Imagination

Teri and Yayoi spent the next hour sharpening the feel and image of their aura. Yayoi kept him in the dark throughout the process. Teri believed that it was the standard and that it was cool.

They spent the first ten minutes making their aura more apparent—it was ten minutes of making their noses bleed and dunking their faces in the ink patch to numb the pain. It was also at this point that Yayoi’s aura adopted a green color.

Yayoi spent the next five minutes fuming about having to explain why the color’s name was teal. She also used the time to shit on Teri for not knowing other colors except the ones on the rainbow. It was in this timeframe they realized that they could talk normally while keeping their auras visible.

The next thirty minutes or so were spent on them moving around the room to see if they could maintain the consistency of their aura while engaging in a set of physical activities. But they couldn’t make that happen. The best they could do was to manifest their aura and perform one action before it fizzled out. Here, Teri noticed two particular things about how his body behaved when it was clad with aura: one, he was more aware of how his body existed in space and had complete control over it; and two, his body only broke when he tried to do something unreasonable based on his physicality.

At this point, Teri realized that he could only manifest his aura in three to six-second bursts. During this time frame, as long as he could set his mind to perform a single action, performing harder tasks such as a front flip, a back flip, and even dodging rocks thrown by Yayoi would become an easy feat. In terms of combat, however, he found it more reasonable to use this boost in ability to make his strikes more efficient and precise. Simply increasing his attack speed or power would break him.

When Taku woke up, he staggered toward the two while rubbing his eyes. He yawned, mumbling that he had a good night’s sleep and woke up only because he found himself in that white room again, staring at that moth-like creature stabbed to death with ten swords. It seemed like he was going to talk more about it, but he dropped the topic, beaming as he saw Teri and Yayoi clad in their own aura.

Disappointed that Taku wasn’t as jealous as she thought he would be, Yayoi made the guy sit in front of them. Taku followed with a piece of bread in hand, breaking and sharing it with others as the discussion went on. Taku listened to Teri. For Yayoi, he nodded thoughtfully, especially at the parts where she was literally explaining anything. The bottom line, as Teri and Yayoi shared, was that the process of manifesting one’s aura was hard and there was no way all of them could master it this early even with the ink’s near-overpowered healing properties.

But Taku said bet.

The man picked himself up from the ground and stepped back, letting out a few long and deep breaths as he did. Yayoi nudged Teri’s shoulder. He smiled at her, entertaining the possibility of Taku popping like a balloon and spraying them with his blood. He also took a rock off Yayoi’s hands and had her quietly admit that she wanted to make Taku mess up somehow.

“Behold…”

Taku shut his eyes and strengthened his posture.

Teri and Yayoi kept their gazes steady, determined to cheer him on or run if he did pop like a balloon.

Taku started doing handsigns, mouthing its name one by one so that Teri didn’t have to bother describing how his fingers bent and hugged each other. Ox. Hare. Monkey. Dragon. Rat. Serpent. Ox. Taku’s expression crumpled as he tried keeping his concentration. He gave up doing the rest of the hand signs and started slapping his hands and fingers together.

But Taku’s aura still surged regardless of his awkward display of skill. It started from a great fire from his heart that exploded to cover and burn his entire body. Then, it became more pronounced. Soon, it adopted a white blue color, glowing brighter and brighter until it turned pink and took the shape of falling cherry blossoms.

And as if Taku finally grasped his essence, he snapped his eyes open and spread his arms in a T-pose, matched with a confident smile. For the last time, his aura transformed again, turning into a backdrop of different surreal flowers and shapes of fire brightly painted into reality.

“This shit is easy—”

Taku laughed like a cartoon villain and asserted his dominance over his two friends. He smiled even wider as he started bleeding from his nose and crying tears of blood. He wobbled backwards, but Teri caught his hand and led his body over to his ink patch.

Teri also stopped Yayoi before she could kick Taku while he was down.

