There Was No Secret Organization to Fight with the World's Darkness so I Made One (In Exasperation)-Chapter 1

I think all humans have, at some point in their lives, dreamed of having superpowers. Like 'If only I could teleport~'. Or 'If only I can turn invisible~'.

For example, when you are about to be late but are stuck at a traffic light, repeatedly checking your watch, you would be thinking how much easier things would be if you can just teleport to where you're headed. Any healthy teenage boy has surely had delusions, while going dufufufu, of how they can do this and do that if they can turn invisible. Chaste ladies may have dreamed, while going uhehehe, of being able to cast Charm on the handsome guy they fancied. Though that's not a chaste lady anymore, but still.

Naturally, I also thought about it a lot when I was in middle school. But as a run-of-the-mill homo sapien living in the start of the twenty-first century, just thinking about it didn't change anything. If I was living in the space exploration age, then might I have had a chance?

Upon entering high school, my delusions gradually began to dial down, and I came to think of that kind of thing less and less. Though every once in a while, something might trigger me to enjoy a harmless conversation about 'what would I do if I had superpowers?'

Perhaps it was because I had one such conversation with a friend on the way home from high school. While sitting in my living room and watching variety TV shows that neither benefit nor poison me and eating senbei crackers, I notice that I've dropped quite a few crumbs on the ground. So on a whim, I pick them up with telekinesis.

I didn't try to pick them up.

I picked them up.

"……Huh?"

Realizing a few moments later the cracker crumbs collected in my hand, I stare at them closely.

That was strange, right? I feel like something incredibly strange had just happened like it was nothing at all.

I look at the floor. No crumbs. I look at my hand. Crumbs. Yet I have no memory of moving my hand to gather them up.

Which means…… what does this mean?

Now I'm growing doubtful of my memory of senbei crumbs even having been on the floor in the first place.

I am not suffering from dementia. It's just that it was such a mundane thing that it didn't fully register in my mind. The only people who clearly remember every single detail in their lives is probably only those with photographic memory.

Don't tell me I seriously picked the crumbs up with telekinesis?

For confirmation's sake, I turn to look at the bag of senbei, then mentally will one to come out. But nothing happens. There's no sign of anything happening.

See? It doesn't work. Yea, yea, I'd just imagined it.

Heaving a sigh, I scatter the crumbs in my hand with telekinesis, then reach out for the TV rem—

"HAH?!"

I unconsciously drop the remote control.

WUUUTTTTTTTTT?!

I didn't imagine it! This time was no imagination! Even though I didn't move my hand, the crumbs still dispersed!

Eh? It wasn't my imagination, right? Just my imagination? Wait a second. Eh?

My heart is beating like it's about to burst out of my chest. I think the last time my heart rate went this high was when I fell asleep at morning assembly from listening to the principal's neverending speech but then got reprimanded by the vice principal by name. He shouted directly into the mike, so the feedback was going nuts, I was jolted out of sleep so my head was all foggy, when I looked around everyone was staring at me, the silence was just excruciating, my cold sweat just wouldn't stop…… no, let's leave this memory well alone.

My head is a complete mess. According to light novel development, now that I've awakened, in the near future I will be attacked but a beautiful girl will show up and there will be a bloody struggle followed by 'oh yeah~!'.

No, no, let's calm down. I can do without the bloody struggle, thank you very much. Prime numbers. Let's count prime numbers. No, before that, I've got to cool my head. Let's do that. We're gonna be KOOL. That's good. Let's do that.

I totter to the kitchen with unsteady steps, thrust my head under the faucet in the sink, then turn it on at full blast. Cold water cascades down onto my head, then splash onto my clothes and the ground.

I shut the faucet in a fluster. Shit. That was like, three times the amount of water that I had expected.

But well, the silver lining is that the unexpected cooling of my physical head has also cooled my mental head. I strain my ears, but the only things I hear is the usual low hum of electrical appliances doing their thing, and the carefree laughter from the variety show that I had left on. While feeling the water that had gotten onto me seeping in and making even my underwear wet, I stand stock still in silence.

What can I say? I've cooled down. Both my head and my heart. Being able to use telekinesis doesn't actually mean anything. The world is not going to end, my grades aren't going to get better, and my allowance isn't going to go up. The water dripping off my hair is just… melancholic.

I sigh, then go grab a rag to wipe the floor with. I take off my clothes, wring them, chuck them into the washing machine in the bathroom, return to the kitchen in just my underwear, and proceed to wipe all the cutlery and spice bottles that I had gotten wet.

I'm glad my parents happened to be out. If they saw my shameful behavior from just now, I wouldn't know how to explain myself. In the first place, I would just feel like running away.

After thoroughly cleaning up after myself, I turn off the TV with a heavy spirit, grab the bag of senbei crackers, and return to my own room. Now I'm just depressed.

After sluggish pulling on mismatching T-shirt and jeans, I sit on my chair. Then I sink deep into thought when munching on the rest of the senbei.

Now that I'm back to being calm, I'm starting to doubt whether it really was just my imagination after all. If it was so obviously telekinesis to the point of knocking over houses or lifting refrigerators, then it might have been easier to accept. It would be so unbelievable as to be believable. But all that moved in the end was just senbei crumbs. They're smaller than even BB pellets. One morsel probably doesn't even weigh one gram. It wasn't the senbei that flew, but the crumbs. Was there maybe just wind or something? That would be way more believable than me suddenly having awakened to superpowers.

