Ryoma woke up groggily, and his knuckle hurts like it had hit some wall. "What happened?" rubbing his head while waiting for his vision to become clear. "Where am I?" he looks around and realizes that he was in the nurse's office with Fuji beside him. "Fuji-senpai…. Why am I here?" he rubbed his head a few times. "Saa… how should I explain this?" Ryoma was still in daze to realize Fuji was struggling to find a way to explain this to him.
"Ne Echizen, do you remember what happened to you in the club room?" in response Ryoma gave him a what-look. "You mean you trying to rape me?" Fuji sweatdropped and sighed. "Listen. What I'm gonna tell you is something I know you won't believe but you have to, cause you'll soon find yourself in grave danger if you don't learn what is happening to you." "o…k… What medicine did you forget to take? I'll go buy some for you" Ryoma lifted an eyebrow and joked.
Fuji just facepalmed at his joke. "You see, this ring you found at the park was actually mine. I somehow dropped it there and didn't notice. And that's where you came in and picked it up. AND wore it for fun which resulted in all this trouble. As I said before, there are creatures called Vonkage who feeds on a Zantei's blood in order to live. And you have now become one of those preys. Get it?" Fuji stopped and looked at Ryoma who was looking at his bandaged hand.
"The ring was supposed to help stimulate your spiritual energy that was laying dormant in you. After wearing the ring for a while, your spiritual energy will start to awaken and surface in your body. But it takes a toll on your body as it takes time to adjust to the changes. Normally we would just rest and wait for it to pass but for you, your spiritual energy was too great and your body couldn't handle it all at once. Therefore, I helped you in what we call "The Release" which is to release the extra spiritual energy that has bottled up inside of you or you could have died or be stuck in a coma." Fuji took a deep breath from the long speech.
"Then what was that in the clubroom? You fulfilling your sadistic needs?" Ryoma pointed out.
"Might be. But that was also to help you with "The Awakening" which as the name suggests, it awakens the now active spiritual energy so that you can manifest it. Also normally we do this through training, but since you know nothing about this and to convince you that what I say is true, I used the other method which involves scaring the shi- , I mean spiritual energy out of you. The strong desire to survive made your spiritual energy come out as protection but too much made you go on rampage which would explain your injured knuckle. Walls aren't the best thing to vent out anger on." Fuji answered knowingly hopping his long speech would somehow make sense in Ryoma's mind.
"So through all that, you mean I have now become one of you Zanteis and have to now hide myself from these evil Vonkages?" Ryoma asked skeptically
"You can go into hiding, or you can learn how to fight" Fuji stated. Ryoma just stared at him with a confused face.
"Maybe I should show you." Fuji put his hand in front of him and a small ball of orange red started to form and rotate on the palm of his hand. This attracted Ryoma's attention, but showing no surprise. "This is a ball of spiritual energy, you can do many stuff with this" he made the ball float in mid air and flicked it towards Ryoma's forehead which made a red mark upon impact. "Ouch..!" rubbing his forehead. Fuji chuckled.
"Now you try" Ryoma pouted a little and tried to do what Fuji did, he looked at his palm and concentrated….very…very…hard but nothing happened. Fuji chuckled. "Maa… I expected that, since you just awoken your spiritual energy, it takes practice." But Ryoma didn't give up and tried concentrating more. To Fuji's surprise, a very small blue ball was taking place but vanished within seconds. Not bad….
"Other than helping Zantei's to awaken their spiritual energy, the ring also measures their spiritual energy's strength. People in this world shouldn't have any effect by wearing it so I don't know how you triggered it but your spiritual energy is quite strong. Your strength is shown by how many triangles are light up. Now you have 3." Fuji stopped explaining as he saw Ryoma was having a hard time taking in all the weird information.
"I'll leave it here, you'll understand more with some training."
"Training? As in tennis?"
"You'll see, I'll be going now, you'll be alright walking back home right?" with that Fuji left the confused Ryoma who replied with a nod.
