Welcome to Underground Calm Down, Right Arm of Mine!
Part 1
Warning: Brief mention of suicide by hanging (non-graphic)
Shoutkun"s wet body was dried by the fire, then both of them returned to Amanoiwato exhausted. I silently welcomed them back with hot black coffee. Toukchan explained what happened little by little, and I listened without interrupting while keeping a sour expression on my face. Shoutkun sat in the corner listlessly, as if he had become melted ice. Let"s leave him be. Saying anything to him will only make it worse. After they drank their coffee, it wasn"t really the right mood for training or studying, so both of them, with a heavy gait, returned home before dark.
Once they left, I locked the door to the bar and retired to the living s.p.a.ce. There, I played back the home videos I made of the event while holding a one-man reflection meeting. Comparing before and after the defeat event, Shoutkun"s drop in tension is severe. He didn"t say a single word on the way back to Amanoiwato, even though he was chatting frivolously before the event. I don"t really understand why he"s so depressed. Is it normal depression, or… no, surely he wouldn"t hang himself, would he?
Once I imagined it, I started getting scared. He is at an age where his emotions tend to go from one extreme to the other, after all. When you"ve been beaten up as a result of becoming drunk on your own power, it"s not at all strange to become so depressed that you feel like the world is ending.
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I became so worried that I used my psychokinesis to find Shoutkun and follow him home. I searched for the figure of a young boy wallowing in grief, and I just managed to catch a glimpse of the back of him as he was going into a home goods store. Was he actually buying rope to hang himself with?! But it turned out to be something completely different than what I was thinking. After wandering aimlessly in the cosmetics department, he put a box of red hair dye in his basket.
What? Is he running an errand for someone? Is there someone who would dye their hair such a funky color in the Takahashi family? While I watch confusedly, Shoutkun, who only bought the hair dye, leaves the home goods store and next goes to a clothing store. There, he bought a black t-shirt with flames on it, and he also completely bought out the display of lighters next to the cash register. Now that we"ve reached this point, I can somewhat guess what he"s up to. If he"s planning to do what I think he is, I have no words.
Just as I thought; when Shoutkun returns home, carrying his shopping bags, he heads straight to the bathroom. He changes into the t-shirt he bought, examines the instructions on the hair dye, then proceeds to dye his hair red by himself. Once he finishes, reflected in the mirror is the appearance of someone who looks like a chuunibyou patient that"s continuing to make the same bad fashion choices that can"t be taken back later even though they fretted over the slip-up they made when they had such an incredibly gaudy post-summer-vacation debut.
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However, Shoutkun lights the lighter, and happily stares at the flickering flame.
Owowowowowow-ouch! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! My soul hurts! I tore off a piece of Nenrikin for this!?
"This red heart of fire… is the truth."
Please just – shut up! You aren"t even pyrokinetic.
The dangerous door Shoutkun opened didn"t actually close. It"s just half-open.
I let out a deep sigh at the sight of Shoutkun striking a pose in front of the mirror with his lighter held up like a flaming Olympic torch. This is how "eccentric" characters like those from light novels and anime are born, you know.
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I now understand a little bit how the president of an evil organization feels when they create a monster. If I did try to make a slightly enhanced human being, even if I"m puzzled and think, "I wonder why this is so difficult?", it would come out better than I thought and I would be like, "Yes, I did it, I did it!". Awakening such a thing would cause me to be half amused, and half guilt-ridden.
I wonder if the defeat event was a little overkill. I wonder if I drove Shoutkun, who was an ordinary boy, mad by giving him superpowers.
…Well, whatever.
Money, power, muscles. Even if Shoutkun got those kinds of strengths handed to him, he probably would"ve still gotten carried away. The strength currently handed to him just happens to be of the psychic variety, that"s all. It"s better that he makes mistakes now so that they can eventually become fond memories rather than becoming a failure of an adult. *Umu*.
Good. Self-justification ended. Even parents can"t completely educate their own children, you know? It"s obvious someone unrelated to them will make mistakes as well. Fortunately, I didn"t make too big of a mistake, so it"s all good!
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An emergency family meeting was held by the Takahashi family when Shoutkun sat down to dinner unexpectedly looking like a cross between a "Yankee"1 and a chuunibyou patient.
"I have awakened to the truth of fire", Shoutkun persisted.
His mother tried to not get upset, thinking that her son had gone crazy. His father, with a sad expression that was painfully nostalgic, impressively dealt with the situation by saying "For now, let"s wait and see." Shoutkun"s parents, I"m really sorry about this.
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Putting the serious affairs of the Takahashi family aside for a moment; I decided to do a re-transplantation experiment on the Ice-steroid piece I tore off of Shoutkun that evening. Shoutkun"s "awakening" was so shocking that it made me forget about it for a bit. To sum up, I discovered that it"s impossible to re-transplant Ice-steroid. When I tried to stick it to Nenrikin, there was absolutely no adhesive power. Even if it"s torn up into small pieces, I can"t get it to stick. Therefore, re-transplantation is impossible.
Gone is the dream of the birth of the strongest, multi-powered ESP"er who can wield psychokinesis, time-stop, pyrokinesis, and freezing abilities. It"s a little disappointing, but I also feel that it"s for the best. Because it"s way too much power for a human body to handle; I can barely even handle having psychokinesis, you know?
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The next day.
I used my psychokinesis to check on the state of the Takahashi family and what happened as a result of their family meeting. Shoutkun was in his futon, groaning and holding his right arm. I observed him for a while, and it seemed like control of his freezing ability had become unstable. I checked on the condition of Ice-steroid by touching it with my psychokinesis, but the scars from it being torn up seemed to be healing. Sometimes Ice-steroid spasms a little, and when it does, it releases cold air. It seems like symptoms, such as itching, are occurring in the wound as it heals… or something.
Nenrikin doesn"t become like that when I cut it, is that because I was training to control it for a long time? Is it because it"s within the margin of error for me to pull out one piece of gra.s.s from the continent2? I didn"t think too deeply about tearing Ice-steroid into pieces since I"m always tearing off pieces of Nenrikin, but it may be that tearing up Ice-steroid while it was still in its early growth stages was too much for it. Hmm, still, should I conduct even more experiments on animals? Currently, I only know about how easy it is to stick Nenrikin on animals and what the reaction is. I need to figure out the actual conditions required for transplanting and a good method for tearing off pieces of it. And even though Ice-steroid isn"t in great condition right now, it"s still not that bad. If it was worse, Shoutkun would completely have no control over it and may have even become an ice sculpture.
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Footnotes:
1: Yankee = juvenile delinquent
2: 大陸から草を一本引き抜く (tairiku kara kusa o ichi hon hikinuku) = pull out a piece of gra.s.s from the continent. I tried looking this phrase up but couldn"t find anything on it. I a.s.sume it means that because the piece he took was so small compared to the size of the whole, it didn"t affect anything.