The rest of the day passed in a haze of anticipation and experimentation. I kept testing little things—like levitating notebooks and pencils from my bag so I don't have to reach for them, making lights flicker whenever I walk under them in the hallways, and changing the color of my notebook cover as one more 'trick' to show off to Eric.
It worked each time.
Each time, I felt a little more certain that this was real, that this was really happening, and that I, Elexys, the epitome of extreme rarity, would soon lose what makes me so unique in this world.
After school, I headed to my little room in the orphanage, wanting to experiment without an audience. I closed the door, pulled the curtains closed, and took a deep breath as I focused.
Let's see what I can really do...
First, I tried moving objects around, which I vaguely knew I could do but wanted to be certain. So, I floated a pencil, a book, a pillow, a backpack, and other small stuff in the air. With a gesture like waving a hand, snapping my fingers, or even just the mere thought of it, they obeyed my commands, and now they're all floating mid-air and dancing around at my whim!
That confirms it: I can move things with my mind alone!
But simply being able to float things telekinetically doesn't explain how that red light turned green, how my notebook changed colors, or why the hallway lights flickered on and off while I was under them. Thus, waving a hand dismissively, the floating objects unceremoniously fell on the floor as I let gravity once again take hold of them.
I should try something more complex to see its limits.
Hmm... let's see.
I stared at the pencil on my desk, I pointed a finger at it, then willed it upward—the pencil floated.
It was as if it simply accepted the new arrangement of reality and hovered politely in midair. Then I flicked my finger and heard a whipping sound as the pencil impaled the wall halfway through in an instant, like a loosed arrow.
"Ooooh, that would kill~" I whistled, admiring the pencil embedded in the wall.
Hmm... how weird.
Now that I think about it, all this time, there was no effort or strain on my part. You always see in TV shows or anime how the protagonist always has to struggle just to move a freaking pencil an inch at the start, but here I am...
With a beckoning gesture, the pencil unimpaled itself. Then, with a swipe of a hand over my eyes at an angle covering the wall for a brief moment, the wall was once again whole, unimpaled as if nothing had happened.
Mhm, the controls sure are easy enough.
Feeling more confident, this time I did not bother with hand gestures or visual cues, which would have been rather tiring; I simply stared at the messily stacked notebooks and textbooks on my desk, and they started rearranging themselves into order.
Marveling at the scene as my desk started looking a lot more organized, I just realized its true potential, so I quickly raised my right hand and arranged my fingers at the proper position, eager to test the theory as I 'snap!'
The scene instantly refreshed like a webpage on a fast internet, and all of a sudden, my room was no longer a mess.
Bed made. Scatter shirts, pants, a hoodie, and socks into the laundry basket in the corner. Dust, coffee stains, and all sorts of little things no longer littered the white tiles of my bedroom floor as they looked, for the first time ever, very pristine.
Mhm, perfect.
My smile widened further as I stared at the stack of notebooks and textbooks on my desk. I, Elexys, with a snap of my fingers, instantly finished my homework!
Wanting to see the result, my notebooks immediately flew from the desk, floating right in front of me as I flipped the pages at will. And indeed! I saw that my accursed, cumbersome math homework has been done.
Just like that!
I didn't even have to open one single page of a textbook to do it, nor did I do much more than 'think about it' really.
And looking at it, it's even written in my own handwriting, as I had specified, which should get me out of suspicion of 'outside help' or plagiarism. Well, technically speaking, it isn't cheating since I'm 'technically' the one who 'did it'.
Either way, sayonara homeworks~!
May we never see each other again, you cumbersome pricks~!
Mwahahaha!
School thinks it could eat away at my free time with their stupid homework? Heh, think again!
Hmm, yeah, I think I have an inkling of what type of ability I just awakened, but now let's see just how far I could really take it...
I stood in front of the bedside window, parting the curtains just a little so my eyeballs could see, picturing the most ridiculous thing I could think of, 'A certain purple alien fictional villain from a famous comic franchise dancing cha-cha on the neighbor's roof...'
I crystallized the thought, staring at the neighbor's roof across the street...
Suddenly, I heard an old dance tune. I saw him and nearly choked on my spit. There he was...
