Chapter 25: Training?
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What is the thing to learn before learning?
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[Liu's Pov]
After what could be considered a new morning routine for Liu, the training was finally about to begin.
'I wonder how far we've gone...'
Following Lumian, Liu put on her shoes and stepped out of the carriage with a hesitant step.
'... did the Form really manage to keep up with the carriage?...'
A slight apprehension was visible in her movements, but she had already been ready for a while to face the Form during a day of Obscurity.
"Whoa.. what are all these glowing trees?!"
As for Milo, who got out after her, he immediately started marveling at what he was seeing. A quantity and density of trees he had visibly never seen before.
"Those are lumarbres, don't you know the tree categories or what?"
'... seriously how old is he? He looks like a kid...'
Lumian had disappeared the moment Liu had set foot outside, he had also already put up a barrier around the carriage.
"Of course I know them, I've just never seen so many in person, I've never had the chance to go into the outer forest..."
Milo moved forward and stood next to Liu, still looking at the trees around them.
"... unlike you, I don't live at the border, and seeing so many lumarbres in person is way cooler than in a photo."
'... I can't get used to that photo thing, there were tons of them in the guide...'
Without paying much attention to Milo, she looked around for Lumian, who was supposed to be their teacher and teach them things.
"Where'd Lumian go?"
"I'm here."
Arriving from behind them, Lumian's voice resonated along with the sound of quite a few footsteps, somewhat muffled by the grass.
"Looks like going out during Obscurity with the Form not far off doesn't bother you too much, that's good."
"That's true, weren't you afraid of the dark?" Milo added.
Lumian was followed by the chevarbre, which he had probably just untied.
"No, I'm not afraid of the dark, and yeah, it's fine..."
'... it's not too dark and I'm not alone so it's fine.'
Seeing the chevarbre behind Lumian, Liu turned her curiosity toward it.
"Why did you untie the chevarbre? Can I pet it now?"
Walking past Liu, Lumian went to lean against a tree a few meters away, with Patrick the chevarbre still following him.
"We're gonna let it wander around inside the barrier all day, you can pet it whenever you want later..."
After leaning against the tree to face Liu and Milo, he finally noticed that Patrick was following him and taking up all the space between him and his students.
"... and why are you following me? Go run around or something. I've got nothing to eat for you."
'... is he talking to the chevarbre?...'
And Patrick blew air through his nose in response, causing a gust of wind that lifted Lumian's hair, then he went off further away to graze on grass.
'... and that works?... If I talk to him, will he understand me?'
"I just thought of it, but why do we call it a chevarbre? Isn't that kind of a ridiculous name? Like what does chev even mean, and just adding arbre after is weird, no?"
Milo, as always, was in his own world, asking questions out of nowhere.
'What's going on in his head?'
"Well, first try naming something that doesn't have a name yet before questioning the name of something else. And besides, it's pretty logical, no? Like, chevarbres like eating grass, and grass, you could say, is the hair of the earth, and they also have a habit of eating people's hair, especially Patrick's. You'll have to be careful, Liu, last time he came and snatched some of mine super sneakily."
(Chevarbre is a French wordplay combining: cheval ("horse"), cheveux ("hair"), and arbre ("tree"). Its English equivalent could be "horsetree", but this would lose the wordplay with "hair".)
Liu had found Milo's questions ridiculous, but Lumian answered them super seriously. It was the first time he'd given such a complete answer on such a random topic...
'Is he in teacher mode or what?...'
... and on top of that he kept going, almost as if this subject was close to his heart:
"So in my opinion, using chev is pretty logical. And then, arbre, well that's the most logical part, no? I don't see the problem, the chevarbre is a species of the Arbority that has a lot of different breeds corresponding to types of trees, and it's not like all these breeds have the word arbre in them, in fact none of them have the word arbre in them. It's like lumarbre, it's just a category of trees that make light, each type of lumarbre has another name to tell them apart, so I don't see the issue. You're nitpicking for nothing, and you shouldn't criticize words that already exist, it could offend their creator. Instead, try to understand why it's written that way."
