BXBX NOVEL Chapter 1 part2
After school I went to "Mac" with a friend, but there was no clerk suddenly breathing fire, I wasn\'t wearing black clothes or surrounded by beautiful girls, it was peaceful, with the only "surprising" thing being my friend spilling some soda on my uniform. I should have made him pay the dry-cleaning fee, since it was his fault my uniform ended up being sticky.
◊
The next day. I stopped checking the news sites. There was no change. I even checked the newspaper for the past two days, but there was still nothing. Since the pain was getting much better, I decided to practice my psychokinesis. When I did, understandably there was no change in the operative range, but the output had changed. My limit was now 4 g. I could feel that my "psychic-muscle"1 had increased.
4 g! Wow! 1 g! It increased by 1 g! But it\'s 4 g! I still can\'t move a pencil! Fuck it!
No wait. When you consider the time it takes to recover from psychokinesis pain, you could say it takes two days in total for output to increase by 1 g. So in a year, my output will approximately be 182 g. In a year, I still won\'t be able to move a full 500 ml water bottle. If you train constantly every other day, when you\'re an old man you may be able to lift a cat. Ugh. Damn it! Isn\'t that stupid? With or without muscle training, you can still throw around a cat. You can play catch using a cat instead of a ball. “Nyan!”
Although people without powers may view them as a luxury that solves all your problems, the time spent training them would probably be better spent learning some English. Even if after some twists and turns supernatural powers were recognized and used for everything, while it would be exciting for a while, eventually things would cool down, and it would be back to normal. It\'s absolutely better to study hard at university enter a good company, and have a stable life.
Even though I say that, I decided to continue training my psychokinesis, since it didn\'t take up much time or effort. I don\'t understand it. It\'s completely different from the super powers I imagined when I was small. No monsters come out, aliens from space don\'t appear, there\'s no contact from an agent from a secret organization, and there\'s no door to another world to open. Even if a monster does come, it\'s absolutely more effective to hit it with a vase or a bat than try to fight it with 4 g\'s of psychokinesis power. Having super powers is pointless.
I realized something. I didn\'t want super powers, I wanted my super powers to cause me to get caught up in extraordinary happenings. In addition, I didn\'t want this "extraordinary life" to be dangerous, so I wanted a strong power that would let me safely enjoy it. Fox example, a good ability would be one that can be easily weaponized. But with 4 g\'s of power in a straight line, the only way I can think of to weaponize it would be to throw thumbtacks one by one. But it would be faster just to sprinkle them with your hands. Sigh. It really kills the tension.
◊
Ten days later, I was used to my abnormal situation of being able to use psychokinesis, the human ability to adapt is scary. If you think about it, if you handed a person from the Heian2 era a laptop, like me they would be confused for a while but then eventually they would\'ve adapted. Although they would probably claim that it\'s the product of witchcraft. Maybe similarly, what physics can\'t explain right now will become common to mankind a 1,000 years later.
There\'s no health problems. On the fourth day I fell down on purpose and complained of headaches so I could get checked out at the hospital, but the only conclusion from the exams was that I was healthy.
My experimental notes on my psychokinesis entered the 3rd page, and I started to accumulate detailed data:
First, I thought that my psychokinesis powers improved by 1 g every 2 days, but it seems I jumped the gun a bit. The increase pattern was: 3 g→ 4 g→ 5 g→ 7 g→ 9 g→ 11 g. It seemed to be increasing by 1.3 times. It\'s much easier to grow than muscle. Using a calculator, in one month it should be 118 g, and after one year it should be 746416648580237 t… that\'s a geometric series for you. It would make even fiction heroes go blue in the face.
However, I shouldn\'t expect too much since I don\'t know where the upper limit is. I may suddenly hit my growth limit at 100 g. As suddenly as I got my psychokinesis I may also just as suddenly lose it.
