SaiTeru

"So let's just agree...When you and I combine our powers, nothing is impossible. We're invincible"

- Saiki's thought about himself and Kokomi (Chapter 218) SaiTeru is the het ship between Saiki Kusuo and Teruhashi Kokomi from the The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. fandom.

Canon
Saiki and Kokomi are friends and classmates. They first met outside of school when Kokomi talked to Saiki in a bid to get him to acknowledge her beauty in the same way she gets from everybody else. When Saiki completely disregarded her she was left in disbelief and took it as a challenge to get him to be interested in her. Gradually, they spent more time together and Kokomi developed genuine feelings for him.

Their relationship is limited due to Saiki’s asocial nature. He generally tries to avoid engaging with Kokomi at all costs but circumstances end up working against him. One aspect he finds exhausting when it comes to Kokomi is her many fans that will harass him for being friends with her. Due to his psychic powers, he is fully aware that she has feelings for him and knows this stems initially from her vanity. To that end, Saiki would try and find ways for her to lose interest in him, such as going on a “date” and purposefully making the worst choices to discourage her, but this ended in failure. At one point he even allowed himself to be captured by Kokomi’s fan club to be “cleansed” (to make him undesirable to Kokomi), however, this fails as well when the club realise he makes Kokomi happy, which is more important. Eventually, it seems, Saiki gave up on losing Kokomi’s affections and instead seeks to limit them.

Kokomi’s feelings for Saiki were originally based off her ego. She found it inconceivable that he did not find her attractive, as she has crafted herself into the “perfect girl”. When he did not acknowledge her, she initially believed he was just simply too stunned to react to her, or believed she was an illusion. However, she has found herself developing sincere feelings for him and finds that he has inadvertently changed her for the better. When given the option to start a relationship with a fellow high-school boy with immeasurable wealth, she declines because of her love for Saiki, noting that before she would have jumped at the opportunity. She tends to be easily flustered over Saiki, going bright red when she noticed him staring at her. She found herself with butterflies in her stomach when Saiki asked to meet her in their classroom after school, expecting a confession, but was annoyed to find all their friends in the room as well.

Whilst Saiki is fully aware of her extreme vanity, he also is aware of her genuine kindness. In her effort to make herself the perfect girl, she goes to great lengths to be nice to everybody and to help people out as and when she can. This does not appear to be a ploy neither, as Saiki is fully capable of reading her mind and has never found her efforts to be devious or malicious. This kindness has perhaps endeared Kokomi to Saiki, and at one point he becomes annoyed with her many fans when they exhaust her for compliments on changes they’ve made to themselves. His care for her was also shown when he was annoyed at his brother for telling Kokomi she is not good enough for Saiki and was pleased to see her get the better of him. He also went to great lengths to protect her from their school’s press club, who tried to get compromising photos of Kokomi and even forged some photos to discredit her.

Despite his psychic powers, Saiki sees Kokomi as possessing powers that rival his own, particularly that god favours her greatly. This results in Kokomi getting to spend time with Saiki that allows her to get closer to him. She has been round his house where she babysat with him, worked with him on school festivals, joined him on New Year’s Day, and spent time with him on a trip, where she rowed a boat with him, rode on a camel together, and visited a temple. She also successfully gets to sit next to him in class after every year. Kokomi’s feelings also go as far as having a future with Saiki, as when their class had to list their plans after school, Kokomi had wrote “to marry Saiki-kun” but erased this. When she saw what Saiki had listed on the form she swiftly, and discreetly, wrote the same thing. Normally, Kokomi is shy and reserved when engaging with Saiki, but when she was saved by him from a bear, and under the impression she was in a dream, she became playful and affectionate with him. She latched onto his arm and played with his cheek. To maintain the illusion she was in a dream, Saiki had to oblige all her wishes, which involved taking her to a castle and saying “ooh” to her, although he did so reluctantly.

To a certain degree, it appears Saiki may have slightly warmed up to Kokomi, although still very far from having any feelings for her. He vented his frustration towards the boys at their school for causing Kokomi to collapse from exhaustion and carried her to the nurse’s office. When she joined her classmates on a mixer, Saiki secretly tagged along in order to get Kokomi to be interested in somebody else. However, even though he used his telepathy to help the boys give the best answers to win her over, he appeared slightly moved when Kokomi still wished he was there with her. He ultimately knocked out the boys and took them away, remarking that, “I cannot let you have Teruhashi-san.” It also seems he does find her attractive, but due to his psychic powers he could only see people’s muscles and skeletons, however, when he lost them he noted that she is pretty. He also seems to know her much better than her own brother, as when he tried to buy a gift for her, Saiki told him to get a mug with a dog printed on it. The brother arrogantly refuted this suggestion but Saiki used his psychic powers to place it in the gift bundle he gave to her. Out of all the gifts there, she only liked the mug that Saiki suggested.

Perception of Saiki and Kokomi as a couple have been found in numerous people they know. At one point, Kokomi met Saiki’s grandfather who was so impressed by her that he wished for them to get married. Yuuta, a young boy who lives next to Saiki, believes Saiki to be “Cider-man” and Kokomi to be “Peached T-Girl”, Cider-Man’s counterpart. When both Saiki and Kokomi are seen with Yuuta, Saiki’s mother commented that they looked like a family, causing Kokomi to blush. Even her fan club are under the impression that Yuuta is Saiki and Kokomi’s child. In school, only Chiyo is aware of her feelings for Saiki, but the wider student body are gravely jealous of how close Saiki is to Kokomi. At one point, he is harassed, and later assaulted, by two jealous students for spending time alone with her. He is also on the receiving end of harassment from Kokomi’s jealous brother, who has a sister complex, and believes Kokomi only belongs to him.

Quotes
"Hey… that’s enough"

- Saiki defending Teruhashi from his brother in Chapter 178 "Now I realize that… She does have a chiseled face more than anyone else. Aside from her personality, I admit that her appearance is defined beautiful"

- Saiki’s thoughts of Teruhashi in Chapter 280

Fanon
Due to its simplicity and the most attention from the authors, SaiTeru is the very first and most famous ship in the franchise. In particular, it was Teruhashi's crush for Saiki and her rivalry with other girls that were devoted to the ending animation of the anime adaptations. Either way, Teruhashi appears so frequently in the manga and anime as the character in charge of the romantic subplot that many fans of the ship mistakenly confuse her status as main love interest with Saiki's canon partner. In this regard, the fact that the franchise ended at a seemingly open end in terms of romance was found "disappointing" by many of them.

Many people enjoy this ship because both Saiki and Teruhashi have changed so much after they met each other. At the beginning, she had an interest in him only because he's not like the other boys who are amazed by her, however, throughout time, she started to grow genuine feelings for him, a remarkable development of this is when she rejected the man who got everything, Saiko, because she has feelings for Saiki. On the other hand, despite the fact that Saiki was always finding ways to make Teruhashi uncrush him, he still ended up saving her multiple times, for example is at chapter 182, when he realized Teruhashi was still thinking about him even when she was in a mixer. At that time, Saiki had actually smiled a little and then had all the guys who is after Teruhashi beaten up because he thought that they don't deserve her. This only means that Saiki also cares about her a lot.

Even so, due to the controversial attitude towards Teruhashi among work's fans, as well as the obvious popularity of slash shipping for the shounen franchise, this ship has many rivals, for example, Saiai, ImuTeru and KaiSai.

It is currently the third most popular ship on AO3 and the most popular on Pixiv among the fandom with 1680+ works.

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Trivia

 * Saiki's Japanese Voice Actor said his favourite character in the series was Teruhashi Kokomi.