Tom 1. Chapter 7. Is My Power Dangerous?
Life was unexpectedly calm, despite the constant distractions from Yang when I wanted to meditate. Since the day I met Grimm, I had been trying to open my aura stronger and faster. Although I had plenty of time, I occasionally indulged her desires. To my surprise, the feeling that the aura would soon emerge and break through the depths of my two-year-old body was not far off.
The beginning of my journey to understanding the nature of power was not connected to traditional meditation techniques meant to calm the soul. Instead, a strange yet incredibly strong girl for her age became the source of knowledge that opened up more than the practices themselves. Meditation, while helping to balance the mind, was not a panacea. So, I invented a new method that I proudly named "Super-Duper Ultimate Technique Called Yang Power."
The essence of this technique was in interacting with her, which looked very similar to using wrestling moves. Why did I allow her to torment my body? Because any touch from her when she was tense gave me the feeling that the power, which was the aura, was awakening. But no matter how much I did this, achieving a breakthrough quickly was almost impossible. Although my words may seem like I endured her, that's not the case. Perhaps there would be a greater bonus if I endured her torment, but I used other techniques against her that I knew from my past life, such as tickling. Although this technique can be called quite cowardly, I have not yet dared to use the techniques I know against a child of her age. And one more thing: these techniques are only for those who want to die by my hand.
So the days and months went by until I heard the sound of the bed creaking from the bedroom of the new house, from Taiyang and Summer's room. Although there was nothing particularly special about the house, it was just like it was shown in the series, but there were some differences. Instead of two beds, there were still two, but there were fewer people on them. And one more thing: Ruby was not with us, and the crib where she should have been was missing. In fact, there should have been two cribs, but with me, there would have been three, and she wasn't there because she was small enough not to share a room with us. Although Yang hadn't lost her desire to use me as some sort of dakimakura with a living filler.
When I heard the creaking of the bed from Taiyang and Summer's room, I was genuinely surprised—I hadn't heard such a sound in a long time. Although this sound wasn't unusual for adults who might be having sex, my curiosity made me check if I was mistaken. Approaching the door, about two meters away, I heard a moan, and this sound finally confirmed my suspicions. At that moment, I was stunned, not because it was something strange, but because a thought crossed my mind: "I didn't want to hear that." Now, I could no longer look at her with the same innocent gaze I once had, knowing that she could moan like that. I went downstairs and sat on the couch, not because it disturbed me greatly, but because my head was filled with thoughts about the future I had envisioned, trying to predict possible events. Everything I knew helped form a picture of actions that seemed probable. But now, after what I heard, these pictures began to fall apart. The world turned out to be much more real and cruel than I had thought, capable of destroying hopes and desires, turning them into ashes and casting them into the abyss.
In the real world, the only thing you can predict is your own desires, not the actions of others. The behavior of those around you can only be understood when you know them as well as you know yourself. Another way is to use methods that restrict the free will of others and prevent them from acting differently than you want. However, this is no longer prediction, but manipulation, which allows you to control the actions of others. Manipulation is a dangerous tool, as it does not provide true understanding but merely imposes control. It destroys trust and mutual understanding instead of strengthening them. My skills in understanding the world and human consciousness can either grant me power or destroy me. Therefore, they should be used with caution.
So I sat, thinking about what might happen in the future, based on the information I had just received. Although a groan is hard to consider as information, I pondered what might come next, considering their actions. Occasionally, the thought crossed my mind that Ruby might die, and a new child would take her place as the hero. But I already considered this idea crazy, so I dismissed it as an impossible fog of tears. After some very interesting thoughts, my mind realized that events were unfolding very precisely, but these were just guesses that I couldn't confirm myself, except by waiting for the next events. But that's life, where you can't be prepared in advance. So my time of contemplation ended, and I climbed back up the stairs. The sounds coming from the room had already disappeared, which made me smile a little. The half hour I spent there in thought was enough for them, and after these words in my head, I smiled even wider.
When I re-entered the room, I unexpectedly saw the same oil painting I had seen countless times. She was once again using the technique "Cats - Empresses of the World" and lay in such a way that she occupied the entire bed.