Only solids can be moved; I\'m unable to move air because it\'s impossible to see it and therefore it\'s impossible for me to "grab" it. Liquids are difficult to grasp, even if you use psychokinesis, just raising up 11 g of water causes it to fall and splash everywhere. It seems like it\'s moving because of the splashing, but it feels like I\'m trying to draw water with a ballpoint pen. Naturally, it\'s impossible to move fire or bend light. There wasn\'t even a single sign of success when attempted.
◊
Regardless of exams or school field trips, I continued to train my psychokinesis in the evening, and it was around two months after discovering my powers that I became able to lift around 8kg. The output of my psychokinesis was clearly nothing to be ashamed of. I could easily lift ordinary hand-held objects. Curiosity caused me during class to drop my eraser and use my power to pick it up, but I wasn\'t caught. I don\'t know if no one saw me or if they did and just thought they were mistaken. This caused me to get a bit full of myself, so I decided to use my psychokinesis to do a "magic trick" with cards for my friend. He was suitably impressed, which made me feel great.
But afterwards, he kept nagging at me to tell me how I did it, and I struggled to come up with a decent reply. Finally, I gave in and told him I was using psychokinesis, but since I had told him it was a magic trick, he didn\'t believe me and just thought I was being a jerk. Then I tried to convince him by giving him a proper display of my psychokinesis, but he just thought that that was a magic trick as well. Ugh, he was being so thickheaded.
The more I tried to prove it, the more obsessed he became with trying to get the secret of the "magic trick" out of me, until I eventually just stuttered out something random then ran away. When I was asked to show it again the next day, I got out of it by saying that my mom had thrown my trick cards in the trash. I then swore to myself to never use my psychokinesis in public again. Let\'s just keep it my own personal hobby. Showing it to others is tiring…
◊
I debated about what things I should try to move with my psychokinesis in order to increase its output. I tried moving the rice cooker, the bookshelf, the refrigerator, and even a passenger car. Four months after moving a bus at a bus stop near my house, I at last hit my limit.
I noticed it. In this world, there are not any "unattached" heavy objects. I\'m not sure, but I think a bus weighs around 6-8 tons. A house is probably even heavier, and a skyscraper is probably even heavier than that, but I can\'t move things that are fixed in the ground. Although I\'ve thought about moving a train, using psychokinesis on a train could cause a catastrophe, plus it would be difficult to hide it in the garage.
Since it can\'t be helped, I decided to stop the training to increase my output and start training in things like endurance, precision, and application. A 7t output should be plenty sufficient. The first thing I trained was the vectors of my psychokinesis. I wanted to be to move things in all directions; up, down, left, right, etc. Originally, there were slight signs of horizontal movement being likely, so it should go well.
I tried it, and it went well. I was able to demonstrate 2-3kg of power in all directions. But by using my psychic-muscle in a different way, my headache was the worst it had been in a long time.
Thanks to having a solid foundation, my "vector domination" proceeded more smoothly than expected and in three months I was able to use 7t of power in all directions. However, the price was a cold sweat upon learning about a rumour of a spinning bus being seen in the middle of the night. I had been seen. Let\'s no longer move buses.
◊
When I conquered all the vectors, I was finishing my third year of high school and about to move on to university. I chose my future course in university to be in engineering in a school on the lower part of the national ranking, as this corresponded with my academic achievement level; and choosing this field of study would make it unlikely that I would ever be unemployed. I would be best to aim for physics in order to research my psychokinesis, but I\'m not smart enough for that. I may be slightly better than average, but I don\'t have enough brains to do something innovative.
I studied for my entrance exams while further training my psychokinesis. It\'s pretty much a hobby at this point. Recently I\'ve been using my training to help me relax from studying. The next part of my vector conquest would be not to \'move\' but to \'stop\'. So far, I had been using my power in \'push\' and \'pull\' movements, but I should be able to use it with no motion as well. Such as making things float in the air, or preventing balls from rolling down a slope. Psychokinesis stopping… I guess you could call it?
