Tick-tock, tick-tock, seconds pass at the clock as Kirai stares at it, slowly the second hand moves ever so closer to the twelve.
It hits 12 and Kirai stands up in silence, walking across the living room to the fridge, taking out a cake with two candles on it, one and eight, so together they make eighteen, the age that Kirai was turning as of right now.
He places the cake onto the table, no one sat at the table, only three pictures were on the table. To the head of the table it was a picture of his father, across that was a picture of his mother and finally across from him a picture of his little sister.
Placing one slice of the cake to each picture, Kirai breathed out very heavily, “Would’ve been really nice to have you celebrate this day with me, Auntie is still working oversees. May you guys rest in peace and don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”
The room becomes silent and stays so for a few minutes. Kirai stands up and begins taking everything off the table, washing up the dishes.
“Good night everyone.” He slowly walks to each picture facing them downwards to the table. Leaving and going up to the upstairs to his room.
Plopping himself promptly into the bed, turning to his back to the bed, “Ugh tomorrow is Monday, did I even set my alarm.” Kirai sits up looking at his Alarm app to set the right ones.
He throws his phone back into his covers, standing up to stretch a bit, as he stretches out his back though he looks upon a shelf above his desk. There stood a semi bloodied teddy bear.
Kirai walks up to it, reaching out his hand towards it. As he is about to touch it an image of a flaming car appears before his eyes. Quickly he pulls off his hand, “Why do I keep trying to dig up the past. They are dead, no need to keep remembering it.”
Laying back down into the bed he slowly begins to drift asleep.
The same day at 6am.
The alarm starts blasting into his ear, “Ugh goddammit, it is already time.” Kirai drags himself out of bed, and begins putting on his uniform. Tying his hair up and heading down stairs.
While half asleep he begins putting his shoes on and inserts the key into the door, but then he realizes he forget a really important thing.
Kirai goes to the table and prompts all the pictures back up, “I’ll see you guys.”
He leaves his house and begins walking down the path to the train station, along the way he sees business men leaving for work, highschoolers going to school and of course some people from his university.
The train station was as always and how Kirai hated it, loud and annoying. Kirai is simply sitting down on a bench looking around, nothing out of the usual per say. Music, yelling, guys dangling something over a girls head and not letting her get it.
Wait what, usually he’d ignore this kid of stuff but today he was not in his usual mood so he got up and went over to that.
“Look look guys she can’t even reach it.” Kirai walks past and grabs it out of the guys hand, “Here you go.” he gives it to the girl. As he turns his head the other grabs his collar, “Who do you think you are butting into our fun.”
He just let out a long sigh, grabbing onto the guys wrist and begins applying pressure to it, slowly pushing him down to the ground, “Okay first off, I god damn ironed this shirt yesterday” He squeezes even harder, “Second your breath smells like literal shit.” Kirai bends his wrist forward, “Fuck off.” He finally lets go and push him to the ground.
The guy quickly scurried to his friends, “Lets get out of here guys, that guy ain’t normal.” Kirai shakes his head, turning to the girl taking a closer look. She was fairly short standing, white hair with random strands of black mixed into it and wearing a hoodie and skirt. But the most eye catching thing are the bags under her eyes, it looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.
“Are you okay?” He asks, she is quick to reply, “I am fine, thank you so much for helping me, but I need to get on my way now. Here take this as thanks.” She takes out a small jelly and handed it to Kirai. “Thanks I guess.”
She quickly runs off, but the train has arrived so doesn’t matter.
Kirai’s day progressed like usual, boring lecture halls, annoying classmates and shitty cafeteria food. But it ended quite quickly so the quicker he can get home.
He unlocks the door, “Finally home, today was just annoying.” Taking off his shoes he goes directly to the table, “Good evening guys.” Kirai just places the groceries that he got on the table. Kirai puts up the pictures again, “Today was an okay day, had an altercation at the train station but nothing major.”
