The Book Of Letters

After my shift had ended, I thought of asking Esuke if he could help in seeing memories that I"ve lost. I went to Lavender Park since he and Hibiki always pa.s.ses there before going home, but when I came, I only stumbled upon Hibiki, and Esuke was nowhere in sight. Hibiki appeared to be looking for him as well, and noticed me coming.

"I"m not so sure," said Hibiki when I asked him about Esuke"s whereabouts. "He went to the public toilet earlier, but after twenty minutes of not seeing him coming out, I decided to check in. The stall he was in was locked, so I knocked. There wasn"t any response from him that I had my familiar to peek. It would have make more sense if he fainted, but in this case, disappeared into thin air."

"That"s weird," I commented. "Can you use your familiar powers to track him down?"

"I could if you have something that belongs to him," he replied.

I rubbed my temples, thinking what we should do in this situation. It wasn"t like Esuke to leave without saying anything. I was about to suggest that we should split up as he could still be around when I saw someone running towards us. It was Esuke.

"Sorry guys!" he yelled, waving his hand. He stopped in front of us to take a breath. Hibiki slapped him on the back and angrily asked him where he went. Esuke fl.u.s.tered and said he had to help an old lady cross the streets.

"You ran out of the toilet without being noticed and helped an old lady?" I was dumbfounded by his reason. "That"s a stupid excuse, Esuke. Tell us where you went off to."

"L-look, even if I tell you it would be anti-climactic," he told us. "Let"s just go back so we could buy groceries early."

Hibiki and I looked at each other. We knew something was off about Esuke, since he was an honest-type of person. What bugged me was where he went off to. Even later that night he went to bed straight away after washing his dishes. It became obvious that he was keeping secrets from us. Midori went to her room early since she had quite a busy day, leaving Hibiki and I downstairs cleaning up the dining room and the kitchen. After we were done with our ch.o.r.es, we sat at the dining table, discussing what was going on with Esuke.

"What kind of secret that he wouldn"t tell to the both of us?" Hibiki questioned.

"I guessed he doesn"t trust us enough," I replied. "His condition has stopped, meaning he should be able to see the future by now. What if he saw our future?"

"Mamoru mentioned before that oracles usually say in riddles in order to keep the future vague," Hibiki reminded. "They would also forgot what they have seen, so I don"t think he remembered what he saw. Even if he had a feeling that it was a bad future, he would have told us as a warning."

Throughout the night, we made up theories of Esuke"s odd behaviour, but in the end, we didn"t agree to any of them. We hardly knew anything about oracles, which made us more worried of him. Hibiki and I decided to go return to our rooms and I sat down my desk, illuminating my s.p.a.ce with bright luminous crystal. I began to write a letter to Kurai, telling him about what happened earlier, put it in an envelope with his Gloxinia Town address on, and stamped the letter to send it away. I wished I could stamp myself just to meet him, but the crystal in Kurai"s stamp was strong enough to teleport small and non-living things only.

The next day, Esuke had an early start. When we woke up, he wasn"t in his bedroom, but he completed his breakfast duty and his uniform wasn"t hanging on the wall of his room. What was peculiar to us was he left his broomstick and no memo as to why he left so early.

"Something smells fishy with Esuke," I said. "He is always the last person to wake up. What do you think, guys?"

"Seriously, you two should stop overthinking it," said Midori. "Like what if something embarra.s.sing happened when he was in the toilet yesterday? Or that a dog s.n.a.t.c.hed his handkerchief on his way out and he had to chase it?"

"He could have asked Hibiki," I said. "Come on, Midori, aren"t you suppose to worry him?"

"I"m more concern about how he"s been doing right now," said Midori, taking her broomstick and went out of the door. "I"m going off. I have a meeting for the next Special Task Post Officer exams."

"I think Esuke told Midori something," said Hibiki after Midori went out. "Well, he would trust Midori more than us. She"s reliable when it comes to keeping secrets."

I couldn"t get over with my curiosity. I had thought a number of likely reasons why he would keep it from us, but Midori might have been right about Esuke having an embarra.s.sing moment. On second thought, maybe it is not. Hibiki said he went in twenty minutes later, meaning that he noticed Esuke wasn"t in the stall but the door was locked. Then the next question would be why would Esuke ran away from Hibiki?

I rode on a bicycle to do ordinary deliveries. There hadn"t been any deliveries that required Special Task Postman today, but it was alright for me since I wasn"t able to focus with my mind filled with concerns for Esuke. I stopped my bicycle by the streetlight when I saw something shimmering above me. An envelope faded in, and it seemed that Kurai finally replied my letter. He talked about the events occurred on that day and later answered to what could possibly happened to Esuke.