The problem was that when we first moved into this place, she and I had separate beds. But due to the tears of this cunning one, they were a trick together, forming a large child's bed. The issue is that there is one and a half times more space than in the previous house, yet somehow she manages to take up all the space, and I can't understand how she does it.
When I approached our bed, thoughts of giving her a playful slap on the butt and quickly hiding swirled in my head. But just as I managed to think about it, she started moving, searching for something. When she realized something was missing, her eyes opened. At first, she stared at the ceiling, then suddenly shifted her gaze to me. She froze, but her look became strange, as if she was searching for something and had found it again. She even started moving away and watching me closely. Although she made space for me, it felt like a trap. So, from the beginning, I didn't accept her gesture of goodwill. But I couldn't wait for something to fall from the sky, so I began to lie down slowly, to have a chance to escape. Everything was fine until suddenly, like a sickle strike to the groin, she made her move again, from which I had no chance to escape.
Days passed, and Ruby grew like yeast. Half a year of my life had gone by, but during this time, I finally managed to unlock the aura I had expected to achieve earlier. However, expectations and reality are entirely different things.
I gained my new power while Yang and I were playing with Ruby. The sudden appearance of my aura surprised me and made me sweat a bit as I tried to hide from Summer's eyes. It was a workday, so Taiyang wasn't around, but that didn't make my game of hide and seek any easier. When I started glowing yellow, it would have been simpler if the light spread from me like a regular incandescent bulb. But when I noticed Yang looking at me and the laughter from Ruby quieting down, I realized something was wrong. Only then did I see my hands glowing. But despite the fact that I was the brightest glowing boy in the area, shining like the sun, the game continued. The oddity wasn't in the sudden breakthrough but in the fact that when I hid from her, even though she almost caught me, my aura color changed to black.
Black color... Interesting, why do I have that color? Although I didn't really care what color my aura was, the important thing was that it appeared. But such changes in color from yellow to black might seem strange to others.
For some time after the appearance of my aura, I studied how it works and how to learn to control its color. The only thing I understood is that the yellow color appears only when the use of the aura is at some invisible boundary that I cannot yet see. The transition to black happens at the moment when I feel some strange surge throughout my body, which is impossible to understand. And so far, this causes some inconvenience. Firstly, I still do not know how to control the power, specifically to find out what my manifestation is. Secondly, my aura gets out of control when Yang presses me to himself. And this power was very difficult to hide.
So, after my aura appeared, I realized I had to find a way to keep Yang from clinging to me so much. Although her affection was pleasant, the glow that enveloped my body during those moments was far too unusual. Even though this world itself is strange, it would be incredibly dangerous to let Summer and Taiyang know that their two-year-old child had already manifested an aura. Then there's Ozpin — someone who might take an interest in me, which is the last thing I need. And there's still the looming threat of Dotai. Though he hasn't found me yet, I won't truly understand the level of power this being possesses until I see it with my own eyes.
So, my best strategy was to hide my aura and quickly learn to control it to avoid any more unexpected incidents. That's how I spent the next six months. My goal was to master this power and act like a regular person — or, more accurately, like a regular child.
During these six months, something else happened. Yang's birthday and mine. Although I mentioned being two, I'm actually three years old now. Time flew by monotonously until that breakthrough, and while it added some excitement to my otherwise uneventful days, keeping a distance from Yang was difficult at first. However, when she turned three, her behavior shifted. She stopped clinging to me constantly and began paying more attention to her father, her new mother, and her younger sister.
Though her sudden change in behavior was initially unsettling, giving me the eerie feeling that something had disappeared from her mind — perhaps memories or empathy — I eventually realized my theory was wrong. Watching her play with Ruby, it was clear her empathy hadn't vanished. Yet, the question of whether she retained memories of me or others still lingered. Even now, I haven't been able to figure out why her behavior changed so abruptly.
At first, after all these changes, I had strange thoughts. But when I meditated to understand how to conquer my power or at least enter into full resonance with it to stabilize it, I began to find answers. Not to the question of how to conquer the aura, but what exactly is happening with Yang. In my past life, I had already seen this. At the age of three, children develop their own self-awareness as separate individuals. So, when she was constantly with me before, after the changes, her personality began to move away from the one who shaped her until she was three years old. I'm glad I knew people who had such young children. Although I had my own shelter, the knowledge about children gained from owning this place was small compared to the information from an old acquaintance.