It was the first time he'd rambled so much in such a short time, surprising even Milo, who stood open-mouthed at this response.
'... you'd almost think he invented that word himself... is he really in teacher mode?'
"Uh... yeah okay, I... won't do it again."
Milo looked terrified by Lumian's answer, for a reason unknown to Liu.
"Alright, shall we start?"
Lumian finally proposed. To which Liu and Milo nodded.
"....."
Then...
"....."
... silence, aside from the sound of Patrick grazing further away, the soft wind, and a few other sounds from insects, the silence was complete.
'... what's happening right now?...'
"Uhm... shall we start?..."
Lumian seemed a bit lost, until Liu spoke.
"Hm-hm... I don't remember how it's done anymore, it's been too long since I taught, what do you want to start with?"
'... seriously...'
Next to Liu, Milo let out a sigh of relief. Seeing Lumian so unserious had undoubtedly reassured him.
'... this is so not pro...'
Shaking her head in disdain, Liu tried to suggest something so the training would actually start:
"Can't you just explain to us how you actually plan to make us stronger? And why are we outside? Couldn't we train in the gym?"
Liu's questions visibly woke something up in Lumian. He shifted position, straightening up a bit against the glowing tree he'd chosen and looked at Liu.
"Mmh... yeah. We can't really train inside, the energy there is different, the gym will be for physical training without energy. And I don't think you've forgotten, but we also need to start training with the Form."
Crossing his arms, he began explaining how the training would go, or something along those lines according to what Liu believed.
"So, we agree that you're here to gain the strength to solve your problems yourselves. What would you do if I told you I could directly solve your problems quickly and give you the life you want on top of that?"
But instead he asked this question, a question Liu already more or less had the answer to, but which made her doubt anyway.
'... would he really be capable of that?...'
"Even so, I want to do it myself no matter how long it takes, otherwise I don't see the point of doing it. If you do everything in my place, I think I'd be ashamed to even look at my sister."
Unlike Liu, Milo didn't doubt, he was there for a good reason and he knew what he wanted to do. He must have already been in this situation for a while.
'... would I also be ashamed to look at my grandparents?... I'm not sure...'
Seeing that Liu didn't have an answer yet, Lumian this time addressed her directly.
"I have without a doubt the ability to solve all your problems by myself, but that doesn't mean they'll be solved the way you want them to be, the result won't be in any way the one you're expecting and it surely won't be the one you're looking for."
Turning this time toward Milo, he continued.
"You both have quite a number of problems you want to solve, some go back a few years and others are recent. It's normal to doubt, especially since this is the second time I'm offering you something like this."
He asked the question once again.
"Do you want me to solve your problems in your place, or do you want to do it yourselves?"
And Liu, still hesitant, answered in a voice not so certain of the truth of her own words...
"... I want... to solve things by myself, that way, even if the result may not be the one I wanted, I... won't have regrets... I think."
... which she finished in a small voice.
Milo, for his part, had remained silent as if to affirm that he wouldn't change his mind.
"Ok, in any case, it's better to doubt than to not think about it at all. That's why asking the same question several times more or less lets you to confirm the other person's intentions, well, it depends on the situation."
'... so that's what that was for?...'
The tone in Lumian's voice had changed, it was less serious, and he continued on without changing it back.
"Anyway, even if I had the ability, I wouldn't have done it. Honestly, that wouldn't bring me anything, so that settles the problem. So, since today is the first day, I'm going to explain to you the broad outline of what you're going to learn and all that... but the following days it'll be you asking the questions and me answering them, that's it."
This not-so-serious tone came with an unpleasant explanation and a drastic change of subject, catching Liu off guard.
'Huh... damn it, he got me, I bet Milo knew he was going to say that...'