It\'s hard. Up to now my psychokinesis training was similar to lifting dumbells, this was more like the incredibly difficult "invisible chair" exercise. At the beginning it\'s fine, but as time goes on I got distracted which caused the power to decrease and eventually it starts to tremble and I can\'t hold it in position anymore. But if I train this, I\'ll get pink (?) psychic-muscles that combine instantaneous power and endurance. Even if this technique is nothing particularly special, like any other man, I like seeing myself gain muscle. Muscle=social status.
I lifted my desk while studying. As I was listening, I slowly lifted the chair I was sitting on. I solved previous exam questions while floating my father\'s car. In spite of splitting my attention between studying and psychic-muscle training, both my grades and my psychic-muscle increased. Well I guess it\'s that. It\'s like how some people play sports to get into a studying mood. Some people can\'t concentrate on studying while listening to music, while other have to listen to music in order to be able to study. It seems that studying and my psychokinesis training fit together well.
It was worth spending 12 hours a day during summer vacation seriously studying and doing psychic-muscle training, not only did I get an "A" on the exam for my first-choice college, the power of my psychic-muscle increased to the point where I could hold things in place for a long period of time without getting tired. But staying up all night was very painful.
My parents and teacher recommended I take the exam for a school ranked one place higher as well, but I refused this reasonable suggestion. Besides, the one-rank-higher school isn\'t near the ocean. Anyway, I wanted to enjoy the peace that came from having successfully finished my college entrance exams.While my friends who had passed on studying during summer vacation began to do so with grim faces, I continued on with my "hobby".
The next task was manipulating my psychokinesis in different forms. I was no longer using my psychokinesis to manipulate objects, instead I wanted to use my psychokinesis to manipulate the power itself. Because my endurance training during the summer also further developed other aspects of my psychokinesis, I was now able to more sensitively feel the power itself.
Until now, I could only use my psychokinesis on physical objects, so it was difficult to manipulate both things that aren\'t visible (air), and things that don\'t have distinct boundaries (liquid). But now I can manipulate the power itself, so if I, for example, form the psychokinesis into a ring, I can fan in air, and if I form it into a cup, I can draw water… well, at least there\'s a likely chance.
I guess I would describe it like this. My psychokinesis is now like a cursor and I can "click" on items to select them. And like manipulating an image on the computer, I can now use my cursor to drag out and stretch my psychokinesis to a certain range. Of course, I can\'t select objects while I\'m dragging.
I use the muscle analogy every time, but it\'s like you\'re tightening a screw or hammering a nail. Instead of training, I was using my muscles to make something, which felt like more of a vague use of them. Even though my psychic-muscle is plenty flexible, my psychological fatigue is severe, I\'m exhausted after 1 hour. I abandoned it. Because at a certain point the force field got too distorted, I decided to start over from the very beginning tomorrow. But I feel like it\'s worth the effort.
It took me a week to spread it to the size of a 500-yen coin. A month to reach thousand-yen bill level. I gradually figured out how to spread the force field, and after about two months I was able to stretch to the size of an 8-tatami mat floor3 in about 15 minutes. If I continue training this, it will continue to increase in size. From here I decided to go into more instantaneous and complex manipulation training. It reached the point where it was possible to pull and stretch points and get it to form a "plate". Forming the plate made suddenly made me want don4.
The range of my psychokinesis is the same as my field of view. It means I can freely use my psychokinesis within my line of sight. Actually I can move two or three things at the same time with my psychokinesis . In other words, even if I don\'t bother to make a plate by stretching out from a single point (the standard force field), I should be able to create a powerful force field that is in the state of a plate from the beginning. I was stretching it out from one point because it was easier, but I also remembered the feeling of the "plate psychokinesis", so I should be be able to apply it well and effectively.
Thinking like that, I started training. On the first day it took 2 hours to make a thin and brittle plate similar to a tissue. After a week it became like paper, and I started to get the hang of it. In about two weeks I was able to cover the area of a tennis court in a field as sturdy as wooden planks in about 3 minutes. I was improving so quickly I amazed myself.
Thanks to the fact that I have carried out basic training on a daily schedule so far, I can see that the rate of skill improvement has been visibly rising recently. I might be a genius.
