Psycho Busters, Volume 2

Kakeru is a normal boy, or so he thinks, so when he met the beautiful Ayano, he was immediately attracted to her. Then, he found out that she was psychic, and that her friends were psychic, too. but he doesn't know much of their background. With his mother and two sisters on holiday without him, he invited Ayano and her friends to stay in his house, in hopes that he can get to know her better, and learn more about her friends and her.

Her friends include Xiao Long, a boy who can heal with his powers, Kaito, who has the power to make fire and uses it as a weapon, and Jôi, who can see into the future, but who is currently in a deep sleep, worn out from using his powers. Ayano herself can read minds.

Jôi finally wakes up, and his power becomes immediately evident as he takes over leadership of the group. He asks the others to do tasks for him, and tells Kakeru to go up and down stairs starting only with his left foot. Kakeru is puzzled by this, but agrees, and Jôi shares his vision of the future with them... the world in ruins, a strange man standing over them, and Kakeru going to face him. Kakeru doesn't know the man, but the others do. He's Ikushima, one of the council controlling the Garden, the place that identifies psychics and tries to get them to use their powers on behalf of the government.

Ayano and the others want freedom, but the council is unwilling to give up control over psychics who are so powerful, and so they send two other psychics after Ayano and her friends, psychics meant to kill everyone except Jôi and bring Jôi back to the Garden so he can be used.

Jôi, meanwhile, tells the others that he feels that Kakeru is actually a very powerful psychic indeed, but his powers are not under his conscious control. Which is actually a good thing, as Kakeru may be a "type zero", one of the most powerful psychics on the planet.

When Kakeru, Ayano and the others are trapped in Kakeru's school by the attack of the other two psychics, and the girls from Kakeru's class are in danger, it's up to him to keep the others safe by dealing with one of the psychics, Takemaru. But does Kakeru have any chance of reaching Takemaru?

This book sets up the situation with the Garden, and much of Takemaru's attack on Ayano and her friends. Kakeru wants to be a man and take care of Ayano because he's such a wuss generally, but his psychic power may give him the edge, even if he can't control it. Secrets are revealed, but even more stay secrets, and the book ends on a cliffhanger.

While I haven't seen and read volume 1, this book intrigued me enough to want to keep reading, which is a hard task for an interstitial book to accomplish. This book is rated for teens and includes some gratuitous nudity for comic effect, and some non-gratuituous nudity used to break people out of a kind of psychic-power trance. No bad language of otherwise sexual situations. Highly recommended.