He takes the eggs and scallions to the kitchen, making some scrambled eggs while he “talks” to his family. “The altercation was cause of some idiots being annoying towards a girl, so I kind of stepped in, I don’t know why. But hey you always told me to be more outgoing I guess.”
Kirai sits down with his food onto the table, “Also got this weird all jelly actually.” He pulls out the jelly that that girl gave him, looking at it there was no branding on it at all, “Seems weird enough, might as well eat it before this.”
He opens it and throws it into his mouth, as he swallows it his vision becomes slightly blurry and his body starts to sway from side to side, “Well note to me, never take stuff from strangers again.”
Falling off the chair he face plants directly into the hardwood floor, that is gonna leave a mark.
Hours later…
“Ugh what the hell.” He opens his eyes just barely, but he can’t see anything cause it is like his house is filled with a thick mist blocking his eyes, “The hell is even this.”
He stands up looking around and it pretty much was like it was just in his house, then suddenly he hears footsteps coming down from the second floor.
“What are you doing, you look like you have seen a ghost.” from behind him a voice is heard, it is very familiar and nostalgic. Quickly he turns to see the mist clearing a bit and he sees his father.
“.…….” Kirai tries saying nothing but his voice wouldn’t come out. His father just walks past him and towards the front door. He follows suite, the mist becomes clearer and clearer as he walks forward, at the front door stood his mother and sister waiting on him.
“Big bro, what’s wrong aren’t you coming with us.” His little sister came to him, hugging his leg. “Yeah we already packed your bags, so lets go.” his mother as well urged him to come with him.
Kirai reaches his hand out to them, but grabs it himself. Letting out a sigh and sitting down onto the floor. Curling his knees up to his face, “They are dead, nothing is gonna change that. No matter how much I act like they are with me, they aren’t.”
The mist begins to dissipate and get drawn in towards Kirai. He needed to accept it again.
An alarms starts ringing from the other room, meaning it was already six. “Dammit, why did I have to pass out for so long. I won’t go today, I want to at least figure out what happened.”
He walks over to the table, “My eggs are all cold and soggy now, sucks but still gotta eat.” Kirai gulps down his food. And goes up to his room.
“I should wear something casual, my goal is to find that girl, which is a tall task in a large city but I’ll manage.” He throws on a hoodie and gets ready to go.
“See you guys later.” He bows to the pictures of his family and goes out.
Kirai is walking around the city of Maizuru, in the Kyoto prefecture. He used to really enjoy going on extended walks everywhere but this was before he shut himself out of the world after the passing of his family.
He walks up to a group of teens on the entrance of a alleyway, “Have you kids seen a short girl with mostly white hair around here.” The largest of the bunch came up to Kirai, “And why would he know, huh?”
Why are kids like this, that is all that Kirai thought, “You are standing around like some monkeys, so who knows maybe you saw anything.” He scoffs, “You seem chill, but nah we haven’t seen anyone like that. Who’s she even your girlfriend or something.”
“Not quite, but thanks.”
No useful info turned up after asking around a lot, slowly he starts thinking to give up on finding her. But before that he goes over to the Family Mart near the Tanabe Castle ruins.
While in there he picks up some snacks as well as some fried chicken they had, “That’ll be 700 yen please, wait is that you Kirai?” The cashier recognized him as she was from the same Uni as him. “Yeah that is me, your name was something along the lines of Hina right?”
“Yup, I didn’t see you around today, why didn’t you go school the whole day?” Kirai couldn’t really just say that he was looking for a random girl that gave him a jelly that made him see things and a mist that retracted into his body, he threw on a smile as he usually would, “Nothing much, just didn’t feel like it.”
Kirai took his things, and begin to walk off, “Wait before you go, are you free Saturday? If so then no problem.”
“Nope I shouldn’t have anything planned for then, why you ask?” He really isn’t that well versed in conversing, outside of going to school he never hangs out and shut himself out of everything. “Nothing much, could we exchange numbers and I will tell you one of these days.”