Although the joy from the mentioned information was spinning in my head, understanding it did not ease my confusion. New questions began to bother me. Why do I show such emotions towards her and why do I show them in this way? When I learned the truth about my world, melancholy struck, but this emotion disappeared after a few months. In this world, I noticed that I feel more emotions, but I attributed this to the biological changes in my body. So now what I felt was abandonment, a feeling that I had been abandoned, and it was disturbing. I had the feeling that not only she had a change in personality, and it seemed that this foundation was made by the world itself. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was nonsense. So I stopped thinking about it and shifted my thoughts to finding solutions to two problems, and this will definitely take a lot of time, but I still have time.
Although my time was limitless while I was a child, it had a tendency to run out. Therefore, I set a goal to learn how to control this power by Ruby's birthday. My training began, and one of the most pressing issues that had become a stumbling block needed to be resolved as quickly as possible.
At first, everything was slow. Then, when I understood how the power flowed through my body and felt its action, how it moved through the nerve endings and lymph nodes, it surprised me. In Chinese culture, there are names for mythical designations of this energy, such as the energy 'Qi,' which in Chinese myths is described as a force that flows through all living and even non-living things. By acquiring it, you can move to another stage of human development. But I did not see or feel the exact energy described in that book, but I felt something else. At first, I felt prickly electric charges spreading throughout my body, causing goosebumps all over. Then I felt the blood flowing through my body start to feel strange. It was impossible to describe what I felt, except as a chaotic movement that never ended and went in a cycle of contraction and relaxation. And then I realized that I could feel not only how my blood flowed but also how my heart beat. This feeling seemed the strangest to me. Even when I felt something penetrate my blood, it didn't seem worth noting because these sensations were somewhat familiar. Strangely, when I realized what I had encountered in my body, I understood that I was feeling a hormone moving through my body. At that moment, I found it funny, and I just smiled. A smile appeared on my face, which triggered a further reaction in my body. When I saw even more different hormones in my blood, it became clear that the aura has more different levels of influence on the body besides protection. When these sensations penetrated deeper, I also began to delve deeper into my body to learn how to master the aura itself. The next thing I felt was the movement of lymph through my body. Although it was slow and thick, the exchange of intercellular fluid that I felt was no longer surprising. However, the pain I felt was sharp, like a cat jumping on your stomach while you sleep. At first, I didn't understand what sensation I was feeling and where it came from. Despite the pain, my thoughts wanted to find the cause of this painful sensation. When I found it, I realized that it was my muscles and bones that hurt. Although the painful sensations intensified every minute, it didn't bother me. But when my body began to stiffen like a board, I froze in a meditation pose in the backyard near a tree that shielded me from Taiyang and Summer, who were watching Yang play with Ruby. They hadn't noticed me yet, but soon they would want to check on me, and I was stuck here like a statue. So I needed to get out of this state as quickly as possible.
All the time I sat by the tree, I tried to find a way out of this situation. For quite a while, I tried to do something inside myself, flying in my thoughts. At some point, the pain increased to such an extent that all my thoughts began to get confused, but I still wanted to delve deeper into the rabbit hole, which was covered with thorns. The more I struggled, the more the feeling of being unable to do anything about this problem upset me. And then I began to hear with my ears that someone was approaching me. Their steps were light and quick, so I knew that one of the children was coming to me. My eyes were closed, so I didn't know who was coming. When I felt someone's hand on my face, the unexpected movement of my aura after this action was strange because it allowed me to get closer to the core of my being. When I met my soul, it was like glass, all transparent, but with many threads that, like tentacles, twisted throughout the space of the center of my soul.