I don't remembering clearly whether the windows in the living room were open or not. To make sure, I get up from my bed and ensure that the window in my room is fully shut. Then I slam my bed hard to make some dust float up. The sun shining through the window illuminates the particles floating lazily in the air and not flowing towards any specific direction. Alright, there's no wind.

I break apart a senbei to get a piece about the size of the fingernail on my pinky finger, then place it on my desk. I just stare at it, but it doesn't move. Of course it doesn't.

Next, I bring over a fan to blow at it. The piece flies off like normal. Well, this is also as expected. It's expected, but seems different somehow. When the crumbs flew in the living room, they were more, like, stable, and flew in a more direct path…… I think.

I gulp audibly. Should I do it? Am I gonna do it?

If nothing happens, then this can become a funny story. Well, no, it'd be an embarrassing story. But if I think of it as having experienced a waking dream, then it might pass off as a precious experience too.

One more time, I break off a small piece of senbei, and leave it on the table. This time, I stare at it intently and prepare myself to properly remember everything from here on. To make completely sure that there's no wind, I hold my breath, then I hold out my hand. I imagine the senbei fragment being grabbed and pulled towards me.

As if it's the most natural thing in the world, the fragment floats up, then flies into my hand.

"Eh, seriously?"

I drop fragment. Hold out hand. Fragment flies into hand.

Once again. I drop fragment. Hold out hand. Fragment flies into hand.

One last time. I drop fragment. Hold out hand. Fragment flies into hand.

Just to be doubly and triply and quardruply sure. I drop fragment. Hold out hand. Fragment flies into hand.

Now this is just creeping me out.

I'm not going to pinch myself or mutter "is this a dream?" or do anything cliche like that. This is way too realistic for that. There's no doubt that this is reality. It is decidedly not something cheap like hypnotism or superspeed. I am currently peeking into a place that is more assuredly on the other side of science.

Eh. Eh—……

Times like these, what am I supposed to do? I have no prior experience nor knowledge to draw reference from. 'Hell yea, I got superpowers!' is not exactly absent, but to be honest, I'm feeling way more troubled than anything else.

Cus, y'know. In light novels and manga, the powers that the protagonists get is a hell lot more dramatic, yea? Even in cases where it's not dramatic, there's still a voice in their head asking for help, or some creature shows up to persistently ask for a contract. They get, like, a goal, or some hint about what they're supposed to do, yea? Even the genius young man who picked up a certain notebook in his school courtyard found a 'HOW TO USE' page written inside of said notebook.

But in comparison, what is this?

Dropping senbei fragments. It floats up, and settles into my hand. Drops. Floats. Settles.

So, like, what is this, really? Depending on the way you think about it, it might be awesome, but still. Just, what?

I may have become able to use telekinesis, but I haven't a single clue what triggered this. A normal teenager awakening to superpowers is a standard trope, but when you dig deeper it always turns out to be normal(-not).

Both my parents work, and my family is normal. There's no possibility of them actually belonging to some underground world. Papan is an inspector for materials used in making automobiles, and I personally saw him at work back in elementary school when I visited his workplace. He went on about lasers hitting materials and bouncing back and whatnot. Maman helps out with the flower cultivation business of her parents' home. This, too, I help out every once in a while during summer break to earn some pocket money, so there's no room for doubt. I've never been spirited away when I was young, there's no suspicious transfer student at school, and there are no enigmatic bruises on my body. Rather than saying that I haven't encountered anything mysterious lately, it would be more accurate to say that I haven't even seen the 'm' in 'mysterious' throughout the entirety of my life.

The hell, man. In my seventeen years, this is my first time in such an incomprehensible situation. Even the math questions on the Tokyo University entrance examination are more comprehensible. I may not know how to solve those, but at least I kinda get what they're saying. But this, I don't get, from the very fundamentals.

No, wait. Isn't it a bit too early to think that I'm the only one who's able to use telekinesis? Is this perhaps one of those pathetic delusions of chuunibyou where I think myself awesome cus I'm special and all that?

Could it possibly be that it's normal to be able to use telekinesis, but just that all the adults have been carefully hiding the fact?

Or maybe the entirety of the human race has suddenly awakened to telekinesis?

It totally…… could not happen, doh.

…… It can't, right? Guess I should look into it just in case.

I get back into my seat, turn on my computer, and go on the internet. I click through several news sites, but don't see anything of the like. Well, it's only been about 30 minutes since I became able to use telekinesis. Perhaps it just hasn't made the news yet. Leaving the news aside for now, I input other search terms.

Search: adolescence, telekinesis, discover

Search Results: 'things said by adolescents,' 'Wikipedia – adolescence,' 'adolescent mental illnesses,' etc

I click on all the links on the first page of the results, but all of them seem completely unrelated. I mean, that's only natural, I suppose. Mentioning adolescence together in the same sentence with telekinesis or whatever would raise doubts of mental sanity, sure. Either that, or it'd evoke a gentle smile and averting of the eyes. Now I've gone and reconfirmed that claiming to be able to use telekinesis is just cringy as hell. OK, that's me deciding to never ever discuss this with anyone else. Even though it's true, having to prove that it's true would be a pain. In the first place, even I was bewildered by it until I managed to accept it, so other people would probably just suspect it to be a magic trick or something. And even after I prove myself, it would still be a pain. I might learn something if I ask some renowned physics professor to use some state-of-the-art physics machinery thing on me, but I have no such connections.

