Isshun's first reaction to the periwinkle haired girl waving at him was:
"What the fuck?"
Thankfully, Nejire couldn't hear through the window, nor was she an expert at lip reading.
The second reaction that Isshun had to Nejire was:
An awkward wave.
For a brief moment, he considered simply ignoring her and closing the curtains. Still, Isshun knew enough about social interactions to understand that arbitrarily antagonizing the neighbors was a bad idea.
Nejire, however, didn't seem discouraged in the slightest. If anything, she waved harder once she realized he was responding.
"…Might as well."
With a quiet sigh, Isshun grabbed a cushion from one of the dining room chairs and placed it on the floor beneath the window. After that, he unlocked it and slid the window open.
As expected.
Isshun neatly sidestepped as Nejire lunged forward, watching with a tired expression as she tumbled through the opening and landed face-first onto the cushion.
At least she didn't get hurt.
Nor was he the cushion.
With the computational ability far surpassing both his parents, it wasn't surprising that Isshun could calculate a decent amount into the future.
Not in clear visions or prophecy, but more like predictive overlays like looking at future frames in an animation: translucent projections of what could happen based on current motion, senses, and intent.
Isshun could easily keep it at a solid 5 seconds in the future, but with any time above 7 seconds, the margin of error was much higher, leading to multitudes of overlapping projections.
The future appeared like a warped, semi-transparent 3D playback layered over reality, and leaving it active for too long made him feel extremely nauseous.
Isshun didn't know how his Quirk was able to see 5 seconds into the future in a lecture, just through his enhanced senses, watching a lecture 5 seconds into the future was a rather motion sickness inducing experience.
'Maybe I should just get used to it at some point. Don't really want my vision to be in Sandevistan vision 24/7 tho.'
He mentally filed that thought away and focused back on the present as Nejire bounced to her feet, seemingly unfazed.
She stared at him with unrestrained curiosity.
"Hello!" she said, beaming.
"…Hello," Isshun replied, returning the smile with effort.
"What's your name? My name's Hado Nejire! My family just moved here from Akita Prefecture! I'm seven years old! My Quirk is called Wave Motion! Oh—what's your Quirk? Your hair looks really cool—"
Isshun watched her step closer with every sentence.
"Wait!" He raised a hand.
"Hm?" She tilted her head.
"At least give me a chance to answer your question before you go off on your… tangent." He pinched the bridge of his nose. If he didn't interrupt her now, she'd still be talking five seconds from now.
He consciously dampened his Quirk and looked back at her.
"What's a tangent?"
Let me ignore that.
"My name is Shunkan Isshun. I've lived here since I was born, and I'm five. My Quirk is Precognition—"
"What's pre… cog… ni… tion?"
"…And a tangent is what you were doing just now."
Nejire completely ignored her recent question and nodded enthusiastically. "Wow, you're really smart! So what was I doing just now?"
"Hmm… who knows?"
'This kid might be even worse than the previous neighbors.'
"So what's pre… cognition? Does it have something to do with your hair? Oh! Does your hair glow when you use it? But I didn't see your hair glowing earlier…"
"Before I answer any more questions," Isshun said carefully, "can we set some rules?"
Nejire blinked, then nodded. Her parents set rules too. Like not touching dangerous things, or not flying indoors without permission—
Oh no.
She just broke a rule.
She really didn't want to get spanked again.
…Why did she suddenly go quiet?
Isshun watched her expression shift, then sighed.
"How about one question at a time," he said, "and if you break the rule… hmm. A flick on the forehead."
That snapped her out of it.
"Huh? Oh! I wasn't paying attention!"
"…Haaaah."
Isshun stared at the ceiling.
This was going to be a long day.
--<>--
Answering Nejire's seemingly endless questions, both Isshun and Nejire didn't realize that time had passed for a while, until someone rang the doorbell once more.
The sound cut Nejire off mid-question, just as Isshun was trying to explain the basics of linear algebra.
Honestly, if there was someone right in front of him who let him use the Feynman Technique without complaint, who was he not to take advantage of it?
Who knew? Maybe Nejire was a hidden genius. Maybe she'd end up explaining teleportation theory to him.
While Nejire's personality was hard to get used to in the beginning, as a person who did like explaining things, he got used to it relatively quickly.
Ring-Ring!
The doorbell finally snapped Isshun out of it. He stood up from the couch, Nejire immediately following close behind.
The height difference due to age might have resulted in an eyebrow twitch on Isshun's end, there wasn't much he could do. He'd heard kids needed a lot of sleep to grow properly, but his own high school self clearly hadn't known anything.
