'Mom talked… while talking?'

I looked at my mother as if she was a ghost. I wasn't aware she could do that!

'How did she manage to hide it for so long? Wait. How is it possible to do that in the first place?'

"Are you okay, Wren? Why are you looking at me like that?"

("What's the number for the mental hospital?")

She was doing it again. There was no doubt anymore.

"How are you doing this, Mom?"

"Doing what?"

"You know, talking about two different things at the same time."

"What? What do you mean?"

("I lost my son today. I hope they'll take good care of him when he's there.")

'What's with your obsession with mental hospitals? Do you want to get rid of your son that much?'

Right now, I wasn't sure about anything anymore. Was she acting? Or was I the crazy one? At this point, my little sister intervened.

"Hey, stop that! You're creeping us out!"

("You're already creepy enough as it is! No need to add more on top of it!")

'She's doing it too! Alright, either my whole family has supernatural powers or I'm going insane. Speaking of which, I hit my head hard just before. Should I listen to Mom and go to the mental hospital? Can't I go to the normal hospital first?'

The situation wasn't going well so I opted for a tactical retreat. In these cases, it was good to act fast.

"Bye!"

Before they could react, I ran to the front door, opened it, and exited the apartment. Soon enough, I was back to my newly made friend, the street lamp. Everything was its fault, I assumed, which pushed me to stare at my friend angrily. I wanted to give it a good kick but I stopped myself. I knew by experience that it was much stronger than me. I didn't stand a chance in a straight fight.

After one last disdainful glance, I snorted and walked away. I needed some time to understand what was happening to me. Or to others. I didn't know.

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After a bit more walking, a passerby came my way from the other direction. He was a man and didn't pay any attention to me. I would normally do the same, except that he was talking to himself quite loudly.

("After shopping for groceries, I need to buy a present for my nephew. After that, go to the bank. Oh, wait, today's Sunday. Banks are closed. Darn it.")

It was already strange that he would talk about his plans for the day out loud but that wasn't the strangest part.

'I wasn't dreaming, right? His lips didn't move when he was talking!'

He quickly went past me and I couldn't confirm it for sure. That incertitude didn't last too long. The next person I passed by, a woman, was also talking about what she thought about her new boyfriend. And her lips didn't move either. After a few more tests on other people, I couldn't deny it anymore.

I was the weird one and not the others. And if my guess was correct, their "talks" looked very much like their thoughts. My being able to hear their thoughts meant that… I became a mind reader.

For a long time, I was dumbfounded by the revelation.

'How did that happen? Was it when I hit my head on the street lamp? Or perhaps the weird dizziness that happened right before? How is it possible to get such power just like that?'

However, no matter how many questions I asked myself, no one would be able to answer. Unless I met another mind reader. I found a bench on the street I was on and sat there to think about my situation. No matter how I thought about it, I had no idea how this happened. First, I had to calm down and find out what to do next.

While I sat, many people passed by me. And for most of them, I was able to hear their thoughts. After a few minutes and when the realization that this was really happening set in, my first idea was that I had to try more things. I needed to get a better understanding of this ability before I could conclude on it.

Since I was already in a good spot with a lot of test subjects around, I stayed in place and attempted this and that. Fortunately, I still had my bag of snacks in hand. I spent a long time on the bench while sometimes also walking around for some specific things I wanted to try. In the end, I realized a lot.

I was confident I was able to hear anyone's thoughts. Whenever I couldn't hear someone's thoughts, it was because they weren't thinking about anything at that moment. I made sure of this by following a few silent people until a thought came to their minds.

But that wasn't all. If I focused on someone, I was able to go deeper. Much deeper, in fact, so much so that it was scary. I could read someone's memories and thoughts related to those memories. Basically, I could read someone's whole life. I was able to know everything about any single person, perhaps even better than they could because I wasn't limited by memory loss issues. Or selective memories, memories embellishments, and any of those things.

One piece of bad news was that I didn't manage to learn how to turn this power off. It wasn't all that bad, though. After trying a lot of different things, I figured out I could change the range of my power at will. Reducing the range to zero was almost the same as turning it off. As for when I tested extending my range, I soon regretted it. The thoughts overload almost fried my brain. I was surrounded by buildings full of people and hearing hundreds of people's thoughts at the same time wasn't pleasant in the least.

After some more tries, I also managed to extend it in a single direction if I wanted to. I had no doubt this might come in handy at some point.

Now that I had a better understanding of this power, the truth of my situation hit me. If I could read minds and even memories, who would be able to stop me? Don't people say that information is power? I now had access to an infinite amount of information. I was all-powerful.