So mum's the word on the whole thing about me being able to use telekinesis. Alright. Just having decided on a single policy has made all this research worth it. The internet really is amazing.

After waiting for several minutes and hitting F5 on those news sites, I turn to the next set of search terms.

The very sound of 'illnesses of the mind' might sound worrying, but I don't know if this telekinesis comes with any risks or side effects. Like, what if it shortens my lifespan every time I use it? Or I've become able to use it as a side effect from some illness? Or some poisonous substance builds up everytime I use it? Just to be sure, I walk out of my room to grab the emergency kit, then put the thermometer under my armpit. I look up the normal heart rate of a 17 year old male, then measure that too.

In summary, I am absolutely normal. I'm experiencing no headache and no dizziness. It seems that at the very least, nothing's going to happen to me in the near future.

It might make sense to not use something that I'm not familiar with and just leave it alone, but that in itself may also be dangerous.

Such as how if I don't use it regularly, then something like MP builds up inside my body until I eventually go boom. I'm gonna have to say 'no thank you' to going boom.

Rather than putting a lid on something that stinks, it might be safer to bear a certain amount of risk to examine it long term. There's no indication of it going away if I just leave it alone.

Let's examine it as far as we can go. If this develops into a telekinesis cheat that enables me to become popular, then go me.

I look up 'psychokinesis' and 'nenryoku' and 'telekinesis' and 'parapsychology' and every single related word I can think up, click on every single link, and read it all.

What I learn after one hour is that none of it was of any help to me whatsoever.

There were sites that discussed the topic with the assumption that it's not real, suspicious sites with dubious logic and mentions of power from the devil or inner power. But not a single one of them was satisfactorily relevant to my current scientific/non-scientific situation.

There are two things that I can consider.

1) There is absolutely no precedent, and I am the first human in history to awaken to telekinesis. Or else there were others before me, but they died without realizing their powers, or it was so shoddy and pathetic that they got buried underneath the mountain of fakes.

2) This is a matter that is being restricted on the highest level of the government, and all mentions on the internet are thoroughly erased.

Both seem like they might be true. I'm really hoping that it's not number 2. Special forces from a gigantic secret organization are even now on their way to bash in my door and kidnap me at any moment! That's scary, hahaha (high-pitched voice).

No man, it's not funny at all. That might even be a one-way ticket to becoming a human test subject. I can only pray that it's not number 2.

After 3 hours has passed and the news sites still have yet to mention anything of the sort, I give up on trying to gain information from the internet and decide to shift into actual experiments with my telekinesis. Electric scale from the kitchen, pet bottle (with water inside), and tape measure from my desk drawers. For starters, I line all these up on my table.

The reason why the entire senbei didn't move but the crumbs did is because of weight. I think. So now I'm going to confirm how much weight I can move.

Firstly, I weigh the pet bottle with all the water out. It's 25g…… that's even heavier than an entire senbei. Damn. I thought to test my upper limit by gradually adding water to it, but there goes that plan.

Without any other choice, I break off crumbs of senbei and weigh them on the electric scale, eventually determining the limit of what I can lift to be 3g. Up to 2g I can move without effort, but when it approaches 3g, then I have to really consciously think of 'moving' it.

Leaving aside the pathetic output that can only move a single ant, I have already made my first discovery. The output of my telekinesis can be controlled.

It's a feeling thing so I can't really put it into words, but when I use telekinesis, there are the three steps of 'look at the target,' 'hold out my hand,' and 'put in strength.' 'Look at the target' is exactly as it sounds, so we'll skip it. 'Hold out my hand' requires me to open up my hand, with the palm facing towards the target. It still works if I don't hold out my hand, but then the output drops significantly. To be specific, it drops to a third. 'Put in strength' is really difficult to describe with words so all I can say is to just put strength into it. It's like, straining, or doing it seriously, or other similar phrases. If you ask me where I put strength into or how I'm straining, I wouldn't be able to answer you. If I really had to put it into words, then all I can say is it's an invisible telekinesis muscle, or 'telekimuscle' for short, and that I move it……

You know how you don't really feel anything when you pick up something light, but when you carry something heavy or are arm wrestling with someone else, your muscles start quivering and getting tired and you think to yourself 'oh right, I have this thing called muscles, I'm totally using it right now'? That's what it's like. Sort of.

Having determined my limit to be 3g, I try various things to see if I can make it go up to 4g, such as doing handstands and getting down on all fours. As a result, I got tired. Physically, to be sure, but also a different 'tired' than the usual mental kind. I feel sluggish, I don't feel like doing it anymore. But after I rest for a bit, the tiredness goes away. It seems that I expend something like MP when I use telekinesis. I still don't really get it, but I'm pretty that's what it is, so I engrave 'Be careful of MP over-usage!' in both my experiment log and also my heart. Excessive physical exhaustion can lead to death, and excessive mental exhaustion can lead to neurosis. Surely excessive telekinetic exhaustion won't lead to anything good either.

Next is range. How far does my telekinesis reach?

This I quickly find to be far beyond what my tape measure can measure. Rather than saying that I can reach anywhere in my room, it would be more correct to say that it reaches however far I can see. The flip side of that is that if I can't see it, then I can't move it. If I can't see the target clearly, such as it being on the other side of a dirty pane of glass or it's just too far away, then the accuracy drops, but the output remains the same.

Last is operability. How precisely can I move things with my telekinesis?

