7

'Well, did you like it?' said Airi when they had both finished their ice-creams.

'Yes,' said Kenji, nodding. 'I've never eaten anything like it before... Thank you, Airi!'

Airi beamed happily. 'Well, that made my day! Okay, now I'm ready! Where do want to study? In the library? Let's go, then!'

They walked back to the school library and sat together.

'So, where should we start...' said Airi, taking out her class notes and a notebook to work on the assignment.

Kenji looked at the blank notebook silently.

'Didn't you make any notes?' said Airi.

'No,' said Kenji. 'I was unable to write that fast. But it's all in my head; and I'll make notes later...'

'Really?' said Airi, thinking that he was either super smart or super...not so smart.

'Yes. So, first, we should work on the introduction on what the heart is,' said Kenji. 'We could then go into its structure, and then its functions and impact. Lastly, perhaps, some miscellaneous data and additional information for a comprehensive ending. We'll write both what the teacher taught us today as well as some new facts of our own finding.'

Super smart. 'Hmm, okay, I guess we could split it, then, so that we can complete it separately,' said Airi. 'I'll do the introduction and ending data, you can do the functions and impact.'

'Yes, let's do that,' said Kenji, nodding, and he immediately opened his textbook and began to study.

'I'll also add a diagram of the heart — I'm good at drawing, you see,' added Airi, and Kenji nodded approvingly.

'Good idea.'

'Well, I'll work on my part at home, then,' said Airi, getting up, but Kenji held her wrist and stopped her.

'You said we were going to do this together!' he said, looking at her seriously.

'We are doing it together! It doesn't mean we literally have to be in front of each other all the time,' said Airi. 'We'll meet again tommorow and compare our parts, edit it together, and then we'll rest easy until the deadline.'

'Okay,' said Kenji, in a tone which sounded suspiciously like regret. 'Go on, then. I'll complete it here.'

Airi left, her footsteps growing more and more distant, and Kenji was left alone in the silent, darkening library. He knew he had about an hour before he would return to his natural form, so he decided to hurry up and complete his work as fast as possible.

His textbook contained a lot of words he did not understand, and he wondered why there was a difference between the way that humans spoke and wrote. He had begun to understand spoken conversation to some extent, but what was written in these books was beyond him. Top that with the fact that his reading wasn't very good yet. After fifteen minutes of reading the same incomprehensible paragraph to no avail, he decided to try something else.

He went outside into the empty street and looked for a passerby. At last, he saw an old man with a load on his back.

'Excuse me, Sir, can you read this book for me?' asked Kenji.

The old man laughed gruffly. 'If I was that good at reading books, son, I wouldn't be here lugging heavy things all day at my age!'

Kenji looked at the old man and noticed his bent back. Why did such a man have to work? Why did he not know how to read? Why did no one help him?

'I can help you with that if you like,' he said, offering his hand, but the old man pushed it away.

'No. I'll be fine, son. Work hard, so that you don't end up like me, my boy!' he said kindly before shuffling away.

Work hard. The teacher had said the same thing. He had observed almost all young humans get the same advice; but he had never seen the implicit threat in that innocent phrase: work hard or you will suffer. At least he had found one similarity between the two worlds: both valued intelligence and perfection; and the lack of either was punished by society.

He sighed and moved on until he saw a boy from another high school.

'Excuse me, can you read this book for me, please?' asked Kenji.

'Why, are you blind or something?' scoffed the boy. 'Or just stupid?'

Humans could be so unnecessarily hostile... Kenji knew what he had to do next; he closed his eyes and applied the Force.

The boy frowned and said, as if in a trance, 'Okay, I'll read it...'

'Thank you,' said Kenji still applying it, and he gave him the textbook. 'These five pages on the heart, please.'

The boy read them aloud, and as the words were spoken, Kenji could understand them. The difficult words seemed to morph into easy ones, and by the time the boy had finished reading, and Kenji had run out of energy to apply his special power, he knew everything he had to know for the heart assignment.

'Thank you, my friend,' said Kenji, as the boy snapped out of the trance he had placed him in.

'I'm not your friend!' said the boy, dropping the textbook from his hands and looking alarmed as he stared at it, wondering how it got there. 'Get away from me, you freak!' he exclaimed, and ran away.

Kenji looked at the sky and realised that it was getting dark. He knew he would change to his natural form any time now. He would have to get back to his temporary home as soon as possible.

He ran all the way, past the main road and its bustling traffic, past a row of food stalls, past the office buildings where people were still working. He then turned round a corner into a secluded street and walked through a dark alley nearby. Upon emerging, he walked on in the pin-drop silence until he reached his destination at last: an old abandoned building that seemed to have been forgotten by the world; the place he had chosen to stay in during his nights on Earth.

He pushed its creaky old door open, and just in time; for he could feel his ears emerging again the way he was used to; and the faint red glow in his eyes was reflected back at him through the broken glass of the window in front of him.

He lit a candle, and the room immediately lit up. There was nothing much, save his makeshift bed put together with a few motheaten cushions and an old bedsheet. He placed his school bag on a rickety table, and then picked up the bowl that he had placed there that morning and uncovered it; it was full of cooked rice, now cold, of course. The sight made him smile. He couldn't have enough of this delightful food. He had learnt how to cook it the previous evening, and he was sure he could spend the rest of his time on Earth eating only this — happily.

Happily — what a scandalous word. His father would have objected at it for sure. But how else could he describe how he felt when he ate that snow-coloured delicacy? He knew he was being greedy by eating so much, by caring so much about how his food tasted, but he couldn't help it.

Kenji knew how much his father hated emotions of any kind — they were, after all, the root of all human evil — but it wasn't like he was getting carried away by them!

Or was he?

He remembered the ice-cream with Airi, and he shook his head. Emotions were a dangerous thing, and he understood now why his father had always cautioned him against them. He was getting weaker, and if things went on this way, he would fail his mission, and his father would be disappointed in him as usual.

His smile faded as the candlight flickered and cast a shadow on his face, and he retracted into his old neutral expression. He would not fail.