And here’s part 3, which ends chapter 1. The good news is that I’ve finished the longest chapter; the bad news is that it seems that translating won’t get any easier. Also, question for you guys; do you want me to collect all the parts and make a pdf of the entire chapter? It’d be pretty easy for me to do that since I initially write these on Google Docs. Let me know in the comments. Happy reading!
So long as you take your basic credits, you're free to whatever you want at the university. You can join a circle group, go around with friends, stay in the lab, or even easily make a lot of money with a part-time job. It was three times as fancy as I imagined, so I decided to immerse myself in my hobby without any hesitation. In short, learning about ESP.
I did psychokinesis training, bought occult magazines, and I read books. I went to lectures of self-proclaimed experts; sometimes I even directly met them and talked with them about it. I saved money from my part-time job and flew to various places. Mt. Aso. Fuji's sea of trees. The Guiana Highlands.The Tower of London. Domestic and overseas, I thoroughly investigated various famous suicide places and power spots. But I got nothing. There were never any occult groups on campus in the first place.
I went to a presentation of a self-styled psychic while hiding my abilities, which was a good idea as it was extremely anti-climatic. In a dimly lit room they started muttering gibberish, and after spending a long time muttering they finally cried out the "magic word", causing some water to change color.
It's a magic trick, thank you very much. Even someone with no super powers can see that. It's too disappointing. There's not enough effort. I couldn't suppress my anger at how ridiculous it was,so I ended up losing control and accidentally making the room a mess with my psychokinesis; I don't regret it though. That part was fun… !
My first year at university passed by idly. Although I was let down, I comforted myself my claiming that it was better for supernatural powers to be difficult to find because then ordinary people wouldn't easily discover them. And while I didn't find any fellow ESP'ers, my training progressed almost too smoothly.
Seawater lifting, using density and precision to prevent water leaks, weight-bearing output, support endurance, maintaining the barrier formation, I needed to cultivate various psychokinetic techniques. I bought a 50m measuring tool and made a cube that size full of water, the output was 125,000t. This result means I have enough power to lift a medium-sized tanker. That's scary. There's no doubt that if my psychic-muscle was a real muscle it would be monstrously macho. But in a fight, a tank would lose to a battleship.
♢
I was so preoccupied with super powers that I almost repeated the year, but I managed to pass and entered my second year of college. That year I decided to shrink my search from worldwide to just the city my university was in.
My output can no longer be measured by hand, and I gained hour-long precision and endurance by covering every individual grain of rice in a bowl in a thin barrier and maintaining it as long as possible.
It's the era of quick response now. At any time, in an instant, I must be able to use my psychokinesis perfectly. Currently, it takes 2 seconds for me to form a barrier. I want to reduce this to 0.2 seconds which is the average reaction time of human beings.
Furthermore, I want to be able to spontaneously support myself when I'm exercising. For example: my legs are crushed and I can't walk! That sort of moment. If I have assistance from my psychokinesis, I could possibly jump or leap as if my legs weren't crushed. Specifically, it will be cool if I could jump for dozens of meters like a superman and crush the concrete with a fist in the same way by using my psychokinesis to assist my movement. The chance to smash concrete by driving your fist into it only occurs once in a lifetime.
I decided to incorporate response time training into my everyday life. When I wake up in the morning, I throw the pebbles near my bedside up while still lying down. I throw up a small barrier right before the pebbles hit my body. This continues for five minutes. During this, I don't use my hands. The power and precision drops when I don't use my hands while using my psychokinesis, but it's too suspicious for me to move my hands more than I would on a normal everyday basis.
“It must be as easy as snapping an HB pencil! It must be a natural act!”
Right, old lady Enya? 1
I'm awake once the pebble training is over, so I go get breakfast. However, I do it all with psychokinesis. I use it to hold the frying pan, to control the stove's heat, to cut the vegetables, and I use it to fry. I cover the frying pan and dishes with a barrier so they don't get dirty. Pretty much all my appliances are electric and controlled through psychokinesis. I do use fire with my stove though.