Seeing the future is a common advanced stage for an oracle but there are other abilities that could be achieved. Some are uncommon, others are rare and there are some that are truly unheard of, but it all goes back to the nature of oracle"s power, which is time and spatial magic. For example, since I inherited dark magic, I have the ability to manipulate an object or a person"s time. I could slow them down, stop their time or speed their age. But I try to refrain myself from doing that ever since I solved Oliver"s case. I think Esuke is hiding it to protect you guys, until he can control his profound power.

If I take his theory into account, then it was possible that Esuke had awakened another power. Maybe it was an uncommon or rare ability that Esuke wanted to understand it first before telling it to anyone else, or he gained a potentially dangerous ability if anyone else knew, he would be captured by some underground cult. Either way, it would have placed a lot of stress in him, since he just mastered his basic oracle powers. The question was, what sort of ability did he unlock?

I put the letter in my pocket and got on the bicycle to continue on delivering. After I was done, I decided to take a shortcut through the alleys. I have always wanted to try doing some bicycle stunts like my adoptive father did. I leapt from a stack of discarded wooden boxes to the top of the large garbage bin. I attempted in jumping to the windowsill, but the steepness of the garbage cover made me lost my balance that I had to jump onto the ground again. Disappointed, I rode back to the headquarters to sign in again.

Just as I was going to put the bicycle back to the large mailroom at the back, I heard someone screaming. I looked around and saw no one from my left or my right, but the sound grew louder, sounding like it was coming from above. When I looked up, I saw a human figure falling, with his back facing on the ground. I didn"t have time to wonder who it was. I stretched out my hand to catch him, but when my hand touched him, in a blink of an eye my location changed to the rooftop of the headquarters, holding that person in my arms. My knees were bending as I struggled to hold his weight.

"J-just what is g-" my voice trailed off when I saw the face of the person I rescued. It was Esuke. I dropped him on the ground and he cried in pain. I squatted, clasped my hands onto his shoulders and looked at his terrified face. "No more avoiding, Esuke! Tell me what you are trying to hide from us."

Esuke gulped and sighed. He averted his face away from me. "I didn"t want to tell you and Hibiki about this but somehow, I gained another power."

I wasn"t surprised. Kurai"s theory was right, but I let Esuke to continue on explaining. "I have already demonstrated to you just now but I"ll tell you what the power actually is. Rather than the ability to see the future, I can teleport."

That, I was surprised. He later explained that the main elements of an oracle are time and s.p.a.ce and teleportation is simply manipulating s.p.a.ce and time itself by shortening his time to go to a certain location to milliseconds. However, Esuke haven"t controlled his profound powers yet, and wanted to surprise us after he mastered his power.

"When did you first discover this?" I asked him.

Esuke covered his face and said. "In the toilet yesterday."

I bursted out laughing. Esuke turned red of embarra.s.sment. He explained that while he was in the toilet, he remembered that there was a time sale at the supermarket and he wanted to go there before they ran out of meat, which caused him to teleport. Luckily, he had his pants on when it happened, and he restocked our kitchen before going back to Lavender Park. I initially thought it was Midori who bought the meat.

"At first, I thought my ability works on myself, but now that you"re here, it seems that it affects those that touches me," said Esuke, standing up. "Well now, I"m going to try to teleport us back down."

I immediately stood up and patted him on the shoulder, giving him the "I-got-better-idea" face. "From what I understand, you can teleport to anywhere as long as you imagine it. Well, why not teleport in front of Hibiki"s face?"

Esuke laughed and nodded his head. "That would give him quite a shock."

He held my hand, closed his eyes and transported us into headquarters. We did surprise Hibiki alright, but suddenly appearing in the tea room and fell onto the counter wasn"t what I had in mind. Hibiki spat out his coffee as Esuke and I tried to save a tray of cakes before it hit the ground. Luckily for us, Hibiki was the only one in the room.

Hibiki wiped the coffee off the table as the two of us sat on the floor, apologizing for scaring him. Esuke then confessed about his new ability and Hibiki seemed to be excited for it.

"How far can you teleport?" Hibiki asked. "Can you teleport to the cliff where we met Mamoru the other time?"

"I"ll try" said Esuke. He held our hands and our surrounding turned to Mamoru"s hideout. Without the flying ram in the way, I finally got to see the ocean. It got me imagining having a date with Kurai. I could see us having a picnic, watching the sunset and stargazing. All of the sudden, the scenery shifted. It looked like Kurai"s old room, but with the furniture moved in different places in the room.

