Aimi had not agreed to walk Riko to the train station, but she hadn’t disagreed either.

Of course, there was only one train station within easy walking distance of Tokyo Joshi Kagaku-Gijutsu Koko, Roppongi station. Unless they were from a wealthy enough family to have someone drive them home, or to live in the affluent neighborhood of Roppongi Hills, all the girls from Kagakujo were headed to Roppongi station, to catch one of the evening commuter trains home.

So, unless Aimi wanted to run, she really didn’t have much choice but to have Riko walking alongside her. Judging from what was visible between her long skirt and bulky shoes and socks, she had pretty skinny legs that wouldn’t carry her very fast. She probably wasn’t going to levitate herself either, not in front of all of the heavy foot traffic was now filling the streets.

Thus, when Riko moved up to her flank and held that pace, Aimi merely looked down, trying not to make eye contact.

“AImi-chan! Don’t walk alone! There are scary people in Roppongi after sunset. Drunken salarymen, odd foreigners, gangsters, you name it.” As convincing as Riko tried to be, she certainly didn’t look scared herself.

Aimi, seeing no other option, finally entertained Riko with a reply. “I would not have any problems dealing with salarymen or street gangs.”  Aimi’s neck was now bound up in a thick scarf to ward off the evening chill, giving her head the appearance of poking its way out of a warm blanket cocoon as she looked up to Riko.

“Well, um, no, but you shouldn’t use your abilities to fight. That kind of thing always gets back to teachers. It always did for me…”

Aimi shrugged, and seemed to give Riko the point. Riko’s company being preferable to negative public attention wasn’t exactly a compliment, but she would take it. Of course, if Riko had convinced Aimi to join up with Kyo and Chiyoko, they’d have an even bigger protective group, but Riko decided not to mention that. For the moment, she had Aimi to herself. An unquestioned win.

“Um, so…” Riko began, never one to let awkward silences hang for long.

“We don’t have to talk,” Aimi interrupted. “We can just walk. The street is noisy enough.”

“But I like talking!” Riko was about to become cross with Aimi. She had been lashing out at people all day, daring them to push her away, whether it was her, or her fellow espers, or even the guidance counselor, who was sticking her neck out to help them. If Riko wasn’t so in love with her, she would be tempted to tell her to get lost right now, to go back to whatever shut-in hole she crawled out of.

However, because she was in love, Riko was forced to think about things from another perspective. What if I could read everyone’s mind? I’d never need to ask anyone questions about how they felt, or how their day was going, or show any interest in them at all, really. I’d only ever need to talk to people if I wanted something out of them. Aimi herself only ever seemed to ask rhetorical questions, in order to provoke emotional responses. You’d come across as extremely unpleasant, behaving like that.

Riko also knew, because she secretly practiced singing daily, as part of her hidden plan to become a famous goth rock idol, that vocal cord muscles atrophy quickly if you don’t use them much. If Aimi doesn’t like to talk, and doesn’t need to talk, she could be so out of shape, as far as her neck and diaphragm were concerned, that it could be painful to talk. So she talks in short, pointed sentences.

It was at that point in Riko’s mental processing that she remembered something she had heard. “Can you do like, two-way telepathy? I heard telepaths can send thoughts to other people, not just read their minds. Like a cell phone conversation, but no one can hear you talk, so it's even better.”

Aimi looked down a bit. “I don’t want to do that.”

Riko couldn’t help but feel a bit of excitement. Aimi wasn’t saying she couldn’t do it, and Riko wondered what it would be like to be connected to someone in that way. However, viewing it as intimate also went some way to explaining Aimi’s reluctance.

“Well, okay.” Riko wasn’t going to give up on talking. “Where do you live?”

Aimi walked silently for a few steps before finally giving in and answering, “Ogikubo. Spare bedroom in grandmother’s apartment.”

Riko mulled in thought a moment. Aimi didn’t live with her parents. Were they dead? If they were alive, then why wouldn’t they want to live with their daughter? Riko would have to be careful if she wanted to keep their conversation going all the way to the train station.

“Is she nice?

“Nice enough. Leaves me alone. Makes me dinner.”

Riko could picture it. A kindly old woman, setting a plate by her bedroom door, afraid to disturb Aimi’s solitude. She must be a very patient and gentle person, Riko imagined. Riko hoped she could meet her some day.

The first few muffled sounds of thrumming bass began to pump into the city, as the sky turned red and bars began to open. Thankfully, it was just around then that the girls began to descend the stairway into the Roppongi station, the thick concrete walls of the subway tunnels keeping the cacophony of the world above out of their ears.

At this time of the evening, the trains would be running six or so minutes apart. Riko wouldn’t have much more time to try to bond with Aimi today. Better go for it now, Riko decided.

“We should exchange phone numbers. Your grandmother didn’t send you out without a cell phone, I’m pretty sure.”

Aimi stared at her, as if questioning her intent, whether Riko was romantically motivated here. Well, Riko was, but she had a cover.

“We’re clubmates. We’ll need to communicate outside of school. I’ve already gotten Kyo and Nana’s numbers.”

Aimi gave up, and with a small application of psychokinetic force, her phone flew out of her pocket and out into her waiting hand. Riko followed suit, drawing out her own phone.

The two phones were worlds apart; Riko had a fancy smartphone, armored in a customized case painted in the macabre illustrations of a heavy metal album she liked, and dangling from it was a little plastic toy bat, the kind you could win from a capsule dispenser. It took her twenty tries to get that bat charm. Riko was proud of it. Meanwhile, Aimi had a flip phone that looked to be a decade old, and judging by the refurbished exterior, very well could be.

