A small municipal park painted over with flowers. Offset north from the ter stood a crete fountain with simple lotus designs. Sidewalks fanned out from the focal point of the fountain to ect the ers. For a mid afternoon, few people occupied the ground.

  Just like she wished for, an ideal private pce to talk. He looked over the se of the park and back further to the small rising buildings. “…real world…” The thought had almost made him ugh knowing how much of a strange and ironic statement that was to be said. ‘Most wouldn’t see it as a real world and until yesterday it was just a fake world to me. Strao think my fantasies could be in the real world.’ He took a seat on the bend unbuttoned his jacket. There were questions that o be answered and he did not have a lot of free time. “Good to talk here?”

  She sed once more and focused. A blue ripple came out from her feet over the ground briefly. “Now it is.” Ayumi had dropped all of her facades that she wore for the public.

  Yuki khat he had tless questions for her, but he had to pace himself. One issue more than any preseself and an immediate threat. This apparent real world needed some rules. “What was that this m?”

  Chapter 11 – Kasou-ryoku

  Ayumi maintained a straight at attentioed position. A rigidity and disciplihat he didn’t remember from her before, for how much his memories meant anymore. “That was a maion of your power. Though sidering your current state, a subscious one.”

  “Current state? Are there stages?”

  “Correbsp; There are three stages most of us gh. The dormant stage is how you were until yesterday. Though I guess sidering the sakura blossom, you maybe have been out of that for longer. The stage which you are at, is what we call the subscious stage and the scious stage follows.”

  “Subscious and scious? You make it sound like the power is tied to mental ditions.”

  “That’s quite astute. Our power lives within our mind as such, that means the greatest influence over it is your mental state at the moment.”

  “Based on the names, I’m in some sort of untrolled dition where my passive thoughts are maing?”

  “Correbsp; In the dormant stage, as it sounds our power isn’t awakened. We’re like any other normal human, nothing unique or special about us. Onove into the subscious stage, that’s where training and trol are needed. Most people ’t just advao the scious stage without guidance.

  “While in the subscious stage, we are a threat to both ourselves and those around us. This is especially true for those with vivid imaginations aal illness. That’s why it’s important to identify it early a proper training.”

  “Which you’ll be providing me.”

  “Yes. Your power has started to awaken and the more it’s used it’ll bee a flood gate. Your subscious will start tapping into that power more and more often. Until you learn proper trol, your mind will trol you.”

  He winced a little and the imaginary that came with that warning. “Thanks for the nightmares. Um… it make nightmares real?”

  “Anything. I know of more than a few that died in their sleep.”

  His hands went through his hair feeling the stress of the dark world she painted. Such a world hit closer to home for him than she realized. “How do any of you survive?”

  “Dream maion generally takes a deeply progressed subscious stage to occur. Given how ret it was for you, you will be safe for a while.”

  “That’s not pletely encing. I thought superpowers were supposed to be fun.”

  “Does that answer your question?”

  Yuki leaned back resting his head on the back of the bench staring up at the azure vas half painted in with clouds. Pensive long breathes exhaled as he sidered everything. The world she drew for him sounded disturbing and frightening, especially for someone like himself. “Is there any way to remove this ability?”

  “It’s part of our brain, any sort of tampering could cause damage or be lethal. If someone did such things, they would have been illegal.”

  “Not that simple, figures as mubsp; And you need me as I am. With this um…power, power…I ’t keep calling it something vague and non-descript as power. What to call it…”

  “It has a name, Mes–”

  “Ryo…ka…no, something cool sounding.”

  “We call it, Meso–”

  “Hmm, English maybe? No, I’m terrible at English, even if it does sound cool.”

  Ayumi stopped trying. Even if she did finish, he clearly heard nothing. So she waited with pinched brow at his fumbling around.

  “Ryoku, huh, hm, maybe Kasou-ryoku, yeah let’s go with that!” He tilted his head, still resting on the bench back, over to Ayumi for some feedbabsp; All he got from was a ft expression, not clear if it was disappoi or annoyanbsp; She hid the truth pretty well.

  “Our power has existed for two millennia, we have a name for it already.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Your ability to get lost in your head is…impressive.”

  “Thanks!”

  “Meso Prosecho is what we call our power.”

  “MP for short?”

  “Sure.”

  “M-meso Pro-shesho? What nguage is that? Like Latin or something a?”

  “A, but not Latin. It’s an offshoot of Greek.”

  “Greek, that’s going to be hard to follow. we keep to Japanese? I have enough trouble in my English css.”

  “As long as you don’t use Kasou-ryoku…”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’ll transte.”

  “Awesome! So what’s the step?”

  Ayumi paused to sider the circumstanbsp; The mission hadn’t ged for her. His progression remained unclear and most of all, his potential ed her. If Yuki had anything simir to his father, the risk to more than just himself increased. ‘I’m going to have to be careful, but I ’t dey long. He could move quickly and put everything at risk.’ Risk analysis became even more critical seeing what he could do already.

  “It’ll be training to give you trol over your power.”

  “When do we start? This is only getting worse for me, right?”

  “Indeed. I’ll be ready soon for you. Time is not with us.”

  “Right, deadline as well.” Yuki jumped up off the bench to stretbsp; The metal bag of the bench didly fit perfectly to his spine, but he was young. He looked at the park, seeing it no further filled than before. In fact, they had been lucky enough not to have anyone pass by them. “Fortunately, no one passed by to interrupt us.”

  “No one would have.”

  “Huh?”

  “I made sure rivacy.”

  P the meaning and ramifications of that, he snapped back to her. “Are you saying you have the power to trol people?”

  “It’s not mind trol if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just a Law that affects their deaking to dissuade them from pig the park.”

  “Sounds like you’re splitting hairs. But the park is not small, it’s the whole city block, like what hundred meters?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “That sand guy could only do like teers maybe?”

  ‘Impressive, he’s picked up those details already. At least his observational skills are good. That’ll be important.’ Despite the amount of prep she did to iigate him before tact, a lot remained unknown about him. She found more hings about him than she expected, food and bad. “It’s one measure of someone’s strength, though it’s not as reliable as you assume.”

  idbits of informatio dropping for him. Now that he accepted it, his curiosity to uand the power system only grew. His mind tio paint different ideas of how it worked pared to fial ones he knew. Some corretioed, but it remained mostly unknown to him. “I see. Would you say it’s a hard or soft power system?”

  “What?” Visible fusion made it across her fabsp; She still hadn’t adapted to all of his different idioms. Much remaio learn.

  “Hard or soft, you know like there are a lot of rules with a well defiructure or is it more fluid with the moment?”

  “Well…” She went silent as she never sidered the perspective. A majority of her life, she lived with said power and training. Everythied naturally for her in an uioate. “There are defined limits, but part of the growth is creative execution within those limits to still get results otherwise impossible.”

  “Sounds more soft than hard, but I guess I’ll know better as you expin things to me more.” The more she talked about it, the more excited it made him. Real or not, he had the same eagerness as finding a new manga or book to dive into and fully immerse himself. Though knowing Ayumi, she would hate the analogy to fi, again.

  Still he had enough different pieces to craft an image in his mind. It sort of made him curious about what her homend looked like with all of this power. Could it be some sort of sci-fi utopia, or a high fantasy with impossible structures? An endless possibility of creation seemed like a dream. He wondered what the catch to it all was.

  More happehan just the powers. The corruption she described, the rigidity of her wheopped pretending. So many unknowns still that he o get a handle on. And the all important remaining question.

  Would he follow Ayumi back to bee this King they needed?