Are there "ore TSUEEE"5 ESP\'ers that are self-trained? Is it beginning? Has my "extraordinary life" started?
… But any news on this has been non-existent.
Even Ichiro and Jobs6 didn\'t suddenly one day achieve great success. While proceeding through success and failure, they became extraordinary people in the eyes of the general public. Thinking that way, it\'s natural that nothing extraordinary happens if you\'re passive. Because everything is fine, "trying" is necessary to cause any external action.
If the proficiency level of my psychokinesis is raised high enough, a corresponding disturbance may happen. If I just want to be flashy without considering the consequences, I could go stand in front of a TV station in Tokyo and lift and swing heavy trucks in the street. If you do extraordinarily big things in front of the public, it can\'t be dismissed as a simple "magic trick".
But such a disturbance is different from the "non-ordinary" life I\'m seeking. Doing TV interviews, decorating one side of the newspaper, being criticized by self-proclaimed "experts" in gossip magazines, I don\'t want those things. I want something more like a battle between teams of ESP\'ers. Or a romance with jumper or a psychometrer. I don\'t want "ordinary" extraordinary, I want extraordinary circumstances and extraordinary conflicts.
Hmm. College students seem to have free time, maybe once I enter university I can use my free time to quitely search for people like me.
◊
By the time the center exams7 were over, my "psychokinesis board" was fully formed. I can finish the formation in 10 seconds, and I can easily form plates, cups, and ellipses. Also, it\'s possible for me to form boards into complex shapes, such as a stuffed toy or a bouquet. As yet, it\'s impossible to tightly cover something and cling to it, it feels like there\'s a lot of gaps and waste, but I think I\'ll be able to do it eventually. It would form a barrier rather than a plank.
I pulled up the water with a barrier at the end of a bath, and, while preventing the water from spilling, I further distorted the barrier; my mastery of my psychokinesis continues to steadily increase. I also tried to fold origami with it , and I tried to use it to sculpt wood with a chisel. My goal is to be precise and powerful with my psychokinesis. Sta ○ Platinum8.
Originally, the university gave me an "A, which meant I was perfectly fine on the second exam. It was sunny when I became a college student. I was going to live alone, so I had to move; once I finished I had three free days until the university entrance ceremony. So what to do with that time? Of course, training my psychokinesis. Should I start preparing for lectures? I don\'t know. I\'m prepared to continue taking credits until I graduate.
At night, while the "good kids" slept, I headed for the sea. It was a 10 minute walk. Not a big distance. I descended to the sandy beach while lighting up the area around my feet with a flashlight, and as I listened to the sound of the waves I gradually moved closer to the water\'s edge. Using my psychokinesis, I lifted a large amount of seawater.
Do you understand?
Yes, I can lift water now.
I lifted about one cubic meter of water, which weighs around 1t. Since the ocean is endless, there\'s no limit on weight. From now on I can work on increasing the output of my psychic-muscle from 7t. This is the reason I went to a university by the sea.
Increase the output. Increase the intensity. I don\'t have any particular goals, but I want to raise it as much as I can.
I got caught up in the moment and spent all night playing in the ocean, so I ended up catching a cold and becoming dizzy, which led to me deciding to not attend the entrance ceremony. No matter how great an ESP\'er you are, you\'re still not immune to disease. It seems living alone got me too excited and resulted in something like a high. Reflection. （’・ω・）
- What I settled on calling “nenrikin” (ネンリキン). It come up in this section a lot ↩
- Years 794-1185 in Japanese history ↩
- (or approx. 131.75 ft squared) ↩
- If you’ve read or watched Shokugeki no Soma then you know what this is. For those of you who haven’t, a don is a bowl of rice with food on top, usually some sort of meat ↩
- Read the last comment on for an explanation of “ore TSUEE” ↩
- “Ichiro and Jobs” = Ichiro Suzuki and Steve Jobs. His point being that famous people didn’t become famous overnight. ↩
- National Center Test for University Admissions ↩
- Reference to ↩