First Lesson

October 12th - Kimura Kiyomi

A couple of days later we actually met to do some training to improve our abilities in fighting the ice monsters. As she had promised my mom was at least attempting to train us and the three of us met in my room. My mother had us facing each other, approximately one meter apart.

“You know how you had no control over what was happening last time?” She started the lesson. Suzuki and I both nodded, as I indeed was still shocked about how everything went down last time.

“It's actually not that difficult to control the flow of Mana, at least on a basic level. All you have to do is visualize what you want to do basically,” she continued. We both looked at her in a way that made it clear we had no idea what she was talking about.

“Okay, I give you an example. If you want to start transferring Mana to Suzuki you can imagine something like a valve or a faucet opening. And if you want to stop if, you imagine the same thing, but closing it. Does that make it more clear?” We nodded in unison.

“Very good. Than try it out now. Start by holding each others hands again, it's the easiest way to do it. Later on you should be able to do it from a distance, but you need to be more in sync for that to work.” We did as she was told and we held our hands. Doing it like this and not in the spur of the moment was a little more embarrassing than I would have thought and my mother couldn't help but smile at us as we stood there quite awkwardly.

“Okay, now try it.” For whatever reason that made me close my eyes and I actually imagined opening the faucet in our bathroom and the effect was immediate. Our hands started to glow and I could feel the Mana flowing to him very strongly.

“That was great Kiyo. Now try to stop it.” Nothing easier than that I thought and I imagined closing the same faucet. And indeed the flow of Mana stopped the same second I conjured the mental image of a closing faucet. We let go of each others hands after that.

“How did that feel?” My mother asked.

“Quite good,” I replied. “Like I knew what I was doing.”

“That's great. If you get more practice you should be able to do it intuitively without having to think about any specific images, but it helps in the beginning for sure.” Not having to think about faucets in the middle of a fight seemed like a good thing, so I was hoping I could get to that point pretty soon.

“Now let's try something a bit more difficult,” my mother continued. “Stand a little bit further apart and hold up your hands, your palms facing each other.” We did as we were told and we ended up with our hands being about ten inches apart.

“Very good. Now we can try to transfer some Mana without your hands touching. It might not work the first time, but it's an important skill to master. If you get better at it you should be able to do it standing several meters apart, which might save you one day.” That sounded foreboding, but for the moment I just concentrated on looking at our hands. I thought about opening a faucet again and my hand started to glow right away. But the Mana didn't seem to want to go anywhere and just accumulated around my hand, forming a bigger and bigger sphere around it.

“What do I do now?” I asked my mom.

“Like with the faucet you have to come up with a mental image that helps you to bridge the gap between the hands,” my mother replied. Makes sense I thought to myself. So I started to imagine a literal bridge in my mind and suddenly the Mana that had formed a sphere around my hand started to move towards Suzukis hand.

“Very Good Kiyo. One the Mana is flowing through the air it will automatically move towards someone who is receptive towards it, like Suzuki in our case.” The Mana now reached Suzuki and like it did when we held each others hands he absorbed it.

“Right now the Mana is flowing pretty slowly since you are not very trained in manipulating it Kiyo, but the more you do it the more the Mana will speed up and you will have a much easier time distributing it.” Sounded like a lot of work, but even after doing it for a little while now I already got the feeling I was getting better at it.

“I think you should stop now Kiyo, before you overexert yourself,” my mother instructed and I did as I was told and the stream of Mana instantly vaporized into a thin cloud of particles.

“I think that was enough for today you two, you can take some rest now. I see you later.” With that my mother left the room and I suddenly realized that I was alone in the room with the guy I sort of had a crush on. Okay, more than sort of to be honest.

“That did work quite well, didn't it,” I said, as awkwardly as humanly possible.

“Yes, your mother is a good teacher.” His reply was as matter of fact as always. Why did I get nervous again?

“But I wanted to talk to you about something,” Suzuki suddenly said and he looked me straight in the eye. What was it now?

“Oh, about what?” I replied.

“About Tanaka.”

“What about her?” Was he about to insult her some more?

“Something isn't quite right with her.” Of course, what else could he have said about her.

“Now, listen here, just because she is only a girl...” Suzuki raised his hand to stop me from talking and it worked.

“That's what I mean. She isn't just a girl.” Now my confusion was complete.

“W-What do you mean?”

“I think she is a Yokai. A Yuki-onna to be more specific.”

I didn't know what to reply to that and I realised my mouth was standing wide open.

“I don't think she even realizes it herself. But I feel something is off about her. You must feel it, too Kimura.”

“What are you saying? Why should I feel it, too?”

“We both are receptive to Mana and that means we can detect Yokais and other such phenomenons. At least to some degree. That's why I knew where to find you. I could feel your presence.”

“Okay, but what does it mean that she is an Yokai? Is it bad?” I didn't really know where he was going with this, not to mention that he dropped such a huge revelation on me just now.

“If she really doesn't realize it, it would be no problem. Which isn't unlikely. Being a Yokai runs in certain families, just like being a Moon and a Sun in our cases, but not everyone realizes it. You didn't until I came around either, right?” He was right about that, but that still didn't really answer my question.

“And what would be the worst case scenario? She realizes it and then?”

“The problem with that is that Yuki-onna are naturally drawn to the cold, residing high up in the mountains naturally. So of all the Yokai they are the most likely to be the allies of the Alte Kälte.”

Now it all made more sense. Having Tanaka become our enemy would be terrible.

“And can we do something about it?”

“No, not really. For the moment we can only hope nothing changes. But if she actually realizes her powers and becomes our enemy it would be very difficult to fight her, since she actually has a physical presence in this world. The usual monsters the Kälte can send against us only consist of Mana themselves and can be beaten by our efforts. But an enemy that has a physical body can be a lot harder to beat since they resist Mana attacks a lot more.” This was a lot of information all at once.

“Is that why you did want to exclude her?” I just wanted to make sure.

“Yes, if she is near us, especially when we use our Mana it could lead to her discovering her powers.”

“Okay, I understand. But if she is just with us normally it should be fine?” Suzuki seemed to fight with himself over what to answer. But finally he seemed to yield.

“I guess so. In school it should be no problem to be around her.”

“Okay, then please try to be nice to her, okay Suzuki?” I tried to look at him with my cutest facial expression and it seemed to have the desired effect as I could clearly see him blush and his usual stoic demeanor clearly became labored.

“O-Okay. I promise.” I never had heard him stutter before, but seeing him struggle even a little bit only made him seem more human, so I appreciated it.

“Okay then, let's go down and have something to drink.” We both went down to the kitchen and joined my mom at the kitchen table. Having her look at us in a very specific way made us both blush as we sat down next to each other.