This turns out to be extremely limited. I can only 'draw towards myself (my hand)' and 'push away from myself (my hand).' To put it broadly, I can only initiate movement upon the direct line connecting me and the target. Sideways movement is NG. To be more specific, I feel like it might be possible, but even when I strain my telekimuscle so much that it feels at risk of tearing, all I can achieve is such minute movement that I'm not sure if I just imagined it. So for all practical purposes, sideways movement is impossible.

Having written all this down in my experiment log, I've run out of ideas, and I hear my mom's car entering the garage, so I hurriedly return the electric scale to the kitchen and call an end to today's experiments.

I mean, it's not like I can't secretly keep at it in the deep of night, but wouldn't it be scary if I lose control over it and get my family members caught in it? Though I might be just being overly self-conscious for someone only capable of moving a mere 3g.

The next day, I am stricken with telekinetic pain. Exactly like how overworking normal muscles leads to muscle pain and overworking your brain leads to a heachache. But with that said, I totally did not expect overworking telekinesis to lead to telekinetic pain.

If you ask me exactly what kind of pain it is, I would again be at a loss for how to describe it to you. If I had to put it into words, then it's something like 'foruAH!' You get it? You probably didn't. If I'm to express it in a chuuni way, then it'd be something like 'I feel chaos overflowing from within as my soul breaks out of its shell.'

But then again, it doesn't particularly hurt if I don't use telekinesis or concentrate on being aware of it, so I decide to just let the telekinesis rest for a day.

On my way back from school, I stopped by Mac's. No employee suddenly started breathing fire, no men in black and beautiful girl showed up to have a gunfight over me. Aside from my friend spilling Coke over my uniform, the day was so calm I almost couldn't believe it. Thankfully Febreze managed to cancel out the sugary smell, or else I would have demanded cleaning fees from him, seriously.

Next day after that. I decided to stop checking the news sites altogether. Because there was just no change at all. I even lost the motivation to check. If there's nothing for two whole days, then it should be enough to only check the newspapers from today onwards.

The telekinetic pain also got a lot better, so I tried using telekinesis again. At which I discovered that — although the range and all that remained the same — the output has changed. I've become able to barely move up go 4g. I can also feel the growth of my telekimuscles.

4g! It's amazing! 1g! It went up by 1g! But it's still just 4g! That's not even enough to move a single pencil! Fuck!

Grrr. Considering also the day that I rested due to telekinetic pain, the rate of growth is 1g per two days. Which means 182g in a year. After an entire year, I still wouldn't be able to move a 500ml bottle of water. If I diligently keep at the training every other day, then I'll be in my middle ages by the time I can make a cat float.

U~~WA~~AH. So pathetic!

How retarded is this? If I do normal muscle training, no, more like, even without doing muscle training I already can throw the cat. I can also play catch with the cat instead of a ball. Don't underestimate meow.

Though this might seem like a problem from a very privileged place for those who can't use telekinesis, but honestly speaking, I think learning one or two more English vocabulary words would be more useful than training my telekinesis. At any rate, even if I reveal myself to the public and manage to get the whole supernatural phenomena thing confirmed after what I'm sure would be a ton of trouble, all that'd be waiting for me would be the life of someone who got viral for a while until eventually becoming forgotten. Earnestly studying and matriculating into a good university and entering a good company to do serious work is definitely a far better prospect.

With that said, however, it doesn't take that much time nor effort to do the training, so I'll keep at it. But I'm just saying, it feels dumb.

It's entirely different from the superpowers that I'd dreamed of when I was a child. No mysterious guy has shown up, no invaders from space have shown themselves, no agent from an organization has made contact, and no door to another world has opened up.

Even if a mysterious guy shows up, rather than using my 4g telekinesis to resist, it'd definitely be far more effective and faster to just throw a flowerpot at the guy or even just punch him with my bare fist. Telekinesis is seriously meaningless.

Now I know. What I wanted was not superpowers, but the extraordinary days that come with superpowers. Well, extraordinary days would be dangerous in extraordinary ways and that would suck too, so what I wanted is something that I could enjoy to a certain degree while guaranteeing my own safety. Or perhaps an ability that allowed for more flexibility would be great. The only thing I can think of doing with 4g telekinesis that can only go in a straight line is throwing thumbtacks one by one like caltrops. But even then, it would be much faster to just chuck a whole bunch of them with my bare hands.

Haaah. All my excitement, down the drain.

The human's ability to adapt is a frightening thing. After ten days, I've already grown used to being able to use telekinesis. Thinking about it now, if you handed a laptop to someone from the Heian period, surely that person would start off confused but then gradually get used to it. Just like I did. All while shouting about it being witchcraft or something. Perhaps even telekinesis would be a widely accepted part of physics for someone living a thousand years from now.

I am experiencing no abnormalities with my health either. On the fourth day, I purposely fell and hit my head so that I can be hospitalized and have them do a detailed examination. But the results came back all green.

As for the telekinesis experiment notebook, I have just started the third page, and am steadily gathering detailed data.

Firstly, whereas I had expected the output growth to be in increments of 1g, it turns out that I had merely jumped the gun. It grew like 3g → 4g → 5g → 7g → 9g → 11g. Apparently, it's growing at the rate of 1.3 times each time. That rate is way better than normal muscles. I tried punching it into my calculator, and found out that if I maintain this pace, after a month it would become 118g, and after a year it would become 746416648580237 tons. Geometric series are crazy. Even heroes from fiction would go pale in the face.