"Esuke, why are we in my room?" Hibiki asked. He grabbed the paper on his desk and crumpled it, throwing it into the dustbin. Hibiki told us not to bother what he did just now.

"I don"t know," Esuke shrugged. "Aoko, were you thinking of something?"

"I was thinking of Kurai, honestly," I admitted. "I didn"t think that would affect you."

"Though, I didn"t teleport to him," he said. "Maybe because I"ve never been to Gloxinia Town, so I can only go to places that I have the strongest memories of him."

"Want to go back to the headquarters?" Hibiki asked. "We don"t want to get caught missing during office hours."

Esuke put his hand on his left temple. "I think that"s enough teleporting for today. My precision of where to teleport is always off."

"Maybe you need a clear image of where to teleport," said Hibiki. "Imagine standing at one location and-"

Esuke lost his balance and I immediately caught his fall. We tried to call out his name but Esuke didn"t wake up. Hibiki helped me carry Esuke to the bed, letting Esuke lied down to rest. Hibiki ran out to get a healer. I stayed by Esuke"s side, hoping that Esuke would wake up soon.

Hibiki and the healer finally arrived. The healer told us to wait outside the room so he could perform a check-up on Esuke. Hibiki told me that on their way here, he only told them Esuke had only fainted, telling the healer Esuke was an oracle and all. He couldn"t admit to the healer that it was due to excessive teleportation.

"Esuke must have practiced a lot today," I said. "He must be out of magic. I shouldn"t have made him do more teleporting. I am such an idiot!"

"I think Esuke wanted to understand his powers more," said Hibiki. "He just discovered it yesterday and honestly, that is too big of a responsibility for someone who found out he is a magic-user. Not only that, there hadn"t been records about human teleportation before, except for that one failed experiment hundred years ago."

The experiment Hibiki was talking about was the one written in our history books; it involved three type of individuals: a spellcaster, a charm user and an alchemist. Each were tasked to perform teleportation spell of their own. The spellcaster made up a spell taken from the roots of that word and its synonyms, while charm user used the teleportation crystal that we used in the post offices to deliver one place to another and combined it with another charm, Maxima Magika, and the alchemist used every parts of creatures and plants known for their teleportation.

It was a failure, like Hibiki said. I didn"t want to touch on the spellcaster and alchemist because it was a gruesome result, but the charm user was so close to success. He managed to teleport alright, but days after his disappearance, they found his dead body by the beach. It seemed that his power got drained too much that he died.

Hibiki and I were too excited to learn about Esuke"s new ability that we didn"t think of its potential consequences. Half an hour later, the healer went out of the room, telling that Esuke needed some rest to recharge his magic. He also noted that there were no internal and mental injuries, and reminded us to tell Esuke not to strain too much.

"Anyway, I should be going," said the healer. "I"ve made some medicine for him to take. Tell him to take it twice a day, after meal."

After the healer left, Hibiki and I sat beside Esuke, waiting for him to wake up. Seeing him lying down unawake, made me unable to stop thinking that he might be dead, even though he clearly breathing in front of me. I put my finger under his nose to check his breathing. He was breathing very softly that it was almost as if he was dying. It made me more and more worried until I saw his lips slowly opened.

"Ao...ko," he mumbled.

I took his hand. "Can you hear me, Esuke?"

He kept his eyes closed as he said something unusual. "In the upcoming summer day, the tragedy repeats again. The darkness will reign once more, and only you who can save them."

"What was he saying?" Hibiki asked. Just then, Esuke opened his eyes. I quickly removed my hand from his face as Esuke sat up. He placed his hand on his head, feeling migraine.

"Just a little headache," said Esuke. "For a moment there I dreamt of something, but now I can"t seem to remember what it was."

I felt relieved. "The important thing now is that you"re okay."

❤︎

「The three of us hugged each other and helped Esuke get back on his feet. It was too late for us to thaw the meat for dinner so we decided to take away food at A La Bento Restaurant, and this time, we rode on our broomsticks. Did you know they added new food to the menu? If you ever take a vacation and go back to Lavender City, we should go out and eat there together.

Anyway, Esuke already told Midori about his new ability yesterday. When she came back, we told her everything that happened today. Midori did expect us to find out sooner, but she didn"t think it would take us a day. Though, she figured something happened when we were missing, so she covered for us. She then warned all of us not to play it around ever again, especially during working hours.

Moving on to a serious matter; what Esuke sleep-talked was actually a prediction. I understood what he said but to imagine that it will happen again made me more anxious. All I could say is that you should be careful.

From your loving girl,

Aoko」