He went back to the register, took a piece of paper and wrote his number, “There.” Leaving the store without much of a word after that. But it was time for the visit to the Tanabe Castle.
As usual not many people around as usual.
“This brings back a lot of memories, there I used to hide every time from dad thinking he’d not look there once. And there is where I nearly broke me leg and that is where the girl I am looking for is sleeping.” For a moment he thought it was a bit too convenient, he rubs his eyes to see if he was getting another fever dream or something.
Poking her side, “Hey are you alive? Or are you dead.” She then jolted up and almost tried to run away.
Kirai grabs her shirt, “Why are you trying to run off?”,
“Aren’t you gonna chase me away cause I was sleeping here?” So his hunch back when they met at the train station makes sense now. “I am not here to chase you off, don’t you remember me from yesterday?”
She takes a look at him, “Wait your that boy that helped me, oh no.” she tries to run off again but Kirai never let go of her shirt. As he is about to say something a loud growl stopped him.
He smiles to himself, taking out the fried chicken that he bought, “If you stop trying to run away, I will give you this.” She gulps down and nods her head in agreement and sits down.
“Okay to what I was gonna ask, what did you do to me.”
“I am sorry that the jelly tasted bad.” She continues to much on the food he gave her.
“I don’t care about the taste, after I ate it I passed out and woke up with mist throughout my house, and then it went into my body” She looked up in shock, seems like she hasn’t expecting that. “Wait a minute you actually got the power?”
Her reaction was really really weird, “If you mean that stuff that happened with the mist then sure.”
She was way more serious all of a sudden, “Hold out your palm and focus on it as if you were trying to push something out of it.” Kirai seemed skeptic of her, but at the same time she was acting serious.
He closed his eyes to get a better focus, and did as she told him. When he opened his eyes he was mist leaking out from his palm. “I am so sorry for this happening, I didn’t know you had the potential to awaken.”
Awaken? What the hell is she talking about, Kirai was getting confused, “Could we perhaps take a step back and explain some things.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
She breathed in before she started, “Okay, I’ll start from way from the beginning, hundreds of years ago, spirits used to wander around the Earth, granting them powers based on their own lives that they had lived so far. But slowly the world began to change and so the spirits begin losing their power to directly powers to the people. So in response they created a new way of granting them power, they would use mediums to give them a chance to awaken these powers. But since it was only a chance, the amount of people capable of receiving them dwindled quickly.”
This was a lot to take in for Kirai in just a single talk, “Then what about you, are you a spirit?”
“Nope, well I am from a family that are envoys of a spirit, but I ran off and stole those jellies. And…”
“And you gave me one thinking that it wouldn’t do anything but in the end I ended up awakening.” She nodded back in agreement, well it is her fault. Kirai stood up and stretched his back. “So are you coming with me?” She looks at Kirai very confusedly “Where to?”
“Didn’t you just say you ran away from home, and you were sleeping outside. You can stay with me. I still need your help to figure out this ability I have.”
‘Well that was easier than I thought it be. I guess when it doubt visit a ruined castle.’ Kirai thinks to himself as he unlocks the door. “Here we are…” Even before he starts talking Yui walks past him and goes on to look at everything that is in the house.
“Ooooo what are these, is this your family.” She moves the pictures on the table around, he walks past her going into the kitchen, but even to her he felt very somber and cold as he passed. Way different than the way he was when he met Yui on the train station or even a few moments ago.
“Please don’t damage those pictures and put them back as they were.”
“Are you sad?” Yui asked him bluntly.
A small chuckle came from Kirai, he turns off the running water as he was washing the dishes, he sits up on the counter, wiping his hands. “You want to know honestly, I am. I am very much, I still feel sad for the loss of my family. It’s been 10 years since the incident that took their lives. For the first almost 4 years I couldn’t even leave the house.”