After Riko had excitedly given Aimi her number, and Aimi reluctantly gave hers back, Riko was desperately searching for some choice words to part ways on. “You should get LIME, it’s like text messaging but way better, you can install it on a PC if that phone can’t run…”

“Wait. Don’t move.” Riko had never heard Aimi use that tone of voice before. It was… concern? “Look up slowly. Don’t scream.”

Riko did so. Wrapped around one a nearby subway support column was a snake-like creature, its body onyx black, with glowing purple eyes and a back covered in individually sectioned armor plates. It was looking over the crowd of commuters hungrily.

Choking back a stronger reaction, Riko quietly asked, “What is that? Why isn’t anyone else seeing it?”

“It’s an apparition, a life form without a body. Normal people can’t see them. I can see them because I can see human thoughts and memories, and that’s what they’re made out of.”

Riko wondered out loud, “But how am I seeing it?”

“I’m sharing my senses with you.” Despite the disturbing nature of the situation, Riko managed to turn a lovestruck smile in Aimi’s direction, forcing the esper to quickly add. “It’s dangerous. A predator. I had no choice.”

“I thought apparitions and other urban legends like that weren’t real, just espers,” Riko replied softly, watching the snake thing carefully.

“They are real. Proving they exist is hard.”

“What happens if it attacks someone? We should do something” Riko was starting to adopt an instinctive, street brawling stance.

“I can’t do anything about it, and neither can you. It’s not made of physical matter. Best to avoid it. Let it attack someone else. I’m just helping you so I don’t owe you a favor for everything you’ve done today.”

Riko wasn’t listening. She was already charging at the creature. By the the time Aimi could react, possibly grip her body with her psychokinesis, Riko had already attempted to latch her hand onto one of the creature’s chitinous back plates,

Aimi winced. When she opened her eyes, she saw something even she had trouble believing: Riko had succeeded in grabbing the thing. It hissed angrily as she yanked it from the pillar, displaying surprising strength, given that it was a snake monster about as big as Riko herself. Riko wasn’t sure about it herself. She kept decently in shape, but she was certainly no wrestler. Was Aimi using psychokinesis to make her stronger?

Despite all of that strength, the creature managed to whip its neck and head around and bite into Riko’s shoulder. She let out a grunt of pain that was drowned out by the sound of an approaching train. As the bright lights hit Riko’s vision, she had a burst of adrenaline just big enough to pull the thing off of her.

Riko remembered something from the Brinsfield Foundation brochure earlier, about human thought being a series of electrical impulses. She also remembered learning something about the electrical lines they put above trains tracks to power them. Hoping these were both relevant, she chucked the snake’s long body onto the line like an old pair of boots with the laces tied together.

Just at that moment, the arriving train drew a large amount of power through the conduit, causing the snake to writhe in agony as it became part of the complete circuit. Finally, it evaporated dramatically into a cloud of harmless black vapors.

Riko was victorious. She was also collapsing from exhaustion. The thing had taken something from her through its fangs, like a vampire. She could see Aimi looking over her, a look of concern and annoyance on her face, just before she blacked out.

When she came to, she was inside of a moving train, laid out across a couple of seats. Despite the fact that the train car was standing room only, no one seemed to mind. She must not have looked good. She looked around. Aimi was watching her, still looking annoyed. She also appraised exactly which train she was on.

The HIbiya line, going to Meguro City. That’s where she lived. Aimi lived in Ogikubo, which was a good way to the north from Riko’s station. Riko was still dizzy, these things were hard to think about. Luckily, Aimi answered her unspoken question.

“I found your address inside of your memories, and what train line you planned to use to get there. Some people helped me carry you onto the car, so I didn’t have to lift you up with psychokinesis.”

“Oh. Uh…”

Seeing Riko was awake enough to understand her, Aimi grew angrier with her. “That was stupid. If I had not shown you the apparition, you might not have gotten hurt. Why did you do that?”

She had been inside Riko’s memories. She didn’t need to ask why. Riko said it anyway. “Someone else might have gotten hurt.”

“You shouldn’t have been able to grab onto it. If you didn’t, it would have bit you and you would have been helpless to do anything back to it. You would have accomplished nothing and even now, no one will thank you for helping them.”

“I was able to grab it because you were helping me.” Riko had no idea how it worked, but she was absolutely certain that was the reason. She tried to lift herself off of the seat, feeling guilty about taking up two seats in a train car with so many people standing, but fell back down into it.

“Rest. The apparition stole some of your strength. You need to recover. When the train arrives, I can help you walk.”

Riko felt bad. Not because of the snakebite, but because she was being doted on by Aimi. She wanted to be the one helping her. Show her how cool and tough she was.

On the other hand… she never thought she’d see Aimi outside of school so soon. Riko could see the bright side in anything. Well, unless she was passing out. Which she did, again. She got a few more minutes of relaxation while the train completed its journey to Meguro City.

When they arrived, she was awoken by the sudden sensation of her body lurching off of the seats, moving forward awkwardly like one of those undead creatures from the American movies. Except, if she exerted some of her will to move, the motions were a bit smoother, less likely to gather attention.

Aimi was walking ahead of her. Guessing she was the cause of this sudden, automatic movement, Riko let herself be psychokinetically assisted as she followed behind.

“You may be able to move your arms now. Try to call your mother. Tell her you’re bringing a guest home.”

Riko complied, with every ounce of enthusiasm she had in her weakened state.