However, I don't know whether there's an upper limit, so I'm purposely keeping my expectations in check. The limit being at 100g is all too possible. And also, there's always the possibility of the ability leaving me as suddenly as it came.

Furthermore, I can only grab solid bodies. Perhaps because I can't see air, I can't picture myself grabbing it and so it doesn't work. Liquids are hard to grab, and the time I tried lifting 11g all at once, it just overflowed and splashed everywhere. The fact that it did float up enough to splash all over means that it did work, but it felt like trying to scoop water with a ballpen. Moving fire is impossible, and bending light is, of course, also impossible. Fire and light I don't even feel like I can do anything about.

Regardless of tests or class field trip, I diligently continued training night after night. Now, after two months have passed, I've become capable of moving 8kg. The output has reached the point where I wouldn't be embarrassed to call it a proper superpower. This is enough to move most things that I would normally move with my hands in my everyday life.

Succumbing to my inquisitiveness, I tried dropping my eraser and picking it up with telekinesis during class, but I didn't get caught. Either it wasn't seen altogether, or it was seen but the person who saw it thought they'd just seen wrong.

I got a bit full of myself and told my friend I'd be doing a card trick but performed it using telekinesis. He totally loved it, which made me feel great.

But afterwards he got really insistent pestering me to reveal to him how I did it. Finally giving in, I confessed to him that I did it with telekinesis. But since I had previously declared it to be a card trick, he didn't believe me and only thought I was saying that just to get him off my back. Then I showed him me actually using telekinesis, but he ended up thinking that to be a trick as well. Ahh, there's no end to this.

I got the feeling that the more I try to prove myself to him, the more obsessed he would get about it, so I dodged his questions with something random and then make a run for it.

The next day, when he started pestering me to show it to him again, I told him that my mom accidentally threw my rigged cards away and stuck to that story. Then I swore to myself to never use telekinesis in front of someone else ever again. Telekinesis will forever remain a personal hobby. Showing it to other people is just so tiring……

As my telekinetic output increases, I become troubled for things to move. I upgraded from rice cooker to bookshelf to refrigerator then to private car. After mowing the buses at the nearby bus depot for four months, I begin feeling the effectiveness of even that to be waning.

I've realized. In this world, it's actually quite hard to find things that heavy.

I can't tell specifically, but a bus is about 6 to 8 tons. I'm sure a house is heavier than that, and a skyscraper is even heavier. But I can't very well go around lifting up things fixed into the ground. I considered moving trains, but I can imagine how catastrophic it could get if I use telekinesis to move a train that's already moving, and in the first place it's beyond my ability to sneak into a train depot.

Having no other choice, I put a temporary halt on increasing the output, and focus instead on how long it can last, its precision, and breadth of application. I think having 7 tons as my fundamental should be more than enough to work with.

The first thing I should train is vectors. I want to be able to move in all directions, be it front, back, up, down, left, or right. In the first place, I had felt a slight response when I tried initiating horizontal movement at the start, so I think the chances of success are rather high.

When I gave it a try, it turned out quite well. Aside from pulling and pushing, I am able to exert 2 to 3 kg in all other directions.

Perhaps because I was using telekimuscles that I don't normally use, the telekinetic pain the next day was way worse than what I've had for a long time.

Definitely because I trained my fundamentals first, my mastery over the other vectors proceeded much smoother than I had expected. A mere three months later, I have become capable of exerting the full 7 tons in all directions.

But the price of that is a rumor going around of buses flying around like possessed deep at night. The moment I heard that rumor, cold sweat flowed down my back like a fountain. Apparently I was seen. That's it for moving buses then, I suppose.

Around when I have mastered all vectors, I started my third year in high school. I'm not that worried about losing the means to make my livelihood, so I just chose an industrial place in the lower half of the spectrum that suits my academic ability. It's true that aiming for a research position in physics would be the most relevant for studying my telekinesis, but to be frank, I'm not that bright. I think I can manage to keep my scores above the median line, but I don't have the brains to come up with something revolutionary.

As I steadily make progress in my exam preparation, I also steadily make progress in my telekinetic training. By this point in time, it's completely become a hobby of mine. I kinda feel like lately I'm just using telekinesis as a breather for studying.

After mastering all vectors, the next thing I aimed for is the opposite of 'to move' — 'to stop.'

Up to now, I've been using telekinesis only to move things, such as 'drawing' to me or 'pushing' away, but I'm sure it can be used for the opposite as well. Such as fixing in place something flying in the air, or stopping a ball that's rolling down a slope.

Making the telekinesis stall…… can be another way to put it.

Now this one, it's hard. If what I've been doing so far is lifting dumbbells, this one is awkwardly tough, like the invisible chair exercise. When I lose focus, the stopping power gradually dissipates. At the very beginning, I would feel my telekimuscles quivering and screaming for release even though I know they've still got much more in them. But by training them up, I should be able to gain pink(?) telekimuscles with much more explosive power and endurance. It's not like gaining them would change anything for me, but guys are creatures that pursue muscles even when it's meaningless. Muscles are status.

I lift my desk while studying. I lift the chair I'm sitting in while practicing my listening. I lift my dad's car while solving past exam questions.

For someone doing both studying and telekinesis training at the same both, both my grades and telekimuscles are growing at a steady rate. Well, it's that. The way it feels is like those who do sports while they study and play. Just as there are people who become unable to focus on studying when there's music in the background, there are people who can focus better on studying while listening to music. In my case, it's just that telekinesis and studying turn out to be a good fit.

