Noem waved his hand to dismiss his skill, then bent down in front of Mona. “First thing’s first; you gotta get a good feel for your own Qi. Yours should be pretty high since I’ve been keeping you alive with it for a few years, so all you’ve gotta do is tap into it. Follow along.”
He held out both of his index fingers, traced a wide circle through the air, then pressed them together at the tips. Mona nodded and copied him down to a T, including the unnecessary flourish before the press.
“Now imagine that there’s a little string connecting your fingers together. And when you pull your fingers apart, that little string doesn’t snap; it gets longer and longer.” Noem pulled his fingers apart as he spoke. A string of Qi as fine as silk dangled between them. “You probably won’t get it right on your first try, but go for it like you will.”
“Okay.” Mona confirmed. She took a deep breath and leaned closer to her fingers, then narrowed her eyes in concentration. A small blip of reddish-white Qi formed between her fingertips, but when she pulled them apart, it simply came off on one finger.
She stared at it in confusion, then held it up like a child showing off their greatest nose excavation. “Uh.”
“That’s fine.” Noem assured her. “It’s a little test to see what kind of shape your Qi naturally takes. Mine’s little strings like this.” He spun the string of Qi for emphasis, then pressed his fingers together once more. This time, each fingertip was coated in an oily sheen of Qi. “But you can make it do whatever you want once you get a good sense of how your body works. Yours is good for concentration, so things like a punch, a kick, or a really precise motion.”
“One of those is not like the others.” Mona pointed out as she gently moved her finger–and the Qi on top of it–around. Her eyes traced the gooey mass of power, then flickered to Noem’s. “Do I need to change it to make a skill?”
Noem shook his head. “Not for most skills. It just means you can’t make specific skills that need different forms of Qi. When you make a skill, you just need to do something with your Qi that you think is important enough to be its own thing. Let’s start with something really simple; Punch.”
He held up his hand and coated it in a thick layer of Qi like Mona’s. He did it as slowly as possible, so she could see where the Qi emerged from and how it wrapped around his hand. Mona nodded, stuck out the tip of her tongue, and concentrated on her hand to try and replicate what she’d just seen.
A few seconds of silent concentration produced no fruit. One vein on Mona’s forehead bulged from the effort, and the silence devolved into strained grunts as chunks of Qi rolled off various parts of her body. Then her hand. But after a minute of grunting attempts, she inhaled hard in defeat
“I can’t do that.” She shook her hand and frowned. Bubbles of Qi had popped up all over her hand, but they didn’t form together how she wanted. “It’s hard enough to move my Qi on its own, so how am I supposed to get it to work together?”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
With a shake of his hand, Noem let his Punch fall away. “You don’t.” He said seriously. “Don’t treat your Qi like some other living thing. It’s a part of your body, and you have to train with it to get used to using it. If I gave you a sword right now you could probably swing it, but you wouldn’t have any idea how to actually use it.”
“I might.” Mona pouted. “I did fencing.”
“No, you didn’t.” Noem said flatly. Mona’s face turned bright red, and she started spouting flustered excuses. It was almost cute, in a younger-sister-stealing-parasite kind of way. “Your memory’s really screwed up, isn’t it?”
Mona froze, then nodded vigorously as she took the out Noem had offered. “Yes. I have amnesia.”
Noem resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “The point I was trying to make is that you’ve gotta get used to using Qi. Feel how you push it out of your body and into the world. Try to manipulate it after you’ve already pushed it out. And see how much stronger you feel when you’re using it. You’ve gotta remember that feeling, and then remember it so much that you stop remembering it and start doing it unconsciously.”
“Uh-huh.” Mona said. “Practice a lot. Got it.”
That was close enough to the point Noem was going for, so he nodded and held up one finger. “Take all that Qi you pushed out and cover your finger in it. And you can use your other hand to move it, too–that’s not cheating, but it’ll be useless in an actual fight, so don’t get used to doing it.”
The Qi on Mona’s hand started to move before she finished nodding. She reached up with her other hand to help it along, but stopped when she noticed. She glanced up at Noem with a questioning raise of an eyebrow, then before he could answer, she nodded once again and let her hand fall to her side. To let her mind and Qi do all the work for her.
Reddish-white coated her finger in a thick layer of Qi. She stared down at it as if she couldn’t believe she’d done it, then turned and pressed her finger into the couch.
“Poke.” She declared as if it was a legendary technique. The Qi shifted and hardened around her finger as she drove it into the cushion, adding extra force and speed to her attack. The stuffed thing bloated around her skill to the verge of popping, but stopped just before the fabric could rupture under the power of her Qi.
She stared down at the divot she’d made with surprise that quickly morphed to brilliant excitement. “I did it? I did it!” She smiled wide and jumped to her feet, then turned her head while pointing vigorously at her success. “Look! I did it!”
“You did, yeah. Good job.” Noem smiled without having to force himself. The bite of melancholy was still there, but seeing Mona act so differently than his sister… it almost served to confirm she was gone. That she’d been gone since the second after the incident, and he’d been the monster keeping her alive against her will for all this time.
He kept it off his face. The goddess’ words about him stung more than ever, but he didn’t let them overwhelm him. It wasn’t this girl’s fault that Mona was gone. If anyone was to blame at all, it was the goddess. And he couldn’t exactly get revenge on someone on another plane of existence.
So… what was he supposed to do, then? He couldn’t go back to the university. His family had disowned him a long time ago, and he’d burned almost every bridge he’d ever built to keep Mona alive. But he was unknown. ‘Noem Crest’ was nobody. Not even his contacts knew who he really was thanks to all of his encryption, and whoever Ajiana sent to search for him wouldn’t know who they were searching for.
Noem leaned over and tapped Mona on the nose. She squeaked in surprise, but smiled even wider and tapped him right back. It was a gesture so sickly sweet that it hurt. The real Mona would’ve smacked away his hand as she rolled her eyes and sighed in annoyance. But she would’ve cracked a smile when she turned around and started plotting her needlessly-escalated revenge.
“Let’s get your system hooked up, then we’ll open your letter to let the university know you’re going to attend the winter semester.” Noem said as his emotions warred for purpose within him. “We’ve only got a few weeks until someone comes looking for little miss meteor, so we need to make the most of it.”