"I might teach you things on the fly without you asking me anything, if the mood is right for it. Otherwise I'll only answer your questions, it's the best way for you to really learn what you want and need to, and along the way it'll train your way of thinking, which is the most important part."
He paused, thinking about how to continue his explanations, which gave Liu time to think about everything she had just heard.
'... it sounds so half-assed but at the same time his explanations are logical... I don't get any of this.'
"I think that on the practical training days, I'll give you a mission to accomplish during the day, because the training still needs to follow some kind of logical direction, and if you do everything by yourselves I don't think you'll progress the right way, even if I answer all your questions. Mm... and you'll also get paid if you complete the mission, that way you'll have your own money to spend, it'll give you a bit of experience when it comes to independence within society and other things like that."
He stopped talking once again and looked at Liu and Milo.
'He's actually really in teacher mode... he talks nonstop and super fast...'
"You can sit down you know, unless you don't want to sit in the grass? Normally there aren't many insects in the citizen zone, especially during Obscurities."
This remark finally got a reaction out of Liu and Milo. They had been standing in front of the carriage without really moving for a while already. And in response they slowly sat down in the grass.
"Yeah that's better, it feels more hierarchical this way, call me professor for the rest of the day or else I won't answer your questions. Is that clear?"
'... what is he playing at? This is ridiculous...'
Lumian was visibly waiting for an answer, but Liu and Milo both found the situation so ridiculous that they didn't answer.
And so Lumian repeated:
"Is that clear?!"
"Ye.."
"Yes professor!"
Milo spoke faster than Liu, he seemed rather used to this kind of atmosphere after all, or maybe to Lumian's strange temperament.
"Yes... professor."
And finally Liu answered in a low and unusual voice, completely embarrassed by the actions of the two lunatics around her.
'I hope it won't always be like this...'
"Alright, now we're going to get more into the details of what I'm going to teach you rather than how I'm going to teach you. So, we agree that you know how to use energy, the basic process, energy perception and all that?"
Finally, something resembling training was about to begin, still according to what Liu believed...
And while Milo nodded to Lum... to the professor's question, Liu on the other hand...
'Perception... why perception?...'
... already had things to say, she raised her hand to speak, the atmosphere seemed rather well suited to it after all.
"Yes, something to add?"
Nodding her head, she let out what she had to say:
"Uh so, my grandparents just taught me the basic process, and... energy perception once, two years ago. Nothing else besides a few little things from time to time. So I don't know if there's more I should know or not... and more importantly, I don't understand, why do you say energy perception? I've always called it energy vision myself..."
"Ah yeah that's rough."
Lumian reacted in a very uneducational manner, immediately disrupting the atmosphere he himself had set up.
'... rough?'
"Well it's rather logical, if your grandparents had really taught you to use energy, you would've surely gotten found out pretty quickly, especially since you're already pretty good at using it unconsciously, there must have been moments when people looked at you funny, right?"
This question immediately reminded Liu of certain moments when she could have been found out.
'... it's true, I already went too far in sports, but...'
But in the end she had always been reasonable enough without even paying too much attention to it.
'... maybe I recovered too fast from what happened last week... I hope Pasha and Yumi don't suspect anything...'
Except maybe after the incident, but at the same time, she hadn't had her mind on being cautious.
"Anyway nobody knows about energy over there so even if they had found me out, I don't see what they could've done."
"That's exactly what makes it the most dangerous, especially without your grandparents, even if you're stronger than an adult man without energy, together they would've overpowered you, and you can't imagine what humans are capable of doing when faced with a situation they don't understand and that scares them. I'm sure you too, in a way, are afraid of the unknown."
Lumian's way of answering was rather irritating for Liu, but...
'... why does he always have something to say? and why is it always logical?!... he'll see, one day I'll be the one talking to him like that!'
... instead of blaming Lumian, she turned it into a goal to strive for.
