For a while, neither of us said anything. Akira stared at me, and I stared at Akira. Both my heart and my mind raced.
He saw me! I thought, panicking. He saw me. He saw me. He saw me!
I broke out in nervous sweat.
What should I do? I wondered. What should I say to him? I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I was always bad at thinking up things on the fly.
And then, I heard something behind me that nearly gave me a heart attack.
"Oh? What's this?"
I abruptly turned around and saw Isaneko standing a few feet away, looking at us. She asked me, "Oota, why are you sitting in the middle of the hallway?"
A squeak of terror escaped my throat. I think I mentioned before but despite how she looks, Isaneko had the heart of a wicked witch.
A foreboding shadow was cast over her face as she rolled her eyes from me to Akira. Her lips curled up into a really scary smile.
"You know, on my way here, I saw Yamimura stomping by," she said. "You two wouldn't happen to see what that was about, do you? Did he, maybe, have a fight with someone? Did you see? What about you, Akira?"
Akira shivered and shrank from Isaneko's gaze, as if he could sense her evil aura. Seeing that, I thought he had good instincts. He shook his head, "no," furiously.
"Oh?" Isaneko said in a low voice. "You know, I felt a little electric charge against my skin just a few seconds before. It sort of felt like someone used some kind of superpower or something. But that's impossible, right Yasahonou? I mean, superpowers don't exist, right Yasahonou? You didn't see anyone use their superpowers, did you Yasahonou?"
Each time she spoke Akira's name, Isaneko's voice rose a little and she took a step towards him.
Akira let out a little shriek and backed away in fright.
"I-I didn't see anything! I didn't see anything!" he spoke shrilly. "I promise I won't tell anyone!"
"Oh?" Isaneko said. She was right up Akira's face now, smiling crazily at him. "And why would you say that?"
"Huh?" went Akira.
"Why would you say you won't tell anyone?" Isaneko asked. "Tell anyone what, exactly?"
"Oh, crap," Akira said.
Isaneko cackled evilly.
“So you did see something,” she said. “Something you shouldn’t have. Maybe something impossible like this.”
As she spoke, she pulled out a pencil case and flicked it open with her thumb. She raised her free hand and the pens and pencils all flew out of the case, orbited around her once and then aimed their points at Akira’s face, which grew very, very pale. He swallowed hard as the pointy pens and pencils floated just a few inches from his eyes.
I was simply speechless. Surely, Isaneko wasn’t going to do what I think she was going to do, I thought. No way. But when the pens and pencils slowly inched closer to Akira’s eyes, I had to cry out, “Wait, Isaneko! What are you planning to do?”
Isaneko barely glanced at me when she replied, “What do you think I’m planning to do? He saw something he shouldn’t have. You know we can’t let him get away with that.”
She wagged a finger, and one pen pressed itself against Akira’s throat.
I cried out, “B-but then - !” But Isaneko cut me off.
“Juuust kidding,” she sang. She lowered her hand and the pens and pencils all flew back into her pencil case. Her smile became small and elegant, but no less evil, as she said, “I won’t do anything. It was just a joke.”
“J-Just a joke!?” Akira said rather shrilly. “That wasn’t funny! I really thought you were going to kill me!”
“Oh, I would never go that far,” said Isaneko. “The most I would do is hire an enforcer to stalk you every waking moment of your life.”
“That’s just as terrifying!” Akira snapped. “Can you even do that?”
Well, Isaneko is the princess of a shady, borderline legal cult, I thought. She and Mirai had confessed a couple of weeks ago that all the club members had been signed on as members of a cult started by her mom. But since nothing has happened since then, I started to wonder if maybe they were joking. Isaneko’s sense of humor, as you clearly saw, wasn’t exactly something most people would get.
Instead of giving a straight answer, Isaneko just kept her small, evil smile and said, “Who knows?”
But then her smile disappeared and she became all business.
