Exploring the Gateway

He walked out of the classroom, once again thinking about Alice. The moment he exited it, his thoughts were interrupted by a popup.

Psychic Connection level task completed: Psychic Connection levelled up

After John had looked at the popup, he noticed it now mentioned Arcane magic. He wondered what that meant. Eventually, he concluded it could mean that it was a type of pure or unfiltered magic, given how it was usually used. At least in the video games John tended to play.

Later, while walking down one of the hallways, which was strangely empty, he noticed something glinting in the corner of his eye. Unsure of what it was, he turned around to find it. But when he looked, there was nothing there. Somehow, the space behind him was as empty as before. Sure that it was just his imagination, he continued walking down the hallways in the direction of the arts and crafts classroom.

A few minutes later, John reached the arts and crafts classroom. When John entered the classroom, he first noticed Alice sitting at one of the tables placed in the back of the class. Strangely, most of the tables around her were not occupied. John caught Alice nervously glancing around the classroom, and went to sit down next to her in short order.

“Hey, I know you were angry earlier. It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but could we continue the conversation from the bus?” John asked, not entirely fine with her seeming desire to hide her feelings. Alice, her face showing neither anger nor any other emotion, responded with a simple nod.

“I know we sort of talked about this earlier, but I wanted to ask you. How did you manage to get through these last three years? You know I buried myself in video games and just tried my best to ignore it, but what did you do?” John asked. His voice once again shaking slightly, although it was nowhere near how it did before. Saying it all quietly, hoping the rest of the class wouldn’t notice or care about their conversation/

“Honestly, I didn't manage it. I spent the last few years just hoping that I would find a way to feel normal again, and I never did. Every morning, I wanted something to change. I had wished for so long that you had sat next to me one day and told me you felt the same. That it was a mistake to ever stop talking in the first place. I wished that something would change about my life. Just to break me out of that vicious cycle. If I didn’t bury myself in studying towards my degree, I wouldn't have been able to survive it,” she answered, her voice cracking under the feelings she had expressed, and failed in the attempt to hide. Even though she didn't know this, her feelings were much the same as John's.

The first thing John thought to do was hug Alice, and so he did, in an attempt to comfort her. They hugged for what was probably only a few seconds but seemed to them like it had been hours. The two of them did so silently, not because they did not want to speak to one another, but because they relished each other's company above all. After all, that was the thing they had both had missed the most these past three years. They continued to do so, seemingly uncaring about anything else around them, until they were interrupted by the sudden entrance of the teacher into the classroom. That was not before John could whisper a promise into Alice's ear, however.

“As long as I can be with you, I promise you won't be alone again. Not like how we both were the last three years. I won't make the same mistakes I made back then,” John whispered, his voice portraying both feelings of guilt, and his attempt to comfort Alice. He broke the hug only a moment later, placing his hand on hers.

The class started only a moment after the hug ended. It began with the teacher instructing the students to start a new project today, asking them to draw an animal or person. From either memory or a simple reference. John thought for a moment about what he should draw, and decided when he looked at the person sitting next to him. He said nothing, however, beginning his work in silence.

During the rest of the class, both of them worked hard on their drawings, while occasionally talking to each other about various topics. John was working on a drawing of Alice. He got the idea for it when he looked at her, wanting to capture how he saw her. Alice, on the other hand, was drawing a bird. A bird John could not yet recognize but was actually an owl. Alice was too focused on drawing the owl to look at what John was drawing, so she did not notice when her face had slowly formed on his canvas. She did not realize when he put her skinny frame to it, nor did she see him when he was drawing her neck length brown hair. Long strokes of pencils filled in her green eyes, a sort of longing to them that was just as could be seen in hers. He added blush to her cheeks, just like she would have if he had told her he was making that drawing. John recreated her through his eyes meticulously and with great effort. Simply because he wanted to do so. Not because of any greater interest or thought, but because what he had put on the canvas motivated him in itself. He always loved drawing, and this was as good a subject for his skill as he could get.

For a moment, John considered not showing the drawing to Alice, worried his feelings would not come across the way he had intended them to. Then he remembered his powers and that he might be able to judge whether that would happen by a simple use of Observe and so decided to use it on the drawing before he gave it to Alice.

What he saw surprised him in a few ways. According to the popup, he had apparently enchanted the drawing.

‘It would make her more accepting of my advances?’ John wondered what that really meant. He wondered if it would even be moral to give her something like that. Maybe it was that all gifts now worked this way, but he had a feeling that was not the case. He was unsurprised, however, when he saw another popup.