A form of respect toward Lumian's way of arguing formed in Liu, and so she nodded to what he had said.
"And I imagine your grandparents just taught you to 'see energy' and not to 'activate your energy perception,' and that's why you call it energy vision. It's not a big deal, but you still need to understand the difference."
He stopped talking and immediately snapped his fingers...
Snap!
'Wha..!'
... performing an action that completely disrupted Liu.
"I took away your sight, one of the senses you possess and that your physical body allows you to use. Now, activate your so-called energy vision."
'... he could warn me before doing stuff like that...'
Though a little resentful, she went along with it anyway and activated her energy vision, only to end up seeing nothing except what she might consider a color, maybe black.
"You don't see energy and that's normal. Most people stop at this stage because it's the simplest and most direct, and especially because they aren't taught what comes after in terms of energy perception. I imagine you already know this, but energy is always present even if you don't see it. So now tell me, what is perception?"
The situation wasn't too pleasant, having one of her five senses gone, Liu felt strange but not that disoriented.
'... what is perception?'
And despite everything, the fact that the training finally seemed to have started outweighed any discomfort she felt.
So she answered directly in a thoughtful voice.
"Feeeling... things?..."
'... we feel emotions too, no?..'
Even though she had answered, her uncertainty made her ask herself even more questions.
"Yeah, you could say that it is the best and shortest possible summary of what perception can be."
And Lumian suddenly speaking again made her jump. Aside from Lumian's words everything was silent, Milo was definitely listening attentively to the explanations.
"But well it's so imprecise that it's not very useful in your current situation. Basically, yes, perception is feeling things, but then you need to define those things and differentiate them, the most logical way, I'd say, is going to be to divide those things into physical and mental. A division that is always useful in a lot of situations."
"And now, tell me, what are the things you feel physically, and what are the things you feel mentally?"
'... physically and mentally...'
Lumian's explanations and questions had completely put Liu in an educational mindset, fully encouraging her reflection on the subject.
"Uh... mentally, we feel our... emotions, I'd say. And physically we feel our environment through our five senses."
Prepared for Lumian to speak up, this time Liu didn't jump.
"Yes, that's rather sound. Though if I want to nitpick on the words, we could say that things need to be nuanced. Mentally we don't always feel our emotions. Most of the time, we perceive them. The difference between the two, is that you feel your emotions but only in the present, and that you perceive your emotions but only in the past. Then there's the future, but in that case we'd just be talking about imagination."
'... our emotions aren't the same depending on the moment?...'
"For you to understand better, tell yourselves that feeling emotions you've already felt is impossible, but perceiving them and imagining them is something rather achievable. Do you understand?"
This time he addressed to both of them at once, clearly showing that his explanations concerned Milo just as much as Liu.
And in response Liu shook her head.
"I think I understand a little bit, but I don't think I'd manage to re-explain all that..."
The silence next to Liu showed that Milo was surely in the same situation. But in the end not seeing anything still made her uneasy, especially not seeing Milo's reaction.
'Is this what he felt when Lumian deprived him of his hearing and speech?...'
"Yeah, it's normal that you don't understand most of the things I tell you, and that's fine. But in any case, you're going to retain something from it, and the usefulness of that something will only depend on you and what you do with it."
Liu nodded at what Lumian was saying, but she was getting more and more restless, unconsciously looking for a way to compensate for the void her missing sight made her feel.
"Well, I imagine being deprived of one of your five senses and staying in place must be unpleasant. But it's useful for you to understand how the concept of perception works, as well as energy perception."
Snap!
Lumian snapped his fingers once again.
"What the!"
Visibly (or not), taking Milo's sight away in turn.
'... how long is this going to last? My head already hurts...'
Liu's discomfort didn't stop her from concentrating on Lumian's explanations, precisely because she wanted it to end as fast as possible.
"Well as you know, you have five basic senses, and as Liu said, these five senses are part of your perception, and so they can be part of your energy perception, the same way sight is already part of it."
