and started singing, getting completely lost in the song and the shine of the floor. He was having fun with the cleaning, and then when he finished, he picked up a few of the largest of the books, and placed them on the floor in one space along the wall. Then the next general size, and he kept going in till the books filled that wall before moving to the space of wall toward the door. It was a book he'd had for around two years, but had just never picked up. Even the fact that it was here was because he had never read it. It was the only copy he had ever seen. It was special. It was a blurred book.

These books were always brilliant, thought-provoking philosophy, or amazing stories, and it was constantly in speculation among the most prominent minds of the world as to why the names of the authors, of all things, would be blurred.