Spending my summer vacation being absurdly earnest with ten hours of studying and telekinesis training everyday paid off. I managed to get an evaluation of A for my preferred university, and it also no longer tires me out at all to activate my telekimuscles' endurance and fixation power the entire time. But those overnighters really might have been a bit much.

Both my teacher and parents recommended me to aim for a university one rank higher, but I managed to turn them down with this and that reasoning. The university one rank higher is not near an ocean. As long as I don't commit some huge blunder on my university entrance exams, I should be set.

While elegantly watching my friends who had spent their summer elegantly now attacking their books with not so elegant faces, I push for further progress with my hobby.

The next task for me is to control the shape of my telekinesis. Instead of using telekinesis to interfere with something, I'm trying to manipulate telekinesis itself.

Thanks to my earnest efforts at training up my telekimuscles' endurance over the summer, I've gained a much keener sense of telekinesis as a power in and of itself.

Due to my need for an intermediary to use telekinesis up to now, I've had great difficulties with manipulating things that I can't see, such as air, and things without a definite form, such as liquids. However, now that I can control telekinesis itself, I can use telekinesis to form a fan to fan air or form a cup to scoop water. Or at least, that's what I feel like I can train to become able to do.

How do I put this. Using telekinesis so far has been like using a cursor to click on something to select it. But now, I'm trying to make it so that I can drag the cursor to select a whole area altogether. Of course, becoming able to drag would not mean that I become incapable of clicking anymore.

For starters, I make a board with telekinesis. Starting from the point that it's always been, I extend it to the size of a one yen coin. That took me about an hour to do.

Rather than it being hard to do, it's more accurate to say that it requires the right sense to achieve it.

Comparing it to physical muscles every time is a bit, y'know, but anyways, it feels kinda like screwing in a screw or pounding in a nail. Instead of just using and training muscles in a vague way, it's more like using those muscles to do something. Even though my telekimuscles themselves still had a lot of fuel, the telekinetic fatigue was so overwhelming that I was totally exhausted after only one hour. I gave up for the day. Since the default is a point, the next day I would have to expand it to the size of a coin all over again. But that's what makes this so worth doing.

It took a whole week for me to expand it to the size of a 500 yen coin. Then a month to reach a thousand yen bill. Gradually getting the hang of spreading the force field, 2 months later it takes me only 15 minutes to spread the field to the size of the floor of an 8 tatami room (12.24 square meters). I am sure that with further training, I would be able to spread it even further. But from now on, I will be beginning training to to do it faster and also to make more complicated shapes with it.

I'm now capable of spreading a point into a board. But I want to be able to make a board right from the get go.

The range of my telekinesis is everywhere I can see. In other words, it means I can initiate telekinesis anywhere within my field of vision. At the moment, I can simultaneously control 2 to 3 separate instances of telekinesis at the same time. Which means that I don't actually have to always start with a point and expand that, and that it should actually be possible to initiate an instance of telekinesis in board from from the very start. The reason why I've been using the point and spread method up to now is because it's easier, but I've started to get the feel of telekinesis as a board, so I think it's about time to put that into practical use.

Thus begins training with that in mind. The first day, I am only able to make a thin and flimsy board the size of a tissue. But after a week, that becomes straw paper, accompanied by a better grasp of the trick to it. Two more weeks later, I have become capable of creating a board the size of a tennis court in 3 minutes. Even I was surprised at how fast my progress was.

Perhaps it is thanks to me diligently training my fundamentals all the way up to today, but I can only visibly see the growth of my skill with telekinesis as of late. Could it be that I'm actually a genius?

Could this be me becoming stronk with my self-taught superpower? Is it gonna begin? Are my extraordinary days going to begin?

…… But there has been no sight nor sound of anything like that so far.

Even Ichirou and Jobs didn't reach where they did overnight. Succeeding a little, failing a little, pushing themselves forward, they gradually propelled themselves from a normal person to the heights that other normal people would consider an extraordinary world. In that sense, it may even be said that it's only normal for nothing extraordinary to happen when you're just passively waiting for it. You've got to take some sort of action, got to give whatever it is a try.

Having raised my mastery over telekinesis so high, I am capable of creating a rather significant commotion. If I'm just looking for showiness with zero consideration for the consequences, I can go stand in front of a Tokyo TV station and lift and swing around a large truck. Doing it in front of so many eyes would easily squash the comments of those trying to write it off as a mere trick.

However, that kind of extraordinary is different from what I'm looking for. I don't want to be swamped with TV reporters, to be featured on page one of newspapers, to be the topic that gossip magazines and self-claimed professionals get to say whatever the shit they want about. What I do want is something like a battle with another psychicer. Something like being able to go through thick and thin together with a teleporter or a psychometrist. Rather than extraordinary days peppered with ordinary days, the clash of extraordinary against extraordinary is right up my alley.

Hmm. It's said that university students have a lot of free time. If that turns out to be true, then let's find some time to go looking for comrades.

Around when I've just finished taking the National Center Test (mid-January), my telekinetic board formation has shaped up quite nicely. Formation time has gone down to under 10 seconds, and I can freely make whatever shape I want, be it board, cup, ellipse, or anything else. Furthermore, I have become capable of covering complicated objects like plushies and bouquets with a layer of telekinesis. It's still far from a perfect fit and is more like a stout covering with some gaps and bumps, but it's doable. Instead of a board, now it's become more like a barrier. While in the bath, I would scoop up water with a barrier, then change the shape of the barrier while making sure not to spill any of the water. Together with all the other stuff that I'm doing, my mastery over telekinesis is growing by leaps and bounds.