Tap! Tap!
'... is that the tree?...'
Lumian stopped talking and a dull tapping sound resonated from his direction.
"For most people, the simplest thing to perceive energetically after sight is sound, so perception through hearing. Sound is mainly waves and vibrations."
'... hearing...'
"I imagine you already have an idea of how it's represented and how you can imagine it, but I'll still help you."
Hearing all this, Liu focused even more on the sound of Lumian's voice as well as on the sounds around her.
"You're going to focus as much as possible on the sounds around you and imagine what I'm going to tell you to imagine, once I've finished my sentence you'll activate your energy perception. Okay."
Liu nodded, and Milo also nodded with a small sound that reached Liu's ears, confirming to her that Milo was still next to her.
"So, you're going to imagine that the sound is a transparent sphere, a transparent sphere that expands in every direction, this sphere has an origin, this origin is the source of the sound, the origin of the sphere's expansion. This sphere already has vibrations, vibrations that also come from the source of the sound, vibrations that you feel, but vibrations that you don't yet hear. This sphere expands until it reaches you, and as soon as this sphere reaches you, the vibrations reach you as well, as soon as this sphere and the vibrations reach you, that's the moment when you perceive the sound... now activate your energy perception."
And they activated their energy perception.
'.....'
At first, Liu felt... nothing, nor perceived anything.
Except silence...
'... isn't it working?...'
...until suddenly, she felt... a wave, a wave coming from behind her, on her left.
'Here? What's th..'
She felt the wave, she perceived it, she knew which direction it came from, but... she didn't really know where it was, at what exact distance...
There was no sound, it was very strange.
She knew the sound existed, she perceived its origin and its waves, but... she didn't hear it, not yet.
A brief and small instant after she perceived the wave, she felt it expand... expand at a speed far surpassing her perception and instantly reaching her...
Paa. Kree. Pffuu...
... and as soon as the wave reached her, she directly heard the sound through her hearing...
Paa. Kree.
'... I didn't even have time to feel the vibrations... by the way what was that noi..'
"Patrick, leave the chest alone, there's nothing for you in there."
This time, she didn't even have time to really perceive the wave, Lumian was way too close, and the sound of his voice reached Liu directly, throwing off her concentration a little.
'H..here!'
Another wave had appeared! with the same origin as before, Patrick!
Ppfffuuuu...!
And this time too, the sound reached Liu before she could perceive any vibrations, but... the sound didn't stop, a large number of constant waves were arriving toward Liu, along with rather strong gusts of wind lifting her hair.
Ffffuuuu.....
And at that moment, Liu finally managed to perceive vibrations coming from the waves arriving toward her, and... she directly heard their sounds...
Ffffuuuu.....
This sound added to and mixed with the one she was already hearing, or rather, these sounds added to and mixed with the ones she was already hearing.
Making an echo of the whistling wind ring in her head.
"Stop blowing or I'll tie you back up."
'....!'
And all of a sudden, Lumian's voice joined in, a sound whose waves and a few vibrations she strangely managed to perceive just as well.
One more sound, one more echo, with vibrations of a lower pitch than the whistling of the wind, giving Liu the experience of a contrast of sounds and echoes she had never before been able to perceive with her hearing alone.
"Argh!!"
Of course, this influx of auditory information, far greater than what she was used to, greatly worsened the headache she was already starting to have, making her directly deactivate her energy perception.
'Damn it... this is horrible!...'
Snap!
And all of a sudden, her sight came back too, nearly making her feel faint. She covered her eyes with her hand and pressed on her forehead, relieving the pain as best she could.
'... seriouuusly...'
"Yeah well sorry, that might have been a bit too much for you, it's true there's a lot less noise pollution in the citizen zone than outside, you must not be too used to it."
Lumian apologized, but Liu had glanced at Milo next to her.
He was looking at her as if nothing had happened, surely wondering what was wrong with her.