He checked the screen beside the door. An unfamiliar woman stood outside, her features strikingly similar to the seven-year-old peeking out from behind him, only older, and visibly worried.
"Oh, that's my mom!" Nejire's face lit up instantly.
"Yeah, it seems so."
He moved toward the door, instinctively nudging his Precognition, just enough to skim for potential outcomes. Thankfully it was just mainly awkward conversation and mild scolding to Nejire.
Good. He mentally picked out a decent excuse for why his parents weren't home.
"Oh… that's my mom…" Nejire repeated, her tone noticeably different. Isshun glanced back at her, puzzled, then hummed thoughtfully.
After all, right on Nejire's forehead, was a very noticeable red mark after a few times where Nejire had asked too many questions at once.
'Was that why?' He speculated, but Nejire answered his questions soon after.
"I only said I was going to say hi…"
…Are you serious?
Isshun stared at her in disbelief. Nejire, to her credit, seemed to understand exactly how ridiculous that sounded. She flushed slightly and waved her hands defensively.
"Don't worry! As long as they know I'm safe, they're usually pretty relaxed!"
She nodded firmly, as if trying to convince herself.
I don't know about that one, chief.
Isshun shook his head in exasperation, opening the door.
"Hello–oh a child?" The woman quickly smoothed her worried expression into something gentler, presumably not to scare the child.
Too bad her efforts were on a child who could care less about it.
"Hello! Do you need anything…?"
"Oh! I'm Hado Shiori, from next door. We just moved in and…Nejire-chan?"
She leaned forward, eyes widening as she spotted a familiar silhouette attempting to hide behind Isshun.
Isshun, who knew where the conversation would go, looked at Nejire behind him, no longer with a confident expression she held when reassuring that nothing would happen.
'Where's all your confidence now?'
Moving out of the way, and opening the door fully so Shiori could fully see Nejire, he watched with minor amusement as Shiori quickly grabbed Nejire by the scruff of her clothing.
"Oh here you were, Hado Nejire."
Instead of Nejire's previously assured relaxed demeanor, relief and exhaustion warred on Shiori's face as she crouched slightly to meet her daughter's eyes, seemingly ignoring the red mark on her forehead.
"Hado Nejire. Look at your mother."
Nejire obeyed, her expression with a mix of guilt and fear. Guilt for worrying her mom, and fear of the punishment.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?" Shiori continued. "You said you were just going to say hello, and then an entire hour passed without a word. Were you so excited to finally meet a peer that you forgot about us completely?"
"N-no…"
Nejire's eyes darted around, desperately searching for a lifeline—finally landing on Isshun. She gave him a pleading look.
Isshun met her gaze, utterly unmoved. His expression clearly said, Nothing I can do.
Betrayal stabbed through Nejire's heart, her face naturally forming into a pout.
Before she could protest, Shiori gently but firmly tilted Nejire's face back toward her.
"And now you're already trying to get your new friend to save you?" Shiori sighed. "Hado Nejire, when we get home, you're getting a spanking."
Nejire went pale.
She looked between her mother and Isshun in sheer panic, silently begging for help.
Looking at Nejire's pitiful expression, Isshun, who was weak to emotional appeal, made to support her, but was immediately intercepted at Shiori, who gave him a 'kind' smile.
…Yeah. You're on your own.
"Thank you for looking after my Nejire-chan," Shiori said. "As thanks, would you and your family like to come over for dinner?"
Free food?
Even as Nejire resigned herself to her fate, her eyes sparkled again. She looked up at Isshun hopefully.
"…I'll have to ask my parents once they wake up," Isshun replied, deploying the greatest excuse known to mankind: Sleeping Parents. "But they'll probably say yes."
Shiori nodded. "You don't need to call me Mrs. Hado. Auntie is fine, but I don't think I caught your name?"
Oh yeah I didn't introduce myself yet. But before Isshun could even respond, Nejire interjected.
"His name is Shunkan Isshun—"
Shiori calmly covered her mouth.
"Sorry about that," she said apologetically. "My Nejire-chan is a little… energetic."
"It's fine," Isshun said. "And yes, my name is Shunkan Isshun."
"Then Shunkan-kun. Thank you for spending time with Nejire-chan. I hope you two get along well. Please take care of her."
"...No problem."
Isn't she older than me?
Judging by Nejire's expression, she'd thought the same thing. She opened her mouth only for Shiori to intercept her again and begin dragging her home.
Isshun waved once which was unseen, and closed the door.
Well, that was a weird experience.
--+--
A/N: I know this fic will prolly not be popular, so if we somehow get 500 powerstones, yall will get an extra chap, lol.