“All jokes aside, though,” she said, “this is incredibly serious. Real psychic powers are supposed to be kept secret. We can’t just let any normal person know they’re real.”
“Can’t you just give him powers like you did me?” I said. “Then he’d be one of us.”
“That was really a one-time only deal,” Isaneko said. “We only gave you powers because we needed one more person to open the club. And making a new psychics takes resources, which we don’t have a lot of. And even if we could, we can’t just give just anyone psychic powers all willy-nilly. There’s no telling what kind of chaos would follow. You should know best that there are people out there who cannot be trusted with powers, like the Piper for example.”
I fell quiet at the mention of the Piper’s name. It had turned out that infamous serial killer also had psychic powers. He was psychokinetic like me, and he used that power to make a soundproof box around himself and his victim so that his victims couldn’t escape or get help. I was lucky to slip into that box before it closed to rescue Omoyo.
“Uh . . .” went Akira. “I don’t really get everything you guys are talking about, but basically you don’t trust me to keep your secret that you have superpowers, right?”
“That’s the gist of it,” Isaneko said.
“In that case, let me show you my secret,” Akira said. He raised his hand in front of him for us to see. In the blink of an eye, it became covered in black fur. And then, just as fast as it appeared, the fur disappeared.
Both Isaneko and I looked at his hand in amazement.
“Well, this is a surprise,” Isaneko muttered.
“You have powers too!?” I cried out.
Akira nodded.
“We should take this talk to the club room,” Isaneko said. “It may be summer holiday now, but there are still students like us roaming the school because of clubs and remedial lessons. The others also need to know about this.”
“Okay, got it,” I said. “Is that okay, Akira?”
Akira glanced nervously at Isaneko and then nodded.
“It’s not like you’re going to give me any choice,” he said, mostly talking to Isaneko.
So, we led him back to the clubroom where Yuna, Omoyo and Mirai waited. Yuna and Omoyo were a bit surprised to see Akira and even more surprised (and worried) when they heard what happened. Their surprise reached max levels when Akira showed his power to them. Mirai, however, didn’t bat an eye, as if he already knew what happened before we even came inside the room. With his power to see the future, he must have already seen everything for himself.
“So, all of you have powers?” Akira asked.
“Indeed!” Mirai shouted. “I am the Demon Overlord with the All-Seeing Eye, superior to even Odin’s. To my right is my general, Homura Omoyo, who none can hide their hearts from. And to my left is the great huntress that no prey can escape from, Yuna!”
“Uh . . .” Akira glanced my way.
With a sigh, I said, “Putting aside Mirai’s painfully embarrassing delusion-filled speech, basically, he can see into the future. Omoyo can tell what other people are feeling, like if they’re sad or stuff like that. And Yuna’s like a human GPS tracker for people.”
For some reason, Yuna scowled. I wasn’t sure why she looked so grumpy.
Mirai also wasn’t happy with the way I explained things and said, “What do you mean by painfully embarrassing? It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
To which, Omoyo responded, “Yes, it was that bad. I get embarrassed every time you act like that.”
“By the way, Akira,” I said, “since you have powers, does that mean Mr. and Mrs. Sakamoto have powers too?”
Akira shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “No one, not Grandma, Grandpa, Mom or Dad ever told me about them. Before coming to this town I didn’t even know superpowers were real. Out of the blue, on the first night of my stay with Grandma and Grandpa, I suddenly changed into a wolf man.”
“Well, while not plenty, there are psychics out there who were born to normal families with no history of powers,” said Isaneko. “Although this is my first time seeing a shapeshifter. I didn’t know such a power even existed. Did you, Mirai?”
“I have, actually,” Mirai said. “My dad worked with some shapeshifters, but . . .”
He had an unusually serious frown on his face, and it got me kind of worried.
“But what?” Akira asked.
“I-it’s nothing,” Mirai said. “Forget it. Anyway, since you only discovered the existence of special powers a few days ago, you probably don’t know about the community.”
