“Oh, so you’re finally awake.”

Jana’s eyes flickered open, feeling heavy. Slowly, she moved her arm, pausing when she felt how sore it was, and propped her upper body up, moving beneath thick blankets. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was.

It was a white hospital room, clearly not built for anyone to be treated for anything serious. Standing beside the window side of the room, a familiar black-haired kid that looked a little younger than herself, maybe a junior or freshman in high school, looked down on her.

“Who...are you again?” she asked, her eyes fluttering as she slowly registered more and more feelings and observations about the world around her.

The guy shrugged. “You’re Psychi’s frienemy, right?”

“Frienemy? Who uses that word these-” Kana coughed, falling back down to her pillow as the involuntary action made pain surge left of her chest. It felt horrible, but she’d handled worse. “Is...is my rib-”

“Yeah, you broke it, presumably fighting my sis.”

“Oh! Right, I remember you. You were...”

“Jeremy.”

“Right, Psychi’s brother.”

“And you are?”

She coughed again. “Jana, the super-psychic.”

“Good to meet you, Janathesuperpsychic.”

“Stop it with the dad jokes.”

Jeremey sighed. “Yeah, I will. So, what happened?”

Jana grumbled as she tried to remember what had happened. It made her notice just how bad of a headache she had, probably as a result of her going beyond her psychic capabilities to save herself.

Right... “Psychi tried to kill me,” she said, not thinking very hard about her presumptive thought.

Jeremy crossed his arms. “If Psychi tried to kill you, the doctors are sneple.”

“I’m not lying, damn it!” Jana insisted, propping herself up once more to get a little closer to Jeremy’s face. “She went absolutely berserk and was a millisecond away from making me a pancake.”

“Right, after you attacked her with ice.”

“Yes, after I attacked her with ice!” she said, a little flustered.

Jeremy cocked an eyebrow. “Is...is English your first language?”

“Mon deuxième,” Jana responded, glaring

“Well, if you learned it first, you’d know that you accused my docile sister of attempted murder. I think it would be wise to give me the full story rather than that,” he said before his expression flickered from stern to thoughtful for only a half-second.

That put her in a sour mood. “Like You can stop me from doing anything.” A spear of ice formed outside Jeremy’s Psi-negation field on the other side of the room, aimed at him.

Jeremy looked between it and Jana with a bewildered expression. “Dude, imagine threatening a powerless 14-year-old because he said you were being rude.”

The spike of ice flew at his head fast as a bullet, scratching his cheek and crashing through the window.

Jeremy, mouth hung open in a dope expression, didn’t even flinch. He swept a bit of blood off his cheek and looked at it on his finger. He rubbed his forehead with his other hand like he had a headache. “You are a literal child.”

“Shut the hell up!” Jana responded, throwing her blankets off to sit up. Cold air fell from Jana as her anger increased, turning the room into a refrigerator. “You can’t do a fucking thing!”

“Yeah, well, clearly, I can make you angry.”

Jana’s blankets hit Jeremy faster than a car, throwing him against the wall, shattering the window even more when his head hit it, and causing him to slide down in a heap. “Don’t test me!”

“What is...what’s your problem?” Jeremy asked, audibly winded. He looked weary from the attack, with glass caught in his hair and lap. “You attack my sister without warning all the time, then when she finally retaliates, you act like it’s all her fault?”

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“She knew we were meant to fight yesterday, but she didn’t come!”

Jeremy threw the blankets off himself, pissed. “You know what, let’s say you’re in the right, for the moment. Why the hell did you just attack me? What do you have to gain from doing that?”

“You were trying to make me pissed.”

He laughed. “So you decided to be pissed? Sounds like I’m good at what I do.”

“If you piss me off, you get what you deserve,” she said as if her actions were righteous.

He threw his arm out angrily. “Oh, shut it. You know damn well I’m younger than you and weaker by an order of fifty magnitudes. Stop acting so superior about this! What did I or my sister ever do to you to earn your ire?”

Jana pointed at him. “You pissed me off, and she pissed me off!”

Jeremy shook his head, getting a headache from talking to the egotist idiot. “Y-wha-how is that in any way a freaking crime? You’re pissing me off.”

“Yeah, and what the heck are you going to do abo...” Jana slowed down, realizing she’d fallen into a fallacy. She crossed her arms and looked away from the near-freshman stubbornly. “Well, deal with it. Not my fault you can’t handle different opinions.”

“Oh my god...You are giving me a migraine. If that’s not your fault, how the fuck is it my fault when you get angry.”

“Well, that’s...” Jana began before very obviously realizing she’d fallen into the exact fallacy she’d tried to avoid and quickly changing her story. “You’re the one who insulted my English!”

Jeremy slowly got back to his feet. “Well, if you had a problem with that, sorry. I was just trying to be funny, not to demean your English skills, which are perfectly fine.”

“W-well...ok, then. Why are you even here?”

He sighed. “Well, I’m here because I was checking to see if you were alright, obviously.”

“Why the hell would you do that?”

“Let’s see, maybe because you were faceplanted into snow while wearing a tank top when I found you?”

“Found me?! Don’t skim over that little statement, kid. Did you just imply that Psychi didn’t take me here?”

“Yeah, she-”

“So you’re telling me you defended your sister after she left me to die in the snow?!”

Jeremy groaned, raising a hand and clenching it, frustrated. “Maybe if you listened to me, you wouldn’t need to talk so much shit.” He began idly plucking glass from his hair. “Psychi has disappeared.”

Jana clicked her tongue. “She’s probably off in some mountainside, talking to some plants or something.”

“No, I mean I watched my sister get eviscerated from reality itself.”

Jana’s eyes widened and grew wild in fear. “Wait...no, don’t tell me...”

“Relax, if I thought my sister was dead, I wouldn’t be talking to you like this.”

His words didn’t seem to quell the girl’s fear. Her crossed arms shivered and tensed as if she were cold. “W-well, you don’t mean that...he came, did you?”

“Who?”

“Y-you know...him.”

“Stop using vague words.”

Jana relaxed. “W-well, if you weren’t talking about him...What happened?”

“I don’t know. Some green light encircled her, then condensed into a point and vanished.”

“W-what? You mean she just...vanished?”

“Right in front of me.”

Jana narrowed her eyes in worry. “Was it another super-psychic?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Nope. It looked more like magic.”

“As if!”

“Hey, I’m just saying my thoughts. I really don’t know anything.”

After some time in silence, Jana looked at him suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I dunno. Why would I lie to you?”

She shrugged. “To get back at me for fighting your sister?”

“Sorry, but I don’t like angering...I mean, I’d rather not make an enemy of you.”

“You damn well should...” She leaned back into her bed. “W-what are you going to do? About your sister. Also, can you get me my blanket? It’s in your negation zone.”

Jeremy closed his eyes and blandly said, “You can pick it up.”

The blanket floated to Jana when she commanded it to, much to her surprise. “You leaned the psychic mediation?”

His eyes flickered open. “Uhh, yeah, -my sister taught it to me.”

“Lucky you,” she said sourly, “You have a family member.”

He looked at her with an unamused glare. “Not anymore. Did you lose your family too?”

Jana averted her eyes, then flipped to face the other side of her bed, snuggling beneath her sheets.

“Huh...Well...” Jeremy stood, gathered his sister’s basket from a nearby counter, and walked to the door. He grasped the handle, then stopped for a moment. “If you...ever need to talk about something...well, you know where I live. See you around, Jana.”

He walked out, leaving her all alone.