29 Talented Magician

Asahi was laying over some bins. Since they were restaurant bins, one of them had spat out a mound of food and trash when it tipped over.

There was a round silver capsule poking out of that pile. One part of its walls slid open like a door and a white light came out of it.

A slithery thin creature crawled out.

It had two beady black eyes, four mandibles that had a joint each so that it could bend and the creature had an overall shape of a worm.

It had a spiral coil at the end of its tail, which made it look like a miniature drill. Furthermore, it had a wide fin across its back which gave it an aquatic look.

The worm was very tiny.

It crawled onto his hand, resting on the mound of leftover food up to his shoulder. The parasite climbed into his ear canal and squeezed into it.

Asahi began jolting his head and grimaced. When it got deep enough, it drilled through his skull with its tail.

Asahi screamed in agony and spasmed out of sight in a dark alleyway.

***

Hikaru arrived at the entrance of the TankTop Gym which was open 24/7. There were many people exercising which was surprising.

‘They must have come after work hours.’ Hikaru thought.

It wasn’t packed. It was at 20% capacity, about 8 people were here.

Hikaru tried opening the door, but it was locked. He then noticed an electronic reader on the side that was emitting a red light.

He had never been to the gym before, so he didn’t know these things.

He saw the times of the staff working hours. The last time they supervised it was from 3 pm to 7 pm.

Hikaru had hoped it was staffed, so he could pay for entry. He didn’t know that sitting in the gym toilet was the owner of the place.

Soon when a man opened the door with an electronic key tag to leave, Hikaru slipped through the opened door.

At the same time, a huge muscular guy who was sitting on a bench holding a dumbbell had looked up and seen this.

He glared at Hikaru.

Since Hikaru was wearing a school uniform, the bodybuilder named Daitaro figured he was just a middle school punk looking to cause some trouble. He could also tell from Hikaru’s biceps that it wasn’t trained at all.

Biceps? What biceps. It was non-existent.

Such a slim figure made him look like a J-Pop star but to Daitaro he was just some weakling who couldn’t handle a fistfight when it happens. He was the type of guy who would ditch his hot girlfriend the moment a thug came out of the alleyway.

Hikaru didn’t know that Daitaro was already criticizing him and was busy looking at the gym equipment. Daitaro didn’t rat him out because he wanted to see what Hikaru would do next.

Hikaru went over to a bench press equipment, removed the weights from the ends of the 20 kg Olympic barbell and laid on the bench.

‘At least, he’s not stupid.’ Daitaro thought.

Some beginners who attempted to work out without learning about the gym equipment or hiring a personal trainer to guide them would put weights on the Olympic barbell which was already heavy.

It was extremely rare for a Japanese person to have a higher base of muscle mass as the genes for it were almost extinct to have statistically unless someone was a half-caste. Therefore, almost no one could do over 7 reps with additional weights on a 20 kg barbell and have never trained before.

If the genes weren’t there, then one needed to have trained muscle from some other physical activity or job. Hence, Daitaro had seen many idiots scoff at an empty barbell, stack some weight plates on it and embarrass themselves before taking the weight stacks off.

Hikaru lifted the barbell above him and slowly dropped it to his chest. He then pushed it up and repeated the process.

It surprised Daitaro as there was precise stability in his smooth movements. It looked like he didn’t feel the weight at all.

After doing ten reps, Hikaru placed the barbell on the bar holder, got up and placed some weights on the dumbbell’s left end.

20 kg, 20 kg.

Daitaro scoffed. Feelings of anger, disbelief, disgust, and amusement came over his face. He smiled out of schadenfreude as he shook his head at Hikaru.

‘You gotta be kidding me.’

Daitaro had already decided that he would sit and watch the show.

If Hikaru dropped the barbell on his throat and needed emergency help, he’d delegate responsibility to the other occupants of the gym.

Hikaru went to the right side of the barbell and placed another two weight plates.

20 kg, 20 kg.

‘What an idiot.’

Daitaro began snickering at Hikaru, but he did it quietly so that Hikaru would continue without notice.

Hikaru laid under the barbell and aligned his hands to the rings engraved on the barbell. Since both sides had the same amount of weights, it was balanced. In total, Hikaru would lift 40+40+20 = 100 kg.

He began wondering if Hikaru could even lift the barbell off the J-hooks.

It cleared his doubts when Hikaru pushed it off the J-hooks, and it fell on his chest and crushed him.

That was what Daitaro saw. However, when Hikaru lifted the barbell from his chest, he realized that what he saw was incorrect.

The barbell hadn’t fallen on Hikaru as he thought; he was actually doing reps.

A couple of other guys were watching this as they had noticed the newcomer ignorantly stack weight plates.

All of them had their eyes bulged out as they tried to see if what they were seeing was real. With more light hitting the retina of their eyes, the more they saw, the more confused they became.

It was clear as day that Hikaru didn’t have any bulging muscles at all. How the hell was he lifting that?

They began to think that Hikaru was a talented magician doing magic tricks, or that this was some prank on YouTube.

Yet, whatever it was, they could not tear their eyes away.