His hands begin trembling, “Even to my aunt who was taking care of me, but slowly I learnt to act as if everything was fine, and I became somewhat social in collage…” Speak of the devil, his phone rings with an unsaved number, “Wait a second.”
Yui lays down onto the sofa while Kirai answers, “Yes, who is this?”
“It’s me Hina, we met at the conbini earlier today.”
“Oh it’s you, what’s up?” Kirai doesn’t really talk to people across the phone,
“I was wondering if you are actually free tomorrow, we could maybe go the aquarium or something that you would like.” Though Kirai couldn’t see her reactions, it was quite obvious that she was flustered.
“Sure thing, let’s meet there at 3pm, if that is okay for you?”
“Um, okay then, see you there.” she instantly hung up after that.
“Was that your girlfriend on the phone?” Yui sneaked that comment in from all the way on the sofa, “Nope, do you think a bum like me can be in a relationship.”
He drops himself onto the sofa as well, “So then tell me how does this power thingy that I got now work?”
Yui tilted her head as I asked, “How should I know that?” she took an orange from the coffee table and began peeling it.
“Well I guess you give these power things to people, so you should know right.” Kirai is just wondering if she is joking or is serious.
“Everyone’s power is different, and has different triggers, you are gonna have to figure this out yourself.” In his head Kirai just feels like an absolute idiot, “So then why did you follow me here.”
“You offered me a place to stay, so why would I not take it.” He just sighs at this point.
“Sure I guess. Well it’s dinner time, any wishes for that?”
“Fish!!!” Damn that was loud.
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to be so loud.” Kirai taps his ear to make sure he can still hear.
“Oh so sorry, I just haven’t eaten proper foods in so longgggggg.”
“Oh yeah, it kind of slipped my mind that you ran away from home. You can use the guest bedroom.” Kirai looks in the fridge to see if he has any unfrozen fish already.
“Really really?” Her eyes glow to what Kirai said, “Yeah, go up stairs, the last door to your left is my room, grab some clothes from there and directly across is the bath. Dinner should be ready by then.” He looks deeper in the fridge, “Ah there it is.” he pulls out four fillets of salon, “I was saving you guys.”
Yui smiles a bit while looking at Kirai, she doesn’t answer but does as he said.
Kirai waits for steps to be heard from the second floor and lets out a deep breath as if he was holding something back. He goes over to the pictures, “Sorry guys, I am gonna have to move you today and most likely for a while, I have someone over for the first time in forever.”
He puts the pictures onto the coffee table, “Welp time to cook.” He roles up his sleeves.
After a lot of chopping, sizzling and plating sounds, the food is done and just on time when Yui comes down.
She looks upon the set table, nicely seared salmon fillets, mashed potatoes, a small salad and of course a nice hefty bowl of rice. Yui’s mouth begins to drool, “Oh my, god, there is so much good stuff.” x
“I tried a bit harder than I would usually would, so enjoy yourself as much as you want.” Kirai sits down, in front of him way less of a portion, not cause he wanted her to eat more. Kirai keeps track of his intake, he did martial arts before collage as a form to socialize, but he was quite good at taekwondo, so even know he continues constant body training.
Meanwhile across him, Yui was scarfing down more food than the size of her body.
“Hearing that you come from such a high esteemed family, I would’ve expected a bit of table manners.”
Yui looks back at him with a mouthful of food in her mouth, “So what, that doesn’t force me to act all prim and posh.” She continues to dine.
Kirai gets up and takes away his plates, “After your done with eating, put the plates in the sink and you can sleep in the guest bedrooms.” Yui just sticks up a thumbs up into the air.
So he just leaves her to her own devices while he goes to up to his room.
Promptly plopping himself into his bed, “Well today, was kind of a waste of a day. Couldn’t even get any info on this damn so called power I have, so it’s just a useless thing at the moment.”