When I reached my destination, the hardest part remained — understanding how to do everything correctly. A few minutes passed uncontrollably as I tried to interact with the center of my soul. It constantly resisted when I approached, but no matter how hard I tried, it did not extend a helping hand. Although this thing resembled the sun, I did not feel any warmth from it. The only thing I managed to understand was that it was not the soul, as I initially felt, but the aura itself, which looked very similar to it on the outside. My actions, which I wanted to take to subdue or create a symbiotic relationship with my aura, were quite complex. At first, I thought that my power came from my soul, but it turned out that it came from another source. The aura itself was my source. At first, this surprised me, although what did I expect from this world, for everything to be as expected. I observed it to understand how to find a backdoor that would allow me to go deeper. But the only thing I understood was that the tentacles that extended from it were approaching me like a pack of dogs wanting to tear me apart. Suddenly, I felt another hand touch my face, and I felt a strange but very overwhelming surge of power that allowed me to resist my aura.
When the tentacles began to retreat, I managed to notice a dark passage. And at that moment, like lightning, I burst in to see that I was in a bright space that seemed even a little dazzling to me. Suddenly, I heard a voice.
"You are an outsider in this world," the otherworldly voice said.
"What?" I was taken aback by the words. "Why am I an outsider here?" I asked with curiosity.
"Because you are not from this world, you were not meant to be here!" the voice split into several voices, growing louder with each passing second.
"Then why did you create a body for me?" my question aimed to answer one of the main questions.
"Because you are a parasite that could have taken over her," the voice said with aggression. "So I had no choice but to give you a body to minimize your influence on her. But you still managed to create a bond with her that prevented me from destroying you from the very beginning," as the force of this world spoke these words, I felt hostility and a desire to kill me.
"Why do you wish for my death?" I asked, softly, like a quiet moonbeam.
After my words, the world fell silent, but not for long. Half a minute later, it spoke again, singing its eerie song.
"You are a parasite," it said with such firmness in its voice, as if the whole world had gathered in that sound. "Your parasitism with Yang is a mistake that needs to be corrected," there was hostility in its words.
"I am not a parasite. Yang and I have a symbiotic relationship," I replied, staring into the unknown of the white space.
"You are in symbiosis with her only because you were lucky that I didn't consume you," the creature said, as if diving into memories. "And you were lucky that she was nearby," it added with a note of sadness in its voice. "That's why I consider your relationship with her parasitic," the creature added, as if summarizing everything that had been said.
"I will not disappear from this world!" I shouted with hostility in my voice, raising its volume.
These words, though they could not end the dialogue in my favor, at least gave me a chance to entertain myself somehow. I was already bored of listening to it, and with each moment, it irritated me more and more. So I spoke these hostile words to amuse myself a little at the end of the conversation.
And at that moment, I felt a surge of aura that sought to eject me from the deepest corners of my own being. But suddenly, another sensation appeared – a touch, completely different, gentle, like the touch of angel wings. I felt someone small and light settle between my legs. At first, I thought it could be Yang, but this possibility was quickly dismissed as impossible. Even stranger were the thoughts that it could be Ruby – a small child who had recently learned to crawl and still walked clumsily, had come to me on her own.
Although I couldn't see her, I felt the warmth of her body, which calmed me down until I heard the voice of the world again, speaking strange words, in my opinion.
"One of the children of the sun god," she said with sadness. "There are few of you left in this world," the troubling monologue concluded.
"What does that mean?" I said, not expecting to hear anything from it.
"You shouldn't worry about that, parasite," I felt aggression from her again. "But I will not destroy you. Yin, you can freely use your power," after these words, I suddenly began to disappear from the center of my aura, not having time to say anything.
I saw those tentacle-like hairs begin to reach towards my soul. At first, it confused me, but the power that was revealed fully merged with me, enveloping me like a black widow's web. And I woke up just in time to see two girls playing with my motionless body while I was in the inner world of myself.
The sensations I felt as the tentacles from the aura wrapped around me were hard to describe, except as the warmth of summer sun in a snowfall.
When my eyes opened, I saw a pair of violet eyes in front of my face and realized that I had returned from the inner world to the outer world. After I opened my eyes, she removed her hands from my forehead. Then I looked down and thought that Ruby's hair color, as she sat on my lap, looked funny. Her hairstyle resembled a nest and transitioned from black to red at the tips. I thought about how difficult it would be to comb her hair, but that would be Summer's concern, not mine.
