Chapter Four: Ready Or Not, Here He Comes

"Yes, your transformation will be hard. Yes, you will feel frightened, messed up and knocked down. Yes, you'll want to stop. Yes, it's the best work you'll ever do."

-Robin Sharma

Makoto had arrived at the address he'd typed into his phone, all he had to do now was muster the willpower needed to go in.

To the surprise of no one, classes had been canceled for the day, leaving Makoto without much to do. He'd surmised that going to the location he'd been given the second that had happened was a bad idea, so he'd milled around the grounds for a while. Around noon, he'd gone to a nearby convenience store to buy a quick snack and get directions to a bus line that went to Haramihama.

Based on the directions the cashier had given him, he'd walked about half a mile to a bus stop and hopped on the first one that stopped for him. Thankfully, the bus was mostly empty the whole ride, but even then Makoto didn't want to stay on the bus any longer than he had to- the crowded, dirty place had a tendency to make him feel uncomfortable.

Thus, he'd gotten off at a stop at a random point in Haramihama, then consulted his phone again to figure out how close he was. After about another mile and a half of walking, he'd reached his destination.

He'd expected somewhere abandoned, or at least somewhat secluded. Instead, he was staring at the inside of a bustling restaurant named "Summer Radish." The name was prominently displayed in multiple places, with the 'a' in 'Radish' replaced by what was presumably supposed to be a radish. Based on both the noise and the number of people he saw inside, the probability of there being an open table wasn't zero, but it was lower than he would have liked.

Aside from himself, the only person standing outside the restaurant was a twentysomething guy in a uniform who probably worked there. Taking a deep breath, Makoto steeled his nerves and walked up to him.

He looked down at Makoto (not on purpose, he was just significantly taller), saying, "Can I help you?"

"I just have two questions," Makoto said. "One, is Mikuru Asahina on her shift?"

The guy froze up for several seconds like he had no idea how to answer that. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"No, it's not," Makoto said, a hint of desperation in his voice. This was already going badly- he'd have to pull out Plan B. "And two, can I get a table?"

The man's expression didn't change, but at the very least, he seemed to take Makoto a little more seriously now that he'd said that. "Let me check if there's one available." With that, he disappeared inside the restaurant.

It didn't take long for him to come back out. "There's a space near the back for you, just follow me." This time, as the man re-entered the restaurant, Makoto followed.

As he was led to his table, Makoto took a moment to examine the place. It looked somewhat ordinary- a bar with a row of stools near the front of the room and a handful of tables scattered throughout the rest, most seats occupied. Two painted doors- one blue, one pink- appeared to lead to bathrooms for either gender. The walls were painted a light brown, except for the areas covered by a handful of simplistic paintings. Nothing about the place really stood out yet, which was both a blessing and a curse.

"Your table is right here, sir, and a waiter will be with you shortly," the man in front of Makoto said, pointing to a table for two set in the back corner of the restaurant with only one menu at it. Makoto sat down and the man quickly left.

Makoto quickly flipped through the menu as if he expected Third Eye to have planted a secret code in there somewhere, but it didn't appear to be that way. There were no oddly-colored letters, no errant marks, no nothing. The menu just looked like, well, a menu.

Therefore, the first sign that the things Third Eye had said to him were true came when the waitress arrived. She wasn't in a ridiculous outfit like he'd been semi-expecting her to be, but he still noticed two things about her. One, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Third Eye, and two, Makoto swore he recognized her from somewhere else, although where that somewhere else was he couldn't remember.

"Hello there, sir! My name's Sekai, and I'll be your waitress this afternoon. What can I get you?"

Makoto wasn't quite prepared for that, so he gave the simplest answer he could think of. "Could I just get some water for now, please?"

"Sure thing," Sekai said, before darting back towards the kitchen to get it. Thus, Makoto had a brief period to try and figure out the connection he had to this girl. After a few seconds, he came up with a handful of vague memories of her being in his class, although the two of them had never been close or even really talked. (After the first few weeks of school, most of his female classmates had tried to sit as far away from Taisuke as possible, which didn't help either.)

It didn't take all that long for Sekai to get back with his water. She brought him a glass, then quickly poured him some from a pitcher before dropping a piece of paper onto the table.

"Sorry, sir, but we're out of coasters. You'll have to make do with that for now," she said before disappearing back into the kitchen.

Makoto didn't question whether or not they were actually out of coasters. However, he did flip over the paper just to make sure he wasn't missing anything, which revealed a hastily-scribbled message in what was probably waterproof ink. The message read, "My first shift ends in about half an hour, then I've got a break. Just hang around here until then, and I'll bring you where you need to go."

Trying to act natural (and hoping that no one else had tried to read the message) Makoto flipped the paper back over before setting his cup down on it, occasionally lifting it to take a drink. When he'd gotten the glass to half-empty, Sekai came back to his table, asking him if he was thinking about ordering some food.

Makoto hadn't started the day with a lot of money to begin with, and the convenience-store snacks, bus ride, and water had dealt a vicious hit to his wallet. He quickly checked to see how much he had left and realized he had just enough to get a cheap appetizer. He'd be broke after he ordered it, but if it gave him a reason to stay on the premises longer, he was taking it.

"Could I get some cheese and crackers, please?"

"You got it, sir. Coming right up," Sekai responded. Then, she scribbled the order down onto a notepad she'd been carrying, ripped that page out, then stuck it on a magnetic board (alongside several others) for the kitchen staff to see.

