School trips. The absolute bane of any psychic’s existence.

For most students, they’re fun—an excuse to skip class, sit on a bus for hours, and bother every breathing organism within a one-mile radius. For Saiki Kusuo, they’re a logistical nightmare. Being away from home means being away from his coffee jelly stash, his quiet, his routine, and—worst of all—the distance he usually maintains from everyone else. His powers are harder to hide when he’s crammed into a space full of loud, emotional, brain-leaking teenagers who think entirely too loudly for their own good. It’s overstimulation packaged as “educational enrichment.”

And this bus? This hellish metal tube barreling toward Okinawa? It is, without exaggeration, Saiki’s personal purgatory.

He’s been trapped here for over an hour and a half, wedged between Nendou—who keeps elbowing him every time he laughs at something on his phone—and Kaidou, who hasn’t stopped whisper-ranting about “dark forces stalking us from the shadows” since the moment they left PK Academy’s parking lot. Saiki has spent the last twenty minutes calculating the psychic force required to discreetly explode the entire island they’re visiting, and honestly, it’s starting to sound tempting.

Finally, after one more accidental shove from Nendou’s mountainous shoulder, Saiki has had enough. He stands abruptly—politely excusing himself in the psychic equivalent of slamming a door—and slips into the aisle, determined to find a safer, quieter corner of the bus.

The farther forward he gets, the fewer students there are. Blessed silence creeps back into his brain. His legs stretch for the first time in ages, pins and needles prickling down to his ankles as he walks. He’s just scanning for an empty spot when the bus lurches violently around a curve.

Normally, he would balance himself with telekinesis. Gracefully. Invisibly.

But he’s exhausted. Distracted. And the sway comes too fast.

Before he can correct his footing, the sudden motion throws him sideways—and directly into you.

Or more accurately: into your hands, your lap, and the hard plastic of the handheld game you had been playing.

The screen flashes GAME OVER the moment Saiki’s weight smashes the buttons.

…Perfect.

Two problems register instantly in his mind: One, his lower back is throbbing from colliding with your very unforgiving console. Two, he is—unmistakably, horrifyingly—half-lying in your lap like a kid being fed airplane-spooned bites of dinner.

He jolts upright with all the speed and dignity of a cat falling off a counter.

“Sorry—” he blurts out, already scrambling away from you like the seat is on fire. “I didn’t mean to—”

But before he can fully stand, their homeroom teacher strolls by, clipboard in hand and patience long gone.

“Kusuo, sit down. The bus is moving. Pick a seat and stay in it.”

Saiki freezes. In slow motion, he looks from the teacher… to the now-occupied seats around him… back to you.

Great. Juuuuuust great.

With the existential heaviness of someone accepting a doomed fate, he sinks down beside you—stiff, mortified, and desperately pretending nothing happened.

He keeps his eyes fixed forward, ears pink, voice flat as he mutters:

“…Sorry again. I didn’t mean to squish you. Or… annoy you.”

His back still hurts. His pride might be mortally wounded. And he’s starting to suspect this trip will be the end of him.