New skill: Enchant

That popup told John that he could now infuse magic into objects, although how he would do that exactly was still unknown to him. He wondered once again what it meant by Psychic magic, but he now knew that his feelings or what they infused into the drawing, had counted as such. That still left some doubt as to what the classification actually meant, however, and John also wondered how exactly he had infused magic into an object without his intention. Concluding that placing his entire focus onto the drawing must have caused him to infuse it without noticing. It was easy from there to tell what he would have to do if he ever wanted to enchant again.

At the same time, Alice finished her drawing of the owl. It had now been colored white, and it looked to John to be a snowy owl, though it had some fantastical differences. After she had completed it, she decided to look over to John's drawing.

Once John wasn’t distracted by the popup and his own thoughts, he noticed Alice looking at his drawing over his shoulder. Looking over at her, he saw she began blushing wildly, in just the same way as John had drawn her.

“That is really beautiful,” was the only thing she could blurt out, her voice conveying both sweetness and surprise, before she reached over to hug John tightly, “thank you," she whispered in his ear, breaking the hug off only a few seconds after it had started. Luckily needing to say nothing else as the bell rang and ended the class.

“I’ll see you at lunchtime,” Alice said, taking the drawing and quickly exiting the classroom, still blushing wildly and seemingly understanding John's intention to give it to her without a word. For a minute, John thought about going after her but decided against doing so, seeing how embarrassed she was right nowt. So he only got up to get to his next class, which was Psychology.

Walking through the halls of the school, he noticed they were strangely full. He also noticed a group of people that were seemingly surrounding a specific spot. He couldn’t see what it was that they were standing around exactly, but he could guess. It was very likely that Brad was once again beating up one kid or another, as he usually did. John attempted to find out if he was correct, he pushed through a part of the crowd and was able to see Brad repeatedly punching a kid John did not recognize. John would usually intervene, either by attempting to stop Brad or taking the beating himself, mostly because he knew he could endure much more of that than most of the other students. After all, he was used to it. This time, however, he thought of a better way, and he didn’t hesitate from the possible consequences. A way he had to at least attempt. Like before, he used Psychic Connection but this time he focused his thoughts on Brad.

A second later he felt himself touching Brad’s mind, or rather, falling into it. He found himself sinking in something. He was in the middle of a giant ocean. It was not a calm ocean, the water around him was like a storm. The storm seemed to have a purpose, as if acting on the command of some unknown force. The ocean, with its leviathans and krakens appearing from beneath the waves, told John what that purpose had been. The purpose to destroy, to kill, to hate. He swam towards some unknown object in the far distance, struggling against the waves and monsters that littered the ocean, while not even knowing why he was swimming towards that thing. Until he realized he was searching for something that was not yet more sea. He was searching for an island. It was a small island. On the island were only a few things, a small palm tree from which a monkey was hanging, and another four monkeys who were strangely scattered around it. Finally reaching the island, John tried to approach the monkey on the tree only for it to run away from him, seemingly afraid. Having failed in the attempt to approach the monkey on the tree, he approached the others. One offered him a banana, showing a sad face. Another was humping the ground, ignoring John entirely. A third moved around John, trying to look into his pockets as if attempting to steal something. The fourth, who also ignored John, looked longingly into the ocean as if waiting for some lost love.

John was confused but somehow he still knew what to do. He took the banana, and not even a second later the monkey who stood in front of him was now a man. When John looked at the man, he couldn't recognize him, but it reminded him of someone he knew. Then, he suddenly found himself falling out of Brad's mind and back into his own, and when his sight returned to him a moment later, he noticed another popup.

Reinforce Emotion succeeded: target’s regret increased by 10%

From that popup, he knew he had succeeded in his goal. That was only confirmed by the crowd dispersing a few seconds later. In the chaos that the dispersal caused, John saw the strangest image he had ever witnessed. Brad's giant frame had seemingly buckled under some unseen force, and he had dropped to his knees. Meanwhile, his face had turned into a mess of tears, and Tiffany had begun shouting various obscenities at him. The kid that Brad was beating up had now seemingly disappeared. Having escaped with the dispersing crowd. Quickly, John also escaped, not wanting to get involved or be used as fodder to cheer up Tiffany. A minute later, once she had stopped shouting, he was already too far away to hear her.

John was utterly shocked by how much the ability had affected Brad, and while he was happy that he had stopped the kid from getting a beating, he began worrying that there might be long-term consequences. Although the possibility that Brad would be less willing to beat anyone up again in the future appealed to him. Something that he was almost angry at himself for admitting. Deciding to think more about this later, John quickly walked to the Psychology classroom.

It was time for Psychology 101