Chaoskouji

Arc 5 Chapter 6 - Premonitions

The next morning, Kikyou was still ill.

She had recovered significantly from last night's downpour, up and moving about her apartment when I came to visit in the morning, but still had a serious enough cold to the point in which she had decided to stay in for today.

I got reamed out for threatening to undress her in front of Matsushita, but upon being reminded she had dared me to do it first, she shut up enough for me to cook her breakfast.

Once that was done, I left her to her illness to go and explore some rumours I had heard about in Keyaki Mall.

Apparently there was a fortune teller at the school who was giving very accurate predictions.

I didn't believe they had the ability to tell the future. For that you'd have to be psychic. But I was curious as to how good this fortune teller worked, based on how I understood it. Cold reading. The ability to give a reading, a prediction of one's future based on a massive amount of past data. In other words, they interpret patterns to understand people.

A good fortune teller can extract information from the person they're reading through a short conversation. They can pick up on things that the person themselves hasn't noticed.

It was a difficult skill, to be able to convince a person that you know more about them than you do and being able to extract information without the mark noticing was incredibly difficult.

I was curious as to how well they would be able to read me.

Unfortunately, I made a mistake in my planning.

"I might have messed up," I muttered.

The intense late-August heat blazed down upon me. I saw a shimmering heat haze ahead, above the concrete, and through the roadside trees. The dorm rooms came equipped with air conditioning, so we didn't feel the heat much indoors. However, it was summer, and in direct sunlight, you instantly started sweating buckets.

The heat reduced people to complete lumps. I desperately sought out shade. Fortunately, the school boasted a rather expansive campus littered with tons of trees.

It was 9:30 A.M., well before most student activities, as I made my way towards the fabled fortune-teller. Fortune-telling services were supposed to begin at ten, but I didn't plan to stick around for long. I'd quickly get my fortune read, then leave just as quickly. That was my plan.

But as I neared my destination, I realised my plans were about to be shattered.

I had expected Keyaki Mall to be nearly empty. Instead, the opposite held true. Numerous students lounged around in their summer clothes, most of which I suspected were here for the same reason I was. There was a general trend in the movement of students heading towards the elevators, and I watched from a distance as more and more of them headed up to the fifth floor.

This wouldn't do. I wasn't sure how busy it would be, but if each fortune took even 10 minutes, it could be an hours-long line.

I turned to my left and headed towards the emergency stairs. They weren't meant to be used normally, but with all the students in the elevators I thought it would be much quicker to sprint up some stairs than to wait in line or squeeze in with 10 other people.

The stairwell wasn't air conditioned, and the instant I stepped in I could feel the heat, probably the reason it was off limits, but I took off running anyway. Running up stairs was an unusual experience, but it didn't take long to reach the fifth floor.

When I reached the area where the fortune teller was situated, there was an even more confusing situation.

"There are couples everywhere."