Suzuki Sensei was standing just outside the front of the building when I ran out in a hurry. I couldn't tell if he had been waiting for me a while or not. He just nodded and gestured for me to follow him.
I knew we were likely going quite a distance away so that I could get out of the range of Fuki's sensitivity, and so that I could give my report without worry of my emotions leaking. It wasn't anything special or to be nervous about exactly. It should just be that I would be told off, perhaps punished a little and then brought back. They weren't likely to do too much to me due to Shigure's participation in the missions they gave him. In a way, I was being used as a hostage.
That thought only made my mood drop lower. Not only had I forgotten all the academics and studies, I was pretty much useless on the field without Shigure there to guide me and I couldn't control my emotions well enough to not influence a young and unstable ability user like Fuki. I had thought I had gotten over this. Grown past this. Was I destined to become a failure and weakling for the rest of my life?
I felt bad that I had made Fuki worried and been the cause of her losing control. The guilt squirmed in my gut. I hoped the scolding I would receive would not be too harsh or short and that the punishment would not be too painful.
I followed Suzuki Sensei to take the train and he held onto my train card for me. After changing lines three times, we ended up on a train out into the country. I saw farms and green fields. Trees and small lakes - or perhaps those were rice paddy? I wasn't sure. Seeing this open land reminded me somewhat of home and the tension I had felt from being trapped in an urban jungle of the city gradually fell away. Out here, closer to nature, I could vaguely sense the spirits of the land taking note of me, a foreigner, intruding upon their territory. Some spirits were hostile but most seemed sleepy and derisive. Only a few watched me with quiet wariness, as if afraid of what my presence meant.
Seeing as I did nothing but sitting on the train, most spirits of the land eventually ignored me. There wasn't much I could do on a train that was passing by anyway.
The train was relatively smooth and stable, making me feel sleepy. My eyelids drooped and I wondered what Suzuki Sensei saw. He had been watching me from the corner of his eye all this time, barely saying anything but a few polite words. Every now and then, he had pointed out famous landmarks and talked about relevant history or cultural history.
Seeing as I had not been anywhere besides Shigure's family home, the mountain above which the clan village was built, the hospital and the building complex in which I was now living, I should have been more curious, but I was more wrapped up in my own misery. I needed to be stricter with myself. Both in training my physical strength to get back in shape, and in improving control of all my abilities. And that was besides head knowledge and basic things like maths.
That was a lot of training to do. I had to redevelop my jumping and leaping strength and power. Who knew when I would next need it to escape from danger? I had to improve my bone, joint stability and muscle strength for my super strength ability so that I wouldn't accidentally injure myself if I had to use those abilities next time. Muscle control and activation would be important as well, so that if I was caught off guard while midair, I would at least have some means with which to dodge danger.
I had to retrain my self-defence and fighting techniques, because if I was targeted again, I wanted to be able to protect myself. It was highly likely that I would be targeted some time again in the future. Especially since I had that dangerous passive ability that allowed others who used and abused me to gain more abilities or strengthen their current abilities. Just thinking of that made me shudder. Was there a way to get rid of that ability altogether? If anyone found out about that ability, Shigure would be in mortal danger. They'd get rid of him to get to me.
I tore my mind from those darker thoughts with great effort.
There was my translation and interpretation ability. Things had been rather spotty there lately, where I had gotten languages confused and been unable to tell what language I was speaking or writing in. Then there was my ability to tap into various channels of communication and to allow people to hold conferences in my head so that they could understand each other better. There was my ability to extend the range - usually of mental type abilities - to enable them to reach or hear further. I needed to improve my capacity to improve the quality and number of people who could borrow my mind to converse. And this was where my mental abilities blurred together with this because emotions and spoken language all seemed to be categorised as different languages according to my brain. Emotions were a type of language. Which I felt quite interesting.
The way animals and wild creatures spoke wasn't entirely with emotions but it was similar and like a different wavelength, because it included body language, scents and various other factors. It was difficult to explain. Also, every creature communicated in a different manner, like aquatic creatures, birds, mammals and reptiles. Just trying to sort through it all required more brain power than I could be bothered with.
Then there were my telepathic and telekinetic type powers. Mental abilities required me to learn to improve the shaping and shielding of my thoughts and emotions and that wasn't even touching on sensing, probing or attacking things outside of my mind. I hadn't figured out how telekinesis worked properly yet. It was like doing acrobatics with my mind, but seemed related to mental shields and attacks, in that mental power had to be shaped to become more tangible and able to manifest in the physical.
Then there was healing, soul power and spiritual power type abilities. I had barely touched on those.
Then there was the inherited legacy and words of power as a tribal judge. Not that the tribes were around anymore…
Now that I thought it it, did I have too many abilities?
Thinking of all the hings I needed to do, relearn and train made me feel dizzy and tired. Thinking about it all also hovered on the border of those old memories. Although the Creator Father and Shigure had helped me file those away, it was very easy for those old memories to jump back out of their files when triggered. Mental trauma couldn't be healed in a split second. A person could only overcome and grow stronger from them after learning to find a way to accept and deal with the memories. While I could now remember those memories without getting sucked back into them and my mind had purposely 'forgotten' some of the worst of them, it didn't mean I could live as if those events had never happened.
Now as I slept, although I didn't dream as intensely and vividly as I used to, I still had to fight to break free of that cloying fear and that sticky sense of being trapped. Being forced to bend to another person's will. Flashes of my assailants of the years took turns being the dark figure pressing me down. My throat was being slowly squeezed shut by a sadistic hand and cold laughter filled my ears. I tensed with the expectation of what was going to happen to me next, awaiting the sharp blows of pain and reeling sense of losing any and all control.
My mind began to shut down as my vision spotted. Tears dripped from the swollen corners of my eyes, making existing wounds sting. I could feel the burning pain in various areas. My shoulders had been dislocated again so that I couldn't fight back with my arms. The skin around my ankles had been rubbed raw to the point of festering from my shackles.
I just wanted to die. And yet I didn't. I couldn't. I had to fight to survive. I had to keep living no matter what. Even if it was to spite all the enemies who had come at me since childhood.
With that thought of my childhood, I was brought back in my dream to the funeral of the great aunt who used to be kind to me. Another elder with a sharp beaked nose held me down, gripping my jaw with her sharp, bony claws, forcing me to drink poison.
"You rag of misfortune," she snarled. "Because of you, she's dead. Because of an ill-bred and unlucky clod of toe dirt like you, my sister is dead."
It hadn't been my fault. It hadn't.
But all my cries and protests fell on deaf ears while other tribal elders looked on with icy gazes.
It hadn't been me. She had been sick. The elder who professed to be her half-brother and confidante had poisoned her to death because she refused to tell him the secret he wanted to know after he had discovered she was dying. I had been framed.
It wasn't me. It wasn't me…