I've also taken up folding origami with telekinesis and carving sculptures by moving the carving knife with telekinesis. What I'm after is precise yet powerful usage of telekinesis. So basically, Star Platinum.

Originally already slightly unsuitable for my university of choice in a good way, I also passed the university-specific entrance exam with ease. I have fully become a university student.

After moving into my own place, I ended up with three free days before the matriculation ceremony. So what did I do with that time? Of course I spent it on telekinesis training. What was that about preparing for my courses? As if I'd do that. Just grabbing enough credits to graduate is good enough, duh.

Night time, when all the good children have gone to bed, I leave my apartment to head towards the sea. It takes only 10 minutes on foot. It's really not that far away.

Listening to the sound of the waves, I get down onto the sand. Illuminating my way with a torch, I make my way to the edge of the waves. Then I use telekinesis to lift up a huge mass of seawater.

Have you caught on yet?

Indeed, the me now has become perfectly capable of lifting up water.

One cubic meter of water weighs 1 ton. Seawater is boundlessly plentiful, so there is almost no upper limit on the weight it can serve as. From now on, I will be able to train the output of my telekimuscles until 7 tons seem like nothing in comparison. This was half the reason why I chose a university close to the ocean.

I can finally resume increasing my output. It's gonna go up and up, all the way. I don't have a specific number I'm aiming for, but I'm just gonna raise it as high as I can.

But I ended up overdoing it and spent the entire night on the beach playing with seawater, which caused me to catch a cold and I had to almost limp into the matriculation ceremony. Even psychicers can't beat illnesses. It seems that I had gotten a bit drunk on getting to live on my own. I'm reflecting on it.（’・ω・）

It turns out that in university, as long as you get the credits, you can basically do whatever you want. You can devote yourself to your club, you can play around with your friends, you can lock yourself up in your research lab, you can earn money doing part time jobs.

Finding myself with three times the freedom that I had expected, I unhesitatingly poured it all into my hobby. Which means telekinesis, of course.

While keeping up my training, I started buying and collecting occult magazines and reading through publications. I also attended lectures given by self-claimed specialists and at times even managed to meet and chat with them in person.

With the money that I saved up from part time jobs, I started flying here and there. Mt. Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture. The Sea of Trees at the foot of Mt. Fuji. Guiana Highlands in South America. London Tower. It didn't matter if it was in the country or overseas. I basically went to way more suicide spots and power spots than I can count with the fingers on my two hands.

However, none of them felt quite like what I'm looking for. And my university didn't have an Occult Club in the first place.

I also attempted to meet people who claim to have superpowers while hiding my own identity, but all I discovered was just sheer disappointment. After a hellava long time going on and on muttering random nonsense that's supposed to be a spell in a dimly lit room, with only a 'the color of the water has changed!' to show for it.

It looked like a stupid trick every which way, thank you very much. Even if it really was a superpower, I wouldn't acknowledge it. It's way too pathetic. Your effort is not enough. It was so pathetic that I couldn't hold in my anger. I ended up using telekinesis to completely wreck that person's entire house, but I do not regret it at all. Fucking messing with me……!

In this way, my first year in university was mainly just fruitless effort. But despite the futility of it, it became clear to me that even if there are psychicers, I wouldn't be able to find them using the methods of a normal person. So I wrote that off as the silver lining.

While on one hand the search for comrades completely fell through, on the other hand my training went astonishingly smooth.

Lifting seawater requires the accuracy that doesn't allow the water to spill, the output that can support the weight, the endurance to continue supporting the water in the air, the shape formation to maintain the barrier, and basically requires all areas of telekinesis training that I've cultivated so far.

When I became capable of easily lifting a cube of water that I used a 50m measuring tape to measure, I realized that that meant a weight of 125,000 tons. I looked it up, and discovered that this was more than enough to lift up a medium-sized tanker. Dayum. If my telekimuscles were normal muscles, then I would have become so macho that I'd be a monster. Let alone a tank, I think I could probably beat a battleship in a fight.

Due to spending too much of my time on telekinesis, I was in danger of having to repeat the year, but managed to pull through somehow and thus became a second year student. This year, I'm thinking to shrink my sphere of activity from worldwide to just citywide.

My output has already reached the point where I am no longer able to measure it, and I have also attained the precision and endurance to wrap every single grain of rice in a bowl with individual barriers and maintain that for a whole hour. What's next is the era of responsiveness. I need to be able to use telekinesis whenever I want, right there on the spot, exactly the way I want to.

Currently, it takes me 2 seconds to put up a barrier. I want to bring that down to the average response time of a human, 0.2 seconds.

Furthermore, I want to be able to use it as an assist to physical motion in a natural way. For example, I've sprained my leg and can't walk! Then at that moment, I will use telekinesis to aid me so that I can still jump and prance about like my foot is still fine. Another way of putting it is I want to make it so that my normal actions could be boosted to superhuman levels, such as jumping several tens of meters and pulverizing concrete with my fist. Leaving aside whether I'll ever get the opportunity to pulverize concrete with my bare hands in my entire life, of course.

For the instant responsiveness, I began incorporating training into my everyday life.

As soon as I wake up in the morning, I throw up a small stone left beside my pillow even before I get up. Then right before the small stone hits me, I reflect it back up with the barest minimum of barriers. This I continue for 5 minutes.