He rolled over to face the ceiling, “I wonder why Hina wanted to go on a date with me so suddenly. Till now we had only talked less than 10 times. Eh better to not dwell on it”
Closing his eyes he slowly drifts asleep.
Kirai feels a slamming on his belly, he squints his eyes open, seeing Yui smacking him, “Get up, get up, I want breakfast.”
“What the actual fuck.” He sits up, “The hell are you waking me up for.” Kirai rubs his eyes, “I am hungry so I want to eat.” Kirai was too half awake to even think properly. “Sure sure.”
He made his way down the stairs somehow and made some breakfast and a coffee for himself. After actually waking up he can talk, “Don’t you know how to cook or something, you didn’t have to wake me up.”
Yui shakes her head from side to side, “Nope I have no idea how to even crack an egg.” Kirai is just stunned and wonders if he is the idiot here or, “How were you surviving on your own till now?”
“I don’t know, luck I guess.” All he could do in response is sigh, very heavily. He slurps down his coffee and goes up to get dressed.
The weather was in that weird time where it was both warm but also can be cold with some gusts of wind. “Damn my wardrobe is pitiful, I just got hoodies, hmm maybe I could.”
He took out the long black cardigan that his auntie bought him one time, “Who would’ve thought I would actually wear, thank you Aunt.” He threw that on, a dark pair of jeans and a white shirt.
Kirai looks at himself in the mirror, “I would normally think I look awful but I did a half good job this time.”
Before he leaves he needs to talk to Yui, “Okay there is ready food in the fridge, don’t make too much of a mess in the house and on no circumstance should you touch the pictures of my family nor should you go into my room. That is it. I have no idea when I’ll be back so see ya.”
Kirai leaves the house, leaving Yui alone.
It takes him a bit to reach the aquarium but he gets there before Hina. “Welp, let’s just hope I didn’t get stuck up.”
Kirai just sits down and waits for almost 20 minutes after the agreed waiting time. He gets up ready to leave and as he is about to start walking off he feels someone tug on his back.
“Hmm? Can I help you?” He turns around to see Hina behind him breathing like she just ran a marathon, “Oh damn are you okay.” Kirai sits her down to where he was sitting just a moment ago. “I’ll get you something to drink.” He goes quickly to get her a drink.
“Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
Kirai actually looks at what she was wearing, she was wearing a nice white floral design.
She finally catches her breath, “I am so so sorry for being late.” Kirai pays no mind to it, he was more worried about her, “Don’t sweat it, what happened though?”
“I was late with getting ready so I missed my train.” she blushes and twirls her hair out of embarrassment, Kirai couldn’t contain his laugh.
“Sorry sorry, I just couldn’t help it.” he pats her head, “Shall we go see some fishes?” Her mood brightens up a bit.
They spend their time looking at many of the exhibits, mostly laughing at the weird fish, today was their lucky day, they had an outside show for some seals. “Wanna go check them out, there isn’t a lot of people anyway.”
“Sure why not.” Her bright and warm smile made Kirai actually smile completely genuinely, this was not something he had happen in quite a bit. She leads the way and Kirai follow her up.
‘Who would’ve actually thought that I’d enjoy going out like this. Maybe I should do it more often.’ While he is lost in thought the seal show is going on, it was quite empty since it wasn’t a big show but Hina was enjoying it.
Kirai snaps out of his thought he heard a large splash right in front of him and Hina, getting them both wet, “Well for fuck sake. At least my cardigan is mostly dry. What about you Hina?”
Turning to her he sees that she is fully flushed red cause her dress was white so it made everything a bit more see through, he quickly takes off his cardigan, “Wraps this over yourself.”
Hina puts it on and then the worker came and apologized to us, she wasn’t mad I guess, more embarrassed.
“Want to head over to shops and get you some clothes or do you want to do go somewhere else.”
“Nah I am fine with this, wait a second.” She looks Kirai up and down, “I never noticed that you were so well built, I had never even seen you out of uniform before yesterday. What do you even do on your free time?” That was first a low blow and an awkward question to answer.”
