Riko was not having an easier time sitting still through classes this afternoon than she did this morning. Except now, instead of wondering exactly what kind of club she’d get stuck with, she was wondering whether her future organization, the parapsychology club, could ever find a teacher willing to sponsor it and act as its faculty supervisor.

They were an odd bunch. Riko liked all of them, except for Aimi Aoki.

She loved Aimi.

Riko wouldn’t trade any of them for the world.

Finding a teacher who would be willing to stake their reputation on them though? That would be tricky. Their proposed club was not a traditional subject, even for a science-loving academy such as theirs.

In addition, they weren’t exactly model students. Kyo’s test scores were stellar, so much so that they ranked her separately from the other students. However, she possessed the ability to memorize every class she ever attended, every textbook she ever got her hands on, and for that matter, every cram book in the bookstore. She could hardly set an example anyone else could follow. Behaviorally, few would act like they did.

As for Riko, she struggled to even achieve academic mediocrity. Academic excellence was beyond her ken. She could fit in okay when surrounded by delinquents, but this was a prestigious school that any delinquents looking merely to coast through life wouldn’t even dream of attending. Here, she stood out as much as the espers.

Riko had her determination, though. She would do whatever it took to establish a place for herself and Aimi here at Kagakujo. As well as the rest of her new esper friends.

After the final few classes finally crawled their way past, the members of the prospective parapsychology club were able to meet up. Riko made her way up to the library’s Conference Room 4, the same place the prospective members met up earlier.

She had unconsciously hoped that her and Aimi would be the first to arrive, and they’d have a moment alone together. A foolish hope, as she quickly learned when she opened the door and saw Nana Ishihara already sitting there at the conference table. Riko had moved brisky, and was panting a bit as she stood in the doorway, but Nana seemed perfectly relaxed.

“How’d you get here so fast, Ishihara-sama?”

Instead of answering Riko, Nana gave her a sharp look. Oh right, Riko thought, apportation.

“Oh, um, is it tricky? Going into a room you can't see inside of? When it’s dark I bump into stuff just trying to get into the bathroom. I think I’d hit my head pretty hard if I tried to blink in there through the walls.”

“Excellent observation, Control Sample-chan.” Riko was still getting used to that name, but at the same time, she was proud that Nana had accepted her so quickly. “I can’t go everywhere like this, normally only places I can see, but I can return to places I’m familiar with. Such as my bedroom, a restroom at Tokyo Station, or here.”

“Do you, um, spend a lot of time in the Tokyo Station bathroom?”

Nana’s face remained still. Her face didn’t move much in general, even to a question like that. “Thankfully no. I can ‘bookmark’ a location through focused concentration, like a website you wish to visit again later. It’s taxing on the memory to do so, and I don’t have a memory like Kyo’s, so I limit it to the areas with the greatest utility. It's sort of like cramming.”

Riko mentally chewed on the idea as she sat down across from Nana. Before she could come up with any followup questions, Nana’s friends and prospective clubmates Kyo Amano and Chiyoko Shiro came in through the door, plopping themselves down in the same seats as they did at lunchtime.

“HIya Kyo-san! Chiyo-chan!” Riko felt for a moment as if she was intruding on a sacred space. The three of them obviously spent a lot of time here together, and she had sort of just butted into their lives. Plus she was a ‘normal’. Her father said that espers were often mistreated by ordinary society due to the envy and mistrust that surrounded them. Riko kept these feelings of doubt off of her face, however, giving the two girls a bright, cheerful smile as if she was, too, a long time friend who belonged here.

Riko’s outward warmth seemed to pay off, and neither Nana, Kyo, nor Chiyoko seemed uncomfortable with Riko’s presence. “Hello Riko-chan,” Kyo replied, and Chiyoko gave her a little bow. Chiyoko wasn’t yet on conversational terms with Riko, it seemed.

Riko didn’t mind giving her time. It was Aimi she wanted to drag out of her comfort zone. Someone who could read minds shouldn’t be that guarded, Riko thought. Besides, they were soul mates, or so Riko believed, they should share everything, of course! Speaking of which…

Nana spoke up about the missing presence first. “Aoki-san has yet to arrive. Control Sample-chan, do you know where she might be?”

Riko thought for a moment. “I have an idea. How do you get to the roof?”

The four girls made their way to the stairway that accessed the roof, having directed Riko there. Opening the door, Riko saw what she expected to find; Aimi Aoki, hovering a meter off of the school’s flat roof, gently bobbing up and down like a toy boat on the surface of a lake. Her eyes were closed, but as she heard four sets of footsteps approaching, her eyes opened, and she drifted gently to the ground.

“How did you find me? I was going to come to the conference room after a moment.”

Riko grinned, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s easy. I just thought about what I would do if I was a person who could levitate, and was always hearing people’s thoughts and memories like a noisy restaurant full of people talking. You’d want to be somewhere away from all the people in their clubs and sports, but not out of the school altogether.”

She continued, “I also thought if I could levitate, the main thing I would want to do is fly to school like a superhero. But I noticed Ishihara-sama doesn’t like to show off the fact that she can get around really quickly, and figured if you could fly, you might walk to school anyway, to keep people from talking about you like they would a superhero flying around town.”