While walking around I form a barrier under my feet that lifts me a few millimeters off the ground. It's not only to practice persistently forming it, but also to practice timing it; I need to form it right when my foot is about to hit the ground, and then immediately release it once my foot lifts up. I came dangerously late to my first second-year lecture because I spent too much time doing this practice. The first day I could walk about 300m per hour. It was really difficult, and it took a few months until I was able to get back to a normal walking speed. Because I was doing this on campus, my friends were worried that I had injured my foot. I felt bad about it, but I went along with it and pretended to have a foot injury, though that was probably overkill. It's not like there's a reason for me to be in a rush to train my powers anyway.
Once I'm done attending lectures for the day, and I finish my "all psychokinetic" dinner, I continue my training by using my powers during studying, using them to browse my laptop and move my pencil. I use my psychokinesis to assist with daily activities because it would be troubling to me if my abilities were to dull. Moderate psychic-muscle training is indispensable.
Once I finish studying around midnight, I put on the mask I got when I went to Bali one time and go outside. It's hero time. Using psychokinetic muscle strengthening I fly across the rooftops of the apartment buildings, and head to the sea using air-walking (running). Once I get to the sea, I fly around it and lift seawater like it's an athletic event. I make sure that no one sees me. Although if they do and rumors form, it's not like anyone will actually believe them. I'm even wearing a mask to hide my identity. It looks super-suspicious though.
Though initially I was asking myself "What on earth are you planning on fighting?" while training, six months of the same thing made it become nothing more than simple routine. To further explain, flying around at midnight wearing a mask was caused by a relapse of my chuunibyou causing me to remember the pleasant feeling of being a protagonist. No, I really can use psychokinesis, I probably can't just dismiss it as suffering a chuunibyou relapse. Recently all of my earnings from my part-time job have disappeared into steel-toed work boots which can endure a weight of 2t. Well, you see, a organization aiming at ESP'ers with really strong abilities may appear. So this is a countermeasure against that?
… except there's no indication that such an organization will ever appear. If an organization that has super powers on the same level as me were to appear and we fought, it would probably be a monstrous battle with the Tokyo Skytree getting destroyed at the end of it.
Although it calls my sanity into question, training to fight invisible enemies has become part of my daily routine, and I've had more time to go searching for "friends". But searching by myself, I wasn't able to find anyone with the same abilities as me. There's no information broker to do "underground" research for me, so I guess mass media is my best option.
However, I don't think my plan of having a "real" ESP'er appear and call out to other power users would be very effective. Up to now, various TV stations have created tons of different programs aimed at searching for "real" power users, but none of them have been able to produce a convincing, without-doubt power user. I tried watching videos and DVDs of various programs, but 95% of it is fake and the remaining 5% is at the level of “can't be determined whether real or fake”.
Utilizing my vacation days, I flew nationwide and overseas; I tried to meet that remaining 5% of people: one person had a five year long waiting list to see them; one person was unfriendly, refused to show their abilities, and finally angrily drove me out; the two prophets took money and gave nothing but vague predictions in return; and the remaining had undisclosed contacts.
I realized it. I was forced to understand. I'm the only ESP'er in the world. But there was no sense of wonder or disappointment. Ah, as I thought, it's that kind of feeling. Psychokinesis is a big thing, but because it had become too routine for me it had, in my perception, become no big deal.
I remember when I bought a video game for the first time in elementary school. At the time I felt as if I got a legendary weapon, I was really happy. I bragged to my friends, and before long we started playing a fighting game together. At the time when the best entertainment was manga, the game was a small unusual comet that appeared in a boring everyday life.
My psychokinesis had become like that. Three years after gaining it, I had become completely used to it. It's definitely interesting and fun, but like I do with my favorite game, I need a taste of the sequel, otherwise there's no excitement or expecting the unknown. Everything becomes predictable.
Maybe there won't be any other ESP'ers in the future.
There's no secret organizations aiming for my life.
There's no flirting with a beautiful girl.
There aren't any harmful side effects to my psychokinesis.
I don't even know how I got my powers in the first place.
Maybe in the end my psychokinesis training will be just commonplace and nothing eventful will happen. It seems pretty likely, since I can easily imagine myself like that. But, well, if you train to to the utmost limits, it's not difficult to use your powers to cause a huge uproar.
Perhaps the curtain opening on a fantasy-like awakening experience is impossible and powers will never be understood on a particle level.
But I'll continue training my psychokinesis.
Just in case.
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