Kazuki was still awake, sitting propped against the headboard with his glowing smartphone in hand.
After a long conversation with Hanah about his powers and some speculation about their new world, the girl had finally fallen asleep from exhaustion. Kazuki glanced briefly at the other side of the bed, where Hanah lay peacefully. The school bag that had previously been placed as a barrier in the middle of the bed remained in position, creating a clear territorial boundary between them.
Hanah slept on her side, facing the window. Her black hair was spread across the pillow, a few strands falling to cover part of her peaceful face. The thick hotel blanket covered her body up to her shoulders.
The room lights had been turned off.
"Uhh, I should tell mother about this," Kazuki mumbled quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.
With quick and familiar movements, Kazuki's fingers danced across the touchscreen, opening an instant messaging application that shouldn't function in this strange world. Of course, such long-distance communication technology couldn't possibly work without supporting infrastructure—telecommunication towers, satellites, or fiber optic networks. However, thanks to his reality manipulation power, the smartphone functioned as if it were still connected to a complete modern network.
Kazuki stared at the contact name "Mother" on the screen for several seconds. There was a faint hesitation visible in his usually calm and calculating eyes. Not doubt whether his message would be sent—he was sure his power ensured that—but doubt about how to explain the absurd situation they now faced.
Finally, with a quick decision, he began typing:
[Kazuki: Mother, it seems I can't come home]
Less than five seconds later, a reply came:
[Anira: Were you transported to another world?]
Kazuki stared at the screen with raised eyebrows, slightly surprised by the quick and precisely targeted response. His mother's reply was too specific, too accurate to be just a lucky guess. However, thinking about it again, this wasn't too surprising. Anira always had sharp intuition and deep understanding of things beyond most people's comprehension.
Anira was the first to notice Kazuki's strange power when he accidentally created a toy he wanted out of thin air. Instead of being afraid or considering him a monster, she guided him, taught him to control his ability, and most importantly—to keep it secret from the outside world.
[Kazuki: Yes, more or less. I don't know how long it will take for me to come home, but I could if...]
He deliberately left the sentence unfinished, letting the implication of what he could do with his power hang in the air. With his reality manipulation ability, Kazuki could theoretically create a portal back to their original world. However, that would require a much greater and riskier use of power than simply creating gold coins or manipulating a smartphone.
And Kazuki himself didn't know the distance between this world and their original world, but he could sense that the distance was vast. Not physical distance that could be measured in kilometers or light years, but a dimensional distance beyond conventional concepts of space and time. He also doubted if a simple portal could take them back. If a portal couldn't bring them back, he would need a much greater power to penetrate the dimensional boundaries and return to their original world—power that he might never have tried before.
Anira's reply came almost immediately, as if she could read Kazuki's mind even through text messages:
[Anira: Don't do that. I think you'd better find the person who brought you to that world. By the way, how many were brought there?]
The stern warning from Anira made Kazuki slightly frown. If his mother went so far as to forbid the use of his power to return, there must be a serious reason behind it. Anira was not someone who gave warnings without strong grounds. Perhaps there were dangerous consequences he didn't know about—side effects of dimensional manipulation, damage to the structure of reality, or even impacts on their own bodies.
Kazuki himself didn't really know what his power was actually like. All this time, he had just done what he wanted without truly understanding the mechanisms or limitations of his ability. He knew he could create, manipulate, or change almost anything—but to what extent? And with what consequences? These were questions he had never really found answers to.
[Kazuki: It seems all my classmates were brought to this world. Now I'm at a hotel with my classmate. The two of us are separated from the others.]
His eyes glanced again at Hanah, who was still fast asleep. There was something strange about the fact that among all his classmates, the two of them were the ones separated from the main group. Was this coincidence, or was there a specific plan behind it?
[Anira: At a hotel? Is your classmate a boy or a girl?]
[Kazuki: Ah, that's... a girl. She's sleeping next to me.]
He answered honestly, knowing that lying to Anira almost never worked. Somehow, that woman could always detect dishonesty, even through text messages.
[Anira: I see. I trust you very much. I know you definitely won't do anything to her while she's sleeping, right?]
[Kazuki: Of course not. By the way, she already knows that I have powers. I think it's okay that she found out.]
Revealing the biggest secret in his life to someone else wasn't a light decision. Throughout his life, Kazuki had always been reminded by Anira to keep his power secret, to not attract unwanted attention.
However, the extraordinary situation they faced in this new world seemed to require an exception to that rule. Hanah needed to know what they were facing if they wanted to survive and eventually find a way home.
[Anira: I see. Well, be careful there. Don't do anything that could bring chaos, okay?]
[Kazuki: Yes, yes. Well then, good night.]
[Anira: Yes, good night to you too.]
Kazuki closed the messaging app and glanced at the digital clock in the corner of his smartphone screen: 00:00, exactly midnight. He turned to the wall clock hanging on the hotel room wall; its hands also showed exactly twelve o'clock.
"So the time in this world is the same as in our original world," he murmured quietly.
The fact that time flowed in parallel in both worlds was potentially important information.
His eyes returned to Hanah's sleeping figure. The girl moved slightly in her sleep, mumbling something indistinct before becoming quiet again. That's when a thought occurred to Kazuki.
"Maybe I should..." he muttered, looking at Hanah carefully. "It would be troublesome if she couldn't understand the language of this world."
If they wanted to find information about their classmates, or about who brought them to this world, it would be very inefficient if only Kazuki could communicate.
Kazuki closed his eyes, concentrating fully. He used his power again, this time not to create objects or manipulate technology, but for something far more complex—manipulating Hanah's entire body.
He made changes to Hanah's brain structure, adding the ability to understand and speak this world's language automatically when she interacted with local residents. This process was invisible to the naked eye, but beneath his closed eyelids, Kazuki could "see" the changes occurring at the neurological level—new connections forming, language areas in Hanah's brain developing and adapting, her memory being modified to include vocabulary and grammar from a foreign language that even Kazuki himself didn't know the name of.
But Kazuki didn't stop there. With deeper concentration, he did something he had never even tried before—he manipulated Hanah's body so that she could use powers too. Not powers as great as his, but at least basic manipulation abilities. That power would awaken on its own later, perhaps when Hanah faced a critical situation or when she really needed it.
What Kazuki did actually far exceeded anything he had done before. Manipulating another person's body at the genetic and neurological level was something he had never even imagined.
His power could also be used to modify other people, simply by thinking he could manipulate their bodies. An example was what he had just done—changing Hanah's body, which initially couldn't use power.
"Alright, done," he murmured after several minutes of concentration. "With this, I think she'll be able to understand the language of this world."
Hanah was still sound asleep, completely unaware of the fundamental change that had just occurred within her. There were no physical signs of the modifications Kazuki had made—no magical light, no change in appearance. However, when Hanah woke up later, she would find that she understood the foreign language that previously sounded like a series of meaningless sounds.
Slowly, Kazuki turned off his smartphone and placed it on the bedside table. He laid down carefully so as not to wake Hanah, pulled the blanket up to cover his body, and stared at the ceiling of the hotel room.
Kazuki closed his eyes, letting the comfortable darkness envelop him. Although he had just performed a very complex reality manipulation, his body showed no signs of fatigue. His power seemed to have no clear limitations or side effects—a fact that sometimes made him uncomfortable.
Because if his power was truly unlimited, then the only limitations that existed were the morality and ethics that Anira had instilled in him. And in this strange, mysterious world, those boundaries might be tested more than he had ever imagined.
With that thought, Kazuki slowly drifted off to sleep.