Akira blinked. “Community? You mean there’s a whole community of people with powers like us?”
“Indubly,” Mirai said proudly.
Isaneko interjected, “I think the word you’re looking for is indubitably. But yes, there is a community for people with powers like us. There are plenty of different groups, gangs and organizations with genuine psychics and superpowered people. Some of the biggest groups in Japan, with ties to the government, have their headquarters here in this town, which is why it’s sometimes called the capital city of Japan’s psychics. Some of those groups have a bit of a feud going on right now.”
“Are you okay?” Yuna asked through her phone. “I know that it must be a lot to take in.”
“You’re telling me,” Akira said. “So uh . . . why are you typing in your phone and using that to talk?”
He became flustered when Yuna lowered her phone.
“Oh! Uh . . . Y-you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he stammered. Despite the way he dresses, he was a really upstanding guy, if not a little insensitive.
But Yuna quickly replied, “It’s okay. I don’t mind. It’s just, I lost my voice about a year ago, so I’ve been mute since. But I can still communicate just fine with my phone or by writing.”
A year ago. That would be about the time that Yuna’s mom passed away, I thought. We never talked about it, and my parents never made any mention of it, but by now I had a general idea about what happened. She seemed okay now, but there was really no telling what Yuna was really feeling inside. Omoyo might have an idea, but I doubt she would ever say anything about it without Yuna’s permission. The two of them had become really close since the Piper case.
“By the way,” Akira said, breaking me out of my thoughts. “You mentioned something about a feud. Is that what that fight was over? You know between those two guys. I think you called one of them Yamimura?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I forgot to mention, but I think Shikouyama said something about rumors.”
Omoyo groaned.
“So that idiot’s acting up again,” she said. “But what rumors are you talking about?”
I shrugged showing I didn’t know, but Mirai said, “It’s no big secret. You all know about the fires cropping up all over town lately, right?”
“Of course,” I said. Some of them happened in my neighborhood after all.
Mirai said, “Someone on the internet’s blaming it on the Yamimura family and people close to them. There’s no proof of it, of course. But that’s not stopping people like Shikouyama from flying off their handle. And the Yamimura family and their supporters aren’t just going to ignore those accusations. Plenty of fighting is going on in cyberspace with finger pointing, name calling and violent threats.”
“Things that are really not needed right now,” Omoyo grumbled. “The town’s still trying to get over the tension from the whole Piper thing. I don’t even want to think what could happen if the fires keep going on.”
“Well, putting all that depressing stuff aside,” said Mirai. He pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen, and handed them over to Akira. “Please sign over here.”
Akira looked through the paper before holding it up to ask, “What’s this?”
“A club application form, of course,” Mirai said.
Akira looked at him and asked, “And you want me to sign this, why?”
With a smile, Mirai said, “You didn’t really think we would just let you go after everything that has happened, did you?”
Isaneko added, “Just so you know, we are not going to take no for an answer.”
Poor Akira looked from Mirai to Isaneko and then to me with a hesitant gaze, but Mirai and Isaneko just kept smiling while I looked away. Then, with resignation, Akira sighed and filled out the form.
And that was how our club got a new member.
After that, we got to hang out in the clubroom doing our own thing, putting the fight and all that other gloomy stuff behind us. It seemed like the day would end without anymore trouble, but life had one more thing to throw at us.
When the day was over and it was time to go home, we all went over to the shoe lockers. I was in the middle of slipping my toes into my black sneakers when I overheard Omoyo say, "Huh? What's that you got there, Yuna? Some kind of letter?"
After a short pause, she suddenly shouted, "What the hell is this!?"
I abruptly turned around and rushed to the girls.
"What is it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"
Huddled together, the girls all looked up at the sound of my voice. In Yuna's hand was a piece of paper that looked like a photograph. That photo was a picture of Yuna, herself. But written over her face in red marker was the word for "Curse".
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