Mask of Change

I slept on the train long enough to reach REM sleep, which let me visit Kenji. ‘Something wrong?’ I said, as I entered.

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘My body resets after a while, in here.’

‘So, what’s wrong?’

‘I’m serious: Nothing.’ Kenji paced the small room, bumping his arms on the narrow walls. By his expression and body language, his “nothing” was something. I suspected Kishimoto was to blame for his reticence.

I changed tactic and tone. More sympathetic. ‘We’re friends,’ I started. ‘It’s unconventional, though, and we’re past the stage of being shy. If we don’t communicate, we’re increasing the risk of getting in trouble.’

Kenji nodded along, chewing his lip. It took him a couple minutes, but he finally slapped the wall. ‘Can you make the room bigger? Feels like I’m losing my mind.’ He explained how Kishimoto had made it smaller to amplify her powers.

Was that so hard? I thought, but didn’t say it. Better to act casual, let Kenji know we were equals and should speak accordingly. ‘Of course, give me a sec,’ I said, and looked around the room. Easier said than done. I hummed, pressed my hand against the wall, and pushed. Nothing. I closed my eyes, looked serious, and imagined the wall moving outward. Nothing.

I opened my mouth, framed the question in my mind, and asked:

‘How did Kishimoto change things?’

Kenji explained how it happened when Kishimoto wasn’t inside, but I doubted that was a condition. That aside, Kishimoto knew the layout. She’d been inside the original apartment a bunch of times.

‘Did she ever make it bigger?’ I asked, to which Kenji shook his head. I frowned and didn’t speak my thoughts. Better not to distress Kenji. But I worried it was a case of removal being easier than addition; the ol’ put-the-toothpaste-back-in-the-tube dilemma.

I had an idea, and I asked Kenji to sketch the floor plan of his original apartment. He had a single pen but no paper, so he drew on the back of a magazine kept on the top of his bookshelf. I didn’t ask about the magazine’s contents.

When he finished the floor plan, I memorised it. Not difficult; it had a standard layout. With a clear image in my mind, I closed my eyes and tensed my body, like trying to use telekinesis. A second later, rough, rumbling sounds came from the walls. I didn’t risk opening my eyes, but Kenji gasped. When the sounds stopped, I opened my eyes. I stood in the middle of an ordinary, albeit bare living room.

‘Finally,’ Kenji said, jogging the length of the room. ‘Doesn’t feel like a cell anymore.’

I wasn’t done. The way I figured, we needed to get a better grasp on our powers. If we knew our limits, we could better assess risk. Finding the DA&MP system at the Golden Harvest site proved pivotal, but we’d have to use trial and error henceforth.

With the pen and magazine, I sketched a larger apartment, more like an expensive hotel suite. While Kenji checked the rooms and closet of his old-slash-new apartment, I closed my eyes and focused. The rumbling sound began anew. Kenji jumped and exclaimed, but I kept going until the rumbling stopped.

When I opened my eyes, I stood in the middle of a big apartment. That was an understatement. Massive suited the place better. It was the kind of apartment you inherited from your parents, bought with money passed down through generations. Kenji and I had the same reaction: Mouths agape, turning in slow circles, taking in what felt like a fantasy.

‘This is…nice,’ Kenji said.

I laughed and sprinted into the other rooms. Kenji followed, as for a time we revelled in a place we could never own in reality. Calming down, we flopped to the floor and caught our breath. ‘Get the Fulcrum,’ I said, levering onto my elbow. ‘I want to try something.’

Kenji brought the Fulcrum from the original room and fused it to the floor. I gestured at the barbell. It weighed twenty kilograms. Using telekinesis on it wasn’t difficult, but I noted a greater strain on my muscles. Kenji concurred. Sure enough, a smaller apartment amplified the telekinetic power, while a larger one reduced it.

Aside from curiosity, there wasn’t much reason to have the massive apartment, so I envisioned the original size and pulled the walls back into place. ‘If you need power,’ Kenji said, ‘feel free to shrink it.’

I’d always had an obsessive personality, meaning when I got invested in something, I really got invested. As a result, while Kenji wanted to mess around more with the apartment sizing, I pressed him for other information. Firstly, his body proportions. I checked and found he had great proportions for the deadlift, a movement analogous with working the Fulcrum when fused to the floor. Long arms, good femur-to-shin ratio, and a naturally broad back.

I got Kenji to do a deadlift, to check his form, and found it adequate. Though, he didn’t brace his core. I couldn’t criticise him too much, since I’d forgotten to brace my core while fighting Kishimoto. Hard to focus on stuff like that in the middle of a life-or-death situation.

We went over the basics of bracing the core. On the most basic level, it involved an intake of breath, holding it, contracting the abdomen, and then doing the lift. Still, Kenji had trouble adjusting to it. I wondered if he had a weak diaphragm. There were some exercises to train his bracing, like walking with a heavy load, but I decided to discuss it later.

What I really wanted to teach was a more complex exercise: The clean. I’d learned it for sprinting and cycling. It involved lifting the barbell from the floor and up to the clavicle, letting the weight rest on the deltoids. However, technique mattered a lot more, and in the brief time we had, I couldn’t teach Kenji everything.

With an emphasis on power rather than strength, I had a theory that training the clean would let Kenji use the Fulcrum with shorter, more powerful pulls. At present, Kenji pulled the same way, regardless of if I wanted to lift something for a minute or throw it in under a second. So, my idea was to use powerful pulls for attacks and strong, sustained pulls for levitating things.

Another problem was conveying what I wanted. The Fulcrum glowed red either way, so we decided on specific gestures, since Kenji could see through my eyes. An open palm meant I wanted to levitate something. Kicking, finger pistols, or a fist meant I wanted to attack. Pretty intuitive.

My time in REM sleep elapsed and I vanished from the apartment. When I woke up, the train neared our destination: Sendai. I massaged my lower back, ate a snack, and waited for the train to stop.

After I left the station, I found an abandoned parking complex and warmed up my body. I was too excited about testing our powers, so I roused Kenji and explained my intent. ‘Ready?’ I asked.

‘Ready.’

I took a step back – and kicked. Kenji wrenched the Fulcrum simultaneously. A sizeable chunk of concrete blasted away from a pillar. A twisted, sadistic feeling curled my lips. ‘I’d say our system works.’ I kicked again, this time at an old, dusty vending machine. Glass shattered and the plastic bottles crumpled and leaked as they rolled across the concrete. A bottle of Mizu-Hydro rolled in front of me.

‘I’m still confused about the Mizu-Hydro,’ Kenji said. ‘You, what, randomly stopped drinking it?’

‘Not randomly,’ I replied, deciding whether to tell him about Hoshino Ren. ‘A friend told me about it.’

‘Gecko?’

‘No. A shut-in. Kishimoto got to her.’

Kenji stayed silent. ‘Sorry,’ he said after a minute.

Information “clicked” in my head, and I regretted mentioning Kishimoto. I hadn’t thought about things from Kenji’s perspective. If Kishimoto had been using her powers to harvest organs, Kenji would’ve unknowingly, and quite happily, been in his room, working the Fulcrum, thinking he helped Kishimoto do good in the world. With what I’d told him, all those hours of working the Fulcrum warped in his mind. Wouldn’t have surprised me if he felt sick with guilt.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask how Kenji felt, so I told him to not blame himself. Collecting my things, I left the parking complex. Neither of us were blameless. But we had each other – and we had power.