'... he's fine... not even a little headache?'
She ignored Lumian's apology, and asked Milo directly.
"Didn't you manage to perceive the vibrations?"
"I did, why?"
He visibly didn't understand the reason for Liu's question, so she had to continue in a somewhat outraged voice.
"Didn't it hurt your head to hear so much sound at the same time?"
"Yeah a little, but I'm used to it. When you live in the city with the noise of people, cars and everything else, and on top of that you've got your headphones on with music. It's not that different, it just hurts a bit less."
Now it wasn't just Liu's voice that was outraged. She stared at him, only to see, as always, a face that said he'd told the whole truth.
'... so I'm just really not used to it? It's not because I'm less skilled than him?...'
And of course the reason behind these questions and this attitude was her competitive spirit, which strangely only showed up when she compared herself to a boy.
"Ok, feeling better now? Are you ready to hear the rest of the explanation? Anyway there's just a few clarifications left, it won't be much, and even if you don't understand them it won't change anything since you'll be forced to understand them later anyway, so you've got time."
'.....'
Of course the so-called professor still had a few things to say. And once again it was something without a doubt strange and incomprehensible.
'... I think I prefer it when he only half answers the question...'
Milo nodded, and Liu resigned herself to doing the same a few seconds later.
"As you've understood, energy perception uses the word perception for a good reason."
This idiot nodded as if to affirm his own statement.
'... he's seriously weird in teacher mode...'
"You also need to understand that perception isn't limited at all to what is energy-related or to your basic perception, but that'll be for much later. For now, what's going to interest us is the senses."
"Forget about the five basic human senses, they're of course going to be useful to you, they're even going to be the ones that are most useful to you, but limiting yourself to just the five basic senses is completely idiotic."
'... limit myself to just the five senses?'
Don't humans only have five senses?
This question was surely visible on Milo and Liu's faces.
"Fundamentally humans only have five senses, five physical senses. But then, what is fundamental, what you think is real and what you believe to be true... isn't always the solution. Why not invent yourself a sixth sense? if it allows me to perceive energy in another form and thus increases my possibilities, what's the harm in doing something like that?"
'... is that even possible?'
Despite the logic behind Lumian's arguments, Liu couldn't really bring herself to believe it.
"For example, we separated perceptions into physical and mental. And Liu talked about emotions for mental perception. So of course you can invent an emotional sense, or even an emotional perception. Anyway, you'll need to do it to become stronger and to succeed at the daily missions I'll give you."
'... so I really had said something logical and possible?...'
Lumian's explanations were starting to go a bit too far for Liu, she had already thought a lot and adding everything that had happened, she wasn't really sure anymore whether she understood what was being explained to her or not.
But Lumian continued:
"Whether it's senses or perceptions, you can invent as many as you want, as long as you have the imagination and the ability to."
"Then you obviously need to watch out for an overly large influx of information. Using two perceptions at the same time isn't really a good idea, even if it can be useful, it's also super dangerous. And although using several senses at once to complexify a perception is more feasible, it can also quickly become dangerous."
And finally, Lumian stopped...
"Hum..."
'No!'
"...one last thing."
... or not.
'Does he ever stop?'
"Basically what you need to remember from all this, is that imagination is one of the most important things to work on to become stronger. And it's one of the things we're going to focus on during your training."
He finally left his tree and straightened up. Making Liu and Milo raise their eyes a bit more.
"Alright that's all for this morning, now you can take a break, and after that we'll need to make food since I haven't done anything."
He finished while heading toward the carriage, opening the door and disappearing inside.
'.....'
Silence set in, both in Liu's thoughts, and on Milo's face...
"....."
Until...
Mrunch... munchh...
'Huh...?'
... a chewing sound made itself known right next to Liu's ears.
She turned around abruptly, only to catch a glimpse of...
'... my hair!!'
... Patrick, trying to eat her hair...
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First, you must learn to learn...
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