And now the most important thing. Yang, after I shifted my attention to Ruby, began to move away towards Summer, who was coming to see what we were doing together.
And then suddenly I felt her move. When I turned my head, I saw two gray eyes looking at me with a desire to play.
"Kids, what are you doing?" Summer asked us, after she had asked Yang the same question ten seconds ago.
When I heard someone approaching, I was already ready to respond. Breaking eye contact with Ruby, I looked at Summer and began to answer like a child.
"We're playing, Mom," I said.
"And what are you playing?" she asked us with genuine interest.
"Stare-down," I said.
"The one you recently invented?" she said, recalling those events.
"Yes," I agreed with her words.
"Alright, play, but in two minutes, come home to eat, okay?" she said to Ruby and me, but more to me as the older one.
"Okay," I said with a smile.
After hearing my words, she smiled and started walking towards the house.
"So, what shall we do, Ruby?" I said, looking at the child in front of me.
While we were talking with Summer, Ruby had managed to throw her legs over mine and was watching us with curiosity.
Yang stood alone, looking at Ruby and me, thinking about something, and from her gaze, I couldn't understand what she was thinking. Then I quietly whispered to Ruby:
"Let's play at home, and now you go play with Yang. Okay, Ruby?" I said to improve their bond.
She looked as if she understood everything, got up, and ran to Yang. But the look Yang gave me didn't disappear. I felt something and hastily said:
"Thank you," although my whisper was drowned out by a gust of wind, her gaze changed, and she went to play with Ruby, who had run up to her.
When they disappeared from my sight, I activated my aura and felt the changes. The first change was that the aura no longer felt hostile towards me, and secondly, I learned to control the color change of the aura. This is one of the best bonuses one can get in this situation because explaining why my aura jumps from yellow to black like a mad bull would be difficult. There was also a third feature—I felt my manifestation, which had been hidden from me until that moment. But what I initially felt seemed strange to me because there was a continuous flow around me, like the wind. Although it seemed like the wind to me, it actually wasn't. When I extended my hands to try to create a gust of wind and see what it looked like, my hopes of making a breeze visible to me but not to others, like Yang, Ruby, or Tàiyáng, were in vain. They were in vain because the power I wanted to manifest was not my true manifestation. Then, after understanding the problem, I began to go through all the known manifestations I knew to understand which manifestation would have such sensations as I felt. After some time of such reflections, no realistic thoughts appeared that could at least slightly help me understand my power. The only thing that was close to my thoughts was the power of the season, which was still used by maidens who possessed magical powers in a not very magical world.
Time passed, and it was time for lunch. I was about to leave when I saw Tàiyáng waving at us and saying, "Kids, it's time to eat."
There was nothing particularly fun at lunch, except for Taeyang's behavior, which, to my surprise, was extremely amusing to Summer. His jokes and stories entertained her, although they seemed a bit strange and unusual to me. He told her about his day at work, adding a comedic touch to each event, although most of the stories actually entertained her. Her laughter and surprise were genuine, and his jokes created a relaxed atmosphere, even if they didn't seem so funny to me. And so another day passed, leaving behind only a slight aftertaste of familiar events and unspoken thoughts. Life flowed like a river, quietly and imperceptibly, and each new day seemed like a continuation of the previous one, but with small differences that were hard to notice at first glance.
The only thing that really fascinated me was the development of my new ability, which I sought to reveal and understand.
There was still some time left until Ruby's birthday, but thoughts about what Summer and Tàiyáng had prepared for her ran through my head like a ball of spiders.