Fortunately, because the restaurant was busy due to the lunch rush, his order took a few minutes to come out. Once he'd gotten it, he ate everything as slowly as possible, watching the clock on the wall all the while. By the time he'd cleaned his plate, almost the entire half-hour had passed.

Shortly afterward, Sekai returned to the table to ask if he wanted anything else, and Makoto declined, instead asking for the bill. Thankfully, that wasn't a difficult process: he took just about everything out of his wallet, put in in the bill, stood up, and handed it to the man who'd escorted him to his table.

He didn't want to just hang around the restaurant, because that'd probably look suspicious. So, he decided to take a walk around the block. If he had to do it too many times, the guy waiting in front of the restaurant would probably catch on, but Makoto shrugged off this possibility as being too unlikely.

Without another word, he set off, preparing to wait out the clock.

When he came back, Sekai was waiting out front alongside the host, clutching a purse.

"There you are. I was wondering where you'd run off to," Sekai said. "Now come on, let's go. I only have an hour before my next shift starts and I don't want to waste it all getting you set up."

"Okay, got it," Makoto said. "Wait, I saw the host go into the kitchen, what the hell did he say to you that tipped you off?"

"He just told me some idiot teenager out front asked him about a nonexistent person. That was enough verification for me." Sekai turned away after that, getting started on the trip to wherever her destination was.

She moved quickly, forcing Makoto into a jog to keep up. Not hesitating for a single moment, the girl hurried down two blocks, whipped around a corner, then made it halfway down another block before stopping in front of what looked like a somewhat ordinary building.

"It's in here," Sekai said as she opened the front door. She stepped inside, and Makoto quickly followed. To his surprise, instead of somewhere abandoned or at least empty, it appeared to be the lobby of a fairly normal apartment building. It even had a receptionist that, upon noticing the two of them had entered, said, "Welcome back, Sekai."

"Nice to see you again, Yuuta," she replied, before exiting the room and moving over near the elevators. However, instead of pushing the button, she produced a key from her purse and used it to open a nondescript door before beckoning for Makoto to follow her. He did, and when Makoto closed the door behind him, he was treated to the sight of a relatively bare room with a cement floor. The only things of note were two washing machines, two dryers, and something enormous next to the dryers that Makoto couldn't identify.

"You're going to have to get in that," Sekai said, pointing at the unidentifiable machine in the corner.

"Wait," Makoto said. "Before we go any further, what the heck is that thing going to do to me?"

"In all honesty, I'm not 100% sure, because I don't have any of the notes on how the machine works. Long story short, it'll activate whatever your power is. Only problem is it's kind of painful."

At the mere mention of the word "painful," Makoto shifted to stalling tactics even though he still knew he had to get in. "Is that thing soundproof? Sorry, I'm kind of a screamer."

"Not completely, but it's close enough that we should be fine. Otherwise, there was no way the management would have allowed it in here," Sekai said.

"You know the management here?"

"Of course, silly, I live here," Sekai responded. "We were originally going to put this in my apartment, but my mom was not on board with the idea. Also, it being too big to fit in the elevator didn't help."

"Geez," Makoto said, "it must be heavy."

"It is," Sekai said. "It took us two hours to carry it here, and it wasn't even that far. And that's not including another half hour after that to figure out how we were going to make it fit in here. Look, I could go on all day about that thing, but I don't really have the time and I'm pretty confident you don't either. Could you cut the bullshit and just get in the damn machine already?"

Well, stalling clearly wasn't going to work. "Okay, got it. So, what do I do once I get inside?"

"Nothing," Sekai said as she undid what appeared to be clasps on the front of the machine holding something closed. "You're just supposed to lie there and wait for someone else to open the top back up. When they do, your transformation should be complete, and whatever ability you have will be at your disposal."

She finished with the clasps and flipped the top open, revealing the thing's interior. Whereas the outside of the machine was a dull gray, its inside was glowing a brilliant shade of blue, giving it the appearance of a tanning bed on steroids.

Before he got inside, Makoto asked one final question. "How long am I going to be in here?"

"About an hour or so," Sekai said. "We haven't really done experiments as to what time maximizes the effectiveness of your abilities, but from personal experience, an hour in there hasn't failed anyone yet."

"Okay then," Makoto said, a bit of trepidation in his voice. However, he got into the thing anyway, lying down so that his head faced Sekai and all his limbs fit inside.

"I'll see you in an hour," Sekai said, closing the lid on top of him. Makoto heard the clasps fastening, then the telltale flick of a switch. After that, he heard Sekai's footsteps as she left the room. Then nothing.

A whirring sound punctuated the silence after a brief while as Makoto clenched his fists in worry. What was going to happen to him? What did this thing even do?

Then came the first wave of pain. It wasn't the worst thing he'd ever felt- that honor had gone to the time he'd broken his arm falling out of a tree back in junior high- but it still was enough to make him seize up and moan in defeated agony. The whirring grew louder all the while. Makoto tried to force his hands over his ears, but the space was too cramped for it.

Another surge of pain raced through him, forcing him to grit his teeth to prevent a scream.

A third, and he gave in to his urges and screamed.

A fourth, and he was spasming, pounding against the ceiling, searching for a way out.

The whirring was nearly deafening now. Bolts of odd blue electricity had also started coming from all sides, striking Makoto over and over again, leaving the affected area numb. The lights around him were flickering madly, the strobe effect badly disorienting Makoto and making each bout of agony even worse.

The flashing lights, the energy surging through him, the pain, the confinement, the noise- in an instant, it all became too much.

Without fanfare, Makoto blacked out, his brain shutting down for a few quick repairs.