Fuckin' Yhanos doing the cha-cha on our neighbor's roof.
I was shook to the core, my mind racing with all the thousand possibilities of this power, all of its implications. All those years of being the kid with no power of my own, and now this?
This feels like a joke...
"HahaHAHAHA~!" So I started laughing at the irony of it all, a crazy, manic laughter that only died down after a good few minutes.
I turned back to the dancing Yhanos on the neighbor's roof. Old Mr. Balding Neighbor, who was reading a newspaper, now stands in his front yard, staring at the purple, wrinkly-ass eight-foot-tall alien foolishly dancing on his roof, looking troubled as he scratches his balding head at the bizarre scene, maybe thinking it's another one of the orphanage kids' pranks.
Well, I couldn't just leave the thing there till it stops dancing and starts
genociding half this Universe as well or something, could I? So I crystallized a sequence of happenings—and blinked.
He was gone.
The dancing humanoid wrinkly grape was gone within a literal blink of an eye, much to the puzzled old man's surprise, confusion, and then relief.
Well, the controls seem intuitive enough.
So intuitive in fact, that it's crazy. It's like I just think what will happen even by the vaguest sense with the intent of it happening—and it shall be.
I didn't vividly imagine the thing disappearing or where I wanted it to go, or do any quantum bullshido as matter manipulators describe; I just wanted him to disappear, and disappear he did.
Simple as that.
Well, I could work with this.
Excited silly by this discovery, I jumped on top of my bed, but before I fell, I thought it to be softer than any pillow and much more comfortable than the thin blanket on top of plywood could allow...
And it did.
Otherwise, I would be hurting right now with a bloody broken nose instead of feeling this soft and comfortable feeling on my face and body.
Well, how's that for a trust fall?
After I got up, I still found the bed to look the same, yet weirdly, it felt different. Hmm... well, I did say that I want it to feel soft and comfortable, not to look or change in appearance. Huh, I suppose it's the type of ability that ignores logic.
With that in mind, I'm feeling hungry, so I willed ten cheeseburgers into existence next…
Surely enough, the next instant, ten wraps of cheeseburgers appeared on top of me while I lay on the bed just as I had envisioned.
Mind you, these cheeseburgers are not just any fast-food-quality cheeseburgers; they're the 'as-advertised' burgers I made to look exactly like the big advertisement pictures you always see in the ad posters and media, but are totally different in real life, and they even taste better than they look…
I excitedly take one as I feel its warmth, which I made just at the perfect temperature for them to be eaten. Just what degree was that, exactly? I don't know, but I have the feeling it just is because I willed it so, thus unwrapping it, the mouth-watering smell made me immediately take a big bite…
"Mmmm~ so tasty!" I couldn't help but exclaim as the taste wrapped around my tastebuds, holding my cheek while I chewed and continued to chew and bite for more before I even knew I'd finished eating it, so I unwrapped another one and proceeded to wolf it down as well.
Just how is it so goddamn tasty?!
The premium, juicy meat, the high-quality cheese, the sweet and slightly acidic fresh tomatoes, caramelized onions, the sauce, butter-toasted premium bun—all fresh, super high-quality ingredients.
I've never tasted something so delicious before!
And so, I continue to voraciously eat the cheeseburgers, even though each one is as tall as two inches and as wide as four. I greedily ate one within ten seconds. It was only when I reached the fourth burger that I realized that my poor stomach, which had never handled this much food before, was about to explode, and I unfortunately could not take another bite.
Smiling in great satisfaction while I held my full stomach, I thought a bottle of soda would be nice, so I held my hand, and a freshly opened bottle let out a sigh of very contented satisfaction.
I've never been so full before.
Orphanage kids can only eat so much, with food evenly distributed among the thousands of us. Well, not really evenly, but more toward the kids who evidently have brighter futures, like a form of investment by the orphanage, hoping the kids would one day remember them and donate, which just happens to work against me.
Sigh…
Life is tough for the powerless.
Especially in a world where power dictates almost everything.
But powerless, I am no more.
From what I've seen so far, 'powerless' would be the last word anyone would ever describe me as from here on. Although I don't exactly know all the details, from the experiments I've conducted so far, I could only conclude that I could now manipulate—
Reality itself.