Am I normal? Honestly, what kind of question is that? What is "normal," anyway? Shut up, I know what it means, I'm just being philanthropical! Then again, I guess if somebody actually did ask me such a dumb question, I'd probably answer "Yes, of course I'm normal." I mean, what other response is there to that kind of question? If I were to say "no" they'd think I was some crazy psycho killer or something, right? Besides, I figure I'm a pretty normal guy anyway. Sure, I was raised by a dwarf, but other than that, there's nothing strange about me, right?
That's what I always thought anyway, but most people in the village didn't seem to agree. In school I was always the odd man out, even in stuff I was good at, like P.E. and Art. And on top of that, I was horrible at everything else.
I started to wonder why I was so different. Was it simply because I wasn't from the village? Or because my father was a dwarf? Maybe people thought I was weird because I lived in the forest and had to walk to school everyday. Or maybe it was because I thought up a bunch of weird ideas? That had to be it.
I was often scolded by my teacher, Raine, and my father, Dirk, for telling my classmates weird stories. There was some other stuff I did that got me in trouble, too (like skipping class, burning required reading, etc.), but that's not really related. Anyway, the stories I would tell my classmates usually involved Exspheres, dimensional sliders, ninjas, angels, and other crazy stuff like that. Dirk called it "a bad influence" and Raine called it "annoying."
It was my dream to rush into a room full of Desians and thrash them all with my twin blades! I wanted to rescue princesses from tall towers and fly away with angel wings! And even if I couldn't be the one doing all that stuff, if someone in my class happened to have superpowers or something, I could just tag along and be their flunky sidekick! Anything would be better than the boring life I had.
Sadly, reality is surprisingly cruel. No matter how hard I trained, I couldn't even slice our training post in half with a wooden sword ("It's a sword, so why won't it cut wood!?"). None of my classmates turned out to be angels or anything, even though I was sure at least one of them would be. I didn't even find anything special at the Martel Temple when I snuck in there instead of going to class.
So by the time I turned sixteen, I had trained myself to just forget about the Exspheres, dimensional sliders, ninjas, angels, and whatnot. After all, here in Sylvarant most of that stuff doesn't even exist! And even the stuff that does won't trigger some amazing supernatural event.
So from then on, I could definitely call myself a "normal" sixteen-year-old boy, no matter what standards you're using to judge that. Well, that is, I was normal. But that was before I met Haruhi Suzumiya.