The past few days, I have been diligently trying to unlock my manifestation, but I still couldn't figure out how to make it visible to myself. I lacked the knowledge and experience to finally activate this power that I sought to use and improve. Training in the forest under the watchful eyes of Summer and Tàiyáng, I felt their presence was holding me back. It didn't allow me to fully unleash the potential of the training I had created for myself to find my own limits—the limits beyond which I could feel and see my manifestation. My training consisted of constant games with Ruby and experiments with the aura. I was learning to control it within my body, trying to apply it in different situations. Several times I tried to extend the aura beyond my body, but the attempts were unsuccessful—the aura simply couldn't break through. This forced me to look for other training methods and constantly improve my understanding of this mysterious power. At first, I tried to find some instructions or advice on controlling the aura's power. I asked questions, hoping to get clear answers, but instead, I encountered long and drawn-out stories that were so boring that one could fall asleep listening to them. However, I understood that to get the full information, I needed to listen to them to the end, even if it required considerable patience. These stories I heard from Tàiyáng, although his manner of presentation was too drawn-out and monotonous. Later, I switched to Summer, and to my surprise, her stories were much more interesting. She spoke so captivatingly that I wanted to listen to her even more, and even the moments that seemed simple took on new meaning in her narration. This made me realize that most of their knowledge about their powers came through self-development and their own observations. They figured out a lot on their own, experimenting during battles or listening to explanations from more experienced people. In other words, their understanding of their abilities was formed not so much on formal theory as through practical experience and intuition.
When I realized that their methods wouldn't help me for now because I didn't have their knowledge and experience in my head but had my own ideas, I decided to act differently. I gathered the information I could extract from them through naive questions and childish antics and began to create my own more balanced training system. My plan was to integrate their experience with my own knowledge and continue experimenting.
So I sit in the yard, watching Yang and Ruby play, while I practice breathing techniques. From time to time, I try to climb one of the trees. For a three-year-old child, climbing a tree five times my size is almost impossible, but with the help of the aura, it becomes achievable. However, getting down is still difficult.
Why don't I climb all the way up but only pretend to try? Because for a three-year-old child, standing still or just sitting would look strange, so I have to pretend to be active to make everything look natural.
My actions changed with a certain periodicity so as not to look monotonous or suspicious. It was boring—constantly making sure that no one had a reason to think I was strange. Although the days passed like waves during a storm, the hope of unlocking this strange power only grew.
It seemed these hopes were heard. At the moment when the doors to new possibilities opened, I was busy playing with Ruby, while Yang was helping Tàiyáng and Summer with something that seemed trivial at first glance. However, my assumptions about what she was doing leaned towards the idea that it was much more important. For example, tasting the dough for the pie that Summer was preparing for Ruby's birthday.
I was surprised that in this world, pies are mostly prepared for birthdays instead of cakes. Although my judgments were based only on a few observations—specifically on our and Yang's birthdays and a few other occasions. Maybe it's just a local custom, but for me, it remained unusual.
My breakthrough happened when Ruby and I were tossing a small ball to each other. At some point, it accidentally flew into the wall, and I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my fingers. It wasn't just a physical sensation but something deeper, as if something inside me had changed. The ball was ordinary, the impact couldn't have caused such severe pain. I began to understand that it wasn't just my bodily reaction—my aura was reacting, trying to protect me from the impact.
And then I wondered: why did the pain occur? After all, the manifestation, as I thought, shouldn't cause physical harm. But it did, and this proved that the aura reacted to the damage. It turns out my manifestation can cause me noticeable harm if used incorrectly. This was an unexpected discovery—the power that was supposed to be protective turned out to be potentially dangerous to me.
So, I not only don't fully control my manifestation but also possibly don't understand its true nature enough. What is it? Can my own protection become an enemy? I need to be more cautious in training and possibly take a new approach to uncovering this power.
Although at that moment I was lost in my thoughts, my game with Ruby continued almost automatically. When I finally returned to reality, I glanced at the wall where the ball had flown and saw something strange. A barely noticeable mark that didn't catch the eye, but if you looked closely, you could see a small dent that definitely wasn't there before.
This revealed another surprise to me. My manifestation left a mark, even though I wasn't aware of it at the moment of impact. If such a minor interaction could leave an imprint on the wall, what could happen if I purposefully used my power?
So, in the future, I need to be careful with this power until I learn to control it. It's not worth risking without knowing what it's capable of, as even such a small manifestation left its mark. Now I understood that playing with forces that are not yet under my control can have serious consequences. Even the smallest mistake could lead to something unpredictable, so I decided to focus on training and improvement to avoid dangerous situations in the future. And I agreed with myself that my power is still dangerous for me, but the day will come when I can use it fully.