They walked through a park as they talked, “Well in my free time I am usually at home either sulking, eating, exercising and more sulking.”
“Why though, you seem like a really chill and easy going person.”
“That is just a front that I p…” Someone rams past him with their shoulder, “Ow watch it cunt.” ‘Why did that feel so hard when I bumped into him.”
Kirai gets hoisted up by the collar of his shirt, “What you say to me little pipsqueak?” Been a while since he had last been in such a situation, he grabs onto the guys arm and kicks him in the face, but the guy doesn’t even flinch, moreover Kirai is the one in pain.
“Feisty one, I see. But your weak ass kick ain’t gonna hurt a power user like me.” Power user? Then he must be like Kirai, but unlike Kirai, this guy actually knows how to use his one.
Kirai lets out a sigh and relaxes his body, trying to remember what had happen before when he last had it activated. It was back when he thought of his family and seeing them.
‘How do I make this damn thing work, I tried remembering but that didn’t help. Yui said that everyone has different triggers, but now is not the time to think about that.’
“That is quite the pretty girl you got next to yourself, do you think she would like me.” That is the last straw that he could’ve drawn, Kirai grabs onto his wrist once me but rather than last time he shoves his fingers into his wrist.
He drops Kirai, as he falls to the ground mist begins spilling from his hands and body, what triggered it, he had no idea, but it worked to his advantage.
“What the hell, you are also one, then this makes it all the better.” they can’t see him but can hear his voice and the clanking of his legs onto the ground. His power is metal based.
Kirai looking at Hina sees that she is both scared but oddly calm at the same time.
But he was not calm, he doesn’t understand his power, the guy is made of metal, what can even he do to bring him down. ‘Think dammit think, he is metal, he is like you, so he has to have some down time. Frick it, all or nothing.’
Weirdly unlike last time it seemed like the mist didn’t obstruct his own vision, but everyone else seemed like they couldn’t see infront of themselves. This at least give him an edge.
‘He can’t see, so he won’t know where I hit from hopefully.’
From his crouched down position he used his hands as support the sweep kick, at contact he didn’t feel any metal. A second later there is a large thud to the ground.
Kirai grabs Hina’s hand, “We gotta run, can you?” she quickly nodded back.
They rushed over to the train station and got on the train as soon as it came.
They were both huffing pretty hard, “Are you okay?” Hina asked him instead of the other way around, “Yeah I would like to say that and you?”
“Same here, who was that and what was that mist around you?” Can’t blame her for being interested at all, I mean they got attacked by a metal man pretty much and then also Kirai made a mist out of him.
He let out a sigh, “I’ll explain it as best as I can.”
“I met someone on the day before yesterday, they gave me a thing that later awoke a power in me, it was that mist that you saw. Yesterday when you saw me at the conbinie, I was actually looking for that person, I did find them but it wasn’t really helpful.”
Hina reaction was a mix of a few things, confusion, disbelief and also acceptance, “I’ll be honest, you have zero reason to lie to me, so I will take it at face value.”
‘That went 100% better than expected.’ In his mind he was just expecting for her to call him a crazy idiot.
Silence remained between the both of them for a few moments, till Hina spoke up, “Kirai, can I ask you of you something, in return for believing what you told me?” it would kind of be a shitty move to him to answer with a no in this moment, “I see no harm in that, so sure.”
“Can you close your eyes then?” Kirai just did as she said, now he can’t see but only hear, “Is this okay?”
“It is fine.”
From the intercom, “We will be reaching our next stop in 30 seconds.”
As that message ends, Kirai feels a hand on his thigh and in the next moment his lips touch something and gone in the next, opening his eyes he sees Hina leaning over, “What the …” he gets cut off by the intercom, “We have arrived at the station.”
“See you on Monday.” she waves him goodbye and gets off.
While Kirai is still shocked in place.
TO BE CONTINUED…. OR NOT