---
It had been about 36 hours since Kamijou Touma made the brilliant decision to let a complete stranger sleep in his apartment.
Not a classmate. Not a friend of a friend. Not even someone with ID.
Just a guy.
A guy leaning against a convenience store like someone had unplugged his will to live.
And what did Touma do?
"Hey, wanna crash on my floor and maybe eat my instant curry?"
Touma flopped back onto his futon and stared at the ceiling.
He was starting to think he'd inherited his bad luck from some ancient gambler deity.
But… still.
Kazuki Ren hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, he'd been polite, helpful, borderline robotic in how clean he kept the sink.
Just… weird.
Weird in a quiet, almost invisible way.
Like a puzzle missing the edge pieces.
Touma closed his eyes and played the last day in his head like a badly edited montage.
Guy shows up. Says he's broke and directionless.
Guy somehow dodges city-wide security systems like he's allergic to registration.
Guy gets hired at a café on the spot because he has a "marketable face."
And then.
Then, just when Touma thinks the day can't get any more tilted, a thief runs by, and Kazuki casually tells him where to grab a rock, how to throw it, and nails the guy with the kind of precision that belongs in anime, not real life.
Touma didn't know what made less sense, the math, the instinct, or the fact that Kazuki still insisted he was a normal guy.
Normal guys didn't sound like sports commentators inside their own heads.
Touma rolled over.
He heard something from the other side of the room.
A faint tap sound.
Again.
Tap.
Tap.
He sat up.
Kazuki was standing near the window, completely focused on… five pens.
Five cheap ballpoint pens.
Balanced vertically. All of them stacked on top of each other.
And he was holding the bottom one steady with a single index finger.
Touma stared at the tower of cheap stationery wobbling gently in the morning light.
Then he blinked.
Then stared harder.
"What… are you doing?"
Kazuki looked over, eyes wide, like he hadn't realized he was being watched.
"Oh. Uh. Just experimenting with my fine motor control."
"That's not fine motor control, that's a circus act."
"...I guess it's both."
The pens wobbled once, and Kazuki calmly tilted his finger 2.3 degrees. Touma didn't know how he knew it was 2.3, but he did.
The stack restabilized.
Touma pointed at it like it was evidence in a courtroom.
"You're not level 0."
Kazuki shrugged, looking genuinely lost. "I don't think I'm anything."
"You can't do stuff like that and call yourself normal. That's… that's not even esper weird. That's just weird weird."
"Maybe I'm just lucky?"
Touma buried his face in a pillow. "Don't even start with that."
There was a pause.
Then realization hit him like a frying pan.
"Wait. Weren't you supposed to start work today?"
Kazuki blinked.
"...Oh."
Touma sat up, eyes wide. "Don't oh me."
"I forgot."
"How. How does someone with a brain like that forget a job?"
Kazuki looked genuinely apologetic. "There's a lot going on in my head."
"Get out."
"What?"
"Get out! You're late! The café lady's probably already forming a murder plan. Go. Go!"
Kazuki grabbed his bag and stumbled toward the door while still trying to balance the pen tower.
It fell apart.
Naturally.
"You're seriously a walking contradiction," Touma muttered as he shoved him toward the hallway. "Genius reflexes, no alarm clock instinct."
Kazuki slipped his shoes on backwards, fixed them, and gave a lazy salute.
"I'll be back by dinner."
"You better be. And bring coupons."
The door closed behind him.
Silence returned.
Touma sat back down and stared at the now-empty floor.
"He's definitely not level 0."
---