“Goddamn…” Taku mumbled, breathing in relief as his eyes darted from side to side. It seemed that he had just regained his vision. “I thought my brain was going to melt. So, what is it for anyway?”

“I told you already.” Teri grinned as he sat beside Taku. “It’s for physical enhancement. Being in that state heightens your focus and gives you better control over your body. Yayoi even—”

“It also works with magic spells, though it’s less taxing.”

“Oh yeah, I heard that part.” Taku chuckled, his face became more relaxed as he started making ink angels. “Feels like a precursor to a power move. Did it make you feel strong? Did it slow things down?”

“I don’t think so,” Teri replied, grimacing. “Also, I’m the one who told you that—”

“You two felt like you were moving and thinking at the same time, right?” Yayoi added, sitting on Taku’s other side. “I was trying to wrap my head around it for a while now. I’ve heard people calling it being in the ‘zone’ or in the ‘flow’ state, where you essentially get to perform at your best. It’s mainly associated with athletes. Being in the zone means that you’re so focused that you can perform actions without much thought, making it faster and more efficient. No thoughts, no room for doubt or second-guessing. Or even better—fear.”

Taku smiled as he faced the ceiling.

Yayoi sighed. “Which is why Teri’s approach is good, honestly. Though it’s different. He’s forcing himself into the state by manifesting his aura, which means that he can perform a single action with maximum efficiency.”

“So that’s why there’s a recoil?” Teri had to ask to be sure.

“We tested that already,” Yayoi replied. “Your body only breaks in that state when it’s forced to perform an action it normally couldn’t do.”

“And yeah, you shouldn’t get brain damage by forcing yourself to enter this state—which you naturally get to do for free. I can sort of tell because my head is the only one that’s hurting. My best guess is that not only does it break your body when you perform an action your body can’t physically do… the recoil precisely comes from our bodies trying to keep up with the image in our heads,” Taku added. “This means that naturally getting into that state gets us to perform at our best, so no recoil at all… while forcefully getting there turns off our limiters. I can probably do a backflip while in this forced state, but it might break every bone in my body.”

Teri cupped his chin. “Okay, so I broke myself by forcefully entering the zone. But how does that explain the damage we got when we were doing nothing but focusing and breathing?”

“You probably breathed too hard.” Yayoi smiled and slapped Taku’s shoulder, making him laugh along. “This dumbass thought that closing your eyes and breathing deep and hard means higher focus.”

“I got into focus, didn’t I?” Teri laughed back. “You got brain damage too!”

“If we assume that forcing ourselves into that state means turning off our limiters, it’s most likely that you two unknowingly enhanced your senses so much that it burned your brain. I mean, look at me.” Taku sighed as he raised his hands. “We have a lot of experiments to do. We already know that we can specifically choose what aspects of ourselves get boosted when we manifest our aura; I’d like to personally know if limiting what aspect gets boosted increases the state’s duration… or if you can pre-program certain actions with named attacks would make it more powerful—”

“And it gives us a greater control of our spells.” Yayoi flashed Taku a confident smile. “My scan and hack are applications of wind magic that I got after wearing this ring.” Yayoi paused. Her eyes drifted to Taku and then to Teri. Then, she beamed. “So that’s what I was missing! Tapping into this forced state allows us to directly manipulate how our magic can be used depending on the working image in our brains! We can get greater control… power… precision… And the more we get used to it, the more powerful we can become!”

“Wait,” Taku snorted. “If you didn’t know this before, how come you can use—”

“Because I’m a genius, d-dumbass!” Yayoi raised her voice, her tone a bit shaky. “It’s only natural I could do s-something like this.”

“No, the only explanation is…” Taku squinted. “If you have a point of reference…”

Taku mumbled his next few words. He glanced at Teri and then at Yayoi, smiling from ear to ear and on the verge of letting out a victorious laugh. He waved his eyebrows.

For the first time, genuine fear flashed before Yayoi’s eyes.

“You’re a shounen fan, aren’t you?”