It is three twenty-five on a sunny and warm May afternoon. My another day in high school ends. Instead of going home, I climb the stairs to the roof of the school’s main building. Nobody is there, the roof is as if the quietest place in this universe.

This is indeed a serene afternoon in a beautiful world, except for magic explosions that are constantly rumbling on the playground beneath the building.

It's the close combat course for the intermediate level magicians, where a bunch of ninth or tenth graders flings level-two fireballs or ice shards or lightning arcs at each other. Fun extra-curriculum activity to be honest.

My name is Eason Lu, an ordinary high school student at Los Angeles 19th Magic Senior High.

And yes, I am living in a world of magic.

I don’t know exactly why, but it seems that magic has been prevailing in this world since primeval time. At least that’s what the history textbooks have told me.

People in medieval ages were starting to discover the various usage of magic, as well as burning whoever didn’t believe in magic with incineration spells.

Mankind had become more and more obsessed with magic ever since. At the beginning of the 20th century, the First World War of Wizards broke out. Then there went the Second World War of Wizards taking place between 1935 to 1945, it was the first time that mass-destruction above-God-tier spells were used on civilians, such as “The ultimate fireball retribution” and “The forbidden sun”, killing millions of people.

After the “black warlords” were defeated and sentenced to life imprisonment, sealed into obsidian spheres, and sunk into the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, the world once again returned to peace. Treaties had been signed to prevent any more usage of such massively destructive spells.

It's now 2020. We have magic-powered cars and planes; teleporting and flying spells were still under the government's strict control. Most kids in the world are required to take a nine-year-long fundamental education program; that, of course, is free and supported by each country’s government.

Kids nowadays are lucky. I’ve heard my teachers mention countless times that back in their times, learning magic was a privilege of the upper-classes. Now thanks to the governments and the “free magic” campaigns in the 90s, everyone has the right to learn and use magic. And one of the old profs in my “Introduction to Light Magic” course even cries like a baby every time he tells us about it. So I believe him.

I was born in the States, raised by my parents for sixteen years in Los Angeles. My father was Chinese but my mother was English, a wonderful lady with brown hair and blue eyes. Either way, I’m not a true American. But it doesn't matter and I never get bullied in school, because judging or making fun of any magician’s race, sexualities or anything else personal is also forbidden.

Back to me. I will try to explain everything in short. When a kid is six years old, staff in the elementary school brings over an equipment called the “The Testing Hat”. It jumps on kids’ heads and determines their potential in learning magic, shouting out a result ranging from F to SSS. In case you are wondering, yes, it was a magical talking hat.

I got an F, which I guess it stood for “Fuck, boy, you better go home and give up, because magic just isn’t your shit.” Because that was the last sentence Testing Hat yelled at me before it was led into the police car.

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Just for your information, getting an F from the Testing Hat is actually so rare, that even the possibility of getting an SSS is slightly greater. Apparently everyone in this world has at least a bit of magic affinity except me.

I blame this all on that book I found within my grandpa’s secretly sealed casket. I was four at that time. I walked down to the storage room in the basement for my routine adventure while my parents were on the second floor, alone in their bedroom, probably having sex.

I found this casket among other rubbish and old history books in the corner. It was not locked, so I opened it and found an aged booklet. Its cover had almost worn off, but I could still read some Chinese characters written on it because my dad had taught me those.

It translated to “Classic of Divine Martial Arts”. I read it from page one. There were almost no more texts, only pictures of hundreds of strange arrows drawn on human bodies. The title said: “Let the Qi flow into your body, and strengthen your blows.”

Qi is a Chinese word means “breath” or “flow of life energy”. I don’t know how to explain it accurately. But it can REALLY strengthen my blows. The result was that I got too obsessed with the lectures on that book and wanted to study it with my best. I tried to avoid letting my parents know about this, but fortunately, they also have sex a lot, so almost every afternoon I had an hour or two to practice.

Maybe I was just too talented, after a year when I was five, I finished its last chapter. I could feel the endless amount of Qi flowing violently inside my body. And that, after all, might be the reason I could no longer sense the magic in the air around me.

I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing in this world of magic. And I cannot undo what I have learned.

It has many drawbacks. When the other kids were playing dodgeball in wizard robes – instead of balls they throw enchanted fireballs – I’d rather sit and watch, because the fireball always breaks into sparks the moment I touch it.

Also, I accidentally killed a unicorn when I was seven. I popped it into a splatter of blood and flesh with one punch.

First of all, magic creatures are very common in this world, and unicorns are the particularly strong ones: their horns are capable of casting saint-level spells, and their skins tough as steel. Secondly, I swear it wasn’t solely my fault. We encountered in a grove near my neighborhood, nobody else was around. I probably startled it; it neighed loudly and lifted front hooves as a warning. I, on the other hand, got too scared, so I uncontrollably threw an uppercut with my eyes closed.

When I opened my eyes again, the unicorn became a pile of blood with a bunch of whitish gross tissue twitching on the ground.

I fled right away, and even until now I still feel sorry about it.

At the age of eleven, I officially became a “martial god”.

I didn’t give myself that title, instead; it was the booklet that said: “He who crushes ten mountains with one blow is to be considered as the ultimate of the Divine Martial Arts, and thus shall be addressed as the ‘Martial God’.”

I didn’t get a chance finding ten mountains at once to try it out until my parents took me to the Grand Canyon for the summer when I was eleven. Otherwise, I figured I could make it a few years earlier.

I also learned not to trust books too much. When it said “ten mountains”, it could actually mean twenty-six. I read that number from the newspaper and I don’t want to elaborate. The experts concluded it was caused by some black magicians illegally trying out God-tier spells. So that was that.

As I grow up older, I realize that my power could be a big problem or even a threat to people nearby.

I never pick or accept fights with other kids who study magic, because I still remember vividly how I punched that unicorn into pieces with one blow.

I tried to isolate myself from other people. I tried not to have friends. I can't tell anyone that I'm a million times stronger than everybody in this world, even to my family. I fear that I no longer have equals on this planet.

I’m sixteen years old now. I don’t want to be a hero. I just dream to live my peaceful life in this world of magic. Alone.

But there're always people wanting to ruin my dream: The door to the roof was pushed open. I hear somebody walked closer and faster.

I need not look. I could sense the incomer’s identity even from twenty yards away with the Qi flowing around me.

It was Lexie, a girl who had a crush on me since grade nine. I swear I tried really hard to avoid contact with girls. But someone like her just won’t give up.

Oh, girl. Please leave me alone.

“EEEEaaaaSonnnn!” She lunges at me and gives me a firm embrace from behind. But it was so tight that I have to start tapping her back.

“Lexie... Stop, you are going to choke me.”