During that time, I do not use my hands. Telekinetic output decreases when I don't hold out my hand, but having to hold out my hand all the time during my everyday life would just look too suspicious.

Just like snapping an HB pencil! The important point is to do it as if it's the most natural thing in the world, right, Grandma Enya!

(T/N: Another JoJo character reference.)

By the time I finish my little stone training, I'm wide awake, so I get up to go make breakfast. However, I do it using only telekinesis. I use telekinesis to hold the frypan, use telekinesis to start the fire in the stove, use telekinesis to cut the vegetables, use telekinesis to fry it all. I also coat the frypan and all the cutlery with a barrier to prevent it from getting dirty. Let alone all electronic, I'm going all telekinetic. I am still using a naked flame, though.

When I make my way to school, I cast a barrier to keep my feet several millimeters off the ground. But instead of maintaining the barrier, I only cast it every single time my foot is about to touch the ground, and dispel it immediately after lifting my foot. When I started doing that on the first day of classes in the second year, I almost became late. The first time I only managed a speed of 300mph. As can be imagined, this proved extremely difficult to do, and it took me 3 whole months until I returned to being able to walk at a normal pace. My university friends even started suspecting whether I had a foot injury or something. Although I felt kinda bad about it, I acted along like there really was something wrong with my feet. That I think may have been a bit overboard, as it's not like this training is in any hurry in the first place.

After lectures, I once again take care of dinner in all-telekinesis style, then do normal muscle training while studying by moving my pencil with telekinesis. Training telekinesis to aid everyday motions is fine, but it would be problematic if my normal muscles grow lax due to it. An appropriate amount of muscle training is also necessary.

When the clock strikes midnight, I stop studying, put on the mask that I had bought at Bali when I went there in my first year, then step out. It's witching hour.

With telekinesis as support, I jump from roof to roof, then walk (run) on thin air to the sea. Once I reach the sea, I hold up seawater and begin overwater athletics, then fly around that. It's not a problem if someone sees. It might become a rumor, but my identity won't be blown. That's what the mask is for. Though it does double my suspiciousness.

But even this lifestyle that seems to evoke the question "what on earth are you training yourself to fight against?!" becomes mere routine work after half a year. More like, due to putting on a mask and flying around at night, I think I feel my chuunibyou acting up again. Well, I actually can use telekinesis, so I'm not sure if that can be called chuunibyou anymore, but still. All my wages from my part time job went towards a pair of steel gauntlets that can withstand up to 2 tons of weight as well as very sturdy boots. I mean, y'know, an organization that targets psychicers might show up all of a sudden. So this is a countermeasure for that, alright?

…… Though there still isn't sight nor sound of such an organization. More like, now that I'm completely capable of snapping the Tokyo Sky Tree in half, if someone shows up that is capable of fighting toe to toe with me, then that's gonna be one helluva clash of titans.

Anyways, as the training that even I doubt the sanity of for the sake of preparing to fight against an enemy that I don't see gradually becomes a normal part of my everyday life, I find myself with more free time to resume looking for comrades.

I've already learned the lesson that I probably won't be able to find other psychicers if I search alone. But with that said, I don't have the connections to probe around the underworld either. So the best compromise would be to borrow the power of mass media in a controlled manner.

However, I don't think just showing 'the real thing' would be enough to convince other psychicers to gather.

So far, I've already combed through various TV stations and various TV programs in search of other psychicers, but I've yet to see even one instance of someone who looks real.

I bought all the videos and DVDs of a certain program, but 95% of their guests are clearly just faking it, while the other 5% I can't determine through the screen.

Rearranging my schedule, I once again fly all around the country and the world to attempt to meet those remaining 5%. However, one of them requires booking an appointment 5 years in advance, one of them was really wishy washy about showing me their superpower and in the end got defensive and chased me out, two of them claimed to be able to predict the future but only gave me vague lines that could be interpreted every which way despite having taken my money, and all the rest did not even publicize their contact information.

That's how I knew. That's how I was forced to accept. That in this world, I am the only psychicer.

However, surprisingly, I don't find myself disappointed. It was more like, ahhh, as I'd suspected. I've already have a vague suspicion that that's the case, and telekinesis having become so everyday for me probably also played a part.

I remember when I got my first game back in elementary school. At that time, I had felt like I had gotten my hands on some legendary weapon, and was so happy about it. I went around bragging to all my friends, and got completely hooked onto PVPing with others. Then when my preferred entertainment became manga, the game became reduced to a tiny extraordinary, the occasional comet to color my otherwise boring everyday life.

It's the same for telekinesis. After three whole years of being able to use it, I've become completely accustomed to it. It is still fun, and it is still worth doing, but at most it just feels like enjoying a sequel to my favorite game, and there's no more of the excitement and expectation towards something unknown. I can almost sort of see how it's going to play out from here on.

Most likely, no other psychicers are going to appear.

No organization is going to show up aiming for my life.

I'm not going to have fun with a pretty girl.

There isn't going to be any side effects from telekinesis.

I wouldn't learn why I attained telekinesis in the first place.

I'm going to train my telekinesis like it's an everyday thing, and that's just gonna be the end of that. I can easily imagine myself like that, and I'm fine with it.

But well, after I train myself to the upper limit, then it might be cool to create a huge commotion too. Perhaps that might lift the curtains on a fantasy that might wake me up. I feel like there might at least be an atom-sized chance of that happening, right?

Until then, I will just continue training my telekinesis.

With unswerving focus.