Chapter 7: Gaining Strength

The day after the whole Sally episode happened started pretty straightforward. Kai’s father had gone to work and Kai’s mother was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. When kai went down the stairs, his mom was in a nightgown, serving a cup of milk, positioned in the side of the table.

Kai went by, as usual, aiming to get a cup of water from the cooler, but his mom, who hadn’t seen him yet got startled with the sudden presence.

“Ah!”

She screamed and bumped into the cup. The cup, filled with liquid, said goodbye to the world as it started falling off.

“Het, mom! Watch out!”

Kai managed to grab the cup in the air and even turn it at a perfect angle so that no drop would be spilled. He then set the cup back above the table.

“Oh, sorry I didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, but careful. How many times you dropped things because they were too far near the edge of the table?”

“Thanks for catching, honey. That was a lucky shot.”

‘Luck, heh…?’

Kai realized in the middle of his movement that his body seemed far more precise on that action than when he fought the beast in the school. Back then it took him almost everything to just dodge a jump. And now he managed to just catch a falling cup in the air as soon as he anticipated it would fall. He wasn’t even near the cup when the fall began.

‘My body feels funny… Sometimes it responds to my will far better than other times…’

Kai lifted the palm of his right hand and stared at them for a moment, with a blank mind.

“Don’t stay there too long, honey. You’re going to get late.”

“Yeah…”

Kai resumed his morning activities and went to school normally.

He managed to arrive at Goldenville in time, breaking a long-established record of getting late for the first class. The main excuse was that he wanted to speak to Aimee.

Kai searched for her at his best before the bell rang, but he didn’t have any luck.

‘Hmm… She is going to be the late one today, I guess…’

The classes passed by but Aimee didn’t come. During the interval, Kai left the room and headed to the balcony, as usual.

‘People are still whispering behind my back and avoiding eye contact with me.’ Kai sighed. ‘That’s fine. I was never the popular guy, anyway.’

The air of the limpid sky was renovating after a torture session of boredom, mixed with the colleagues badmouthing. Kai found the best spot to take out his snack and eat on the balcony.

‘If my strength varies like that… I wonder if I can train my body to perform in the best way possible whenever I want? Stuff like that should be controllable, right? After school, I’m going to try and see if I can force my body to respond at a stable speed.’ Kai thought as he sipped the juice from the bottle.

‘If only Aimee had come today… I could ask her. If she knows about the ghosts this means she probably has a hunch of what happened to my body on that day…’

Kai heard voices from people far behind:

“Is that the guy? Hey, he is on the balcony. Is he going to jump again?”

“That’s dangerous.”

‘That object!’ Kai thought. ‘Now that I think of, that object Aimee was holding was always strange to me. She held it for the second time, too. Maybe that has something to do with the powers? I need to ask her.’

Kai felt the curious voices were gathering faster, so he returned to the classroom.

‘How annoying. I can’t wait for the school to end…’

After school, Kai went to a park he knew nearby. It was in the corner of a very narrow road, and the whole view was blocked by trees. People very seldom went there. Especially very few people ventured in the park since there was nothing interesting there but some plants everybody who isn’t visiting for the first time already is sick of. It was the perfect place for some quiet training.

Kai didn’t want to destroy any walls or do anything to fancy. He just wanted to see if he could make his body respond at the peak speed.

‘Training, when it comes to anything, should be done a step at a time. First, I’m going to master my speed. Then I’m going to concentrate on that wave thing. Even more, because I don’t know what the extension of the wave’s power is.’

The training was simple: Kai brought a bunch of colored straws. He just threw them up and tried to catch them in the air. He set the objective of catching more and more consistently each time. The goal was not to get the human reflex to work, but to feel the unnatural reflex doing its job. When his body unusually followed his eyes like that, Kai could always tell.

Kai spent almost the entire afternoon like that. He was exhausted. His body surprisingly got a lot better in such a short period of time. He felt the inhuman reflex was getting a lot more consistently, plus, now he was used to the feeling of such a weird thing happening to his body. It didn’t take him by surprise anymore, and therefore the feeling wouldn’t feel awkward the next time he needed using it.

‘Is this good enough? This kind of training… It feels so... Random. If only I had someone to guide me through this. Where is Aimee, damnit? I should go and try to find her one more time at her place.

Before returning home, Kai made a detour and went to Aimee’s ‘house’ once more. As expected, nobody was there. The door was still open. He tried walking in once again.

“What…?”

Everything inside the house had been removed. On the other day, there were a lot of things lying on the ground and even if the state was horrible, there was furniture. Now it was actually an abandoned place. Only the floor and the walls remained there.

“Aimee…?”

Kai searched the place thoroughly but didn’t find anything. No prints. No indication that anybody went in or went out. It was like the place had been like that for years.

‘Something is not right…’