Riko took a deep breath. She normally didn’t like to go on rants, but she was really proud of her train of thought. “But, if I could fly, and was hiding it most of the time, I’d probably feel claustrophobic inside of buildings and stuff. I keep a journal of my dreams, and sometimes I dream about flying, seeing the world below me rolling past swiftly, feeling the wind in my face, and when I wake up, I feel depressed to be stuck to the ground again. When I felt like that, it always helps me to go somewhere I can feel the breeze. Like a roof. I know you better than anyone, Aimi-chan! Marry me!”

Riko made a V-shaped peace sign with her fingers, and winked. Aimi gave Riko a fiery glare, and Riko knew she had broken Aimi’s telepathic one-way mirror, if only for a moment.

Nana cleared her throat. “Now that we’re all together, we need to find a faculty supervisor for the club. Which ones are staying around after class today?”

Checking the office hours posted on the school website, the group of what was now five girls began to roam around the school, meeting with any teacher that would see them.

Said a physics teacher, “I already supervise the physics and astronomy clubs, and I simply cannot afford to stake my reputation on a field like parapsychology.”

Their luck with one of the math teachers wasn’t much better.  “I stay away from the soft sciences as much as I can. That’s why I’m already supervising the computer club. Computers I can understand, the human mind, not so much.”

The English teacher was also busy with the English Speaking Society club. This was turning out to be a common roadblock. With mandatory club attendance, the teachers all seemed to have their hands full managing club full of active participants.

“What about the school counselor? Or the nurse?” Riko pointed to the few names on their list they hadn’t talked to after an hour and a half of trying.

“Those aren’t  faculty members,” Nana replied. “The club guidelines call for a teacher.”

“Why not a counselor? They’re involved in our lives as much as the teachers. My counselor at my last school kept me from quitting and trying to become a full time idol. The teachers just talk towards us and then ask questions to make sure we didn’t sleep through them talking.”

Nana turned to Riko. “Are you an idol, Control Sample-chan?”

“Um, I did a photoshoot once. It wasn’t a lot of money but it was something.”

Hold on,” Kyo interjected. “The guidelines don’t require a teacher supervisor. They suggest a teacher supervisor as a necessity for any club. What they require is for the student council to sign off on the club, when they believe the guidelines were followed in good faith.”

Riko was filled to the brim with good faith. She suggested the school counselor without ever having any thoughts of trickery or loopholes. The student council president would be a problem, though. She didn’t seem to like Nana very much.

The student counselor wasn’t too busy on the first day of school. Most students were occupied with their new clubs, or the ones they stayed with from the previous year. They had yet to develop the problems and anxieties that would lead to a visit with the counselor. The timing was as good as it would ever be.

Her name was Daisuke Kamei, and she had just agreed to hear the prospective Parapsychology Club out.

She was a handsome older woman. She had a youthful aura to her, with her long, flowing hair, though her sharp features and designer glasses showed her mature side as well. “Nana Ishihara, Kiyo Amano, Chiyoko Shiro, Aimi Aoiki… and Riko Nomura… you’re Dr. Nomura’s daughter, correct? I heard you would be in attendance. I can see the resemblance.”

Riko tilted her head as she looked back from her seat, towards the woman at her desk. “Do you know my dad?”

She nodded slowly. “I shared a number of classes with Dr. Nomura as an undergraduate. Almost all of his liberal art requisites were taken in Psychology. After he went to medical school I never saw him outside of a professional context, however.”

Riko looked at the woman. She was suddenly, uncomfortably aware that she was around the same age as her mom. The same ‘type’ too, as far as physical looks go. She couldn’t help but wonder if Dr. Nomura and Daisuke were… good friends in college. If that wasn’t bad enough, Aimi was also starting at her, possibly using her telepathic ability to watch all this drama play out inside of Riko’s head, just like a movie.

A thought about Riko and Aimi visiting a secluded hot springs bath together as ‘good friends’  was enough to get Aimi to stare at the floor with a huff, however.

“Moving on. As you may be aware, Kagakujo is a nine year recipient of the Super Science High School designation from the MEXT, a highly competitive award. The field of parapsychology has only recently become anything but pseudoscience. Entertaining the legitimacy of the field publicly could put the school’s ten year streak in jeopardy.”

“But anomalous psychic phenomena are observable. If you can observe something, you can conduct scientific research into it,” Nana replied.

“Science is more political than young minds like to imagine,” Daisuke said with a sigh,pushing her glasses up. “Drawing attention to the existence of espers draws unwanted attention to us. Most people, unless they have an idea on how to exploit them, want to forget that espers exist. There's a paper thin line of civility that keeps them from being treated as an existential threat.”

Aimi had forgotten about Riko’s trick. She was now glaring with annoyance at the counselor. “You talk like that, but you’re an esper yourself. You just don’t tell anyone. You wanted to tell Riko’s father, but chose not to.”

A silence washed over the room like a tidal wave. Everyone was frozen in place, staring at either Aimi or Daisuke, with the only obvious motion being the room the tears that were starting to collect at the bottom rims of the counselor’s glasses.

Finally, Nana decided to step in, her voice taking on the aire of responsibility. “That’s enough. Aoki-san, apologize to Kamei-sensei.” She could speak quite sternly for her age when she needed to.

“…sorry,” replied Aimi, looking away. A tension still hung in the air. Hopefully, Aimi hadn't blown the parapsychology club's chances.